Hope's story - the birth

Morning. We got up earlier than we needed to and had showers. I tried to eat some breakfast. It was raining. We got in the car but had to stop for petrol and we made our way to the hospital. We parked in the emergency bay. To me, this was an emergency.

The woman at the admissions desk had obviously been warned as she barely made eye contact with us. She muttered they’d put the TV on in our room for free. Great.

A midwife Amy, who we’d met during the pregnancy showed us to our room. She was crying. Just finishing her night shift, she said she’d be back that evening to care for us. She gave us with a hug, the first of many we’d receive over the coming days and wished us well. She kept saying how very sorry she was.

The next midwife to clock on was Laura, and I will never forget her soothing voice. I couldn’t have got through the next eight hours without her.

I slumped myself on the bed with my back to the door. I didn’t want to see or speak to anyone. I just wanted it to be over. Nine months of joy and happiness and I was now about to enter a life time of hell and heartache. Eventually a doctor came broke what little was left of my waters, bringing with it, a strand of our baby’s hair. “Your baby has brown hair,” she said. I was so excited to learn this small detail, the first real physical thing we would know about our child we couldn’t keep.

When she examined me, I was 3cm so my body had been working hard and I was relieved to know what I was experiencing was labour, and not all in my head.

I was given some pills and almost immediately, labour was in full swing. But the words of that stupid obstetrician from the day before kept ringing in my ear “you won’t feel it”. I was feeling it, and no pain relief had been arranged.

I wanted a drug free labour, so the idea of being hooked up to every drug under the sun didn’t appeal, but then neither did delivering a dead baby, so at the very least I thought I deserved to be comfortable. The drugs took a while to set up, and once they were, I could start clicking my way to a pain-free labour. Bliss.

The rest of the family started filing in to the delivery suite, including my brother and his girlfriend who had also flown over from Western Australia to be with us.

As my labour progressed, the family came and went from our room. Taking it in turns to be with me. And cry. Mostly cry. I was beginning to worry for everyone else. They were all in a bad way. At least I had the mind altering drugs to numb me from my pain.

I got up to go to the toilet. I threw up everywhere. I didn’t like what the drugs were doing to my body. God knows what this would have been doing to my baby if she was alive.

The drugs were wearing off and the pain came back. Five minutes seemed like an eternity between clicks. I was in full blown labour and I was feeling it. Damn that obstetrician.

An epidural, something that had frightened the life out of me during pregnancy, and something which the obstetrician told me I wouldn’t need, was now being arranged.

A young, nervous anaesthetist came in. Simon, an anaesthetic nurse said: “I don’t want her going near Sally’s back, get us the consultant”. We learned that when you’re going to deliver a dead baby, staff will almost do anything for you. We made the most of this small luxury.

The consultant arrived and he was more careful with me than I could have hoped for with my over-protective husband watching him. It seemed to take forever to put in, and everyone said to lie still. I couldn’t, I was in agony. But I did my best to lay still. If I couldn’t have a baby, I wanted at least to be able to use my legs again.

He said he’d wait until I wasn’t having a contraction but the contractions were coming on top of each other. Once it was in, I felt the cool trickle of drugs go down my spine, and the pain was gone. I wish he could have jabbed that needle in my heart. That was one pain I could not escape.

At 3pm, Laura said I was ready to push. I couldn’t believe it. The moment I’d been looking forward to for nine months.

A wise lady said to me I would never, ever feel as happy after the birth of my first child. She said subsequent children would bring equal joy, but there was always something special about the first. She said it was the happiest moment of her life. She was right. I would never forget it, but the pure joy and elation of the moment had been ripped away.

Other friends had also been telling me birth was a moment like no other. I had struggled to comprehend for nine months there was actually a baby inside me, and I could never really imagine getting a baby as the end result. I figured it would become real once I’d had the baby and laid eyes on his or her precious little face. I face I’d been longing to see.

I used to ask Simon throughout the pregnancy: “will the baby like me?” He would answer, but you could tell he was thinking it was the most ridiculous question. “Of course the baby will like you, he or she will love you. You are the baby’s lifeblood, its Mother; it has no choice but to love you”. I knew he was right, but I also liked hearing him reaffirm it for me. Now I felt I was never really going to learn the answer to this question.

I would always look at other mothers and long for that moment when my baby would pick me out in a room and come running to me. Or when a friend would be holding my baby, the baby would cry and only I would be able to stop their tears.

Hope’s birth wasn’t the worst moment in our lives. Seeing her lifeless body on the ultrasound machine topped that. It was still the moment we got to meet our first, precious child. It will forever be though, a moment tinged with such a deep sadness.

Laura started to prepare things in the room for delivery. Trolleys were wheeled out and covered in big green sheets. Dishes and instruments were laid out in ready. I was getting close. We were about to meet our baby.

She started coaching me on what I had to do. It was hard to know how to push when I couldn’t really feel anything below my belly button. But the way she explained things made a lot of sense, and I began to draw on my yoga teachings again.

Mum, Simon’s Mum and my sister were still in the room. I thought they would leave, but I asked them to say. It was everything I didn’t want, but honestly I didn’t know how I was going to do this without them. I kept saying, “this was not in the birth plan”.

