When birth doesn't turn out the way you had pictured, it's not always easy to make peace with your experience. That isn't to say that I was disappointed with my birth experience for either of my boys. My babies arrived alive, healthy and with no real trauma for either them or me - there are a lot of women out there who can't say the same thing, so in the bigger picture I know I am lucky. But when your birth experience plays out differently from your expectations, it can still take a while to wrap your head around what has happened.
I got pregnant with Mini Milk just a few months after we started trying for him, but while he was conceived fairly quickly he was many years in the making as we waited for the time to be right. And those years involved a lot of worry and uncertainty about the state of my fertility after cysts robbed me of most of my ovarian reserve, culminating in basically being told not to leave it much longer.
In those years I saw many other births. Actually, I did more than that - I delivered many babies. My experiences as a student midwife taught me many things, but the biggest of all those was that that you can never predict how a birth is going to play out. It made me even more of a realist than I had been when I had Half Pint, and I went into my pregnancy with Mini Milk with my mind wide open, no concrete ideas and the acceptance that a fluid birth idea is better than a inflexible birth plan.
But I would be lying if the idea of the kind of birth I'd like wasn't very much what I had my heart set on. I knew I could cope with minimal pain relief from my experience of having Half Pint on just gas and air, so that wasn't an issue. What I pictured was a chilled pool birth, with my choice of music playing in the background. A simple idea, and one I accepted may not happen if by chance I went into labour at the same time as another water-loving mamma. But as my pregnancy went on my heart settled on that image of birthing in the water, and when I was told that I couldn't give birth in my local midwife-led birthing unit and instead had to make the 40min journey to the nearest maternity hospital, I was crestfallen. But there was a pool at the hospital, so it wasn't the end of the world...right?
Wrong. Instead of a calm, relaxed labour I spent a lot of it in the car. Instead of enjoying pushing my baby into the world, I was desperately trying to hold him back in fear I would give birth on the Erskine Bridge. Instead of birthing in a warm pool, I delivered on a zebra crossing with an audience of smokers (one wee guy in particular I don't think will ever recover). I'd carefully packed my hospital bags for nothing, and didn't even get to listen to the playlist I'd made.
But as B-movie as my story sounds, I do try to focus on the positives of Mini Milk's birth. And actually, there are quite a few. For one thing I fulfilled my ideal of using as few drugs as possible - a grand total of two paracetamol (and a TENS machine, which to put it bluntly was a pile of pish). I also got to eat in labour...the fact that what I ate was a McDonald's is neither here nor there. And I didn't totally miss out on the benefits of water, as I got to spend an hour or so in the bath at home before our mad dash to the hospital (even though I did have to stop the Pooch from using the tub as a giant water bowl). I even managed to give birth in public without flashing my bits to the world, thanks to some incredibly roomy Primark jammies. Above all it was quick, and there was not one bloody doctor with their trigger happy interventions in sight.
And of course, there is my gorgeous little baby. A baby who was delivered by his daddy, and there aren't many who can say that. But for the record, if ever get to do it again I'm having a pool installed in my house...even if that means a paddling pool in the back garden!
I got pregnant with Mini Milk just a few months after we started trying for him, but while he was conceived fairly quickly he was many years in the making as we waited for the time to be right. And those years involved a lot of worry and uncertainty about the state of my fertility after cysts robbed me of most of my ovarian reserve, culminating in basically being told not to leave it much longer.
In those years I saw many other births. Actually, I did more than that - I delivered many babies. My experiences as a student midwife taught me many things, but the biggest of all those was that that you can never predict how a birth is going to play out. It made me even more of a realist than I had been when I had Half Pint, and I went into my pregnancy with Mini Milk with my mind wide open, no concrete ideas and the acceptance that a fluid birth idea is better than a inflexible birth plan.
But I would be lying if the idea of the kind of birth I'd like wasn't very much what I had my heart set on. I knew I could cope with minimal pain relief from my experience of having Half Pint on just gas and air, so that wasn't an issue. What I pictured was a chilled pool birth, with my choice of music playing in the background. A simple idea, and one I accepted may not happen if by chance I went into labour at the same time as another water-loving mamma. But as my pregnancy went on my heart settled on that image of birthing in the water, and when I was told that I couldn't give birth in my local midwife-led birthing unit and instead had to make the 40min journey to the nearest maternity hospital, I was crestfallen. But there was a pool at the hospital, so it wasn't the end of the world...right?
 |
| where the magic actually happened |
But as B-movie as my story sounds, I do try to focus on the positives of Mini Milk's birth. And actually, there are quite a few. For one thing I fulfilled my ideal of using as few drugs as possible - a grand total of two paracetamol (and a TENS machine, which to put it bluntly was a pile of pish). I also got to eat in labour...the fact that what I ate was a McDonald's is neither here nor there. And I didn't totally miss out on the benefits of water, as I got to spend an hour or so in the bath at home before our mad dash to the hospital (even though I did have to stop the Pooch from using the tub as a giant water bowl). I even managed to give birth in public without flashing my bits to the world, thanks to some incredibly roomy Primark jammies. Above all it was quick, and there was not one bloody doctor with their trigger happy interventions in sight.
And of course, there is my gorgeous little baby. A baby who was delivered by his daddy, and there aren't many who can say that. But for the record, if ever get to do it again I'm having a pool installed in my house...even if that means a paddling pool in the back garden!
I'd love to know if anyone else has given birth in an unusual place...was it planned?! And are there any other mums out there whose birth experience didn't go as they had hoped? Have you been able to make peace with it...if so, let me know how.
0 comments:
Post a Comment