The comparison between my first and second labour’s and births and what I learnt. I have written this down for myself so I will always be able to look back over my birth stories, but I also wanted to share my experiences in the hope that someone will be able to take something away from it. My first birth I was induced at 40+7 days, and my second birth was a natural water birth at 40+3 days. Both births were completely different births, at completely different times in my life. Reflecting on both my births the main thing that stood out for me was the power of your mindset, and how for me it played a very big role in how my births went. I think it is also important to know that I was very lucky both times in the fact that I had no problems or complications throughout my pregnancies or births. Again this is just my experience, you take from it what you will.

My first birth I was 20 years old, I had an uncomplicated pregnancy with no problems or complications. I was in the midst of a very stressful situation where my partner was undergoing chemotherapy and battling cancer. I worked all the way up until 2 weeks before my due date and overall gained 17kgs. I had the mindset that “I was eating for two” and would often come home after a long day at work and gorge down dinner followed by a pack of Tim-Tams (DEFS DON’T RECOMMEND). Although I lost over half of that weight in the birth suit (fluid, baby-8p13oz, placenta), I still had approx. 9 kilos to lose. One thing I very quickly learnt is that it was very difficult to lose weight post baby and I think it took me almost 6-7 months to be back to my pre pregnancy weight.

As my partner was undergoing treatment in Brisbane, he was only able to come home for about 10 days between treatments for the birth of his son. Due to this strict timeline, it was decided that we would be induced so that he wouldn’t miss the birth, or meeting his son before returning to Brisbane for the last 8 weeks of treatment.

At 40+6 we went to the hospital to be induced. At 4pm in the afternoon when we were finally taken in it was discovered that I was 2cm dilated. As I couldn’t feel the contractions the machine was saying I was having I had the gel inserted in order to get this baby moving along. I don’t really recall too much happening until 9pm that night when the contractions were starting to cause some discomfort. I tried having a bath in order to ‘lose gravity’, however felt more like a whale in a bath tub and couldn’t fully submerge (Lucky the Cairns Base has new birthing suits now). As much as I was set on having no pain relief, by about 1am I had decided that I wanted a pethidine injection as the contractions were extremely painful and I wasn’t getting much of a break between contractions, I was also only 4cm dilated and felt super defeated. Unlucky for me my body didn’t respond well to the pethidine and I spent the next 45mins throwing my guts up (yep, there was the pizza I had devoured at about 6pm that night). The good thing about the pethidine, I believe, is that even though I was throwing up, I wasn’t feeling the pain and my body was relaxed enough to dialate to about 8cm. This was great, however once that pethidine wore off, contractions were back twice as painful as before. From then I labored until approx. 3.30am when I had the urge to push. So up I got on the hospital bed. I can remember constantly looking up at the clock above my head as I wanted to know what time my baby was born (probs should have been focusing at the task on hand but anywho). Well, it took a whole hour of pushing my sons head out (yeah, was not expecting that), and his body popped out straight after his head was finally out. Born 4.25am on 04/10/12. Injection to have the placenta come out and 2 stitches later we were done in that birthing suit. The midwife I had was amazing; she stayed throughout the whole birth and was super lovely. The midwives down on the ward (for the 1 night I stayed in) were pretty awful. So after a pretty stressful birth (as we had to make sure my partner didn’t over do it and had to have frequent rests) I then was even more stressed out in the hospital with the ladies tending to my son and I with their shitty attitudes and just being plain old rude.

All in all, after this experience I didn’t sum it up as a horrible birth, I was actually quite grateful that I was able to have no complications or problems, I was just super petrified of contractions as they were more painful than actually pushing the baby out.

Unfortunately just over a year later my partner passed away after the cancer returned to his body. I’m not going to extend on this in this blog as i just want to focus on speaking about my births, however i felt the need to say this so it makes sense as to why the next birth is with another man.

Birth one: 7 hours Active Labour

To read the birth story of her second born please follow the link HERE

Guest Blog @ Relaxed Parenting by Kershia from Cairns, QLD 

 

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