My Birth Story

Photo by Tamar Hope Willoughby

CW: contains mention of traumatic birth and describes a c-section and an infection in some detail.

And a disclaimer: In this blog post I talk negatively about c-sections, but I want to be clear that this is my truth and belongs only to me. If you had a positive c section experience, whether elective or not, that’s a beautiful thing and I never want to take that away from you.

Where do I start? Where do the nuances and intricacies of each birth begin and end? 

I suppose a brief summary of the pregnancy sets the scene. It was good and fine and healthy. I read all the books, I took the herbs, I ate hundreds of dates, I drank raspberry leaf tea. I was confident and unafraid. I was inspired by the rite of passage of birth - the beauty, the rawness of it all. I had been dreaming of a baby for so long - I was so looking forward to the labour. 

I struggled a little with the heatwaves of the summer and I wasn’t hugely mobile for the final weeks of my pregnancy. As so many do, I found the days leading up to my guess date difficult, and I wouldn’t want to know the date in the future. The expectation and pressure mounted even though I resisted it. 

Somewhere in amongst all of this, we had some conflict with our doula. Some trust was broken, and words said that hung heavy over me. I cried into the night a few times over it. I suppose even before the birth, I felt things hadn’t gone as I imagined they would. 

I hated all of my prenatal appointments. I never felt seen, I was just another case, another file, another set of bloods to collect. My results were not sent to me, and they had to re-do one of my blood tests three times, which they were not honest about. I felt wary, and not completely safe.

When the home birth midwife did the home check, it was only about the rules - how my husband would have to wear a mask, how they needed a toilet that was just for them. I was disheartened by it all. Nobody ever asked about my preferences. There was no connection between the physical and the mental or emotional or spiritual. At my final appointment I declined bloods, but felt uncomfortable more than empowered. I wasn’t trying to be difficult, I was just trying to find the gentle route that felt right for me.

My water broke in a big gush at one thirty in the morning on a Thursday. I smiled, and remember a wave of adrenaline coming over me. Here we go, we’ll meet her soon. I cleaned up and went back to sleep. I woke up later in the morning and felt…nothing. No contractions. Every time I stood up my water gushed again, so there was no mistaking what it was. But no signs of birth, no pressure, no tightening.

The day dragged on, but I was optimistic. A variation of normal, I told myself, and carried on. I did the Miles circuit, and went for a walk. It was a muggy day. 

Around 7pm, the contractions started, and my excitement built again. Night was falling, ah yes, I always imagined I’d have my baby at night, by candlelight, in the cosiness of my living room. How lovely it would be. I moved around the room, and the doula and my husband applied counterpressure. As the hours went on they left to get some rest and I tried to sleep. I was conscious that I was already reaching the 24 hour window that the NHS would like the baby to be born in once waters had broken. We hadn’t called a midwife yet, because I was still in the early stages of labour. I was hoping never to need them, and knowing that I already had a red flag by their standards made me want to avoid it even further. 

The next morning, the contractions were starting to wear me out. The hours were ticking on and on, and I wasn’t feeling like I was moving through any sort of journey. The pain began to radiate into my back. I would be thrown forward onto my knees during contractions, unable to sit up with the pain. 

In the early afternoon, I was starting to feel lost. The contractions were incredibly painful, but not close enough together. Still, every labour is different. My doula said reassuring things, although they turned out to be incorrect. ‘It will just be a few more hours’. If only. She looked and didn’t touch. ‘Oh you’re definitely open, I can see that.’ If only. 

Okay. I conceded. I really needed pain relief. The home birth kit had arrived weeks earlier and I wanted the gas and air. The course changed, we called the midwives. It wasn’t as easy as that, actually, the phone line didn’t let us through for about half an hour. An extra stress. 

The midwife arrived while I was crying in the toilet. I’d been doing some weird sit-down-stand-up activity to try and get through the contractions. I was frustrated, sad, and in so much pain. A short sentence like that doesn’t cover it. My back felt like it had been kicked, hard, again and again. I was losing grip of the situation. I was creeping towards 24 hours of contractions, and I was aware, in the back of my mind, that I still felt no pressure. No urges, no need to go to the toilet.

The midwife refused to give me gas and air until she gave me a physical examination. Another shift from my hoped path. I didn’t want anyone touching me. But I wanted gas and air, and so again I resigned. I was crying. I told her I was scared I would only be 4cm dilated. 

She examined me. 

She stood up and took some steps back. ‘I’m stepping away because I’m worried you’ll kick me’, she said.

‘You haven’t really started dilating. Your cervix is firm, and we wouldn’t class this as labour.’

I’m not sure the last comment was helpful. 

She also told me that she could feel the baby was facing upwards, which meant she wasn’t in an ideal position. Back to back babies are known to have incredibly painful labours. My body was trying to turn her. 

