I’m 45 my son is my 5th baby, I have a 28, 25, 24 and 23 yr old, so there is a big age gap, my son is my rainbow baby after 3 losses and 22 years trying to conceive, my son was born at 37+4 on 12th September 2021 at 5.29am weighing 6lb 13oz after 13 hours of labour.
I had a perfect pregnancy with no problems all the way through, from my scan at 28 weeks to my scan at 36 weeks my son was transverse breech, when I got to 37 weeks we opted to have an ecv to turn him head down as I was booked to have a home birth, my ecv was successful but within 12 hours he had turned back to breech again, I went to see my midwife who confirmed that he was indeed transverse breech again, she sent me to the hospital as they couldn’t risk me going into labour in case the cord prolapsed, we live 1 and a half hours from the hospital so we couldn’t risk it either.
At the hospital they decided that I would be induced the following morning, the plan was to give me a short term spinal, repeat the ecv to turn bub and then hold him in place while someone else broke my waters, there was still a chance that the cord would prolapse so the spinal was done in case of needing an emergency caesarean, luckily my bub dropped into the pelvis head first so I was able to have a vaginal birth, a drip was placed in my hand to kick start my contractions which started really quickly. During the process I was hooked up to a heart monitor, it was during this that the anaesthetist noticed a problem with my heart, I was moved from theatre to my labour room at 4pm on 11th September, once the spinal wore off my contractions really got going, but due to the heart problem they sent someone in to do an ECG and an echocardiogram all while I was in labour, (I’ve since been diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy, heart failure that comes up in pregnancy) which in turn slowed labour down, I got the midwife to turn the drip machine up to get things going again.
I was hooked up to a heart monitor, blood pressure machine and the monitors to keep an eye on bubs heartbeat and the contractions, I also had the drip in my hand for the contractions along side one for magnesium due to my heart, so was stuck in the room. I’m quite an active person during labour so this was very frustrating, once the spinal wore off I was able to get out of bed and stand up to help gravity do it’s bit, it was quite hard as I kept getting tangled in all the wires, I managed without any pain relief till 2.30am but at this point the contractions were coming one after the other, there wasn’t a break in between, I felt I couldn’t cope, so I decided to have an epidural, it was very difficult for the epidural to be administered as the contractions were so close together, the midwife then switched off the machine that was controlling the drip for them, my contractions slowed and by 3.20am they were able to get the epidural in. The epidural I was given was amazing as it didn’t numb my legs, only across my tummy where the contraction pain was, I was given a button to press whenever the epidural was wearing off which I only needed once, by 5am I had a lot of pressure down below, my midwife confirmed I was fully dilated so I could start pushing. I was still a bit numb from the epidural but I could feel my son coming down the birth canal but no pain which was an amazing feeling, my contractions were tailing off at this point so my midwife said to just push even if I didn’t have a contraction which I did and at 5.29 my beautiful son George Christopher was born.
