Sam- His Birth Story, Part One

Feb 4, 2012 by cafebebemama

If you hadn’t been keeping up on Twitter, I went into hospital on Monday 21 November after noticing some light spotting bleeding. I had placenta praevia and our elective c-section had been scheduled for Friday 2 December. I was adamant, in the meeting with the consultant, that I wanted an elective c-section. Ella’s emergency c-section after failure to progress in labour was traumatic and terrifically unpleasant. I wanted to have a controlled, semi-peaceful birth and was confident that an elective c-section, while stil MAJOR abdominal surgery, would be the best for all of us. I was also adamant that if I went into labour early, I still wanted an elective c-section. Thankfully, the placenta praevia necessitated that.

On Monday 21 November, one week after turning 41, I went to the toilet around noon for a routine wee and noticed some spotting. My heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t bright red bleeding but it definitely was spotting. I waited for a bit, checked again and was assured that it was continuing. I phoned Mark first to tell him and told him that I would be ringing the hospital labour ward. After I rang the maternity unit, they told me that I definitely needed to come in. Panic stations!

I wasn’t packed and the hospital bag that I had started for the baby was only partially ready. I rang Mark back to tell him to come home, had a quick bath & got dressed, packed the baby’s bag, packed my bag and waited for Mark to come home. We had Ella with us as it was a non-school day. We didn’t want to ring Mark’s parents to worry them nor did we really have time to drop Ella off at their house. All three of us journeyed the 15 minutes or so to Peterborough City Hospital. We had been instructed to go to the Maternity Triage area where they would handle us. We arrived in the waiting area at 1:45pm and thus began my stay in hospital. I wouldn’t leave, in the end, for 5 more days. I hadn’t packed for that! I thought, silly my, that I might be having our baby on Monday 21 November. Everyone else had different plans.

Eventually I was taken through to be examined. We had rung Mark’s parents and asked them to come to the hospital to collect Ella as we weren’t sure how long we’d be there. Ella was bored and wiggly so Mark took her down to the lobby get some treats and shortly after they left I was called back to the exam room. After checking me, they determined that it seemed to be an “old” bleed but they were still concerned enough to admit me. At that point I was given the first of two steroid injections to help Bebe’s lungs to mature should he or she decide to be born early. At this point I was 37 weeks + 5 with a scheduled elective c-section for the following Friday at 39 weeks + 2. It was during my time in triage that Mark brought Ella back up to say goodbye to me which made me cry. I didn’t know what was happening and my daughter was leaving me…it really was hard for me.

I was then tranferred onto the Maternity Services Ward. This is the place where women being induced or checked for ante-natal problems are sent. Also, this is the post-delivery ward in Peterborough City Hospital. Thankfully, the hospital being just a year old meant that everything was nice and shiny and clean. The wards were HUGE with 4 beds and plenty of room around each bed. We were even afforded the luxury of a television, albeit, without freeview or satellite! There was one large toilet/shower room for the 4 berths to share which was far better than when I had to schlep myself down the hallway to a communal toilet when I was in the old hospital for Ella’s labour and delivery.

I shared the ward with a slightly chavvy girl who was being monitored (and later turfed), a diabetic woman at 34 weeks pregnant who was refusing to eat and/or take her medication and a woman being induced and beginning to labour across from me. When I was admitted, no one really explained anything to me. The midwife on shift told me that I would be seen by the consultant in the morning. That was it. No explanation of how long I might be staying or what I could expect. Mark stayed with me for a short while but I felt it was more important that he collect Ella and take her home so she could have a normal night in our house. He went to his parents to collect her and then brought Ella back to see me. We had a nice but short visit and then when it came time to say goodbye, Ella grabbed onto me and sobbed. Poor thing, she didn’t understand why her Mummy couldn’t come home with her. We’d really never been separated with the exception of 2 nights apart in her whole life. We both cried and then Mark peeled Ella off of me and bundled her into the car to go home. Bless her, she fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Thankfully, there were no restrictions on mobile phone usage and I had had the presence of mind to pack my BlackBerry charger so I was able to Tweet and email everyone to give updates. I also managed to write, over the next 3 days, 3 blog posts with my two little thumbs tippy-tapping away. A miracle! The next morning (Tuesday) a rather horrid and totally unfeeling, thoughtless Consultant rolled up, reviewed my chart, said I would be staying at least another day and night and that was it. No discussion about anything. No questions. No niceties or anything. I was left staring open-mouthed as he turned on his heel and went to the next bed. Thus began the pattern for the next 3 days. The consultant would roll up in the morning at some point, look at my chart, tell me I was staying and leave. Each day I wondered when I would be allowed to go home. Each day, no one filled in that answer. Finally, one afternoon, I think Wednesday, one of the midwives finally said, “More than likely they’ll keep you here until your scheduled elective c-section.”

