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Ashleigh<3
30-10-2006, 15:53
So I thought it was about time I get cracking onto my birth story. Wasn't sure wether to post this in waterbirths or just birth stories, figured it's best in this thread area.

Little Chloe Anna is almost three weeks old. I’m already saying, she’s growing up so fast. :(
Having three due dates, the 29th, 30th and then a midwife due date, October 2nd (which I was thankful for, as I only had one day left before I was going to be induced!)
I was so anxious! When will she be here? Grrrr…

Started the 'bringing on labour' techniques after my 40 week apptmnt. Lots of walking, spicy foods, love making, Evening primrose oil capsules….
Then on the night of October 10th, I was almost ready to just give up! But DP and I instead, decided to go for a very long walk, then when we got home, some lovemaking, and I propped my bottom up on a pillow for a while, then inserted three evening primrose oil capsules and propped my bottom up again. (This was advice from the middies) Sorry for TMI!

It was about 4:30am, Started having these horrible menstrual like pains. Got up and started walking around my house, walked around in constant circles in every single room I could find.
Up and down the stairs plenty of times.
They were definitely intensifying, Did this for two hours or so. Then had a shower, they only got worse. So I then started timing them. They were two-three minutes apart. Kept timing them for an hour. By now it was 7:30am, I called the midwife, told her the news, she congratulated me for making it before my induce date. Told me to come in, in one hour.
:smiliedance:

We got in the car and saw that we needed petrol. We wouldn’t of made it to the hospital even though it’s just down the road.
So we got petrol, ended up getting to the hospital at 9am.
Contractions were getting worse. The only comfortable position I could find was leaning over a table, trying not to dig my nails too deep into the wood!
Tried the bean bag- No thanks, Tried the ball- This was actually okay for a while.
My main problem was sitting on my butt, too much pressure, too much pain! But I desperately needed to sit down some how, I was exhausted, having been walking around since 4:30am, The only time I had sat down was the every two minutes I had to pee, and when were in the car on our way over.

10:00am They did a vaginal examination. Great! I was 2cm dilated!
Midwife suggested I hope into the shower. So I was probably in the shower for about one hour non stop. (sorry about water restrictions, midwife told me it didn’t apply to the hospital so I was okay with it, but then again whilst in labour, of all things-would you even care about water restrictions?)
Hopped out of the shower, these contractions were getting so hard to deal with, I was so exhausted, and I had already felt like I had taken the gas, I felt delusional just off being so damn tired!
Walked around for a while tried the bean bag again, birthing ball, NOPE- definitely cannot sit down right now. Way too painful!
By now it was about 11am, Midwife told me to hop back in the shower. So I did.
This is when I started to cry, I was hugging the poles on the wall of the shower, trying to hold my body weight on them, my legs were just going to give in! Started begging for the drugs, I asked Adam if he could sweet talk the middies into scoring me some, even though I knew the hospital I was at didn’t use drugs for labour, I thought it was worth a shot!
So anyway, no luck there. Just had to bite down and deal, I was secretly glad though, as in my birth plan I had in bold, capital letters NO DRUGS.

I heard in the background ENYA playing, Adam asked why we couldn’t play some of our music, midwife asked what type of music we listened to and she quickly said, "no way! and trust me, you’ll feel worse, and after the birth that song will remind you of labour and pain". She was right, I hate enya!:p

I had the best midwife on duty, she really stuck to my birth plan, and didn’t take my frustrated labour cries into account, I almost hated her at the time for it, but love her now for everything she did, and the way she went about it all so perfectly!

By now it was 1pm and she wanted to do another examination. (btw in my opinion, having a vaginal examination, whilst having the most intense contractions imaginable,:eek: is by far worse then the point of pushing the baby out! Just my personal opinion there though!)

So she said I was 5cm dilated, she started filling the birthing bath up (just imagine a triangular spa bath,
but only three times the size to accommodate my large preg-asus body!)
Took about 20 minutes to fill up. I hopped in, and wow what relief! Couldn’t believe how much water helped with the pain, by now I knew I was right in opting for the water birth!

