Emily Smith: My birth story

Throughout my pregnancy I always had a bit of anxiety surrounding his movements and worrying there was something wrong. Towards the end, I had a few visits to the hospital to be monitored for reduced movements. Each time baby was fine, but the anxiety it was giving me was just horrible.

Due to the reduced movements, a decision was made with my midwife that I was to be induced at 39 weeks, and they gave me my date to come in and start the process. I’d heard a few stories about induction - that it would either be super long, awful (or both). I had no birth plan as such - just to go with the flow and do anything that was needed to keep baby safe.

I arrived at the induction suite at 8am with my partner Jack and we were the only people booked in that day. We were going to start with a pessary and see how my body reacted. It was inserted at around 10am and we let it do its thing. By lunchtime I was starting to feel some sort of contraction pains. I had no idea what a contraction felt like, so to experience this new pain was a weird thing to get my head around. I thought I had a rather high pain threshold too, but I could feel myself struggling already. 

We called the midwife in and she could see how much I was struggling. She told me my body was reacting to the hormone in the pessary, so I was experiencing back-to-back contractions – which wasn’t good for me or my baby. We decided to remove it to give myself a break. This was at around 3pm, so we decided to order a McDonald’s and have a little rest too.

By 8pm we decided to give the pessary another go and a new one was inserted. I’d experienced the pain earlier, so I prepared myself for it again. Within two hours I was experiencing back-to-back contractions again and was given gas and air to help with the pain, which resulted in my McDonald’s making a reappearance over Jack’s feet! 

With the pain ramping up again, they examined me and found I was 2cm dilated. The pain was getting too much for me to handle as I wasn’t getting a break between contractions, so they removed the pessary once again. I was expecting to feel relief like the last time, but the contractions kept coming and it felt like this could actually be labour.  

They decided to move me to the labour suite and managed to break my waters. I was given more pain relief as well as the gas and air. About an hour later I was examined again to be told I was fully dilated. I felt a little relief knowing that this was it, I’d made it. My body started wanting to push, and it was the craziest feeling I’d ever experienced.  

I was giving pushing my all, but nothing was happening. The midwives kept having a look at me and then watching the monitor for baby’s heart rate. They weren’t happy with his heart rate which was starting to drop and advised me his shoulders were stuck and I’d need help in theatre.  

Everything from this point feels like a blur. My partner Jack was getting scrubs on, I was signing forms and we were soon in the theatre room. I was going to get an epidural in case of an emergency C-section and as soon as that took hold, I felt instant relief. We’d been awake almost 24 hours by this point. 

My legs were lifted onto the stirrups and the doctors began to help me deliver my baby. Jack was by my side, and I felt calm and ready to become a mum. I began to push when told and soon enough the commotion in the room led me to believe my baby had been born. They used forceps and did an episiotomy to help him out safely.  

The one thing I do remember is that I heard no cry. There was no screaming baby in the room, and I started to wonder what was happening. He was taken into the resuscitation room and for what felt like an age we were left sitting in silence. Jack was by my side crying, asking if everything was OK and the nurses were doing their best to assure us he was in the best hands, and this wasn’t an unusual situation.

We couldn’t understand how everyone was so calm. After the longest ten minutes of our lives, Jack was invited through to meet our son and although he was still a bit sleepy, as they described it, he was brought back through and we got to have our first proper moments together.  

Jacob was born at 5:25am weighing 7lb 5oz. He was very quiet and still as he was lifted onto my chest, not the screaming baby I had anticipated. He was closely monitored for the next 24 hours and thankfully everything was OK. He was perfect.  

The pain I had experienced seemed to have vanished from my memory and the panic of having a baby taken away was a distant memory as we finally became a family of three.