Thanks to the placenta praevia and the fact that I had had a light bleed, there was no telling if or when a proper bleed might start. The danger, with placenta praevia, is that if a major bleed starts, it happens FAST with very little time to get help and the result could be death. The doctors at PCH didn’t want to risk me leaving hospital and having a major bleed. Totally understandable. But it really didn’t help that this wasn’t properly communicated to me until I was in hospital for 3 days. I also wanted to discuss moving up the date of the elective c-section. It seemed to me that keeping me in hospital for 11 days was far more expensive and pointless than moving up the date of the c-section, especially considering that by the Wednesday I was 38 weeks pregnant and had had my 2 steroid injections as well. The consultants wouldn’t even discuss it. They gave me answers like “statistics”, “reports”, “studies” and said it was best to wait as long as possible and get to 39 weeks. I argued that if I went into labour and/or had a bleed then the elective c-section which was scheduled for 2 December would then become an emergency and/or crash c-section, potentially under general anaesthetic which could be far worse for myself and the baby. They didn’t listen. They were aiming for 39 weeks. I was stuck. I was depressed.

Mark and Ella were having to fend for themselves, I was lonely and depressed and all I wanted was to hold my baby. The lunatic in the bed next to me was driving me to distraction and I had nothing to do. It was not a good thing. I honestly don’t know how women who have to be in for much longer manage. Part of my difficulty was that no one was telling me anything until Thursday. Finally on Thursday, the same humourless consultant who I had seen on Tuesday told me that there was no chance I was getting out and that I would just have to wait until the following Friday for my scheduled elective c-section. I sobbed. He stared at me. He said nothing but just stood there and stared at me. Finally he backed out of the bay and left me sobbing. The midwife came over to me and wrapped her arms around me and just patted my back while I sobbed. I just wanted to go home. She brought me some tissues and left me in peace. I curled up in a ball on my bed and was miserable.

I spent the rest of the day sitting up in a chair, watching telly, pouting miserably and checking Twitter. Then, around 3:30pm my comfort midwife came in and asked if I had been put on the monitor yet that day. I hadn’t so she wheeled in the machine, strapped me up and started monitoring me. As the minutes ticked on, I began to feel “tightenings” in my belly. I started looking at the monitor each time they started and watched the numbers go up and up. They started to be more than “discomfort” and became properly uncomfortable. My spotting had picked up a bit that afternoon and now with the “tightenings” starting, I began to wonder if Bebe was planning on an earlier entrance. It was Thanksgiving in America after all. It seemed fitting!

The midwife came around to check the tape and was shocked to see all the spikes and dips in my feed. She asked me if I could feel the contractions. I said yes. She said, “Well, we’ll keep you on the monitor for a while longer then.” About 30 minutes later, after continued tightenings and definite “discomfort”, the midwife came back. She didn’t like the frequency of the “tightenings” and called in one of the junior consultants to look at the tape. They decided that it was time to bring in the consultant to have a look. Then, after a few more minutes, they decided to transfer me to the labour ward. It was about 5:30 by this time. I rang Mark and told him to get to the hospital as I was being moved to the labour ward which scared the bejesus out of him. The midwife and junior consultant brought a wheelchair around and started packing up my things to transfer me to the labour ward. It seemed that Bebe indeed wanted to be a Thanksgiving baby.

Next installment: Labour ward, Arterial Bleeding and the C-Section…