The midwife unfortunately arrived right when the contractions had slowed down, and that meant that the inf-, on the information that she received when she arrived home she concluded that I was in early labour, which I wasn’t. But that was, that was, I was definitely showing the signs of being in early labour because I had slowed right down and, but so I misled her a bit there, and she went off to have breakfast. And we ended up phoning her in, well, my husband ended up phoning her, I should say, in a bit of a panic about 45 minutes after she went to get her breakfast elsewhere, away from the house, because I really began to feel that I needed her. I needed her for some advice about when to get into the birth pool, and I needed her because I was a bit, I was a bit frightened by the fact that I was feeling these urges to push and I knew that it, it wasn’t time yet, but I needed help in restraining myself.

So she quickly came back from breakfast and advised me to get in the pool, which helped me to resist these urges to push. It helped enormously. All the time I would say that the pain was great, the pain was great but I never really thought about using any pain relief. It was a huge relief to me to get into the water but at no point did I feel that it was out of control and that I really needed any, any extra help. The support of my husband and my sister and the independent midwife who was with us was, was really helpful as well.

So is the baby actually born in the pool?

The baby was not born in the pool. I came to a point during the labour and, after having been in the pool I would say probably an hour, although my memory fails me slightly, that I was basically dead to the world. I was flopped over the edge of the, of the pool and I had expended all my energy in trying to resist this urge to push for such a long time. I was very tired and my midwife really helpfully suggested that, if I could, ‘Go and sit on the loo for a while, just have a change of, of scenery, and drink a little bit of water and have some honey on a spoon. And that, that helped me a lot to get my, to get my energy back. Probably just the effect of having been in warm water for such a long time. If you imagine taking a bath for an hour, really nice warm bath for an hour, it does wear you out a bit actually. So, so that was really helpful to just have a change of scenery. And once I’d been out of the pool for a few minutes it had served its purpose, I was up and running again and with a lot more energy. And then, then I was ready to push and the, and the second stage of labour really started in earnest.

My birth plan was to try and have a natural birth, natural labour unless I had any complications, and I’d known during my pregnancy that the baby was back to back, and that might make the contractions much more uncomfortable and less effective. And so if the baby hadn’t turned, then I made, then I said that I was quite open to any sort of pain relief. I was hoping that hed turn round and that I could try and have a, use a water bath as a form of pain relief and stay in a birthing suite rather than – in a midwife-run suite rather than in the delivery, doctor-orientated one;

But because I had to go in to be induced, even though I wasn’t induced in the end, but I was monitored right from the beginning of my contractions starting, from the beginning of labour and so I couldn’t go anywhere near water because I had all the things on. And because the baby’s heart rate dropped a couple of times with the contractions so they wanted to keep monitoring me. And because the contractions were really ineffective, I did decide to have pain relief, so my birth plan was to be open to everything, and in the end I was really relieved that I hadn’t been really firm about not having an epidural because it was brilliant and it made the whole thing so much better;

But during, during the labour I remember vaguely wanting to carry on not having an epidural, and my partner talked me into having an epidural because, because I wanted to carry on trying to do it naturally and I was getting exhausted, and so I did have to be talked into it, but I knew that I wasn’t, I knew that that was my original plan, so it wasn’t like I was compromising myself, because I’d decided that if it was complicated in any way then I would be open to having an epidural. And it was complicated, so I felt that I, it was due to me to have the pain relief so, yeah.

Initially I, before – we didn’t discuss it at the hospital, in regards to the epilepsy, until probably 24, 26 weeks – and initially I’d thought I perhaps might have to have a caesar because they didn’t want me going through the strain of labour, because it’s sort of – you’re getting very tired, all of those things, all of which are triggers to my epilepsy. And, but that transpired that, no, I could, there was no reason why I couldn’t have a normal delivery. That they would obviously monitor very closely how long it went on, and how exhausted I got. I know we discussed if I, perhaps I went into labour at ten at night, so I was approaching needing sleep already, to then go for eighteen hours and not really getting anywhere, then they might decide, you know, I’d gone on, it had gone on long enough.

But we were due to go and meet the whole team – went in for one of my appointments at thirty six weeks and we were due to go and meet the whole anaesthetics team and things that day. And discuss the epidural and all of that, which I wouldn’t imagine the normal – you know, if you just had community midwifery, you wouldn’t have that opportunity. But they wanted, you know, they wanted me to do that, so that I knew exactly what was going to happen, because I, that was very much the option I wanted, an epidural. I didn’t want any pain. And I just thought I wanted to enjoy it and I, you know, I thought about the pros and cons of an epidural, the risks. You know, I have a good friend who’s an anaesthetist. The risk, the risks are very low, even though they have to tell you about them. And I wanted to enjoy it, and I didn’t want to be, I didn’t have a great desire to be the new age mother who’d done the whole thing with only gas and air, and biting on her husbands hand. So you know, I wanted the easy option. If it’s there, take it.