I also kept apologising to them that they had to see me like that and constantly asked how they were, as I was worried they wouldn’t be able to cope watching me go through it all.

I pushed for about an hour. Seemed like nothing was happening, but I guess it was. I was warned the pushing stage for a first baby could be long and hard. I would have pushed for another nine months if I knew I was going to get my baby here alive.

Simon always thought I’d be loud during labour and that I’d yell and scream a lot. But I was surprised with how quiet I was. Yoga had taught me how to use my voice and not to waste energy, so I was channelling all of that.

Simon was so quiet during the birth. I almost forgot he was there. I mean I knew he was there, holding my hand but he barely said a word. He later told me he was just in awe of the entire event and that he didn’t have the words. He’s always been a man of few words.

Another midwife, Narelle, clocked on and it was time for Laura to finish. But she assured me she wasn’t going anywhere until my baby was born. I was so grateful.

Not long after Narelle started she said, “so you’re having a girl?” I said “we are? You’re the second person to say that”. But she swore she didn’t know and it wasn’t written anywhere, she just thought it looked like I was having a girl and she assumed we knew.

I remember screaming during the pushing, “I can’t do it”. I was so ready to quit. But deep down I knew I could do it. I had no choice. Any mother would have done the same.

I threw up a lot during when I was pushing. More than I thought possible. It felt like there was nothing left inside me except my baby. I had rid my body of everything. Now, it was just the baby but she was coming out, too. And I couldn’t keep her.

The midwives would tell me to sit the next contraction out and give my body a break. But our bodies are amazing. I had an urge to push and I have no idea where it was coming from. I couldn’t stop. I would scream “PUSH” and they would say “whoa, she wants to push again”. They seemed amazed at my strength, Simon and our Mothers were proud of me and I was happy with myself. I was also surprised that my sister, previously turned off by childbirth, was still in the room, right beside me holding my hand.

At this point, when Hope’s head was close to being born, Narelle said “oh, here's the cord”. The cord was twice around our baby’s neck. I was absolutely gutted, but relieved at the same time. That gave me a black and white answer as to what might have gone wrong, and definitely meant it was out of my control, that it wasn’t my fault.

As a Mother, you would do anything to protect your kids and I did everything to protect her for nine months, everything. But I knew cord accidents could happen, and I knew they were random. However they were quick to tell me this might not be the cause, and to wait for the autopsy results which could take up to six weeks. They seemed to know more than they were letting on at this stage.

With a push that tipped me over the edge of sheer physical exhaustion, our little baby’s wet head finally emerged. We were told during birth classes if we wanted to see, we could ask for a mirror. I never thought I would want to see, but soon changed my mind and I demanded a mirror. Narelle rushed off to get one.

I had a good look, and was amazed that my body had been able to do this. From all the videos I’d seen, I knew the end was near as after the head comes out and the first shoulder is born, the rest of the body just seems to slip out.

Well I guess that’s if the baby is alive. Hope became quite stuck, and I felt like I was losing control. I screamed “get it out!” Things ground to a halt, the midwives were whispering and started to talk of episiotomies, forceps and vacuum extractions. They both mentioned if the obstetrician came back she’d want to speed things up by using one of these interventions. I was terrified, but I thought right, I can do this, no one is going to cut me or use some tool to get my baby out. I can do this.

I was given an injection of syntocin to speed things up - which I did not really want but I was running out of options. I had so many tubes and wires coming out of me, hardly the natural birth I had been hoping for.

I told the midwives if the obstetrician came back, I didn’t want it to be the nasty little woman from the day before. They knew exactly who I meant and said they’d send the consultant. She arrived as I wasn’t making any progress. Our baby was still stuck.

She was bossy, pushed Mum out of the way and she started pushing heavily on my stomach, but she was only trying to help me. I yelled at her. “You’re hurting me!” Up until that point I hadn’t really felt any pain and everyone else had been so gentle with me.

But she was only trying to help. It was becoming apparent, that with Hope no longer with us, this was going to be a hard labour as she wasn’t able to twist and turn her way out.

Everyone was now trying to help. My support team say my legs were in a position no one thought physically possible. They were holding my legs behind my head, I was pushing with every ounce of energy and the midwives and doctor tried to pull our baby out of me.

They didn’t have to be as gentle with me or Hope as they did. I’d had an epidural so I couldn’t feel anything and the baby was dead, so they didn’t need to worry about her. But they did everything in their power to get our baby out safely, and to keep me in one piece.

It was now very close. “Pull your top up so we can put her on your chest,” I was told. I didn’t think I wanted this. I initially said no. I was so worried what my baby would look like, I for some reason thought she would be bright blue or that I might “reject” her.

But as she emerged, the mother instinct in me kicked in and my warm, albeit slightly pale baby, was placed on my chest. As soon as I laid eyes on her a wave of intense love swept over me. I loved her with every ounce of my being. It was overwhelming. A love I have never known. Even though Hope wasn’t with us, I knew that instant bond I had with her would never be broken. Mother and child, together forever.