Sam's story, Kent - large baby and haemorrhage

"A tough journey but an amazing reward...

On the Friday night 27th November 2009, on day before my due date, large and uncomfortable and like all parents to be desperate to get things moving, we went for a walk down to the fish and chip shop which involves a steep up hill walk on the way back. No instant labour, no broken waters (nice chips though), but disappointment on the walking makes the baby comes front - well that is until around 5am on Saturday 28th (my due date) I woke feeling a little damp so got up for the loo and had a bit of a trickle. 

I didn't really think anything of it just that I was obviously more desperate for the toilet than I thought...wrong. I continued to wake approx every hour with the same trickling every time I moved. To be honest although I was aware that waters could leak, mainly I was totally panicking that I was incontinent as I wasn't getting any pains... but as time went by I noticed the fluid was quite jelly like so became quite sure I was losing my waters, I took the time to have a nice bath, shave my legs, make some food, but by the afternoon the colour was changing which was of concern to the hospital, so on our way we picked up my mum arriving at the hospital about 4pm. 

At the hospital they examined me and seemed unsure if my waters or not but there was a sudden flood, so I am guessing if they weren't broken, they broke them for me, however I was around 3cm and baby had pooed and so were going to admit me and put me on a drip to get things moving. They put a monitor on babies head and I was bed bound...not the birth I was expecting. I had attended NCT classes and was planning on using all the things we had been taught about keeping mobile, I was open to the idea of a water birth and had this idea that of labour being exactly like what it was not for me. 

By the time I had been hooked up to all the necessary machinery, it was 7pm, the midwife confirmed that she would examine me at midnight, this was my goal and I was determined to make it to then without any pain relief, so I soldiered on happy with the fact that I had been told I would go 1-2cm an hour so by midnight should be almost at the pushing stage. 

Yep you guessed it midnight comes and I am 5cm...cue me getting upset and starting on the gas and air. I had mixed feelings about the gas and air I loved the feeling of drunkenness and hated the loss of control I felt. The drip had been cranked up to max and the contractions were coming one on top of the other, I decided that I would rather be without the pain but in control mentally and so begged for an epidural. 

Epidural helped a lot and I was able to nap, however I had problems that the epidural was more effective than on one side than the other. I was examined again at about 4am when I was 8cm and then at about 8am when they decided I was ready to push. 

I started pushing but had excruciating pain in my back which made me very very sick, the registrar gave me a top up of a different drug which stopped the pain. The midwife told me that baby was back to back and the pain reached a head as it turned the right way. After half an hour of pushing I hadn't managed to deliver baby and the concern was growing because of his poo, so the docs came in and put a suction cup on babies head and also cut me, on the first pull on the suction cup it popped off and after a couple more pushes I delivered baby on my own at 9:57am. 

Everything seemed fine, baby was big and healthy and I couldn't take my eyes off it...that is until I became aware of the rising panic around me and then the out of this world pain as a doctor started to pump her fists up and down hard on my tummy. The pain was worse than any part of the labour and the epidural did nothing to stop it, I just screamed and screamed totally unaware of what was happening. I was aware of being rushed up the corridor on my bed and my body convulsing and agreeing to all the drugs they were offering... I remember asking if I was going to die and telling them to look after my baby but as you can imagine I soon zoned out. 

I came round a couple of hours later. I had an unexplained haemorrhage and had lost half of my bodies blood, the doctors put a balloon inside my womb filled with water which put pressure on to stop the bleeding, the balloon was left for 24 hours and then a little bit drained each hour until it was removed. I also had a blood transfusion over about a 48 hour period. 

Three hours after he was born I met my beautiful son Lucas, weighing it at 9lb 1oz, I would have died for him that day and, I would go through the same again and again for him."


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