Maurine's story - Finn

FINN

I had joked with friends that 4 May would be a great birthdate for my baby because 04/05/06 is so easy to remember. And wouldn't you know it, that turned out to be the day my baby son was born!

On Wednesday 3 May, five days before my due date, Gilles and I went to bed around midnight. I had been having mild, period-like cramps every other day for the past two weeks so when I got up at 12.30 and took two Panadol (on the advice of my sensible midwife, Lee) I thought nothing of it.  I was awakened again at 2am, but this time the pain was sharp. I decided to get up, but I let Gilles sleep. The pain came back again, so I thought this might actually be the real thing, and I was quite excited!

My contractions were about 10 minutes apart but lasting about 45 seconds. At 4am, they were five to six minutes apart and I was breathing heavily through them, using my yoga breathing. At that stage I was very happy, thinking this really was it!

At 5.30 am, the phone rang. It was a friend from France who had just seen the evening news and wanted to check if we were on high ground in case the tsunami hit Auckland. The tsunami alert turned out to be nothing, thank godness! The phone call woke Gilles up and we started timing the contractions together. From 5.45 to 6.25 am, they were two minutes apart and lasting from 40 seconds to a full minute. But I was still coping okay and was even enjoying it!

We called Lee, my midwife, at 6.30am. I had two strong contractions while I was on the phone with her and had to stop talking. She said I was definitely in labour and to meet her at the hospital at 7.15am. It usually takes 15 minutes to drive there, so we left at 7am after I had a shower, checked that everything was in my labour bag, and even ate a bit of breakfast.

The traffic was already dreadful and it took us 40 minutes to get to the hospital. The good news was that my contractions had stopped while in the car, but the bad news was that I was convinced they would send me home...

We got to the delivery room at 7.40am. Lee checked the baby's heart, which was fine, and then examined me and said I was three or four centimetres dilated. Because I had only had one contraction in the last 40 minutes, she said we had two options: going home or breaking my waters to get things progressing again.

Gilles really wanted to have this baby ASAP, and said to me, "Look at the perfect blue sky -- it's a great day to have a baby!" The view was amazing from the ninth floor birthing suite -- not that I had a chance to enjoy it!

However, I was worried that breaking my waters would make things much more painful for me, so wasn't sure what to do. Lee went for a coffee and said we had 10 minutes to think about it. When she came back, I had had two more strong contractions, so I was definitely not going back home at rush hour!

My waters were broken at 8am. From then on, my contractions were much stronger, longer and coming every one to two minutes. I was grunting through them like an animal, still using my yoga breathing to cope. I remember bending over the bed and trying to squat on the floor.

At 8.30am, I checked the time and Gilles asked me if I wanted any pain relief. I replied, "No, I can do this!" But 15 minutes later, I suddenly screamed that I wanted an epidural, NOW!

Lee went to find the anaesthetist and came back at 9am saying that she was busy in the theatre doing a C-section but should be here within half an hour. The lovely lady arrived at 9.20am. She was trying to talk to me between contractions about the risks associated with the procedure, but I was just grunting and saying, "Okay, okay, I don't care! I just want one now!"
The needle was inserted at 9.30am, and Lee examined me at 9.40am, once it was working, and told me that I was already 8cm dilated! So I had done most of the first stage of labour without pain relief.

The next hour went by really fast. I was relaxed, feeling the contractions but not the pain. Around 10.45am, I told Lee that I could feel a huge pressure in my vagina and my bottom. At 11am, I was ready to push and the epidural was wearing off. Lee told me she wouldn't give me a top-up because the baby was big and she needed me to feel the pain to push better!

The pushing went on for one hour and 20 minutes. It's the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! I was kneeling over the upright bed the first half hour, then sitting up in bed with one foot on Gilles' hip and the other one on Lee's hip.

At noon, Gilles started crying and said, "Oh my God, I can see the head -- and it's got lots of hair!"
At about 12.10pm, Lee said to me, "I know you're absolutely exhausted, so I can either cut you and the head will be out at the next push, or you still have three or four big pushes ahead of you." I don't where I found the strength, but I just said I'd do it without the cut, thank you very much.

Four or five pushes later, the head was out -- they put a mirror next to my vagina so I could see it. It was so bizarre! At the next push, the shoulders came out one after the other, and Gilles grabbed our baby as he slid out at 12.20pm.

All I could do was look at his face and think, "Oh my God, it's so BIG!" I couldn't see if the baby was a boy or a girl, and Gilles, who was crying, said to me, "It's a boy, it's a beautiful boy."

Gilles cut the cord and our son started crying. They put him on my breast and he started to suck almost straight away.
I was just so tired it felt completly surreal, like a dream. The placenta came out while I was breastfeeding -- it wasn't painful at all.

Lee gave me a shot of local anaesthetic and I had 12 stiches -- first-and second-degree tears of the labia, mainly, but nothing too bad. He weighed 9lb 5oz (4.3kg) and was 54 cm long. We named him Finn and gave him Kahurangi as a middle name as it was such a gorgeous day.

At 2.30pm, after a much-needed shower, we transferred to Birthcare. I was too dizzy to walk so I had to use a wheelchair from the delivery room to the car and then from the car to my room at Birthcare.

Giving birth to Finn was the most amazing and empowering experience of my life, and it made me realise how strong women can be. I definitely look forward to having more babies!