Alba's Birth Story - A Breech Delivery at Home that went a Bit... Shit
I am 42 and this is my third child; there won't be a sequel to this birth story. There is, however, a prequel:
I'd always wanted more than two children. Two didn't seem enough. Two was too small a number. I am the first of a set of four, and 'only two' made me feel sad and incomplete. But Jay is one of two and felt different about it.
I would like another child, I said when I was 38 and the children were 7 and 4.
If you want another child, you'll have to look for another father, said Jay.
And that was that. It was true that we were tired and busy with work and our two. Seven years of breastfeeding and co-sleeping. Not one night of solid sleep in seven years. I had put on three stone since the last baby in the false hope that biscuits could give me the energy I needed to make it through the days, and he was no longer the funny sweet person I had met once upon a time, but his tired and grumpy shadow.
I'll give myself until fourty. If I'm not pregnant by 39 and 3 months, I will accept that two is good enough, I said to myself. I left a tiny bit of hope, my window of opportunity slightly ajar, but mostly I began the hard work of accepting and grieving for the baby I would not be allowed to have.
The closer I came to my closing window, the more thoughts of this baby were with me, and the sadder I was.
I was going to fitness classes that concluded on a quiet five minutes of meditation at the time, and I was now usually flooded with sadness during this meditation. I had become anxious about this part of the class, and where everybody else lay down to relax, I would stay seated.
It was during one of these meditations that I 'saw' a little girl. Picture the other people in the room fading, and then there is a little girl standing behind me, about the depth of the room away, over my shoulder. She is just standing there, looking at me. Not coming closer, not going away. I 'sense' her as much as I 'see' her; she is about 3 or 4 years old, wears a skirt and pony tails. When the teachers's voice wraps up the class, she disappears. I have to fight hard to keep back the tears.
I saw her again the following week: there she was, watching me, not coming and not going. After that I kept my eyes open and on the teacher. The 'vision' was too intensely painful. I wanted this baby. I did not believe in this baby.
Then I turned 39, and then 39 and three months. I had two children, and they were lovely. I accepted my lot and closed my window.
Two years later, I am 41 and nine months old. Things have relaxed at home. We have relaxed. Hmmm, this is nice, says Jay.
Hmmm, this is very nice, I say. Should we, uhm, take precautions?
No, we say, we're old and taking one little miserly risk in six years won't do any harm. Nothing will happen.
But something happened.
Dear Alba, you happened. And this is the story of your birth:
By the reckoning of the medical profession, you were well overdue now - by ten days on the night I went into labour, by eleven days by the time you were born. I know you weren't as overdue as they made it out - after all I knew quite well when we had made you, taking one miserly little risk in six years - but I had been counting down for quite a while. You were a big baby, apparently. Carrying you inside had been quite a job, but finally the towels for your home birth had been laid aside, my bags were packed "just in case", you'd been engaged head first for quite a while now, I was confident an easy birth lay ahead, and we were all waiting to meet you.
Tuesday evening. Your siblings were taking their time getting ready for bed. My tummy started hurting, just a little at first. Just enough to get nervous, asking myself, is this it? I got a bit snappy at your dilly-dallying siblings, I got nervous, but when I finally told the family that I though you were getting ready to arrive, Papi had them in bed and out of the way in very little time. They had been invited to be present and see you be born but after watching a short video clip of a home birth (a very tame one), they had both declined.
My tummy pain turned into slight cramps and then there was a bit of blood in my underwear. I was confident, on the whole, that your birth would be easy but I was not confident in reading the signs, knowing which step I was at, knowing what was what, and what to expect next.
Why, you wonder, given that I had given birth twice before? Neither Cara's nor Theo's birth had been... well, as they should have been. Cara's was induced, kick-started medically and pushed through my body with hormones, intensely and painfully. Theo's started at home but I called the first midwife too early when the pain was not intense enough and felt embarrassed when she came, tutted at the mere two centimeters I was dilated at that point and left a few hours later, and then half a day later the next midwife made a mistake in breaking my waters too early: again we ended up in a hospital, with labour being pushed through with hormones.
So while I called the hospital to let them know I thought I was in labour, I also messaged our friend Lisa: There is blood in my underwear and I have cramps, do you think this could be 'it'? Eleven days over our due date, it was rather likely.
