The Story of Sam Duncan’s Birth...

by Tania Smallwood

 

It is difficult for me to know when to start this story, I feel like I could choose a day prior to Sam’s birth, and then keep working backward from then right back to the beginning of my pregnancy, there are so many things that happened, that at the time seemed insignificant, but on recall take on a much greater meaning.

I think my journey towards Sam’s birth began in earnest a couple of weeks before my due date, when like a bolt from the blue I realised that I was going to have to give birth to this baby! I began to see other women with newborn babies, and comfort myself in that they had done it, and so could I. I listened intently to birth stories at yoga, and antenatal swimming, where I took mental notes of what I might try, what I didn’t want to happen to me, and so on. I wasn’t fearful of the process of birth, and I was in fact looking forward to going through the journey of labour, sharing something completely new and untold with my husband Tom, and welcoming a new member into our family. But I was concerned about the unpredictability of the whole thing, the fact that there were no absolutes, and that I had no idea what to expect, or how I would react, even though I had been with several women in birth as a student midwife.

Our own midwife Roz, was calm and reassuring, she listened to my anxieties, and helped talk through what we might like to do in certain situations. Her knowledge, patience and sense of trust around birth were a wonderful reassurance to us both. I suppose it is this relationship with our “care provider” – for want of a less clinical word - which I really want to highlight here. Roz began our journey with us towards this birth as a contracted worker, someone we saw as being skilled and trustworthy, someone we wanted to have with us, as a professional guide, to provide us with accurate information, to help us make decisions, and to give us care and treatment if it was warranted. I feel that she became so much more than that, and it was during this time, when I began to experience all the normal anxieties and worries of a heavily pregnant woman, that it became so important that we had a relationship, and that we could talk to someone we really trusted, and who really knew us, and what we wanted. I also felt that it was at this time that Roz helped me personally to stop thinking in such a clinical manner about my pregnancy, and what was happening to my body, and to get in touch with just trusting my instincts, and letting my body do what it needed to do to get ready to birth my baby. In one of my midwifery texts, a woman describes “turning head knowledge into heart knowledge”. Roz helped me do this.

Christmas day 1998 came and went without incidence. I spent much of the day wallowing in a blow up kiddie pool with a set of foam antlers on my head (there’s an image for you!). I was 37 weeks pregnant, and felt relieved that now I could proceed to have the homebirth we had planned. Little did I know there was quite some time to go before we would meet our precious baby.

The morning of my due date arrived, the 17th January 1999, and I woke up feeling incredibly energised, (despite the long run of unbearably hot weather we had been experiencing), and positive that I would certainly not be having my baby on this day. Although plagued with awful indigestion from a limb stuck under my ribcage for many weeks previous, and a head well engaged into my pelvis making sitting, walking, and almost anything else pretty uncomfortable, I had an overwhelming feeling of not being quite ready for the birth. I remember thinking that I really should get around to packing my bag just in case we needed to transfer to hospital, and then thinking that I would do it tomorrow or the next day. There was no rush. Tom on the other hand wanted to be prepared, and we continued to squeeze around the birthing pool that he and my brother Craig had erected in our bathroom the day after Christmas. This became a constant reminder as each day crept past that I was now one day closer to having our baby. It was also a reminder of just how huge I felt, and how much your centre of gravity is mucked up when you’re heavily pregnant!

Indeed there was no rush, my baby was quite happy where he was, and on the Thursday, 11 days past my due date, I went to see the obstetrician I had made contact with early in my pregnancy. I felt that if I developed any complications late into my pregnancy, I wanted to have someone I knew and trusted to work in conjunction with Roz in the event that I needed to birth in the hospital. Roz had done a vaginal examination at my request 4 days earlier, and my plan was to get Clive to do the same, and see if there was any change in my cervix. Heading for the dreaded 14 days ‘overdue’, I was willing to do a few things like this, that I considered to be low risk, in order to get things going, anything to escape a medical induction. Clive was kind and compassionate, and seemed to understand where I was coming from. He obliged with a gentle VE, and swept my membranes on my request. To my delight, there had been some change in my cervix, I was 2 cms dilated, but still had a way to go with effacement and length. The fact that there had been a positive change lifted my spirits, and we agreed that I would go into the Women’s and Children’s hospital for some monitoring, and maybe an induction on the following Monday, (I would be 15 days overdue by then) if I hadn’t had the baby by then.

