This is Toby’s Birth Story – my first birth was a breeze, 6lb 14oz, 18 days early & 4 hours 27 minutes!!

So obviously my next birth was going to be so much easier, and it didn’t really matter that it was 6 and a half years later. I had it all planned, I was going 2 weeks early and 3 hours of labour would just about do it. Imagine my frustration when my due date came and went! I was exactly 7 days over on a Thursday, when I had my OB. a checkup at 10.00 am, he gave me an internal and said he would book me in for an induction the following week (if needed) he said I would only need gel as the baby’s head was so low down and he believed it would be nice, quick labour (not that I needed to hear that, after all, I KNEW it would be quick).

By 1.00 pm I’d had a show, by 2.00 pm the contractions had started, they weren’t too painful, but that’s how it started the first time, so by 6.00 pm I decided to perhaps go up to the hospital because I knew that once they really started I wouldn’t have much time.

I arrived at around 6.15 pm on arrival the midwife gave me an internal, with that she turned on her heels walked out of the room returned moments later with a trolley and all gowned up!! She then explained to me that she couldn’t quite reach my cervix (it was too far back) and when she inserted her finger she could feel the head when her finger was only halfway up to the middle knuckle “And it won’t be long now.” At 11.00 pm the contractions had petered out to one every 10 or 11 minutes. I was given my first shot of pethidine to help me sleep.

9.30 am and my last contraction was at around 4.30 am, so an on-call doctor was called in to break my waters. Whoa! They started again, and every new midwife that came in to give me an internal after that, all said: “Won’t be long now, we just need that cervix to come round.” I soon realized that this baby was posterior and wasn’t ready to be born, and I realized this around 1.00 pm when the contractions had stopped, AGAIN!

Between 1.00 pm and 2.30 pm I had had about ooh maybe 3 contractions so at 3.00 pm the “drip” was installed, was only increased twice to produce contractions that were 2 minutes apart and lasting a minute and a half (with 30-second intervals) at some time, I’m not sure when, I was given yet another internal (it must have been after 10.00 pm, because it was the same midwife who first booked me in, on her second shift, ready to go home again.) “Good news, your cervix is coming around and I think you’re about 7cm.”

With that, I got off the bed and back in the shower (LOVED the shower) and started uncontrollably pushing. I remember thinking at that stage that I shouldn’t be doing it. But I didn’t care if I tore from my chin to the back of my neck! I’d had enough! I could then feel the top of the head with my hand My birthing partner panicked and ran out to get a midwife, I was placed back up on the bed to deliver, it seemed no time at all before the head was born. I remembered feeling a sense of relief, it was all over. Then one midwife told me to push to get the body out which I did, but nothing, another push, nothing.

The heart monitor was placed on my pubic area, and the heart rate was down to 73 with that both midwives yelled push as one of them placed her knee against my thigh and they both pulled on the head, with another about 8 contractions later Toby lay on the bed before me “spread-eagled” very blue, fists clenched and a grimacing look of pain on his face, lifeless. He whisked away to the side of the room while I delivered the placenta (that part was a breeze) unbeknownst to me the midwife was giving him a heart massage and blowing in his face saying “Come on little man.”

Toby was born at 11.29 pm Friday, 9lb 4oz, with shoulder dystocia. Toby has an Apgar reading of 4 at 1minute and 10 at 5minutes. I had no stitches, tears or cuts. With my contractions starting 2.00 pm Thursday and ending 11.29 pm Friday. 8 days over, so much for my plan, Toby had other plans and to this day we still usually have to go by his plans!

Revised on 7th December 2021