Of the many things that Lisa is, two are essential here: Lisa is eternally kind and helpful. And Lisa is a midwife. Birth is her business, care is her nature. And Lisa lives a three minute drive away. A few messages and three minutes later, Lisa walked through our front door at around nine o'clock in the evening.
Another three minutes later, she had confirmed that yes, this was 'it'. You were on your way, not long now! We put out the towels in the living room, found a music programme on the telly and sang a bit of caraoke for a while.
The contractions kept washing over our conversation, coming and going and not quite meeting the mark of what my midwives had told me to look out for before I rang for their assistance. I could still talk through most of them even though I would stop in my pacing, bouncing and swaying to wait them out, and my notes read: 'ring hospital when can't talk any more, 2-3 contractions per every ten minutes'.
Your brother and sister were asleep upstairs, and now I also started to get a bit tired, trying to sit down and rest more, and Lisa told me that by lying back I would slow my contractions down a little. It was difficult settling down as there was pain down my right leg as well as my back feeling stiff and unable to move now, but I managed. We thanked Lisa and sent her back home after agreeing that she would keep her phone near so we could call again if we ended up having to go into hospital and needed childcare for the sleeping beauties upstairs. We turned off the telly, dimmed the lights and managed to rest and doze for a while. That 'while' lasted for about two hours, from around 11.30pm to 1.30am.
I was pulled out of my doze by contractions that were getting harder and more painful. Two or three of them I waited out before I said to your father, I think we should start timing these now. My idea was to time them for about twenty minutes to confirm their regularity; that I had come to the time where I couldn't talk through them now, that I already knew. These contractions floored me, froze me in my movements and reduced any vocal efforts to one long AAAAH!
We timed about two or three of those, and then my waters went. It's a peculiar sensation, this. Suddenly there is a presence of a large hot something between your legs and within a split second it pops and a warm liquid gushes out of you. Like being hit by a hot water bomb, except them bomb comes from within you. And of course it's a moment you're prepared for. There's towels and you know what to do next: "Papi, you need to look at this. The colour is important. Have a look and tell me what colour it is. It should be clear."
We're all briefed about the colour of our waters, right? Clear is good. We ladies wear thick panty liners to be able to catch the waters and see the exact colour. Clear with traces of blood is not so good, I think. Clear with traces of black is not so good either. Black means, baby is is distress and has pooped into the waters. This black stuff is extremely sticky and if baby swalows or inhales it this might be bad for baby. The stuff is sticky enough to coat the little lungs and keep the oxygen out when it's needed. Or something. I'm not a midwife and I'm in pain but I know black is not good.
Jay says, "It' black."
"What do you mean, it's black. It's a bit black? Smudged? What kind of black? How much black?"
"It's black," he repeats. I'm still frozen out. He peels my underwear off me and holds it up so I can assess. It's black. Not 'clear with traces of black'. Not 'smudged'. Just black, one hundred percent pitch dark black.
And just like this, fear hits us. I was so confident in my ability to deliver this baby at home without trouble. That's gone in just one small moment. We're now not sure that you will be well, baby girl, that you will be born breathing, that you will come to stay. We're scared to death, of death, and it's time we bloody called the midwife at the hospital.
I'm going to say it now: I'm right in the middle of my Best Case Scenario. This will be, this IS, your Perfect Birth. We will see you take your first breath in less than an hour, I AM able to give birth to you as easily as these things go, and you will be fine, you will be perfect. But until then, we'll be scared to death.
Luckly, I still function relatively well when scared. "Hand me the phone," I say. "Bring the bag. We will have to go into hospital."
I describe the situation to the midwife that picks up the phone - the situation being that my waters have broken and they don't have a little meconium in it, they are 100% meconium, a tidal wave of shit - and she advises me, as expected, to come in. I wait for a second but she does not mention sending an ambulance out. So I ask: Should we drive up ourselves? Surely this is a bit urgent now? No worries, she assures me, us getting into the car at this stage will be quite all right.
So the car it is.