I have to say at this point that even with all the positive input we had from Roz, my confidence in my ability to birth this baby was at rock bottom. As each day went by I felt more and more that if I couldn’t go into labour on my own, then how on earth was I meant to be able to do the birth thing without assistance? I really began to doubt my own strength and courage, and wonder if we’d made the right decision to have a homebirth. After all, I wasn’t going to go into labour on my own, was I?!

We drove home from Clive’s office, and late that night I had a show, called Roz and then tucked in for a good night’s sleep. Apart from the show, I had no cramping, and no further bleeding. The following day on the Friday, I had booked a couple of appointments with an acupuncturist and Chinese herbal medicine practitioner, and with a naturopath, hoping of course that I would already have given birth by this date. I had some acupuncture late in the morning, and then went home and went for a long walk, up to the local shops to get some things for dinner that night. I had a few tightenings on the way, and remember thinking that I hoped no one called an Ambulance, as it really wasn’t that far back to where I was planning on giving birth! The ‘energy pills’ Jenny (the acupuncturist) had given me seemed to work, and I felt strong and energised as I went off to see Shauna the naturopath later that afternoon. I came home with lotions and potions, and felt that things were already on the move, so I took half doses of the herbal and homeopathic preparations Shauna had prepared for me, and invited Mum over for dinner.

Dinner turned into a bit of a drawn out affair, as I felt compelled to cook a frittata I had seen in one of my new cooking magazines, but was also having moderate but irregular tightenings during the process, so we finally sat down and ate at around 9 pm. I was starving, and really craving the egg and pasta in the frittata, something I now look back on as my body’s way of getting prepared for what was in store. We phoned Roz and let her know what was happening, and she thought we should try and get some sleep, and at the time I thought that would be a good idea. But as soon as I lay down things became uncomfortable, and I realised quickly that I wouldn’t be getting any sleep until this baby was born. By 10.30pm, I could no longer stay sitting down for a contraction, and by 11.30pm, I couldn’t do anything else but concentrate on breathing and swaying through them. Mum went home to get her toothbrush and a change of clothes. We had planned for Mum to be there, and it was lovely having her there from the start. She went to bed for a while, but emerged saying she couldn’t sleep, I joked with her that she was scared of missing something. Tom took the opportunity to catch a few hours sleep and Mum stayed up with me, following me around, massaging my back, getting me drinks and just keeping me company while Tom slept. It was a really nice time with just myself and my Mum talking about how exciting it would be to meet the baby, and wondering what my labour had in store for me.

Tom woke up after a couple of hours sleep, and in the meantime my brother, who we had asked to be at the birth, had called from the Pub, and then driven home (I still give him heaps for being so stupid!) just to make sure I was OK. He then fell into bed and slept until sometime around 8am, goodness knows how, with me groaning and roaring out in the kitchen. At some stage before he went to bed, Tom started the long process of filling up the pool, and we had some fun with the hose blowing off the connection, and water spraying all over the bathroom. I spent a lot of time in the shower in the early morning, and the relief was wonderful. We ran out of water several times, and I had to get out of the shower and wait an agonizing half an hour or so before the water was again hot enough for another shower. Roz arrived around 7.15am, and I immediately burst into tears when I saw her. I think my emotions were all over the place, but mainly it was a sense of release, and relief, that I was finally on my way to having this baby.

For a couple of hours I went from leaning over the bathroom vanity, to the shower, and then back to the vanity unit, until I could resist the lure of the water no longer. At around 9.30am, I experienced the bliss of entering a deep, warm pool of calming water, and it felt wonderful. The rest of my labour until Sam was born is a bit of a blur. It was only once I was in the pool that I really was able to get out of my head space, and allow my body to do its work, and some of the photos we have show me looking far away into the middle distance, quite serene, and unaware of anything outside my calm little watery world. That’s not to say that things didn’t get difficult, and that I didn’t have to work hard to get this baby out. I didn’t recognise transition as a specific time when things changed significantly, but looking back on it now, I realise that my insistence at around midday to have a vaginal examination was probably when transition was starting. I was worried that I’d been doing all this hard work and that my cervix was still only a couple of cms dilated. Roz was able to reassure me that I was close to 10cms, with an anterior lip remaining, and that the membranes were bulging. I remember getting out of the pool to go to the toilet, and then thinking that my labour might be slowing down by my being in the water for too long. So I decided to go into the lounge room where Marijke (our back up midwife who arrived sometime mid-morning) had set up a little ‘nest’ for me. Two contractions out of the water was all it took to convince me that the water was where I really needed to be. I remember being really conscious of Tom sitting behind me, and that I didn’t want to rupture my membranes all over his nice shorts! Far too much thinking going on, so into the pool I hopped (?!) again.

