Ezra’s Birth Story
Prodromal labor was something I hadn’t heard or read about in all my reading to prepare for the birth of my son. But it turned out to be how it all began. 3 consecutive mornings of being woken up at exactly 3 a.m. by sensations I’d call closer to extreme downward pressure than similar to period pains.
Extreme pressure which increased in strength, getting me up and onto all fours holding onto the headboard of my bed each morning for 2 hours. And then just like clockwork, at 5 a.m. they stopped. Completely stopped and me and my partner would go back to sleep.
I was booked to be induced at exactly 40 weeks which would have been the Monday afternoon. And so on Saturday night when my partner asked if he could join a friends birthday bash I replied, yes of course! Just don’t be too late back.
As soon as he’d left the house on Saturday night I started doing all sorts of weird things. Things I didn’t see as odd at the time... I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen, including the floors on my hands and knees. I locked up all the shutters in the flat, I sat down cross legged on the floor and braided my hair into lots of little plaits and then sat in darkness in the living room for an hour or so.
Once it got to half last midnight I decided it would be a good idea to get to bed and get some sleep. So in I climbed, expected to be woken up either by my partner coming home a little tipsy or by the now normal 3am wake up call.
It was the 3am wake up call that did it. Only this time everything felt that much stronger. And I wasn’t sure if that was because this time I was in my own (daddy was still out letting his hair down).
By 5 o’clock, the pressure wasn’t subsiding as it would usually and so I sent a little msg to papa to be and urged him to come home and get some rest before we were booked to be induced on the following day!
Daddy was home by 5:40 and by then I knew this time wasn’t practice. This was the start of the real deal. I felt excited! This was finally it!
I was still on all fours in bed and daddy came in and attempted to get to sleep as we both believed we would be in it for the long haul - 24hours or there abouts is what we’d ‘planned’ to expect of labour.
So just after 6 o’clock I got out of bed and ran the bath, walking a few laps of the flat whilst the tub filled up with warm water. I moved all my aromatherapy oils, oil burner and candles into the bathroom but by the time the bath had filled, the sensations had ramped up a notch or two and I ended up just hopping right into the bath with all the lights on, hoping to get myself more comfortable.
I sat upright with my legs crossed and my head rested on my arms leaning forward onto the side of the bath - I had just about enough room to bounce up and down in the water whilst still feeling relaxed and in an upright position.
And it worked, for about 20 minutes..... at which point I had to get out of the bath and SOS use the toilet. That’s when daddy woke up and walked into what may have looked like a disaster scene in the bathroom 😳. Only I wasn’t ill or hungover, with hindsight, I recognise I was transitioning from latent labour into active labour.
I got back into the bath whilst he cleaned up the mess. But it wasn’t long before I began making some involuntary sounds that I can only describe as mooing and my partner decided it was time to call the hospital and just let them know things had started.
The midwife on the phone asked him some questions and informed him that I was likely still in very early labour if I was able to talk through any pain. She invited us in for an ‘examination’ but indicated that we would be sent back home if it was found we weren’t yet 4-6 cms dilated.
Well we really didn’t want that. All the research had shown that travelling into hospital can slow labour down and so it’s best to hold out and wait until you feel more sure contractions are established.
Our plan? I’d take some paracetamol, get my breathing back on track and daddy would start timing the surges which I would still have described more as waves of extreme pressure than painful contractions.
I got out of the bath and did a few nude laps of the flat whilst my partner set up the birthing ball and a towel for me in the living room and a duvet for himself on the sofa!
Another 15 minutes of bouncing and circling my hips on the ball and I felt myself bearing downwards which scared us both into calling our planned uber ride to the hospital and me throwing on some clothes.
Between the uber journey and arriving onto the maternity ward, there was a lot of mooing and involuntary squatting on my part and a lot of very fast sobering up on daddy’s part!
We entered an observation room where a lovely midwife just starting her shift welcomed us and asked daddy for the notes (we’d forgotten them). I unwittingly stripped naked and laid down on the stools set up for observations.
Our midwife offered me some gas and air to help with the surges and get me to stay still enough for her to find baby’s heartbeat.
A few puffs later and she confirmed not only was everything fine, but I was also already 9cm dialated! Definitely not moving to the labour ward which was where we had planned to give birth and certainly not going back home!
My waters burst pretty dramatically and actually I vividly remember how comforting a feeling the warm waters were... something I wouldn’t have imagined from the expression ‘waters breaking’.
A few short pushes later and our baby was born just 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital. Safe and sound, he latched straight onto the boob and had an hour of perfect skin to skin time before getting some serious cuddle time from daddy.
My first birth was the most AWESOME (and I mean awe-some), empowering, wonderful, surreal and magical experience of my life! It’s made me a total birth junkie who’s desperate to tell any women who are seeking an alternative view point, that it is SO possible to have a POSITIVE experience of birth that will make you realise how you’re PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY built and capable of doing ANYTHING!