I'm in the regular grip of very painful contractions - finally more frequently that the two every ten minutes it was before, and so much more urgent - so I'm past driving myself. Jay isn't really in a fit state either but it'll do. The one thing we can't do is leave the sleeping siblings upstairs. We call Lisa again and leave the door open. I'm still exactly where she left me, stuck to my spot on the sofa.
When Lisa parks up three minutes later, she can hear a long and loud 'AAAAAAARRRR' through the door. We both know I'm near the last stage of labour; she can tell from the sound, I can tell from the beginning urge to push as I aaaaarrr.
And yet we manage to present the black puddle and sodden black towels and relate the hospital's advice. "No way are you getting into a car like this," Lisa tells us. "Call the ambulance. NOW." What a relief! The words I have been waiting for! What a pain it is to be a goody-two-shoes that wants to please, doesn't want to run counter to what she has been told, doesn't want to embarrass herself be making unreasonable demands, waiting for permission! Bloody hell, mammas in labour - YOU know what you need! Demand it! Demand it loudly!
Lisa also says something about the possibility of the baby being breech. It registers at the back of my mind. Permission to call the ambulance takes precedence. With a sigh of relief - between contractions and still without having moved an inch - I dial 999. I'm speaking to the operator within seconds and begin my story of "I'm at home and in labout and the waters are all black..." but a contraction cuts in and I'm reduced to a long loud and urgent aaaaaaaarr.
"Is there somebody there with you? Can you pass the phone over to them?" asks the operator. Yes, yes, I manage to say, she's not The Midwife but she's my friend and she's a midwife, and I pass the phone over to Lisa to talk shop with the operator lady. The phone is on speaker. "The most important thing is not to let her know just how serious the situation is," says the operator, loud and clear. Lisa and I exchange looks. AAAAAAARRR, I say. It really hurts, I can 't move when a contraction hits, and there is little time left, my body tells me.
We have one more call to place: If I'm going in an ambulance, I'm taking my personal midwife and childbirth supervisor with, thank you, and we need additional childcare. Another friend had innocently offered 'any help we might need' without ever expecting to be called up on it but was still awake and able to park up just as the ambulance arrived to another loud aaaarrr coming out the front door. Thank you, Jim - between now and the time when you get to camp out on my sofa, your job is in the kitchen looking after the blubbering mess that this baby's father is.
Enter the ambulance crew with their stretcher, and there's a paramedic/first responder, too. They look like they might want to take over, not because they're superbly experienced in supporting home births but purely because it's their job. I'm past the urge to be polite, though, and growl at them: "Leave her! She knows what she's doing! She's a midwife!"
Lisa coaxes me onto the stretcher. It is nearly 2am. I can feel the next contraction coming, and with it the inability to move, but we get me across and onto it just in time. The ambulance crew is lined up against the wall next to me. The paramedic is behind Lisa, on the sofa, ready with oxygen and towels. His name is Kevin, and he will be the first to hold the baby in about three minutes. Lisa sits at the bottom of the stretcher. "Put your foot here," she orders. My foot is on her legs. I have a vest on, and that's all. A once-in-a-lifetime position to find yourself in with a friend with whom to this date you've merely comfortably shared coffee on the sofa, and conversation about the children, the world in general, work perhaps.
Rewind to such a shared coffee, a few months earlier during the pregnancy. Lisa had attended a special training day on breech births. We sat on the sofa and she spoke at length about it. How they're entirely normal in other parts of the world, delivered with the same ease as the heads-first variety. How you mustn't touch and manipulate a breech baby once the body is out because there's a risk of the touch triggering baby's breathing, and baby drowning. How there's one simple trick to help the head out if baby isn't tucking her chin in and gets her head stuck. And how vaginal breeches have become so uncommon here in the UK that barely any midwife has ever seen one while in training, and many are therefore a bit scared of them. Lisa didn't say whether she'd ever delivered one, but we're drawing on the enthusiasm and confidence with which she spoke that day, because now, on this stretcher in my living room, she will apply all that knowledge and deliver this baby. Because this incoming contraction is the last one and I shout and I push and I look down and I see her little back and butt and legs and they're a bluish grey to me (but as good a colour as you can expect from a breech baby to Lisa).
