The Birth Of Austin

[mim]

I already posted this oin the April thread, but thought I'd post it again here

I had a scan at 35 weeks which showed my baby was only measuring 33 weeks, so after 2 weeks my doctor and I decided to induce.
The Monday before the induction the hospital phoned and asked if I could come in on the Tuesday instead, and I thought I would be holding my baby the next morning!
Tuesday morning I got up early to get to the hospital by 6.30, as my induction was booked for 7.30. We got there and waited and waited.....it turns out they had a heap of ladies coming in in labour, so we had to wait until a birthing suite was free. Finally at 10.00 they told us to go home and wait for them to call, they were hopeful it would only be a couple of hours. So we went home and waited. I was getting more and more anxious as the hours ticked by, then finally at 3.30 I rang them to see what was going on. They told me to come in right now, because of my history of quick labours they were happy to do it late that afternoon.

We got to the hospital at 4.15 and were taken into the delivery suite. I was hooked up to the CTG to geta trace, then my doctor turned up at 5.00. He checked my cervix, it was still only 2 cm, but as the doc put it 'very stretchy!' He broke my waters and then eventually inserted the drip. Because of the 'jungle juice' I had to be strapped to the monitors for the entire labour, in case the baby went into distress. I have to add here that I hate the CTG's, it's irrational but I get scared listening to the heartbeat, thinking it's going to stop, and freaking out thinking it's slowing down! My midwife was lovely, she turned the machine around and turned the sound down. My DF then turned on the radio so I couldn't hear the heartbeat at all. It was an oldies station and the midwife kept me amused for awhile singing and dancing to the music! We had a deal that I would deliver between 7.30 and 8.00 so we could then sit down and watch All Saints, unfortunately we ended up missing it!

My contractions started at 6pm, and I remember thinking 'hey, this isn't too bad!' For the next hour they were fairly infrequent, slowly getting stronger, but with a good break in between. Then at 8.00 they hit with a bang and I began to think about pain relief, and the only thing I'd allow myself to have was the gas, not that it did much! At 8.20 they checked my cervix because I was getting a lot of pressure during contractions and I was 5-6cms dilated, I almost cried at that because I thought I must have been nearly there.
My MIL then showed up in the birth suite she works at the hospital as a nurse so she just waltzed in. It's a good thing I was pretty out of it! But, she did leave after about 10 minutes.

At about 8.45 I started to get the urge to push, and the babies heartbeat was dropping a little with the contractions so they checked and I was fully dilated! I was half sitting up with the midwife holding one leg and the student midwife holding the other, my DF was up next to me and I got hold of him round the neck. By this time my whole body was shaking uncontrollably, the midwife said I was in shock from the speed of the labour. I started pushing (and strangling my DF!) The midwife made me let go of DF so I could put all my energy into the pushing. The pushing was hard, my two other births, I was whacked out on pethadine for the pushing stage, so this really was a rude shock! The whole time I was yelling and crying about how much it hurt! The midwives and my DF were fantastic though and encouraged me to keep going. The midwives were great, ensuring the head was delivered really slowly then Austin was born screaming and was put on my stomach. They then realised his cord was really short (they reckoned it was the shortest one they had ever seen) so they had to put him back down between my legs and cut the cord straight away, they then put Austin onto my chest, it was magic meeting my little boy, though I was in shock at how tiny he was. I was still shaking at that point, it didn't stop for another half an hour!
I then had a fair bit of bleeding, so they delivered the placenta straight away, then I had to have the drip going for another 5 hours!
When they examined the placenta (which was almost as big as Austin!) they found a huge blood clot on it. We don't know if the blood clot and the short cord had anything to do with the IUGR though.

Austin was born on April 11th, 2006. He weighed 2030g (4lb 7oz) length was 47cm, hc was 31cm.

This birth was a really good thing for me, after my DD's birth (and Austin being my last!) I wanted a wonderful experience to remember and thanks to my beautiful midwives and DF, I got it.

mim xxx

[My3kids]

Thanks for sharing your birth story, Your little boy is beautiful. I'm glad everything worked out in the end. Congrats...

[HoopDeeDoo]

What a great story. My little Lachy was 2025 grams born at 34 + 6 weeks!

[OopsieDaisy]

Congratulations!!