One thing
that always surprised me was the differences in my memory of the birth of our
son Brandon, vs my husbands recollection. Some things shocked me, some things
stunned me, but overall it just solidified in my mind how men are from Mars and
women own the rest of the universe.
So after
some persuasion I asked my husband Brent to put together a blog post on his experience….
Brent’s
birth story…
As I looked
down on my son Brandon for the first time, I thought to myself about everything
I have done to get to this point. Tears welled up, my little mans mouth opened
and closed so slowly, so instinctively, so perfectly, he wasn’t even here
30mins ago, but he already is a natural at this “life” business. Something that
32mins ago was looking very touch and go.
A nurse
walked by and patted me on the back and said “good work daddy”… My brain went
into overdrive, I literally thought “whos she calling daddy… that’s a bit creepy”
Finally it clicked, it was me.
I was
surrounded by bright lights, beeping noises and about 5 other small babies that
needed care in the SCU (Special Care Unit). My eyes only focused on one baby…
My guy Brandon… for a fleeting moment I thought to myself I wish Heidi could
see me now, chest puffed up, holding onto the trolley with my pride and joy, I
made this little human… this little man, and it was just me and him. My brain
kicked back into gear, wait… where is my wife…? And I remember telling myself “oh
shit shes back in the birthing suite” which is 1 story below where the SCU was.
That’s right you idiot she just gave birth to your little man after 10 hrs of
labour and some seriously scary shit happing at the last minute and your
walking around with your chest puffed up like a total idiot. There was blood…
soooo much blood… You need to get back down there and make sure your wife is ok…
So this is
where I made my first mistake… The first of many… I decided to leave my new
born son alone in the SCU and make a mad dash back down to my wife… she needed
me of course. Before I left I did like any new father would do, I took a selfie
of my new son, mostly because I was paranoid someone would mix up my cute boy
with some other ugly baby and swap them, so then I ran out of there without
even picking up the swipe card to enter the SCU (woops).
I was running… like a crazy man… if someone got in my road I was going to
shoulder charge them out of the way, my wife needed me. I burst into the
birthing suit, run to my wifes room and expect the warm embrace of my wife…
well NOPE… What happened was I walked in and my wife was sitting up in her bed
eating jelly from a cup… She looked at me and turned white, mouth partially
open, her first words was “What are you doing here… you should be with Brandon”
my response of “but but but I took a selfie”. As I said, this was my first
mistake.
How did we
get here? About 10 hours prior I was watching
my wife being plumbed up to a syntocinon
drip to bring on contractions to pop this baby out of her. A induction wasn’t
in our plan.. but as everyone had told us, you don’t make a plan, you just go
with the flow.
So I sat in
the birthing suite with Heidi expecting things to happen quickly… I was like a
kid waiting for Christmas… I was bouncing around like it was the 1st
December and I knew Santa was on his way, constantly pestering my wife. Do you
need a back rub? Do you need some water? What about a heat pack? Is that a
contraction? How about some food… I basically kept that on repeat for about 1
hour solid.
To say I hit
a wall was an understatement. I was exhausted, for the past 2 weeks we had been
on edge told that our baby was a IUGR (intrauterine growth restricted) and
weighing approximately 2kg, we knew that was small, they explained and detailed
how everything could go so we wernt shocked, the main thing being a quick birth
so our little person would come out quickly a without consuming much of his
vital energy.
So as I hit
the wall I quietly sat in the large comfy reclining chair thinking about
objects that weighed 2 kg to try and get an idea of how much my little one
would weigh when he came out… a bottle of coke… a bag of oranges… a bottle of
milk… and boom I was out.
Apparently
snoring loudly and missing an entourage of midwife visits, all of which
apparently came and had a good laugh at the husband that was out cold in the
chair.
I woke up to
my wife an hour later, her first words to me were “are you having a good time
over there?, because I would like that heatpack now”. I felt like a proper
idiot. I fell asleep while my wife was going through induced contractions and
didn’t even have me the “assistant” awake to help out.
Awake and
suitably caffeinated I went to work trying to support my beautiful wife… only
problem was Heidi was limited to her left side. Turned our little one had
decided life was too hard in any other position and his heart rate wanted to go
lower and lower, so the nurses suggested positions until they found the one
that worked. Hey presto… left side it is… FOR 10 HOURS. My poor wife, we had
these plans and strategies for a natural birth, ball exercises, yoga positions,
supportive shawls, back massages etc. And all I could do was face her on her
left side.
Contractions
came, and contractions went. I started getting used to what they looked like on
the computer screen vs how they started to feel with my hand on Heidis stomach.
I knew in depth what was exactly happening to my wife that laid in front of me,
Heidi had organised for us to do a calm birth course (http://www.calmbirth.com.au/ ) in addition to the standard hospitals birthing course. Im
not going to lie, I learnt the most from Calm Birth and it prepared me for this
process better than anything else in the 9 months prior. I knew everything that
would happen, and I knew how my wife and her body would do it. The course also
gave me strategies on how to support my wife through this process. Something
that I found lacking in even the hospitals course.
So away we
went, right into the birthing process. Heidi’s contractions were fast and hard
due to the syntocinon hormones flowing through her body, bringing on waves of
contractions. We knew from our birthing course’s that this would be the hard
road, syntocinon is like using a sledge hammer to hit a nail.
So Heidi
gritted and bared as much as she could for a long time, and then she broke.
They call it the “fight or flight” reflex, an evolutionary hangover from the
days when humans wernt civilised like we are now and would have to either fight
a predator or run away from it. Its that chest pumping adrenalin hit that
causes your body to go “OH SHIT DO SOMETHING” and in this case of child birth
it causes child birth to stall and emotions/adrenalin to kick in.
