Pregnancy & Birth
through ever-more-painful contractions. I was in a lot of pain, but I really believe that Tens machines give labouring women a sense of control in what is essentially a completely unknown labour process which has a mind of its own and a path mapped out for your body which you are all but powerless to resist. I promised myself I would not go past setting seven until I had got to hospital. Again, it was just exerting that tiny bit of control, knowing that I had a few more 'boost' settings up my sleeve for later on, which gave that much needed façade of tenuous control. At 2am I called time on the solitary coping with contractions, woke up my husband and got him to call the hospital. We got there at about 4am and to my horror they said I was only between three to four cm dilated.
What followed was ten hours of breathing. 'But everyone breathes all the time!' I hear you cry. Yes, but not everyone has ever had to think about the very essence of the way they draw, hold and exhale every breath the way that labouring women do. Cue NCT saviour tip number three (basic but vital!); harness your breathing to your advantage. For the next ten hours, my breath became my biggest weapon against my contractions. As long as I could catch the in breath through my nose at the start of each contraction, count to four while breathing it on it, and then let it out through my mouth for the count of eight, I could just about cope with the pain. It meant I was at least armed with something in this battle with Mother Nature. I also managed to be persuaded to relinquish my Tens machine for a few hours to get into the water, which was a wonderful help and a temporary relief from the level of pain intensity.
When the midwife examined me at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, 24 hours after I had first started having contractions, she told me I was still only eight centimetres. I have to say, at this point, I'm not proud of it, but I may have lost my s***. I demanded an epidural. I screamed for one. I asked my husband, politely but firmly, to have mercy and to please shoot me. I could not see a way of enduring any more of the same pain and surviving. And that's when the midwife suggested I try pethidine. I did. It got me through to ten centimetres, mainly because I was basically off my face on drugs. It totally spun me out so that while the pain of each contraction was just as awful, my mind wasn't aware of what was going on so in between contractions I wasn't so paralysed with fear anticipating the next one.
When I finally reached the elusive, mythical ten centimetre mark I had been in labour for 26 hours. I had read lots of birth stories where people had said that the pushing part was a very distinct phase and a different, more bearable sort of pain. For me personally that wasn't the case. Because so many people had told me this part was easier, I was even more shocked to find that it was just a continuation of the hell I was already in. It felt like an impossible task to push the baby out. It would have felt more achievable had someone handed me a feather with which to cut down a tree, so impossible the task did seem! Still, somewhere between a birthing stool, some bean bags and a highly undignified sideways position with one leg up on the midwife's shoulder, my baby was born.
It was by far and away the most difficult, awful, traumatic thing I have ever gone through. I won't be as clichéd as to say 'but it was also the most amazing thing I have ever done, too', because that would be a) very boring and b) untrue. But what my labour did give me was the most wonderful thing I have ever been given; a child and entrance to the most exhausting and privileged world of motherhood. Would I do it again to get my daughter? Yes. But would I still have pulled the trigger, given a gun, at around about hour 24 of labour? Yes. I don't think the two are dichotomous.
And so I finally had my baby in my arms. I finally met the little person I had fallen in love with in the Colombian mountains when the sun rose. It was a triumvirate team effort, a three-strong cast: me, the Tens and my breathing, (with a cameo, but very welcome, guest appearance by Pethidine).
"The effect of the epidural was dramatic. She could still feel the contractions happening, but now no pain"