Mykaela & Mark's Birth Story : Baby James

04/03/2022 Emma Watson

Wow where do I even start?

What a crazy, beautiful, and straight up phenomenal experience that was.

I describe my birth to people as amazing and that I loved every minute of it. They don’t believe me, and my Husband might remember it differently but that’s ok, all that matters is that for me it was positive!

I was induced via a balloon induction Tuesday at 6pm. After about 2 hours I got some strong contractions that I worked through with Mark using pressure points on my back to help ease them. I was able to breathe through it but I’m not going to lie it made me wonder what tomorrow would bring. After about 2 hours or so they subsided, and I was pretty much pain free for the rest of the night. 8am the next morning my midwife took the balloon out and I was 4cm dilated, look at me go I thought!! My OB broke my waters, and we were well on our way to meeting our baby.

My body established labour quickly without any medication and by 8:30am I was having four contractions in a 10 minute window. I spent the next 4 hours walking in the room and using the birth ball breathing through the contractions with Mark pushing hard into my back. I managed so much of my discomfort by breathing and trying to let it flow through my body so I could be as relaxed as possible!

12:30pm rolled around and I was starting to feel exhausted and like I wasn’t getting any break between contractions. I talked with my midwife, and I decided it might be good to have some morphine to try and get some rest. After the morphine started to work, I got into bed and even though I didn’t feel like it did much for the pain it made me drowsy, and I was able to get a good rest between contractions. 1:00pm my OB came in to see how I was getting on, I wanted to know how I was progressing, so she checked, and I was 5cm and not fully effaced or ‘thinned out’. I wasn’t getting my hopes up because I didn’t want to be disappointed, but I did think I would have made more progress than I had because my contractions were strong and consistent. The student midwife was even in feeling my belly because my contractions were so ‘amazing’. They didn’t feel amazing, but I knew this baby would be here soon enough.

The contractions had moved into my tummy now and I wanted to get into the shower to use the hot water. I stayed in there for the next two hours Things were getting tough, I started to feel less like ‘I’ve got this’ and more like wow this is harder than I expected. It was shift change over and we met our new midwife who shortly after I bombarded with requests. I felt like I needed some more pain relief and wanted to try the gas to see if it helped. But between getting out of the shower and trying the gas I realised I was starting to feel exhausted and overwhelmed by the experience, so I made the call to organise an epidural.

Mark was such an amazing support at this point keeping my head in the room and focused on the end game!

It’s now 3pm and I’m 7cm and awaiting an epidural. Only problem was that all the Anaesthetists had gone home sick and there was no one available to do epidurals. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear at this point. Nor did I want to hear I was second in line when they did find someone, but we planned to move to the new room and get set up ready so as soon as there was someone available, I would be ready.

Wowsers this is when things went up a gear and I guess is what they described as ‘transitioning’. It was wild! My contractions were now so intense and back-to-back I was getting Mark to push on my back as hard as he could.

Finally, an hour later and my epidural was going in! While all the prep was happening with antiseptic wash and local anaesthetic something had changed about my contractions and I felt like my body had started to push, I could feel my baby moving down and I honestly thought the only thing stopping him coming out was the fact I was sitting on him!! I even started to push into my contractions a bit and I was getting some relief. It felt like the movies where people yell “I need to push” or “the baby is coming” but I didn’t say those things because I was so close to getting my epidural, I didn’t want them to stop. I don’t know how I possibly thought that logically during that time, but it happened, and I really wanted that pain relief.

Once the first bolus of medication went in, I started to feel relief. I looked at my midwife and said something is different, something is happening. She agreed and said she thought I was probably 10cm by now and that now I was comfortable we could rest and let Bub drop down so there would be less work pushing. This sounded like a good plan to me and honestly, I felt so good at this point I was happy with any plan. I had a lot of pressure still, so we decided we better see where this boy was. I was not surprised when my midwife said he was right there and “would I like to see his hair?” I knew it felt like he was ready exit. We did some practice pushes; his head was on show and my OB was called.

My epidural might not have been everyone’s cup of tea but for me it was perfect. I could still move my legs, weight bare on all fours, feel my contractions and when push came to shove (literally) I could feel the burning and stretching when I pushed my baby out. I tried a few different positions for pushing and even though he was so low, and I could see his hair it still took me two hours to welcome him into the world. He stayed happy and dancing around the whole time and when his head was out, he blinked, opened his eyes, and turned his head to see where he was.

What an incredible experience, it was so calm and empowering.

I felt in control and like a super woman that I just birthed the most perfect baby boy.