Everything has been urgent and busy since we made that first call. Fear hasn't made it to the surface in this room but has been ever present. We're now looking down, waiting for the next contraction to push the head out. Lisa scoops the little arms out and as I look at my blue-grey headless upside-down baby and the last contraction ebbs away, I know there isn't another one to help us along. And I'm right. We wait a few seconds and then, with my best effort at pushing, and Lisa's special midwifery magic, studied a few months ago and applied now, we get the head out. It is 2:03am.
There is none of the elation, triumph and joy that accompanied those moments at the previous two hospital births. "Is she breathing?" is all I want to know. "Yes, she is, look here," Lisa replies and I see the little back rise ever so faintly before the cord is clamped and cut and my little girl is wrapped in a towel and passed to Kevin the paramedic. I call fer her as she disappears from sight but he is the first to hold my baby somewhere behind Lisa's back. He is administering oxygen but I don't know that. Would I want to see if I did? I don't know and I don't get to decide. I'm shaking all over. The chord is hanging out of me, it's very long, blue and purple and beautiful. I make lovely cords.
The parcelled-up baby is now the right colour and passed to her father. We find our eldest at the top of the stairs ready to be invited down. She has the second cuddle of her little sister, smiles at her contentedly and goes back to bed. Her brother is sleeping through all of this. The neighbours aren't. The ambulance crew are getting me ready to ship off to hospital to accompany baby to be monitored for a day and they forget that the mother would like a first glimpse of the child. I remind them. And then there it is, our first moment, face to face. I look at you, my baby girl, and you look healthy - because you are - and a complete stranger. The name I still called you by just now is already fading. I don't know you, you don't remind me of anybody, I don't recognise you as the little quiet girl that lived inside me and worried me by only being active every three days. You're all bundled up and sleepy and strange and new, and seconds later taken off me again. All of this in a flurry of breathless minutes.
Kevin has the fourth cuddle also as we ride to hospital in the ambulance. He is sitting behind me and I can't see or hear my baby but I'm intensely tuned into her presence, as if the chord was still there, now a mental one. I'm glad somebody is holding her. I'd rather it was me.
Lisa debriefs the ambulance staff that's riding with us. He'd never seen a breech birth before.
At the hospital, Kevin and baby go through to the ward before us. It's only a few minutes before we meet again and I finally get to unwrap my baby like a present, put her on my chest, find her a breast to attach her to, and gaze and love and relax. These few minutes, though, will haunt me: I will be wondering for months whether this is really my baby, or whether she was switched in those minutes we were separated for. It's not the most rational of thoughts - within a day she is the spitting image of her sister - but it lingers for about nine months.
The hospital doesn't have a bed for us on the maternity ward. We spend the day on the prenatal ward, a slightly awkward arragement. The official checks and observations confirm that this baby is fine, meaning she has not inhaled any meconium. I am watching and guarding this baby with all I've got and don't close my eyes until we're safely home very late that night. There is plenty of time to imagine alternative birth stories for this baby. What if... In one such scenario we get into the car as instructed and give birth to our breech baby by the roadside. We don't know how to get the head out and she's stuck. No happy ending there. In another such alternative story, I only have the ambulance staff there, no Lisa. I'm not sure how that story goes. Alternative narrative: I make it to the hospital. There's an emergency cesarian in that story. In another, she's known to be breech - again, I'm looking at a hospital birth with a likely cesarian.
As it was, I'd wanted a homebirth, and I got one. It wasn't fun, though; it was dead scary. But whichever way I turn this, my ability to push my surprise breech baby out without medical intervention and with the support I needed was just this: at home, her turning breech without advance notice, without the official midwife present but with the friend who happens to be a midwife. The crucial element, though, is Lisa, without whom Alba's birth story would have gone very differently. So when we name our precious baby a few days later, her middle name is in her honour: Elisa.
Note: The explanation for the tidal wave of shit (i.e meconium) that his breech baby was born on is that as her bum descended the birth canal, the contractions squeezed all of he poop out of her, and downwards into the part of the amniotic sac below her, sealed off from the rest by her body.
I'd also like to add that this is a personal story, not a textbook example of how breech births could or should all go. If you, dear reader, are a pregnant lady expecting a breech baby, please bear in mind that I'd pushed out two babies previously, and that all births are different.
