Lets Talk Labour
Let's talk LABOUR I've read somewhere once that pain you experience during childbirth is the equivalent to breaking every bone in your body. Yes I know that's graphic and seems extreme... I have personally never broken every bone in my body at once before BUT I can't imagine it's worse that childbirth. Being a first time mum I didn't know what to expect and it was more the fear of the unknown that made me feel nervous. I'm just going to go straight into it. So, it's Wednesday afternoon and I have my 39 week appointment with the midwife. She checked me and baby and said I have to go to the hospital because my blood pressure is much higher than usual. Little did I know I'd be leaving my house that day and not returning until a few days later with a baby.
So I get to the hospital now and they check me and baby over, saying they were not happy with my blood pressure and protein in my urine and that the best thing to do would be to induce me the following day to be on the safe side, especially because I was so close to my due date.
So I stayed in the hospital overnight and on Thursday morning at 11:00am they gave me some hormones to help induce my labour to come about naturally. The midwife REASSURED me not to worry and that the labour won't start for another 24 hours on Friday, so to just relax. And that I did.
Come 4:00pm on that same Thursday I started getting these random cramping pains, it's felt horrible- somehow like period pain but 100 times worse and like someone was twisting my insides and stepping on my back at the same time. I didn't know if I should stand up, sit down, roll on the floor I just didn't know what to do with myself. This pain went on for a good few hours on and off.
Then by about 8:00 they stared getting more intense and closer together and I think I went to the toilet to poo about 4 times by this point (I went 9 times in total through the whole thing hahaha). Something didn't feel 100% right... I thought I was in actual labour and not just early labour because I had seen my "bloody show" and the contractions were so close together so I timed them and they were all over the place, every 5 minutes then 7 then 3... and when I told the midwife she said yhh that's what happens in early labour that I still have a while to go. She didn't really take me or my pain seriously. By 12:00 I think I had just done the 7th poo and came out of the loo, felt a massive contraction and a "pop" and a gush of water... my waters had broke. Only then did the midwife check me to see how many cm I was dialated and to all of our shock, I was 6cm gone! Straight away the midwife started to take us seriously because I was so far gone, she gave me gas and air, checked me over and said it was time to go to the delivery suite. Gas and air is the most amazing thing in the world by the way- I took it so much and not just when I had a contraction that I almost got it taken off me.
So the next few hours is a bit of a blur, as I was in and out of consciousness, in pain with the contractions and the constant urge to push/ poo but it turns out that baby was back to back and that was what was putting pressure on my back passage area... which makes sense. What I do remember is shouting "I NEED TO PUSHHHHH" about 100 times and being told not to because it wasn't quite time.
Then at around 6ish I told them I'm pushing and they checked me over and saw that I was 10cm dialated and they allowed me to push. I pushed with EVERY FIBRE OF MY BEING but they said to stop pushing from my front and push from my backside... so I pushed and definitely pooed on the midwives but then baby's head was just to big and I was so exhausted by this point that they had to use a vontuse- a little vacuum type device- to help aid with his head coming out. They had to cut me because his head was so big and I had stitches. With one final contraction I pushed and they pulled the rest of his body out and the relief that I felt was out of this world!!!
And just like that Ezekiel Kayode was born at 6:42am on Friday 1st September weighing in at 7.3lbs with more hair than you can imagine!!!
I know this 10000% sounds cliche but when you finally meet your baby and see how perfect he is with 10 fingers, 10 toes and a perfect little nose- you do forget the pain completely. I've also heard somewhere that your brain wipes out all the memory of the actual pain of childbirth because if you remember it, you won't want to have kids again... now that I believes.