Tadhg’s birth: 2 perfect days of mind-blowing pain, and then relief.
By: Charlotte Elton
Tags: Birth, Hypnobirthing, Midwife, Birthstory, Pregnancy

The title says it all really: this is not a birth story of rose petals in a lavender oil bath where the mother has 3 cramps, splashes around in a bath for 2 hours, pushes 5 times and low and behold there he is. That would have been lovely, and that was the aim, but as I knew full well everyone’s birth is different. The hypnobirthing courses (by Hollie de Cruz and Amala Midwife organisation) I had done had helped me prepare for anything coming my way. It’s fair to say a lot did come my way. And yet, it was perfect.

As Tadhg looked to be a good-size 4kg baby, combined with my pregnancy diabetes, the gynaecologist set a date for induction. I wanted to avoid being induced hence my midwife did a membrane sweep on Saturday (where she separated the membrane of the amniotic sac from the cervix), gradually setting things in motion.

It started on a Monday evening. Every 10 minutes a period-cramp came and went but they weren’t regular or strong enough to head to the hospital yet. Sadly, they were still strong enough to ensure I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. The following afternoon the midwife assessed the situation, and told us that a walk in the forest near the hospital could help move things along. And she wasn’t wrong. I was soon contracting in 3-min intervals, for 45 seconds. These textbook-contractions meant labour had well and truly started.

At 5pm (3cm dilation later) we were back in the hospital (St Elizabeth in Ukkel) where I settled into the labour-room. I could not for the life me find a rhythm; moving from the bouncy ball, to all fours, to standing up, to sitting on a chair, listening to Hollie’s voice on the hypnobirthing recordings… it’s like my body needed some time get used to labour and above all, I was hungry (if you know me, that is NOT a good thing.) Though I tried to eat cereal bars it would not settle my hungry tummy. So not only was I in full labour, I was also in a foul mood (poor Simon, he felt so useless, or in his own words, ‘I felt like a spare tit’). Soon after, the midwife ran the birthing bath and in I went. MY GOD whatever pain I was feeling just disappeared, it was glorious. Suddenly I could look at Simon again without wanting to rip his head off.

The initial pain relief the bath had given subsided after a few hours when the pain became completely unbearable again. In the meantime my waters had broken, with meconium in it (where the baby has done his first poo whilst still inside), so I transferred to the larger tub in the same room with fresh water. The move ensured contractions became even heavier, which was great, but the pain in my lower back and my pelvis had reached a level I did not know existed. The hypnobirthing lady Hollie on the Bose speaker told me that with every surge I had come one step closer to meeting my baby. All good and well but after what felt like the thousandth contraction I saw no way out. 7 hours was starting to feel like a very long time.

After announcing I was still only 5cm dilated, the midwife asked me to avoid focusing on numbers. However, the pain was too much to bear, I was exhausted from not having slept and eaten properly, and started throwing up. It has to be said: how I managed to not puke in the bath mid-contraction was a mind-blowing circus-act. Maybe I should apply for Cirque du Soleil after all. Mooing like a cow, all the while trying to let the contractions do their thing, I had had enough — I needed a reset. The word ‘epidural’ escaped my lips. The midwife encouraged me to hang in there, saying it could all suddenly move quickly, but no… I had mentally and physically been stretched to the impossible for 7 hours and could see no way beyond it. The midwife rang for the anaesthetist, Simon and the midwife got me out of the bath (not sure how they managed to do that, I was like a deadweight lazy old 170kg sea lion in an aqua zoo), they dried me off, threw a robe around my shivering shoulders and off I shuffled to the delivery room next door, stopping in my tracks to deal with the never-ending contractions. Clutching desperately onto Simon, I knew the pain would end soon but every second was one too many. Once I hauled myself onto the bed, all while continuing the loud mooing, in went the epidural.

And there it was…. the numbness. The most glorious lack of pain. I yelled ‘I love my life’, several times. Finally I could smile again, looking around to check where I was. I could speak to the midwives and to Simon,… I was back on planet earth.

So after what had been 7 hrs of tubbing around in the bath, I lay on the bed and watched in drained fascination as the contractions continued to come and go on a monitor, while I felt absolutely NOTHING. The midwives told me to get some rest as I’d need energy for pushing him out. In my head the tough bit was done, but I had really underestimated this next part. So at 5am (after 5 hrs of rest), I was finally 10cm dilated and we’d decided to let the epidural wear off so I could feel the push contractions and also of course feel him come out of me.

The pushing chapter began. Some women push for 5 minutes. Some for 2 hours. You guessed right, I was the latter. Two hours of: on my knees, on my side, on all fours, on my back, all while squeezing Simon’s hand to pulp,… Tadhg’s got a rather large Irish head, hence it took that little bit longer (thank you Boylan family!).

The two midwives Florence and Sarah (from independent midwife organisation Amala) who’d been by my side from 7pm the night before, were the best personal support team a birthing woman could ask for: they kept me informed of my progress, didn’t bullshit me, and were incredibly supportive to get me through what felt like a decade of pushing. In between two contractions I was given a mirror to see his little head, and soon after ‘the infamous ring of fire’ was a fact. I pushed into the pain, and after screaming and crying ‘get him out of me, I don’t care how’, I didn’t believe it when Simon said his head was out. Then I knew it was one more push to go so I made it a big one. Oh it burned, the DAMN RING OF FIRE! Shortly after I felt Tadhg slide out of me and flop onto my belly. All while I shouted Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

Simon was a blubbering mess, I was numb from exhaustion. Simon cut the umbilical cord, I was giving skin-to-skin to Tadhg, not believing he was finally out of me, after 32hrs from the start of contractions — with 17 hrs of active labour.

That should have been the end. But it wasn’t. The placenta decided to throw a spanner in the works and desperately stuck to the top right part of my uterus. A gynaecologist was called in, the epidural was ramped up again and in she went with her whole hand to ‘scoop’ the placenta out of me. Fortunately I didn’t feel much pain due to the epidural, though it did feel alien-like. Little parts of the placenta had remained, causing internal bleeding, but fortunately they were prepared for situations like this.

3 hours after giving birth to Tadhg I was wheeled into my hospital room. Low on blood, bone-tired, but high on endorphins and love.

9 months I had read about the physiology and the mental side of birth and read countless other women’s birthing stories. The support I had gotten from midwife group Amala was incredible; they are there for YOU, the birthing woman. Their mentality isn’t just ‘as long as the baby is healthy’, but also about the mother’s health (physical and mental). They are my friends, they felt my pain, they knew what to say and at what time, they listened, they informed me of all my options, they were honest and kind. I felt so empowered, I had pushed this baby out, all by myself with every ounce of power and energy, they made me believe I could and I did. Screw running a marathon: this was my marathon. And I finished it.

Hence the title; it was the most perfect and painful birth I could have imagined. And if I had to do that again: I absolutely would, every bloody second of it, with the fantastic Amala midwives right by my side.

Sources and contacts:

Amala: www.naissance-amala.be

Hollie de Cruz: Your baby, your birth.

Instagram Hollie de Cruz: : @theyesmummum

Midwife and gas and air blogger instagram: @motherofdaughters / @gasandair