I'd always wanted more than two children. Two didn't seem enough. Two was too small a number. I am the first of a set of four, and 'only two' made me feel sad and incomplete. But Jay is one of two and felt different about it.
I would like another child, I said when I was 38 and the children were 7 and 4.
If you want another child, you'll have to look for another father, said Jay.
And that was that. It was true that we were tired and busy with work and our two. Seven years of breastfeeding and co-sleeping. Not one night of solid sleep in seven years. I had put on three stone since the last baby in the false hope that biscuits could give me the energy I needed to make it through the days, and he was no longer the funny sweet person I had met once upon a time, but his tired and grumpy shadow.
I'll give myself until fourty. If I'm not pregnant by 39 and 3 months, I will accept that two is good enough, I said to myself. I left a tiny bit of hope, my window of opportunity slightly ajar, but mostly I began the hard work of accepting and grieving for the baby I would not be allowed to have.
The closer I came to my closing window, the more thoughts of this baby were with me, and the sadder I was.
I was going to fitness classes that concluded on a quiet five minutes of meditation at the time, and I was now usually flooded with sadness during this meditation. I had become anxious about this part of the class, and where everybody else lay down to relax, I would stay seated.
It was during one of these meditations that I 'saw' a little girl. Picture the other people in the room fading, and then there is a little girl standing behind me, about the depth of the room away, over my shoulder. She is just standing there, looking at me. Not coming closer, not going away. I 'sense' her as much as I 'see' her; she is about 3 or 4 years old, wears a skirt and pony tails. When the teachers's voice wraps up the class, she disappears. I have to fight hard to keep back the tears.
I saw her again the following week: there she was, watching me, not coming and not going. After that I kept my eyes open and on the teacher. The 'vision' was too intensely painful. I wanted this baby. I did not believe in this baby.
Then I turned 39, and then 39 and three months. I had two children, and they were lovely. I accepted my lot and closed my window.
Two years later, I am 41 and nine months old. Things have relaxed at home. We have relaxed. Hmmm, this is nice, says Jay.
Hmmm, this is very nice, I say. Should we, uhm, take precautions?
No, we say, we're old and taking one little miserly risk in six years won't do any harm. Nothing will happen.
But something happened.
Dear Alba, you happened. And this is the story of your birth:
By the reckoning of the medical profession, you were well overdue now - by ten days on the night I went into labour, by eleven days by the time you were born. I know you weren't as overdue as they made it out - after all I knew quite well when we had made you, taking one miserly little risk in six years - but I had been counting down for quite a while. You were a big baby, apparently. Carrying you inside had been quite a job, but finally the towels for your home birth had been laid aside, my bags were packed "just in case", you'd been engaged head first for quite a while now, I was confident an easy birth lay ahead, and we were all waiting to meet you.
Tuesday evening. Your siblings were taking their time getting ready for bed. My tummy started hurting, just a little at first. Just enough to get nervous, asking myself, is this it? I got a bit snappy at your dilly-dallying siblings, I got nervous, but when I finally told the family that I though you were getting ready to arrive, Papi had them in bed and out of the way in very little time. They had been invited to be present and see you be born but after watching a short video clip of a home birth (a very tame one), they had both declined.
My tummy pain turned into slight cramps and then there was a bit of blood in my underwear. I was confident, on the whole, that your birth would be easy but I was not confident in reading the signs, knowing which step I was at, knowing what was what, and what to expect next.
Why, you wonder, given that I had given birth twice before? Neither Cara's nor Theo's birth had been... well, as they should have been. Cara's was induced, kick-started medically and pushed through my body with hormones, intensely and painfully. Theo's started at home but I called the first midwife too early when the pain was not intense enough and felt embarrassed when she came, tutted at the mere two centimeters I was dilated at that point and left a few hours later, and then half a day later the next midwife made a mistake in breaking my waters too early: again we ended up in a hospital, with labour being pushed through with hormones.
So while I called the hospital to let them know I thought I was in labour, I also messaged our friend Lisa: There is blood in my underwear and I have cramps, do you think this could be 'it'? Eleven days over our due date, it was rather likely.