I lasted till 2:30pm before I really needed the gas, was having trouble breathing, Chloe was very much head down, the middie kept reminded me she had felt her head during the last examination. So I knew she was close, still had a lot of pressure on my lungs/ribcage though, so the gas + oxygen really helped me get through those contractions without the whole suffocation feeling going on.
10 minutes of sucking down hard on the gas, I was as drunk as a skunk, and talking all kinds of ****.
My Grandma, mum, Adam’s mum, my sister and Adam were all sitting around the room. Laughing their heads off at me, I recall turning around saying to my sister, (quotations from the movie ‘Mean girls’)
“DON’T HAVE SEX! YOU WILL GET PREGNANT, AND YOU WILL DIE”.
Of course it was just my wacky, loopy, gassed up! Sense of humour that was talking, I don’t really think like that.

Around 4pm, my grandma ducked out and I was furious, I was screaming, get my grandma back in here! She flew all the way over here for this I wont have her missing it! So she came back.
My Grandma was quite entertained! She informed me afterwards that I had only said the 'f' word twice through out the whole Labour! I was glad to hear i did that well. Seriously thought i'd be swearing my head off!

(continuing on below)

Ashleigh<3
30-10-2006, 16:00
About 4:30pm, I felt the urge to push but I knew if I pushed to soon it could be bad, so I just kept sucking down the gas, trying to ignore my contractions.
I asked the midwife for the 20th time, “when are my waters going to break? Why haven’t they broken? Aren’t they supposed to have broke by now? WHY HAVEN’T I LOST MY PLUG YET?”
Midwife just kept saying, “don’t worry about all of that, your baby is almost here just keep concentrating. Around 4:45pm, It was as if my body was just taken over, I could feel everything down there pushing, but it didn’t feel like I was doing it. I could really only feel the pain out of it all. How lucky. THEN, I had a feel of what was going on down there, and I started to fell this jelly type of stuff, and I thought it was the babies hair haha. So I was screaming OMG MY BABIES HEAD IS OUT, I CAN FEEL ITS HAIR, but the midwife corrected me and said, “no darling that’s just your plug.”
I was just as excited to finally hear I had lost my plug. I was really waiting for that.
My plug was really weird! It was like seaweed/algae but a browny colour. Sorry for TMI.
:barf:

Still hadn’t felt any gush of waters, By now I just couldn’t stop pushing, just kept pushing and pushing. I saw her head finally pop out! Was so excited, still kept sucking down on the gas, kept pushing, kept sucking, at 5:04pm, FINALLY The pressure had lifted, I was no longer PREGNANT!
I was a MOMMA! And she was out, I lifted her up onto my chest, looked at her privates and screamed, “Awhh! It’s a girl! Looked at Adam and said, it’s not a boy, I’m sorry, but we can try again in ten years!”:laughing:

Almost instantly stood up from the bath, shaking, almost forgot I had a cord hanging between my legs. Midwife gave me a shot to help the placenta ease its way out, and I remember saying “OWWW!” really loud, and we both looked at each other and laughed, she’s like, geez you just gave birth and you think that hurt!? I guess it was just unexpected! Took quite a while for the placenta to pop out, I remember laying on the bed, and it was as if I was giving birth all over again.
THE PLACENTA WAS HUGE! I was fascinated by it. Kept wanted to look at it, was a bit sad when they took it away, although Adam was quite glad, he was a bit turned off when the midwife asked him if he wanted to take it home to put in the garden- “um No thanks, he replied”, I guess it was the first he had heard of it.
Bit silly making such a big fuss over the placenta, considering I had the most important part being Chloe already, why fuss over a placenta!? I was just so interested in it, couldn’t believe how big it was, when held up against Chloe it was almost the same size. I guess just looking at it and thinking it’s been beside Chloe since after 12wks, her only companion in there lol Feeding her, taking care of so much for her! Hahah I’m quite amazed!
I had one 1st degree tear, although they said it was more internal and very mild i didn’t need stitches.
:smiliedance:

Well I couldn’t get over how perfect she was! She had the darkest hair and eyes, and her skin was just so tanned and red, I suppose like most newborns when they first come out lol But I kept saying, she’s going to be a dark one!

Couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. :) All I kept thinking about was how amazing my labour was, how beautiful my water birth was, how lovely my midwife was, How great my support team were! How in love I am with Adam AND HOW wonderful being a mother already was, and I had only just met her!