It’s difficult because I haven’t really felt labour so – because I had the caesarean last time I never got to the second stage – so it’s hard to compare. But I couldn’t really feel anything. I didn’t have any desire to push which, you know, you’re, they say you have. And I had sort of, I had these pains in my ribs, so they got me on my side to try and alleviate the pain in the ribs, which worked. But I couldn’t really feel anything, but the midwife was very good and she talked me through what I needed to do, like put my chin down on my chest and sort of really push hard and everything. She said, ‘You won’t feel like anything’s happening, but it is. And she would, they had a monitor on the baby’s head by this stage and she said, and the cord, she said you could see it coming further and further out. It was, so she said, ‘We can tell that it’s working. So she was keeping me informed of what was happening and that everything, I was doing everything correctly, otherwise I wouldn’t have known anything, really.

I mean, looking back over that because it was you suggesting that you have the epidural. It didn’t sound like anybody had actually talked to you about whether this might affect your ability to have a…

Well

To be able to feel the push?

No. I hadn’t, they didn’t mention it to me, but I had spoken to other women who’d given birth with an epidural and I’d asked them what it was like.

So I guess it’s a toss up, isn’t it, because it could have meant that…

I know.

Because you couldn’t feel the pushing it was…

It was. It was one, I knew the, what would happ-, that I wouldn’t be able to feel anything, but on the other hand I didn’t want to have a general anaesthetic if it went wrong. So it was, it was a difficult decision, but I’d rather it was that way. And in fact the pain was so intense when I got there it was quite, you know, secretly relieved that [laugh] I was having an epidural, really.

I had 50mg pethidine when I was about 5cm dilated. I did try gas and air then. I found the pethidine, it worked very well for about an hour. My plan beforehand was to just have gas and air but the problem with having been induced with a drip, because there are different ways of being induced, and being induced with a drip meant that I, I had to have bands across my belly to monitor, monitor the baby’s heartbeat and that’s very uncomfortable. Those, those become uncomfortable after about 20 minutes but I had to have them on throughout the labour and I wasn’t able to move around as much as I’d hoped. And the contractions were being controlled completely by the midwife, who was controlling the drip so they did, they, traditionally they say they’re very painful but – or more painful than natural contractions – but I’m sure that a contraction is a contraction however it’s coming about and I won’t know if there is a difference unless I have the opportunity to go through it again.

So, after the, the pethidine, that wore off after about an hour or two and then I did try to suck on the gas and air but I did find at that point I wasn’t able to, to breathe properly, really. I was taking short, shallow breaths as you do when you’re in pain. So really I used, I used the gas and air as a bit to bite on more than anything [laughing]. That was it’s best use. And I did find it, I did find it all far more painful than I’d realised. I mean, incredibly painful. A pain that sends you to a different place mentally and, obviously, I’d never experienced that before.

Because in the modern world, if you’re going to experience a pain like that then you’d be anaesthetised [laughing]. But I was determined that I didn’t want to have an epidural because I realised that this might be my only opportunity to experience childbirth so I wanted to experience it. And by the time it came to pushing the baby out, about 5 hours had passed since I’d taken the pethidine so it had long since worn off. So I felt quite privileged to be able to feel the, to feel the whole, to feel the whole thing because I’d spoken to some friends who’d said they hadn’t been completely aware of the moment of birth even, because there hadn’t been enough feeling and I didn’t want that to happen. So I was completely aware of, of all the movement and the moment of birth, etcetera.

While this was going on, who was looking after you? Who was in the delivery suite with you?

I had 4 different midwives over the, the 2, 2 or 3 days and none of them I knew, not one of them. I’d never met any of them.

How were they?

One lady in particular was an older lady and she was like the first one to look after me. She was a little Irish lady and she kept saying to me, Take the gas and air But I knew from the previous one that I couldn’t take the gas and air because it makes me sick. And she kept putting this thing in my mouth and telling me to suck on it and I kept saying, I can’t because it makes me sick And she just didn’t listen at all so eventually I took the gas and air off her, blew into it and then vomited all over her because she wasn’t listening and I’d told her at least half a dozen times that I couldn’t take it, it would make me sick. I had to show her, so I did.

So you made your point?

Yes.

Okay. So once you’d been sick all over her, I presume then she believed you, that you couldn’t..

Yes, she did. Then she, you know, then, then I think she gave me a pethidine and then I was hooked up to a diamorphine, then I had another pethidine, I was hooked up to another diamorphine.

So did you feel disappointed about the way the labour went?

No, I don’t think so. I mean at the time it was, it seemed a very long time but I was quite, I mean my main priority was not to, not to have an epidural or to, you know, I wanted to be aware of the whole process. And that was fine, that, that happened. I suppose it would have been, it would have been nice if it had been shorter and if wed had a more cooperative midwife for the bulk of it. But in fact, you know, I was very pleased that, that I’d done it sort of almost without too much intervention in terms of pain relief and, yes, no, I mean it was, it was fine really.