Of the many things that Lisa is, two are essential here: Lisa is eternally kind and helpful. And Lisa is a midwife. Birth is her business, care is her nature. And Lisa lives a three minute drive away. A few messages and three minutes later, Lisa walked through our front door at around nine o'clock in the evening.
Another three minutes later, she had confirmed that yes, this was 'it'. You were on your way, not long now! We put out the towels in the living room, found a music programme on the telly and sang a bit of caraoke for a while.
The contractions kept washing over our conversation, coming and going and not quite meeting the mark of what my midwives had told me to look out for before I rang for their assistance. I could still talk through most of them even though I would stop in my pacing, bouncing and swaying to wait them out, and my notes read: 'ring hospital when can't talk any more, 2-3 contractions per every ten minutes'.
Your brother and sister were asleep upstairs, and now I also started to get a bit tired, trying to sit down and rest more, and Lisa told me that by lying back I would slow my contractions down a little. It was difficult settling down as there was pain down my right leg as well as my back feeling stiff and unable to move now, but I managed. We thanked Lisa and sent her back home after agreeing that she would keep her phone near so we could call again if we ended up having to go into hospital and needed childcare for the sleeping beauties upstairs. We turned off the telly, dimmed the lights and managed to rest and doze for a while. That 'while' lasted for about two hours, from around 11.30pm to 1.30am.
I was pulled out of my doze by contractions that were getting harder and more painful. Two or three of them I waited out before I said to your father, I think we should start timing these now. My idea was to time them for about twenty minutes to confirm their regularity; that I had come to the time where I couldn't talk through them now, that I already knew. These contractions floored me, froze me in my movements and reduced any vocal efforts to one long AAAAH!
We timed about two or three of those, and then my waters went. It's a peculiar sensation, this. Suddenly there is a presence of a large hot something between your legs and within a split second it pops and a warm liquid gushes out of you. Like being hit by a hot water bomb, except them bomb comes from within you. And of course it's a moment you're prepared for. There's towels and you know what to do next: "Papi, you need to look at this. The colour is important. Have a look and tell me what colour it is. It should be clear."
We're all briefed about the colour of our waters, right? Clear is good. We ladies wear thick panty liners to be able to catch the waters and see the exact colour. Clear with traces of blood is not so good, I think. Clear with traces of black is not so good either. Black means, baby is is distress and has pooped into the waters. This black stuff is extremely sticky and if baby swalows or inhales it this might be bad for baby. The stuff is sticky enough to coat the little lungs and keep the oxygen out when it's needed. Or something. I'm not a midwife and I'm in pain but I know black is not good.
Jay says, "It' black."
"What do you mean, it's black. It's a bit black? Smudged? What kind of black? How much black?"
"It's black," he repeats. I'm still frozen out. He peels my underwear off me and holds it up so I can assess. It's black. Not 'clear with traces of black'. Not 'smudged'. Just black, one hundred percent pitch dark black.
And just like this, fear hits us. I was so confident in my ability to deliver this baby at home without trouble. That's gone in just one small moment. We're now not sure that you will be well, baby girl, that you will be born breathing, that you will come to stay. We're scared to death, of death, and it's time we bloody called the midwife at the hospital.
I'm going to say it now: I'm right in the middle of my Best Case Scenario. This will be, this IS, your Perfect Birth. We will see you take your first breath in less than an hour, I AM able to give birth to you as easily as these things go, and you will be fine, you will be perfect. But until then, we'll be scared to death.
Luckly, I still function relatively well when scared. "Hand me the phone," I say. "Bring the bag. We will have to go into hospital."
 |
| Didn't know how to keep her warm. There's socks on her arms. |
I describe the situation to the midwife that picks up the phone - the situation being that my waters have broken and they don't have a little meconium in it, they are 100% meconium, a tidal wave of shit - and she advises me, as expected, to come in. I wait for a second but she does not mention sending an ambulance out. So I ask: Should we drive up ourselves? Surely this is a bit urgent now? No worries, she assures me, us getting into the car at this stage will be quite all right.
So the car it is.
I'm in the regular grip of very painful contractions - finally more frequently that the two every ten minutes it was before, and so much more urgent - so I'm past driving myself. Jay isn't really in a fit state either but it'll do. The one thing we can't do is leave the sleeping siblings upstairs. We call Lisa again and leave the door open. I'm still exactly where she left me, stuck to my spot on the sofa.