We named her Chloe-Anna. Initially wanted this to be her whole first name. But no one would call her by her name, was to much trouble for everyone I suppose. Pfftt.. But I guess its true, I figured this as soon as I would try and calm her down, saying Chloe Anna 20 times is a bit like a tongue twister, where as Chloe is just breezy!

She weighed 7’13lbs, Actually thought she was going to weigh around 9lbs being almost two weeks late. She was 49.5cm long. Kept her hands in her mouth at all times, made duck squeaky sounds all night long. After Adam went home around 10pm. Midwife said they have a rule that no partners are allowed to ‘sleep over’. But he could come back in the morning.
I didn’t sleep once, was to busy cuddling her, just admiring her all night long.

Had a few rough ones with the midwifes.
I guess one of the graves shift midwifes just thought I really was a drug dealer considering my baby kept sneezing. She kindly slammed the door on my face after I corrected her and told her that I had never in my life taken drugs. She had already made her mind up though, But I didn’t care I had my baby! It’s all I was there for.
I guessed I wasn’t allowed to be looked after either, or they just didn’t have time. After my lovely midwife left she told me to press this button, (it was indeed the right button to press for help) she said, press the button and ask for assistance when you’re ready to try and breastfeed, I pressed the button, ended up waiting one hour, no one came so I pressed it again, Another midwife came running in, told me it was rude to press the button more then once, turned it off, then she went to walk out without even asking me what the problem was, I then said, excuse me, I was just pressing the button as I needed some help with feeding my baby, she told me I should know how to do that, and that she and all the other middies were on their break so they were too busy.
So when she walked out of the room, I breastfed her on my own. We had some trouble at first, but we really did get it pretty quickly, So glad I had read into it all pretty deeply.
The next morning my midwife came back, she asked if the midwives had helped me at all and I said, no, one midwife told me they were too busy on their break and that I should know how to do that already.
She rolled her eyes as if she was expecting me to tell her that’s what they said. I guess graves midwives aren’t the happiest? Oh well.

I’m sick of wasting my time worrying over midwives.
I had a great midwife present at my birth, I’m so gratified! And I have my baby now that’s all that matters.
I was healthy and fine, wasn't to sore, so i headed home the next day. Was so good to sleep in my own bed!

So I shall share some photos of my lovely little Chloe Anna!
Thank you all for reading my birth story! I really did love every minute of my labour and birth, it’s true when they say it’s all worth it!

~EmsMum~
30-10-2006, 16:04
awww thanks for sharing hun

im glad everything went to plan

naturalmummy
30-10-2006, 16:09
aww congrats! what a wonderful story! Well done for going drug free - it's an amazing achievement!

Ashleigh<3
30-10-2006, 16:09
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/ashkems7/IMG_2501.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/ashkems7/IMG_2501.jpg)
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/ashkems7/Chloeafterfeedingtime1.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/ashkems7/Chloeafterfeedingtime1.jpg)
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/ashkems7/BathtimewithChloeanna42.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/ashkems7/BathtimewithChloeanna42.jpg)
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hahah sorry, there's a lot! :o :D

SweetSerenity
30-10-2006, 16:09
Congratulations sweety and well done!:thumbsup:
Great story :D
Nat xxx

Ashleigh<3
30-10-2006, 16:12
Thank you everyone! :)

And NaturalMummy- I still don't know wether to consider my labour drug free, i suppose some people consider the gas they use as a drug and some don't.
The only thing that helped me with pain was the water. The gas just made me drunk, and helped me breathe.:)

~EmsMum~
30-10-2006, 16:35
Omg cute photos hun

woven_wings
30-10-2006, 16:41
CONGRATULATIONS Ash! What a beautiful story! I am glad you posted it, has made my day!

What a beautiful blessing Chloe-Anna is!

mum2elouise
30-10-2006, 16:43
Wow! So i've just spent about 20 minutes reading your story and looking at all the pics of your gorgeous daughter!:D She really is beautiful:yes:

What a great birth you had! It's so good that you are happy with the way things went. Congratulations!!:hugs:

Mummy2Noah
30-10-2006, 16:50
Congratulations Ash !! What a beautiful Birth Story!!!!
Im sooooo happy you got your Water Birth you wonted. And i would say it was a Natural Birth!!hehe Gas isnt a drug as far as im concerned !!!

