James' Birth Story

Warning....the following note is all about me. I am going to wallow in self pity and talk about events from my perspective only. Yes, for once, I’m going to be selfish.

It has taken me 5 years and nearly 10 months to be able to do this. Prior to now, every time I even thought about this topic I would burst into tears, literally. I am writing this down in the hope that expressing myself so openly will help heal some of the emotional wounds I have no doubt sustained.
Here is my birth story of my beautiful son James. James is such a placid, gentle child, but his entrance into the world was anything but. It was filled with panic, terror and sheer agony.

My story begins when I was 34 weeks pregnant. I was at my obstetrician’s rooms with Stu. We were there to have a sizing scan. This is where an ultrasound is performed and based on the baby’s size at that point in time, a birth weight is estimated. My obstetrician was a private doctor – she had her own rooms with her own sonographer working there. We went into the sonographer’s room and I lay down on the examination table. The ultrasound began and it didn’t take long before he started commenting on the baby’s size. “Woh, I’m glad I’M not having to push THAT head out!” was one comment I recall, said in a joking voice, but the message was clear – this was not a small baby. The tone became more serious as the session went on and he anticipated that the baby’s current weight was around 5 pound 6 ounces, the same some baby’s weigh at full term. And I still had 6 weeks to go....or 7 as it turned out.

After the ultrasound, we went into our doctor’s room and met with her. We expressed our concerns about what the sonographer had said about the baby’s head size and weight. She asked me how big Josh (my first baby) had been. I told her he was 3.965kgs (8 pound 12 ounces) and she said “Well you had a big baby last time and everything went OK, so you won’t have any problems this time”. As the saying goes, famous last words.

Over the next fortnight I started experiencing pains in my groin area I’d never had before, sharp pangs of pain. You know how you lift up one leg at a time to put on undies? I couldn’t do this without a pinching pain in my groin. It started to pinch also when I rolled over in bed at night. It really hurt. I asked my doctor about it and she dismissed it as the usual aches and pains of pregnancy.

My due date came and went. I reminded my doctor about the sizing scan that had been done and expressed my worry at going over my due date. Once again my fears were dismissed.

Fast forward to the night of the 30th May 2003. It was a Friday. Stu came home from work and I decided to have a rare bubble bath. In hindsight I don’t know what the hell I was thinking because I have never been able to have a bath without one of my kids interrupting and annoying me. My dream in life is to be able to experience a nice, long, hot bubble bath without any interruptions. Mmmmmm. Sorry, got carried away there...Anyway, so here I was soaking in the tub, enjoying the serenity when wham ! I felt the most intensely painful contraction I’ve ever felt. It wasn’t like a “normal” contraction – it was like someone had stabbed me with a 6 inch steak knife. I called out to Stu, knowing that something was not right and he came in and somehow got my whale like body out of the bath tub. I got dressed and the regular, painful contractions began. They were intensely painful and coming every 2-3 minutes right from the outset. I knew this labour wasn’t going to take long.

We rang our families, got our stuff together and drove to the hospital. I remember whingeing throughout every single speed hump between our house and the hospital (there were maybe 10?) We settled into our room and did the usual labour stuff. After I had been in labour three hours (not long I know, but the contractions were every minute by now), I asked the nurse about pain relief. She went off to call the doctor to ask if I could be given some pethidine. By the time she came back into the room I told her I needed to push. Those of you who have given birth before will know what this feeling is like. So when the nurse asks, “Are you sure?” you know that same feeling of wanting to smash their face in. Of course I was sure. I’d done this before and I think I know when a baby is about to come out of my vagina. Seriously though, the urge to push just came over me and became overwhelming so I knew that this was it. We were going to meet our precious son soon. It was too late to give me any pain relief and I got up on my knees (as this was the position I gave birth to Josh in).

I pushed for an hour and a half. But there was something wrong. The baby just wasn’t coming. Somehow my doctor had materialised. I was offered the gas, but it didn’t seem like it was even on as I didn’t notice a difference. If anything my intense inhaling on the thing was making me feel breathless and nauseous so I didn’t continue with it. I was in so much pain that I felt like I was losing control and going crazy. I can’t even describe the intensity of the pain. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes, even all these years later. I didn’t know what to panic about more...the feeling of a million knives stabbing me at once, or the looks on the medical staff’s faces and recognising from their hurried sharp tones of voice, that something was very wrong.

The doctor made me lie on my back. They angled the bed so that I was almost sitting up. The doctor reached inside me and broke my baby’s collarbone. How this was done exactly, I don’t know, but the hot burning stinging pain of having hands reaching inside me was excrutiating. I was losing control mentally. I wasn’t coping. All of this with zero drug/pain relief. I turned to Stuart, who was holding my hand with tears pouring down his face. These weren’t happy “I’m about to be a father” tears, but tears of surrender, watching his wife in sheer agony. I am not using highly emotive words for the sake of it, nor am I exaggerating. When I say agony, I mean agony. The midwives (who had grown in number over the past several minutes) began the Macrobertson’s Manouvre – I had two midwives on each side of my body, ramming my bent knees behind my ears as hard as they physically could. It was at this point my symphsis pubis (major pelvic ligament) tore in two. I called out to the doctor, “was that it? Is the baby out?” because the pain was just so intense when it happened, I thought that that was surely IT. The worried look on her face told me it most certainly wasn’t .