When Lisa parks up three minutes later, she can hear a long and loud 'AAAAAAARRRR' through the door. We both know I'm near the last stage of labour; she can tell from the sound, I can tell from the beginning urge to push as I aaaaarrr.
And yet we manage to present the black puddle and sodden black towels and relate the hospital's advice. "No way are you getting into a car like this," Lisa tells us. "Call the ambulance. NOW." What a relief! The words I have been waiting for! What a pain it is to be a goody-two-shoes that wants to please, doesn't want to run counter to what she has been told, doesn't want to embarrass herself be making unreasonable demands, waiting for permission! Bloody hell, mammas in labour - YOU know what you need! Demand it! Demand it loudly!
Lisa also says something about the possibility of the baby being breech. It registers at the back of my mind. Permission to call the ambulance takes precedence. With a sigh of relief - between contractions and still without having moved an inch - I dial 999. I'm speaking to the operator within seconds and begin my story of "I'm at home and in labout and the waters are all black..." but a contraction cuts in and I'm reduced to a long loud and urgent aaaaaaaarr.
"Is there somebody there with you? Can you pass the phone over to them?" asks the operator. Yes, yes, I manage to say, she's not The Midwife but she's my friend and she's a midwife, and I pass the phone over to Lisa to talk shop with the operator lady. The phone is on speaker. "The most important thing is not to let her know just how serious the situation is," says the operator, loud and clear. Lisa and I exchange looks. AAAAAAARRR, I say. It really hurts, I can 't move when a contraction hits, and there is little time left, my body tells me.
We have one more call to place: If I'm going in an ambulance, I'm taking my personal midwife and childbirth supervisor with, thank you, and we need additional childcare. Another friend had innocently offered 'any help we might need' without ever expecting to be called up on it but was still awake and able to park up just as the ambulance arrived to another loud aaaarrr coming out the front door. Thank you, Jim - between now and the time when you get to camp out on my sofa, your job is in the kitchen looking after the blubbering mess that this baby's father is.
Enter the ambulance crew with their stretcher, and there's a paramedic/first responder, too. They look like they might want to take over, not because they're superbly experienced in supporting home births but purely because it's their job. I'm past the urge to be polite, though, and growl at them: "Leave her! She knows what she's doing! She's a midwife!"
Lisa coaxes me onto the stretcher. It is nearly 2am. I can feel the next contraction coming, and with it the inability to move, but we get me across and onto it just in time. The ambulance crew is lined up against the wall next to me. The paramedic is behind Lisa, on the sofa, ready with oxygen and towels. His name is Kevin, and he will be the first to hold the baby in about three minutes. Lisa sits at the bottom of the stretcher. "Put your foot here," she orders. My foot is on her legs. I have a vest on, and that's all. A once-in-a-lifetime position to find yourself in with a friend with whom to this date you've merely comfortably shared coffee on the sofa, and conversation about the children, the world in general, work perhaps.
Rewind to such a shared coffee, a few months earlier during the pregnancy. Lisa had attended a special training day on breech births. We sat on the sofa and she spoke at length about it. How they're entirely normal in other parts of the world, delivered with the same ease as the heads-first variety. How you mustn't touch and manipulate a breech baby once the body is out because there's a risk of the touch triggering baby's breathing, and baby drowning. How there's one simple trick to help the head out if baby isn't tucking her chin in and gets her head stuck. And how vaginal breeches have become so uncommon here in the UK that barely any midwife has ever seen one while in training, and many are therefore a bit scared of them. Lisa didn't say whether she'd ever delivered one, but we're drawing on the enthusiasm and confidence with which she spoke that day, because now, on this stretcher in my living room, she will apply all that knowledge and deliver this baby. Because this incoming contraction is the last one and I shout and I push and I look down and I see her little back and butt and legs and they're a bluish grey to me (but as good a colour as you can expect from a breech baby to Lisa).