Tell me again what did you do for pain relief?

I just used a TENS machine which I’d hired myself and then gas and air in, that the hospital provided.

Do you want to just explain what a TENS machine is?

A TENS machine is, it’s a machine that you strap onto your back that, with little sort of pulses that you can then control the flow, it’s sort of electrical pulses that dampen down your pain sensations and you have control over how quickly or how strongly the impulses are sent to you. So you can actually sort of switch it on and off to help you through your contraction and it’s, it does actually help quite, quite well to block the pain out. And you can hire it in advance so you practise with it, but then obviously when the, when you’re in labour it’s, it’s a whole new experience [laugh] sort of trying to work out when the contractions are coming and operate it. But, no, it was, it was quite useful.

They put this jelly up inside you and, basically, that brings on the contractions, brings, makes you contract straightaway. So I was contracting straight away and that wasn’t too bad. And they were really, really busy, I remember, and the midwife kept buzzing off and leaving me, me and my partner. And sometimes we were left like a couple of hours at a time, which wasn’t too good. I wasn’t impressed about that bit, actually. And yeah, the contractions, they obviously got more and more stronger as the day went on and the birth itself, because, because I was induced, the contractions started to get quickly, more quickly than we thought and I really wanted to have – oh God, what was it called? A – oh, the pain relief when they inject you in the back, what that’s called?

Epidural?

Epidural, yeah, and I really wanted an epidural and by the time the anaesthetist had come round and to do it, because they were so busy, it was too late, basically. And he was trying and trying, he tried to put the needle in my back about 10 times and it’s a big, thick old needle and I just couldn’t keep still for him to do it because I was contracting too quickly. So in the end I had to have him naturally. I didn’t like the gas and air at all and I thought it was horrible so I, I couldn’t, couldn’t have that either. It made me feel sick. And yeah, so like I say, he come, he come out naturally and it was quite painful.

So you had no pain relief at all?

No pain relief at all and they had to, to cut me all the way to my bottom, basically, and that was quite horrific. But the actual birth itself didn’t, didn’t hurt. It was the contractions and this guy trying to put needles in my back [laughing]. That was the most painful thing, definitely. And also afterwards, it took an hour and a half for my placenta to come away and I had various people tugging on it and injecting me and oh, that, and that was the worst bit, actually, the stitches afterwards and the placenta, trying to remove the placenta. That was definitely the worst bit and that, that was it, really. But I’m sure people have had worse pregnancies but that seemed quite bad [laughing]. Not pregnancies, births, that seemed quite, quite bad to me for a first one. I just wish I had pain relief. That would have been much better, I think, definitely.

And we had a couple of bad experiences in the middle. I mean, I wasn’t coping very well with the pain, but that’s, you know, a very subjective experience, because nobody knows the pain I was feeling, and I don’t know the pain anybody else is feeling. So really, nobody can say, ‘You’re not coping. But the midwife actually spoke to a doctor in front of me, and said, ‘Shes not coping very well with the pain’, which made me feel I was a very bad person. And I’d tried everything. I’d had paracetamol, pethidine, baths, TENS machine, epidural, absolutely everything. The epidural was fine, but nothing was happening. And after about, I think it was about 7 oclock the next evening, so I’d been through the whole day in labour, about 7 oclock they decided to start giving me I think it’s Syntocinon [oxytocin], which speeds up the contractions.

Anyway, I had an epidural so I’d had a little bit of sleep, but still I was incredibly tired, because it was now Saturday evening and I hadn’t slept since Thursday night. And I did ask several times if I could have a caesarean, you know, would they consider it? And I kept being told, ‘Well, we think we should try for another 4 hours. We don’t give caesareans based on family history. It’s much better for you to have this baby naturally, so let’s keep going. And at that point, I was quite happy to do so because the epidural was working quite well.

Then suddenly it stopped working and the pump on the epidural box failed, and an anaesthetist came up to try and fix it, and said it was working absolutely fine and he left. And I was still in absolute agony, and I kept saying to the midwife, ‘Can you please do something about this? I’m in absolute agony’, you know, my hips felt like someone was dislocating them. You probably don’t really want this on your tape, it’s putting people off having babies [laughs]. But eventually some, another anaesthetist, a more senior anaesthetist came up and said, ‘I’m not surprised you’re in agony because this epidural pump is obviously broken and it clearly hasn’t been working for a few hours. And she said ‘I’ll fix it for you’, by which point I’d just had enough. It was now 3 oclock on Sunday morning and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot wait any more. I’m not prepared to try another 4 hours. I want you to give me a caesarean at this point. And they did eventually come back, and the doctor sort of came in and examined me and said, ‘OK, well give you a caesarean.