Eventually James was born. He weighed 4.35kgs (9 pound 10 ounces) with a 37cm head circumference. Certainly not the world’s biggest baby by any stretch, but obviously too big for me. I will never ever forget the sound of my screams that night. They weren’t the usual deep moaning sounds of a woman in labour, they were the screams of a madwoman being murdered. Immediately post birth there were no Kodak moments, he wasn’t wrapped and given to me to hold, he wasn’t being placed on my chest for our first “moment” together. He was whisked away – I found out later that he’d pooed inside me ALOT, as a result of being distressed and they were worried that he’d inhaled the meconium, which can cause infection and even death. They took him away to be suctioned and to this day I don’t even remember “meeting” him. At all. Was it in the actual birth suite? I don’t remember. This saddens me. I vaguely recall holding him whilst the phonecalls to family were made, but the pain of the birth seems to have obliterated all the other memories of that night.

Whilst Stu was out having all the fun – seeing the baby, weighing him and so on (can you sense my resentment?), I was trying to get to the toilet. It was only a few metres from the bed, but to get there took forever. When Stu came back in, he asked if I was OK and it was at this point that I realised I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get up from the toilet. My body just couldn’t move.

Over the next few hours it became apparent that I had sustained major damage to my pelvis. One of the midwives explained that this was a very rare condition and it took months to recover from. [Much later I found out the name of my injury is Diastasis of the Symphsis Pubis]. I had an xray the following day which confirmed “total rupture” of the ligament, and James’ broken collarbone was also confirmed via xray. I tried to breastfeed but it took two nurses 20 minutes to get me from a lying down position to a sitting position to try and feed and by then James was screaming with hunger. I quit breastfeeding after 3 days. I then developed infected mastitis from going cold turkey on breastfeeding after allowing my milk to come in. It was awful. It was like having full on influenza, with cracked and bleeding nipples to boot, vomiting, a strong aching pain, fever, the works. All of this on top of my 3rd grade tear stitches pain and the pelvic pain.

Whilst in the hospital I was introduced to Ingrid, my physiotherapist. She gave me a support belt to wear and a list of exercises to do. With pelvic injury the aim is to strengthen your stomach core muscles so that they take the brunt of movement instead of your pelvis. I started off in a wheelchair. It was so bad that I had to have someone physically lift my feet one at a time onto the wheelchair foot rests. I literally could not lift my feet off the floor, not even a millimetre. After a few days I managed to shuffle my legs along with the use of a zimmer frame. You know those walking frames that old ladies have down at the shops? One of those. I think my doctor felt guilty over what happened because she loaned me her masseuse, who came to the hospital to massage me. Once I got home I couldn’t drive (couldn’t lift my feet from the brake to the accelerator and so on), couldn’t dress myself, couldn’t even lie down in bed without help and agonising pain. I couldn’t stand up, so couldn’t bath James, change him, prepare his formula. Nothing. I was good for nothing.

I did not allow myself to cry over what happened. Mostly because I had a 10 year old, and I knew if I started and really allowed myself to wallow in self pity, I would not stop. I think this was a bad decision of mine to hold everything in and pretend I was fine, because it has been nearly 6 years and I still have unresolved emotional pain over what happened.

I hate that James’ whole birth and first few weeks and months were clouded with dealing with the injury, I hate that he was born with a broken bone. I hate that he was born with Erb’s palsy and had a paralysed right arm, elbow, wrist, hand and fingers. I hate that I had to quit breastfeeding. I hate that I didn’t get to give him his first bath. I hate that I had to watch his first bath from a wheelchair, and could hardly even see what was happening because at one stage the nurse stood in front of me, blocking my view and I didn’t have the backbone to even ask her to move. At that moment, I felt like nothing. Nobody stood up for me. I hate that I didn’t get to bath him for several weeks as I couldn’t stand without the frame. I hate that I couldn’t change his nappy for the same reason. I hate that I held resentment against my husband because he got to hold and cuddle his baby without having to deal with all the pain and emotional shit. I hate that I hated him one night for not helping me roll over in bed – truth is, he probably didn’t hear me asking for help as he was so tired but I remember feeling utter hatred and resentment well up within me – probably all hormones, but still....I hate that I couldn’t at the time give my husband his due credit and thanks and praise for all the hard work he put in – he did soooooo much. I hate that in the following months and even years, I had trouble doing normal Mum stuff, like getting up and down and up and down at Playgroup to dance to “Up jumped the scarecrow” and similar songs. I hate that I trusted my doctor and not my own instincts. But most of all, I hate that I felt like a failure, a complete and utter failure.

I still get pain. Even now. It’s nothing like it used to be – unless I try to move a rug with my foot – then it does make me wince every now and then. The female body produces a hormone every month called relaxin which causes ones ligaments to loosen. So every month I get sore – but it’s bearable and I cope, but it’s a constant reminder of my night of hell that I’ve never gotten over.
I’d like to say I feel better for getting that off my chest, but I don’t. Maybe one day...