Heidi looked
at me on her left side, my hand in hers, a tear rolled down her face and she
said “It hurts too much”… That was the time I had to remind her of her “fight
or flight”… we talked it through and I let her know I was 100% behind her with
any decision… but… we needed to get through the next contraction before I would
leave her to seek a nurses help. My wifes face changed from flight back to
fight, the tear rolled away and never came back and she went back to the task
at hand. Getting through that next contraction.
I quickly
hauled ass to get some assistance, possibly a nurse to talk to us about pain
relief options, and that’s when I knew something was up at the nurses station.
Quite whispered discussions were happening, a 3rd nurse rolled in
saying “well if another one of these girls needs an emergency caesarean we will
need to call in a room from the adjoining public hospital” this was not good
mostly because of the distances involved, I thought for about 2-3 seconds and
decided I would keep this information from Heidi, last thing I needed to do was
bring back the “flight”.
So I quickly
hurried back into the room after getting a nurses attention for some pain
relief. Heidi and I had previously discussed pain relief options, and decided
to try nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to take the edge off the pain, which kind
of worked, she didn’t laugh so that was disappointing, but it did focus her
breathing and take us through to the next hour before Heidi wanted to step up
her pain relief options to an epidural (spinal block).
At this
point Heidi instantly relaxed, and as it turns out, relaxed enough to basically
go from halfway dilated for 9 hour’s worth of labour, to fully dilated and
feeling the need to push at the 10 hour mark.
This is
where shit got real quickly, and my “fight or flight” started kicking in.
Firstly I
heard another women leaving for an emergency caesarean (turns out its one of
Heidi’s mothers group friends who had a boy only a couple of hours before our
guy) so I got the distinct impression we were having the baby in this birthing
room regardless of how things went since there was no other surgical rooms available
if Heidi needed a caesarean.
Secondly our
babies heart rate started dropping during every push. I could feel the tension,
I could feel the midwifes eyes on the monitor and worst of all I could hear the
heart beat coming out of the machine going slower and slower.
Thirdly when
the midwife pushed an emergency call button that’s when it went from 3 people
in the room (Heidi, me and our midwife) to every frigging person in the entire
universe, I swear it even felt like there was a channel 9 news team in there at
one stage. People were prepping tables, pulling cords, calling numbers,
screaming instructions, baking cakes… just kidding. Wanted to check you’re
still reading this ;)
Next thing I
know our obstetrician is in there taking the drivers seat, for about 30seconds
I thought “great we are in the clear, Jillian’s here”, but alas she took a look
at the situation, the computer, the heart rate and called for the paediatrician.
Her words were something like “I don’t care
if shes in an emergency caesarean, she needs to get here NOW!!!”
At this
point my head started to swim, my hand on my wifes shoulder, my heart was
pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, but the other thing I was hearing
less of was my babies heart rate… a nurse called it out during the next push…
100… 80… 60… 0… 0… 10… 60… 100…
We had been
told this before, IUGR babies get very tired during the birthing process, very
quickly, the little guys heart beat was slowing down, either he was tired or
the umbilical cord was getting squashed. We didn’t want to stay here pushing
for much longer.
I felt the
door burst open and the paediatrician stormed in and made a line straight for
the resuscitation table that was built into the wall of the birthing suit. For
a moment I thought, whats she doing? She should be over here helping my wife,
but then it clicked, she wasn’t turning on the oxygen tanks and laying out all
of the tools for my wife, they were laying it out for my baby.
100… 80… 60…
0… 0… 0… 0… 0… It felt like a lifetime at zero before the heart beat kicked
back in. 10… 10… 20… 60…
Our
obstetrician took it up a notch, after trying to use the head/suction cup thing
for 2 pushes, and Im not joking she basically was pulling on the cord like she
was doing a highschool tug of war, out came a pair of scissors. Now im not good
with blood… but for some reason I was watching and I couldn’t stop watching…. I
wish I didn’t watch. For any first time fathers out there that are sitting
there wondering what your partner’s lady parts are going to be like during
child birth, I’ll put it this way…
Its like
watching your favourite pub/bar burn to the ground, you hope its going to be
rebuilt quickly and open for business in a couple of days, but something in the
back of your mind is just saying from what you have seen its probably going to
be out of business for a while.
So after the
horrific vision I just had to witness the last push came…
In one quick
swoop my son came out… screaming his frigging head off…
I could see
everyone in the room, the paediatrician included, stop what they were doing and
freeze, transfixed on this little noise maker screaming in perfect newborn English
“YOU BASTARDS PULLED ME OUT AGGGGGGGRRRRR”
Plonk on my
wifes chest went my new baby, and up until this point I didn’t know the sex of
my little one, only to inform my wife that he had “massive balls” big balled
Brandon… has a nice ring to it for his 18th speech, ill remember
that one.
The relief
kicked in when the paediatrician walked over and had a quick look at him, she
smiled and said he was fine to stay on Heidis chest for a couple of mins.
We had our
moment together, Heidi me and Brandon. He wouldn’t stop screaming the room
down, but we were quite happy about that, considering everyone in the room was
preparing for a very different situation.
After the paediatrician
gave him the full once over, we were given our little man to hug and hold, Heidi
gave him a kiss and I nearly threw up in my mouth. Some family joined us and we
all had a moment together. We had around 30 mins before he had to go upstairs
to SCU to go on a monitor, and as I said, the proudest day of my life wheeling
my little man up to that room, chest puffed up and head held high.