Ashleigh<3
30-10-2006, 16:52
Thank you so much!:)

Yes, I'm so glad everything went so well!
Thank you for your wonderful compliments, I agree, she's quite a little cutey! :D :)

Mum&bubs
30-10-2006, 16:52
Congratulations Ash! I've been waiting to read your birth story :p Stuff the rude midwives! I'm glad you got a good one during labour.
The pics are just gorgeous! :D Well done to you & Adam and welcome (again) to baby Chloe Anna!!! :smiliedance:

little bean
30-10-2006, 18:30
Thanks for sharing your story with us - she's gorgeous!!:)

misskittyfantastico
30-10-2006, 18:42
That was a wondeful story to read! ....Chloe-Anna is just beautiful!
Congratulations!

Billy
30-10-2006, 19:06
Congratulations on such a fabulous birth story!! :yelclap: Beautiful name for a beautiful girl :yes:


Oh and I had some dodgy middies on the night shift too... :devil6: :rolleyes:

bekkyboo
31-10-2006, 08:02
Ash - Sweetheart - You did so well!!!!!

And she is such a cutiepie...


ohhhhh - I want a girl!!! - And a waterbirth!


Ditto on the middies... :( I had some that refused to look after G saying they only look after babies that were snuffling or if the mothers needed a hand - G was a ceaser and was blocked up and i could sleep... hmmmmm... And I only learnt how to breast feed when i was left on my own...

candice_bree
31-10-2006, 08:26
What an inspiring story dearest Asha!!

Im so glad that you got the water birth that you wanted and that it was an amazing experience for you!

Chloe is just gorgeous!! Congratulations on you new family!

Pixie
31-10-2006, 09:12
:yelclap:Beautiful!
I am a bit like you with the placenta I never saw mine but I can't wait for my next baby to see it lol weird girls we are!

Sounds like you had a great support network and sheshh at the grave midwifes wow that is bad!!!

lovely pictures she is adorable she looks like you!
Funny how red they are when they are born eh we though Eliza was going to be olived skinned as she was so purple :laughing:

well done again Beautiful name :D

ETsMum
31-10-2006, 09:43
:yelclap: Congrats. Thanks for sharing your great story.
Welcome Chloe!

QTB
31-10-2006, 10:28
awww ash what an awesome birth story!! and oh my gosh Chloe is GORGEOUS!!!! congrats hun!!!

Lisa&Davey
02-11-2006, 11:59
Congratulations on getting the birth you were after! Thanks so much for sharing. I'm glad you haven't let a couple of bad middies ruin your otherwise beautiful experience. Most of them are great but it only takes one or two to be awful and you remember them for life.

She is beautiful. Great work on the baby cooking.

Rockett
02-11-2006, 13:02
Congratulations!
Great story,you did so well! Chloe is beautiful too.:)

pookiesossige
02-11-2006, 13:29
Thanks so much for sharing your birth story!! It was a wonderful read- and I opened every one of those photos- your Chloe is soo beautiful! Well done! :smiliedance: :yelclap:

jessi
06-11-2006, 15:49
Ahhh Ash, what a great story... reminded me so much of my birth (except for giving birth in the water!)... I think your birth was still 'drug free'... i figure that, you werent injected with anything, so your pretty safe with declaring a drug free birth!
I love your pictures. :D

~Alicia
06-11-2006, 19:40
oh Ash, that was so beautiful! thank you for sharing that with us.
Congratulations, she's absolutly gorgeous :D :hugs:

NZMama
08-11-2006, 11:21
Congrats on the birth of your little princess she is beautiful.

Becteria
14-11-2006, 06:18
COngratulations on havign the birth you wanted and such great memories of it! I tried the tub and found it really intense, i needed soemthing to bear down on, but your story has inspired me to give the tub anouther go with this baby!

Your daughter is perfect, Ashleigh, very very gorgeous and you look absolutely blissful!

PS i had **** nigth midwives too who couldnt even speak english and left me after having nearly 40 hours labour and emergency c-section to learn to breatfeed on my own - like you my intuition sortedit out and we got it right on our own!

Melo
14-11-2006, 15:12
Congratulations Ashleigh!

Goodness, Chloe is SOOOOOOOOOOO cute :D!

tjrmum
16-11-2006, 17:37
Congrates - loved your birth story :)