Part 1: My Birth Story
I haven’t shared my birth story publicly yet. There are often so many negative stories around birth and I don’t want to needlessly add to that narrative. I want to share my story in the hope that it may encourage other women to speak honestly about an event that is typically one of the most intense and primal experiences we will ever have. Your voice within that experience matters. How you feel after your birth experience matters.
*NOTE: if you are pregnant or trying to conceive, please exercise wisdom when reading this. My intention is not to frighten anyone but to add to the evolving conversation around maternal mental health and it’s importance.
My daughter Olive, was born in December of last year. I had already had a very challenging first 4 months with the pregnancy due to battling hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness), see more about my experience with that here. Once that cleared, I felt like a completely new person. I could eat again, go outside, work, plan for our girl, it was a complete 180 degree shift to the endless vomiting prior.
I did a lot of labour preparation in that time- I read many books, we hired a doula for the birth, did a breast feeding course, went to a wonderful 6 week antenatal course and had a very clear birth preferences plan. When writing the birth plan I knew we would need to remain open minded. As every mother knows, birth has it’s own plans and I was super aware we would need to adapt to whatever the circumstances threw at us. But the hope was to have a water birth at home.
When labour finally began (at 41+3), I was devastated it was my beloved midwife’s day off. Over the 9 months, I had formed a wonderful relationship with her - she had been so encouraging throughout the hyperemesis and I was so looking forward to her being there for the giant pay off. I had met my midwife’s substitute once before. She was fine but she had a completely different energy to my midwife and wasn’t very familiar with my birth preferences or my case history. In that instance, it was so good to have my doula there who provided some much needed assurance and familiarity for Matt and I. I had done a lot of preparation through hypnobirthing so my doula helped ground and coach me in those initial stages. I also popped a TENS machine on early on which provided a super welcome distraction to the intensity of the contractions.
Shortly after arriving, the midwife became concerned with the level of Olive’s movement during each contraction so she asked us to transfer to the hospital. At this stage, I was disappointed but was grateful to have already mentally prepared for that possibility. Once we arrived at the hospital, the cascade of disheartening events began.
I was ready to get straight in the bath at the hospital but that night, the hospital was having issues with their water supply and literally ran out of water as the bath was being filled up. I know - difficult to fathom, and I still can’t make sense of it 10 months later, but this obviously affected my ability to labour in the water. The midwife was also struggling to pick up Olive’s heartbeat in the bath so they asked me to come onto the bed. The nurses were trying to do a CTG but were having no luck with failing cables so the midwife inserted a fetal scalp electrode on top of Olive’s head to monitor her heart rate. As this kept falling out when I adjusted positions, I was forced to labour on the bed, on my back for hours, which was literally my worst case scenario. It felt so incredibly unnatural to be on my back and I was so frustrated that I couldn’t move into the position I felt my body wanted. There was a lot of shouting at me to ‘push’ which I found distressing. I had longed for a calm, intimate environment where I could focus on my breathing and it had turned into the complete opposite of that. I knew I wasn’t going to get her out if I had to remain on my back for the duration. I was rapidly losing energy and struggling to progress with her head so a decision was made to do an episiotomy which got Olive out quickly.
Her tiny body was placed on my chest and I felt waves and waves of intense love for her mixed with shock and overwhelm. The reality of finally meeting our little bean collided with the magnitude of emotions for what I had just been through.
Unfortunately an injection of Syntocin was then given to me (without my consent) to deliver the placenta. This may seem like a minor event, but at this stage, I felt I had lost complete control over the whole experience, and I was so disappointed I hadn’t been given the choice whether to deliver it myself or not.
I had birthed a beautiful healthy baby I was deeply grateful for but that didn’t negate that I had found my labour experience traumatic. Trauma is completely subjective of course - what one woman may find traumatic, another may not. But my autonomy and my ability to make choices throughout my labour were very important to me. I left the experience feeling I was robbed of that. It’s funny that once the baby arrives, the “at least the baby is OK” statements come hot and fast. I completely understand the sentiment behind this but it subliminally sends the message to the mother that her birth trauma doesn’t matter, that it’s not ok to grieve for the experience that she felt she lost. Part of the tension of moving on from a birth that has been traumatic is trying to reconcile the knowledge that being blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby doesn’t automatically nullify a challenging birth experience. We are not made of stone, we are flesh and blood and heart and there are inevitable residues on us when we go through trauma. There must be space as women, to vocalise, process and travel through that.
CONT IN PART 2: MY POST PARTUM JOURNEY WITH PND