So I am a number of weeks into my EMDR therapy and feel much calmer to write my story than I ever have before. Don’t get me wrong my heart is racing right now and my palms are sweaty but I feel having a clear perception written down allows me to acknowledge just how far I have come. My story is much like others I have spoken too and shall be used in part of a maternity service review in the local area due to the mistreatments in my case. I’m not casting any aspersions into all maternity services as they did deliver my boy into the world and that would not have happened without intervention but it’s important for families to share their journeys.
I was 2 weeks overdue and had just had my second sweep to try and kickstart labour. For some reason I really didn’t take to the midwife that did it and before even covering my decency I was in tears on the bed, I was in pain, uncomfortable and overwhelmed. She brushed it all off and rushed me out of the door. I was struggling to get around at this point due to SPD but managed to spend a few hours on the birthing ball at home.
By midnight I was feeling some contractions so had called the MLU and was told the usual advise of wait until you can no longer talk through contractions and call us when they are 5 minutes apart. I called my mum and sister to update them and within 20 mins I was back on the phone with the midwife and on my way to hospital. Upon arrival I was taken into the birthing pool room upon my request. I had a trainee midwife and her trainer, they were lovely and calming trying to make small talk and I can still hear the advice of imagine you are blowing up a balloon with your pain then blow it away. The trainee was very excited as Charlie would have been her 8th birth and everything had accelerated as if this was going to be a quick process. My contraction became what they described as rolling meaning I had at most 30 seconds off in between but I didn’t feel the need to have gas and air until about 5 hours into the process.
This is when my story becomes a bit more graphic. Gas and air made me violently sick as well as causing me to bleed a little into the bath meaning I had to get out as it was no longer sanitary. I managed until about 7am without any pain relief but had become exhausted so I opted for pethidine. I was moved into a different room and because I didn’t want to give birth lying on my back as in my opinion it’s unnatural biologically speaking this room had no bed but bean bags and birthing balls. I am vaguely aware of floating in and out of consciousness when a shift change over happened and my lovely midwives finished their shift and who walks into my room but the midwife from the previous day. She sits in the corner of the room with my purple book and doesn’t talk… like at all.
By 1pm I am told I need to try and eat and my jug of water is refilled again. The pain in my lower back is horrific and I had to have a second shot of pethidine meaning the only remaining painkiller available to me is gas and air or an epidural. The pethidine had no affect at all but the midwife decides that to speed up the process she will burst my waters. I’m on my back on a mat on the floor and she tells me that I need to keep still my waters burst and she speeds out of the room. The next thing I know there is hospital porters and a bed wheeled into the room. I’m still lying on the floor and I’m told that I have passed a substantial blood clot and I need to be looked after by a consultant at this point I have had 12 hours of rolling contractions and had little chance or strength to stand up. My hubby tried his hardest to get me up off the floor as the midwife shouts at me that I need to hurry up as I’m wasting hospital time as I’m pleading with her that I’m trying but I can’t get up from lying flat on the floor. Sometime passes and I remember being curled on the bed in the fetal position as Jon runs behind us with the bags. I was being moved from one side of the hospital to the other but passed the main visitors entrance during visitation hours. At my most vulnerable moment I am in some circus of horrors position as everyone I passed looked on at the woman clearly in labour.
When we arrived at the ward a new midwife took over. She was amazing! I had shrunk in dilation by 2cms apparently which was incredibly upsetting to hear as I felt fearful at that point as there was no reason to the bleeding and to make matters scarier I had dried blood all around my mouth. I was told I was dehydrated and was put on a drip. The consultant came to see me and told me my baby was facing the wrong way and they think my body was naturally trying to turn him. They installed a catheter but only bloody urine came out so they took another couple of attempts to empty my bladder the best they could but actually what had happened was that my darling son had trapped my bladder. My consultant checked and I had decided the best course of action would be an epidural and some pitocin to try and expedite the whole process. He would be back to check on me.
It is decided that although I’m 9cm dilated a csection is needed due to baby positioning as my darling Charlie bear was face presenting. My hubby gets his scrubs on and we get wheeled into theatre. I can remember being petrified but the staff in their were amazing. I started to react to the anaesthetic and my body just starts uncontrollably shaking. Everything progresses as best as can be and the consultant even made a joke about his lion king moment as he lifted Charlie over the curtain for us to see. However I am short sighted and could only see a purpleish mass. (My first time seeing my son was over 20 mins later.)
