I've never thought I had had a particularly traumatic birth with baby no.3. Initially contractions were ok, but she managed to turn back to back during labour and it became excrutiating. I know I could have had an epidural, but I had one with ds1, and it prolonged labour and I hated that I couldn't walk afterwards, so my birth plan was as have as natural and active labour as possible.
I suppose I was unlucky that I had a young and inexperienced mw (sorry no offence to anyone). She wanted t do a very 'managed' labour - wanted me to lie on my back on the bed with a monitor on my bump. I kept resisting this, as it was so blooming painful to lie on my back because of the baby's position. But mw just kept going on and on about the importance of monitoring baby and how risky it was! She wrote in my notes about 5 times 'again I warned M about the risks of not monitoring baby'!!
So anyway, I'm having this v painful birth with this mw who is paying no attention at all to my wishes! Looking back I just wish I'd had a epidural and done what I was told! But anyway, to skip to the end, I did give birth to y daughter naturally with only gas and air and she was 9lb 11oz!!! I was just thank god that's over!
About 2 mins after birth, I had relaxed as she had cried and been put on my tummy. Mw was cleaning her up and she suddenly said to dh 'just press that alarm there, quickly, press it a lot!' and suddenly the crash team came running in. She had stopped breathing and her h/r was 0. It was horrible cos I was saying is she ok and no=one would answer. The senior mw revived her with 'a good rub down with a towel' (her words). I was just in shock.
So then I'm just recovering from this and suddenly I notice blood gushing from me. Mw has gone off again and I have to get hubby to call her. She calls the doc and another mw and they just look and nobody says a word to me, just grab my wrist and start putting a needle in. I'm saying what are you doing? They go we need to put you on a drip to contract your womb properly. This doc then starts pressing and rubbing my stomach really hard and all this blood and clots (sorry tmi) are just oozing out of me. And I keep saying to him that's really painful! And he's pretty much ignoring me. Then he starts stitching me up, and he's being pretty rough and I'm just lying there feeling like a peice of meat quite frankly! Then for the next 4 hrs I can't move stuck on a drip! And all I can think is that me wanting this natural active birth put my daughter at risk and that was why she stopped breathing. Apparently I was borderline for a blood transfusion but in the end they didn't give me one. I believe I lost 2pts of blood - but I'm not absolutely sure about that as it was all such a blur.
Anyway to finally come to the point, last night I was reading another forum and someone mentioned having a post-partum haemorrhage. Suddenly, with no warning all these memories come flooding back to me! Its like I can really remember the warm feeling of all the blood gushing out from me, and the shock of nearly losing my daughter. I started feeling really faint and shaking - it was like I was there in the delivery room again!
Was this a flashback? This is 22 mths after the birth!?I have kept most of these traumatic details of the birth a secret, and not even dh knows what a horrible time I had. When dd was 3 days old I had a baby-blues moment and sobbed for a couple of hours about what would have happened if they hadn't been able to revive her, but then I have pretty much put the whole experience to the back of my mind.
Now I am sat here sobbing as I write this, so perhaps finally getting this whole story has done me good! Sorry this is such a long one, I hadn't meant to write all this, it has all just come splurging out, lol. Not really expecting any replies but if you got this far well done and thanks for reading!
Mims
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[Modified by: xx Mims xx on 03 November 2009 13:05:01 ]