Everything has been urgent and busy since we made that first call. Fear hasn't made it to the surface in this room but has been ever present. We're now looking down, waiting for the next contraction to push the head out. Lisa scoops the little arms out and as I look at my blue-grey headless upside-down baby and the last contraction ebbs away, I know there isn't another one to help us along. And I'm right. We wait a few seconds and then, with my best effort at pushing, and Lisa's special midwifery magic, studied a few months ago and applied now, we get the head out. It is 2:03am.
There is none of the elation, triumph and joy that accompanied those moments at the previous two hospital births. "Is she breathing?" is all I want to know. "Yes, she is, look here," Lisa replies and I see the little back rise ever so faintly before the cord is clamped and cut and my little girl is wrapped in a towel and passed to Kevin the paramedic. I call fer her as she disappears from sight but he is the first to hold my baby somewhere behind Lisa's back. He is administering oxygen but I don't know that. Would I want to see if I did? I don't know and I don't get to decide. I'm shaking all over. The chord is hanging out of me, it's very long, blue and purple and beautiful. I make lovely cords.
The parcelled-up baby is now the right colour and passed to her father. We find our eldest at the top of the stairs ready to be invited down. She has the second cuddle of her little sister, smiles at her contentedly and goes back to bed. Her brother is sleeping through all of this. The neighbours aren't. The ambulance crew are getting me ready to ship off to hospital to accompany baby to be monitored for a day and they forget that the mother would like a first glimpse of the child. I remind them. And then there it is, our first moment, face to face. I look at you, my baby girl, and you look healthy - because you are - and a complete stranger. The name I still called you by just now is already fading. I don't know you, you don't remind me of anybody, I don't recognise you as the little quiet girl that lived inside me and worried me by only being active every three days. You're all bundled up and sleepy and strange and new, and seconds later taken off me again. All of this in a flurry of breathless minutes.
Kevin has the fourth cuddle also as we ride to hospital in the ambulance. He is sitting behind me and I can't see or hear my baby but I'm intensely tuned into her presence, as if the chord was still there, now a mental one. I'm glad somebody is holding her. I'd rather it was me.
Lisa debriefs the ambulance staff that's riding with us. He'd never seen a breech birth before.
 |
| Hello you, new baby sister! |
At the hospital, Kevin and baby go through to the ward before us. It's only a few minutes before we meet again and I finally get to unwrap my baby like a present, put her on my chest, find her a breast to attach her to, and gaze and love and relax. These few minutes, though, will haunt me: I will be wondering for months whether this is really my baby, or whether she was switched in those minutes we were separated for. It's not the most rational of thoughts - within a day she is the spitting image of her sister - but it lingers for about nine months.
The hospital doesn't have a bed for us on the maternity ward. We spend the day on the prenatal ward, a slightly awkward arragement. The official checks and observations confirm that this baby is fine, meaning she has not inhaled any meconium. I am watching and guarding this baby with all I've got and don't close my eyes until we're safely home very late that night. There is plenty of time to imagine alternative birth stories for this baby. What if... In one such scenario we get into the car as instructed and give birth to our breech baby by the roadside. We don't know how to get the head out and she's stuck. No happy ending there. In another such alternative story, I only have the ambulance staff there, no Lisa. I'm not sure how that story goes. Alternative narrative: I make it to the hospital. There's an emergency cesarian in that story. In another, she's known to be breech - again, I'm looking at a hospital birth with a likely cesarian.
As it was, I'd wanted a homebirth, and I got one. It wasn't fun, though; it was dead scary. But whichever way I turn this, my ability to push my surprise breech baby out without medical intervention and with the support I needed was just this: at home, her turning breech without advance notice, without the official midwife present but with the friend who happens to be a midwife. The crucial element, though, is Lisa, without whom Alba's birth story would have gone very differently. So when we name our precious baby a few days later, her middle name is in her honour: Elisa.
*******
Note: The explanation for the tidal wave of shit (i.e meconium) that his breech baby was born on is that as her bum descended the birth canal, the contractions squeezed all of he poop out of her, and downwards into the part of the amniotic sac below her, sealed off from the rest by her body.
I'd also like to add that this is a personal story, not a textbook example of how breech births could or should all go. If you, dear reader, are a pregnant lady expecting a breech baby, please bear in mind that I'd pushed out two babies previously, and that all births are different.
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