Back in the pool I started to feel some strange pressure feelings at the end of a contraction, and I could hear the sounds I was making sounded like I was pushing. This involuntary pushing I was doing was something completely out of my control, and not at all a conscious effort. I remember Tom asking me if I was OK, and my reply was that this felt soooooo much better than all the other s**t I’d had to go through. I think it was the only time I swore, which in itself is quite remarkable! I think I felt like I could finally be active in birthing my baby, instead of just breathing through and waiting for things to happen. This feeling of pushing was only at the end of each contraction, and it didn’t last for long. But of course, as things progressed, so did that need to push, and soon I was grunting and groaning, and in between falling asleep in the water, with my head hanging on Tom’s arm, his hand keeping my face out of the water. I had never experienced such deep relaxation as I did between those pushing contractions. It was like I just floated out of the water and hovered above the pool until the next one hit.

At 2.40pm, after a highly vocal physical and mental struggle, my membranes ruptured in the pool and the feeling was of absolute relief. I was starting to have doubts, and wondering why they hadn’t ruptured before this. Roz reassured me that my body knew what it was doing, and that there was probably a reason for why they had remainded intact until then. I was amazed that the pool stayed clear, and that there was nothing but a bit of fluid and some mucous in the water. Not long after this the urge to push with each contraction became much stronger, and I began to feel my baby journey down the birth canal, and around that darn bend it has to negotiate before being born! I could feel him moving forward, and then going back, and as much as everyone reassured me that this was normal, it was still frustrating. I remember being worried that I wouldn’t be able to hear Roz over my guttural roaring, but when the time came I had a chorus of people I loved telling me gently to breathe my baby out. Our baby’s head was born very slowly, Roz told me what she could see; eyebrows, then eyes, a little nose, top then bottom lip, and then finally the chin. When the head was out, I remember Roz encouraging me to reach down and touch it. It amazed me that it had hair, and I asked my Mum whether it looked like a boy or a girl. Mum told me that the baby had red hair, and that’s all she could tell! I had quite a lull until the next contraction, and my baby opened his eyes and looked around under the water, which everyone commented on at the time, and which still amazes me each time I see the video footage. Seven minutes later our baby boy was born, in one contraction, and Roz helped guide him under me so that I could pick him up out of the water and meet him for the very first time. Words can’t express the feelings of love and triumph that surged through me at this time. At 4.12 pm, after nearly 18 hours of established labour, we met our son Sam Duncan, and he was perfect. He weighed 4.5kgs (10lbs), and was 55cms long. Given those vital statitistics, I’m quite glad he took his time coming out.

My placenta took about an hour to birth, and the toilet is where I ended up being the most comfortable for this. What an amazing feeling of relief, and even pleasure it was to birth this soft, warm, wonderful organ that had sustained our little one for all those months. I had a tear, which Roz sutured, on our bed, while Sam got to know his family, and then we had huge bowls of pasta for a late dinner.

Having a baby at home just seemed like the right thing for us to do. And once we had done it I knew there would be no other way I would choose to birth. I feel like my journey would have ended quite differently had I gone down the track of induction, and even the birth itself would have been so different in the bounds of the hospital, with policies and restrictions about pushing times, birth in water, and the like. The bond I feel with Roz is so strong, and I can’t imagine having gone through all that with someone I didn’t even know. Her utter devotion to us and her ability to give information and support us in our choices has changed us forever. She has allowed us to own this experience, and while I feel eternally grateful to her for her skill and support, I also feel very much that I did it myself! After Sam’s birth I have had some people comment that I was lucky – lucky to have gotten away with having my first baby safely at home; lucky that he didn’t get stuck; lucky that I have good childbearing hips (?!), the list goes on. I do consider myself lucky: lucky that Roz answered the phone the day I called the ACMI to talk to someone about employing an independent midwife. After that, luck played no part in our wonderful birthing experience, I’m happy to take (most of) the credit myself!