When I found out I was pregnant, I was happy, sad, confused and thought the timing was all wrong. We had just moved back to Taranaki in February 2002 and I struggled for the first time in my life to find employment. End of April I did get a job at a Furniture store, but I hated it even before I started working there. Luckily, I found a better job and started that in early July, to then find out two weeks later that I was one month pregnant. Back in those days, to qualify for maternity leave, you had to at least been working a whole year by the time you gave birth. I was going to be short of that by three months, so I had started a great new job, but needed to take maternity leave only nine months later and wasn't going to get paid any money while on maternity leave. I was an emotional wreck, as keeping ourselves a float financially was my job and I knew that we both needed to stay in work to keep a roof over our head and to stop us from going in major debt. And then of course there is the extra expense of getting ready for a baby and then the continually expense after the baby was born. Of course my husband was absolutely thrilled, which made me relax a little, as I had also been worried that he was going to freak out with the bad timing too.
Once I got passed the 12 week mark of my pregnancy, I was able to let my work know of the situation and they were happy to keep my position for me while on maternity leave and my husband had an extra superannuation account, which he was able to cash in for us to buy what we needed and to survive on while I was off work with our baby.
After all that was sorted, I was able to finally relax properly and start enjoying being pregnant. I remember being so tired in my first trimester and I experienced the worst ever heartburn you could possibly imagine. My pregnancy went really well, even though I was morbidly obese at the time of my pregnancy, my blood pressure only got better and better every time my mid-wife saw me. I worked right up to a week before my due date, while again I suffered excruciating heartburn in my last trimester. Eleven days over due and my mid-wife comments on my baby being in the posterior position, which is not the optimum position for giving birth, but babies have a mind of their own and could change position again when time to birth. Twelve days late and it was 8am Thursday morning, I finally started to feel contractions, I lasted at home till just before 3am the following morning and then I just needed to be in the hospital. My baby was still in the posterior position, so
my mid-wife encouraged me to have a bath when I first arrived, and to sit on my hands and knees to see if the baby would turn itself into the anterior position. I spent over an hour in this position, got crazy sore knees, dead hands and arms and no change in the baby position. So back in my room, and the contractions start hitting me so hard that I was having a contraction on top of a contraction and when given the gas, I just ended up hyperventilating, feeling nausea and then dry reaching because I was total empty. Coming up to twenty four hours since feeling my first contraction, it was decided that I needed to have an epidural, as none of the other pain relief methods were helping with the effect of the double contractions I was enduring. The epidural was a godsend. Couldn't feel or move anything from below the bust down. Seeing as I wasn't dilating very fast, they decided to break my waters around 9.30am and with doing that they found that I had a little meconium in there. So they attached a baby monitor on my stomach to keep an eye on my babies heartbeat, as they needed to know that it wasn't getting stressed. The mid-wife had a major argument with the on duty maternity doctor, she wanted me to have a C-section that morning, after the evidence of meconium, the baby being in the posterior position and also because I just wasn't dilating.
But the doctor said that the babies heartbeat was strong and not showing any stress, that I could just keep plodding along. My husband also overheard the doctor mention that the fat ones always have more trouble and they need to just work a little harder. By around 4pm, my mid-wife checked to see how dilated I was and I was only 6cm. So in eight hours after having my waters broken I had only dilated an extra 1cm, not good at all and she could see my babies head stuck hard against the pelvic area. Finally, she was able to get the maternity doctor to check in and he said that yes it was probably time to do that C-section. Had my Epidural topped up and I was rushed up to the ER. I remember lying there waiting and I was so cold. Finally in the ER and the screen is set up. My husband is ushered in and asked to stay at my head, but apparently the screen that was suppose to prevent him from seeing the gore down there kept slipping down and he got to watch everything. Luckily he was a butcher's son and so he was use to seeing blood and guts. They explain to you when they make the first cut, you'll feel a slight tugging, then they need to cut through another layer, etc. It seems to take forever until they tell you that you'll start feeling a major tugging while they get a good grip of the baby and then pull the baby out. Well, they tugged and tugged and then they had to tugged some more. Yes, my babies head was so pressed into my pelvic bone, that it was suctioned in there. Finally, after 33 hours of hard labour and one more tug and finally out came my beautiful little girl.
She had a slight dent on her forehead, from being stuck, but other then that her apgar score's was excellent, she had 10 fingers, 10 toes and the lungs of a chain saw. Other then trying to get my girl to feed off me, I got to get some much needed rest, after having been up for over 35 hours straight. When I was finally able to sit up, it was the early afternoon of Saturday and my husband had finally come in to visit after having had a chance to catch up with his sleep. My little girl came in for cuddles and she was wearing this cute little girlie dress. We had a little time to cuddle and enjoy her, before we noticed something wasn't quite right with her. She just seemed to get really agitated and not because she was tired, it was just a feeling we both had that there was something wrong. So the mid-wife got a doctor in and they ended up whipping her away to neo-natal to have test's done. The
results came back that she had contracted Strep-B, due to the meconium that was in my water and her having swallowed it.
So they had to put her into an incubator, for intravenous medicine to be administered and they also ended up giving her phototherapy because she also had a mild case of Jaundice. That night was such a scary night, all you want to do is hold your baby and all you can do is sit there steering at them through an incubator, that was far to small for my girl, who was born at 9 pounds 11 ounces and measured at 57cm's long (Average length for a new born was around 50-52cm's). Finally, after two whole days of being down in neo-natal, my girl was finally able to come back into my room with me. She was on the mend, but then something started to go wrong for me. My C-section wound had started to bleed really bad. I had to have x-rays and ultra-sounds to find out what it was, in the end it was a hematoma the size
of an orange. So with my girl getting better and ready to head home, I was now keeping us in hospital while they tried to get the hematoma under control. They regularly stuffed this stuff into the wound, which was suppose to help with the bleeding and healing process, as the type of hematoma I had it had to heal from the inside out. But I bleed heaps, even with it all packed, I had sanitary pads taped to the outside of the wound and it still bleed all through that and the special thrombosis stockings I was wearing. Ended up being in hospital for two whole weeks and then I was finally able to head home. But I couldn't go anywhere because everyday I had to wait for the district nurse to visit to unpack, clean and re-pack my hematoma. This wound took two months to the day to finally close completely. I have never stopped thinking about what myself and my beautiful little girl went through together on the day she came into this world, but all I can say is, she was the happiest and easiest baby and I love her to bits.
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