Baby came a week early. I had tunnel vision and the focus was getting through the pain whilst everything around me was just a blur. You’re vulnerable as a pregnant woman, but vulnerability is even greater when you’re in labour. As has been said many times before, you lose your dignity as you lay there legs spread open as various heads peep down there and hands explore your insides. But when you’re in that moment you don’t give a monkey shit. You just want the pain to end and to be holding your baby.
Labour was progressing for a while but then slowed down. Nearly there but not quite there. The midwife disappeared every so often I think. Shift changes happened and I pleaded with the first midwife to not leave me. The second one did not look as friendly. We were then told that the baby was getting distressed at each contraction. Foetal distress. I vaguely registered this but was not quite sure what that meant for the birth. I had reached the pushing stage but was being told not to push because I wasn’t fully dilated. How does one not push?! I couldn’t not push. I was failing again… Then all of a sudden there was a flurry of activity and my husband is told to change into scrubs. The midwife starts getting instruments ready for delivery but this is promptly stopped by the doctor who tells her off for making the assumption it would happen there and then and not in theatre. Later a lady, I assume a doctor, appears at the foot of my bed and she watches me as I go through a contraction. Next thing she says is she’s going to take blood from the baby’s head. I find out later this is to measure how much oxygen is getting to baby and when the nurse returns with the results on a slip of paper holding it up for the doctor there’s a look of shock on her face. I don’t see this of course as I am delirious on the gas and air.
I am told to give my husband my wedding ring. He wasn’t coming with me. Before I know it I’m being wheeled quickly out of the room to the theatre. As I’m wheeled along a midwife reads out the consent form…. I’m still contracting and can barely hear her words. I shout out “just get it out!”. As I arrive in the operating theatre I am quickly prepped and just before being transferred onto the operating table I’m asked to sign the consent form, the consent form I could barely see and had barely heard moments ago. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, I manage a near perfect signature. I feel cold liquid splashed on my legs, someone inserts something into my IV line in my arm (I had it previously inserted at the start to administer antibiotics as I was told I was a Strep B carrier- another sign to me that I was failing my baby). Then a face hovers above me and its the midwife I had in the delivery suite and she says “Don’t worry I’m here”. I didn’t care if she was there or not. Then all of a sudden another face appears and a mask is placed over my mouth. A male voice says it is oxygen which will help with the pain. Next comes another person who says this will help before placing her fingers firmly on my neck. This was what happens in an emergency category 1 c-section (risk of life to mother or baby). I start to have another contraction and I bend my leg up in pain. Promptly someone grabs my leg back down and says to keep my legs straight. Soon after a voice asks is the midwife here. A voice behind asks that voice if they were ready. Then all went black…..
Psychologist and Patient 