I can remember hearing Charlie’s cry and feeling so overwhelmed but then a moment that has haunted me for years occurs in which I have what I’ve been told is significant blood loss and for some unknown reason blood flew across the room and covered my face and pillow. I remember being cold and wet and seeing the pale panicked face of my husband who is quickly trying to reassure me before he gets ushered out of the room. The next time I see him I am wheeled into recovery and the first time of holding my baby is when a midwife attaches him to my breast to feed. Less than an hour late with Charlie in my arms we are wheeled onto the ward and my husband is kicked out due to it not being visiting hours. The night I remember being a blur of morphine, buzz calling the nurses to pass Charlie over to me so I can feed him and trying my hardest to get some rest but being unable to process anything. There was no signal and I desperately wanted to reach out to my family. I clock watched until the morning when Jon was allowed in. 12 hours after my csection my catheter was removed and I was forced to have a shower so to stop any blood clots building. I did not feel strong enough to move scared I’d burst a stitch and felt like Bambi on ice when trying to move so Jon came with me, leaving Charlie in the room under supervision of a nurse. The bathroom was huge and had a seat under the shower in which I had to sit and have the most humiliating shower of my life. My husband had to wash my bruised, ballooned and bleeding body and all I wanted to do was sleep.
By day 3 I was moved back down to a different ward I had had no sleep and was on the verge of panic attacks. This ward didn’t allow hand rails along the bed which made it difficult to get up and down. Due to my blood loss I was told I needed to express some milk and then move onto formula however when I expressed I started bleeding. So formula it was. We had to use a beaker to feed Charlie as the midwife decided not to give us a bottle in case we moved back to breast feeding. At kicking out time I had a severe panic attack and didn’t want Jon to leave at all. I couldn’t cope and had a meltdown leading to a midwife coming in to talk to me telling me it was the baby blues. That night I couldn’t soothe Charlie at all and at one point I ask a health care advisor for some formula as Charlie was “rooting” and my gut was telling me he was hungry. I was refused as he had eaten not that long before and couldn’t be hungry again. This was when I started to second guess my instincts. It took me over an hour for them to agree on giving me some formula for him after he spent that time screaming the place down and I tried so hard to pace the room and comfort him.
The next morning Jon went and snuck some formula in because I wasn’t going to go and do that again. My legs started to swell and were rock hard. My ankles became the size of my thighs and I was so scared something wasn’t right. No one could give me an answer until a day later when I was told it was due to the amount of fluid in my body due to thinking I was dehydrated during labour, it had nowhere to go so congregated in a mass of tissue fluid around my body. I was not allowed to eat near my baby on this ward and had to leave him alone in a room whilst I dined in the communal space all the while just wanting to be with him. I had to use the facilities before being discharged but nothing was moving so I had to have more medication as well as peppermint water to ease the stomach pains. The washing facilities in this ward was a shower in which you had to step into the bath which I was unable to do unassisted so I washed my hair leaning over the tub as best I could. I pushed for my discharge as I knew I could feel better at home not around so many crying babies which encourages lactation which I now knew was pointless.
I came home and still needed help to step into my front door. A day or two later I passed a clot the size of my fist and followed doctors advice to go back into to hospital if you pass anything bigger than a 50pence piece I was kept in until my blood pressure stabilised as well as my heart rating coming down from 160bpm. I was made to feel guilty by an advisor at one point for needing to hold Charlie to calm me down as I felt safer with him in my arms. In her words it was not my child’s responsibility to ground me it’s my duty to protect him. I was put on more medication and then a day later had to go back in for scans on my legs to check for DVT. My husband was amazing and so supportive throughout the whole process even administering my blood thinning injections daily. I don’t know how we got through the whirlwind but we did.
I started to experience lightheadedness, dizziness and sickness, ectopic heartbeats as well as hormonal instability, then anxiety kicked in. I was told by my doctors it was postnatal depression and I could have even more medication for it. By this point I would rattle when I walked, I felt shunned and ignored so moved to a new surgery who recognised my symptoms as PTSD and my journey continued from there.
Mama Bearable 