I think I felt numb. I don’t really remember. I knew what little hold I had on my dream was coming undone. I was in unmanageable pain, and I wasn’t near the end. The midwife refused to give me gas and air. She recommended, because my waters had broken so long ago (there it was), that I go to hospital. She said she couldn’t force me, but that she couldn’t stay, and she’d come back around 1am. That was many hours away, and I didn’t have many hours left in me. 

I declined going to the hospital. I believe in home birth, I believed in home birth for me. We ran a bath, to see if the water would offer some pain relief. It didn’t. In fact, the acute pain I still felt in the bath became a nail in the coffin. Nothing here could save me. 

Okay, I said. Let’s go to the hospital.

On arrival I was sobbing. I didn’t want to be there. An ugly old building with plastic laminated signs everywhere. People in masks. It was wrong. I had rejected this place from the beginning. I never made plans to be here, so we had nothing. No nappies, nothing to make me more comfortable. We had no way to fight for my preferences because I didn’t know what those were anymore. I didn’t know where this was going to end up, but I knew I wanted it to be over. 

I was admitted to a triage/assessment area. Me, in labour, next to three or four pregnant women, all of us separated by blue curtains. I was screaming. A doctor put a cannula in, and drew some blood. They strapped me to the bed for monitoring although I later demanded they remove it because it made the pain even worse. 

I kept screaming. The contractions were so painful. They weren’t surges. I couldn’t describe them that way. When I think back, it was like one side of my body was being crushed by a metal claw. The way it felt in my back was unimaginable. I wanted to die. I imagined how relieved I would be to cease to exist. I started blacking out between contractions. I begged for help, I begged for it to end. The poor women next to me, pregnant, getting checked for some reason or another, hearing me scream, over and over again. 

I think it took a few hours before they offered me gas and air. Here we go, I thought, some relief.

The gas and air did nothing. Was it even working? I suppose I felt a little light headed, but the pain was just as strong. Someone examined me again, I think. No change. 

After four hours, I was able to go to a labour room. The midwife tried to speak to me, but I was on all fours on the bed, still screaming. I was having coupled contractions. Not so frequent, but when they came, it was two at once. I was drowning. 

‘We’re going to control your pain, and then we’ll discuss the options’, she said. I had an epidural. My home birth hopes were shattered. I didn’t have any hopes anymore. I was exhausted. I was strapped to a machine again. How did I get here?

My faith, in the universe, in love, in everything, was gone. Perhaps Eve really was punished and I was made in her image. It felt like punishment. 

They checked me again. Maybe another cm, but it’s all subjective isn’t it? 30 hours of contractions to get to barely 2cm. The midwife was kind. I know she felt sorry for me. She was present. She looked me in the eyes. I was searching her for help, for support, to know it was going to be ok. I remember, somewhere, that she pressed her forehead against mine. A little solidarity, a little humanity in the system. I appreciated it so much.

The epidural helped. I was able to calm down a little, and a little humour returned to me.

New plan. They were going to give me pitocin to bring on powerful contractions and help my body turn the baby. I’d heard about pitocin. I knew I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t see any other options. Perhaps if I was less tired, less broken, I’d have asked to wait longer. The epidural had helped the pain, maybe we could have seen what my body would have done from there. But of course, my water had broken 48 hours ago at this point, and they reminded me of it regularly. Danger of infection, etc etc. Anyway, we started talking about birth preferences - skin to skin, delayed cord cutting, I was feeling positive. 

I never got the pitocin. The heart rate monitor for the baby dropped suddenly, and took too long to rise back up. They were kind. They did try. ‘These things happen sometimes, we’ll wait 20 minutes and see if it was just a one off.’ Within minutes the heart rate dropped again. I could see they were concerned, but still they tried to give me a little grace. ‘We’ll keep an eye on it a little longer’. They had tried to help me move position, to alleviate the suspected cord compression, but I was numb from the waist down and heavy with exhaustion and hunger. It’s true that even if we had carried on, I didn’t have the energy reserves to be moving around regularly.  

Another drop in the heart rate, and it wasn’t rising fast enough. I had read that heart rate monitors have caused a huge rise in c sections. I know they are not always accurate, but I also struggled with seeing the dips on the computer screen. I was spent, surely my little baby was done with all this too? How much more did she have to give? They weren’t willing, with heart rate drops, to bring on potentially hours of stronger, unnatural contractions, and I understand that. 

‘I’m sorry’, said the doctor, ‘but at this point, especially with your waters breaking so long ago, it’s a c section’.

I didn’t say much. No screaming this time, just a small cry, feeling lonely on a hospital bed. I remember knowing I was about to go through something that would hurt my soul. 

‘All those preferences….sorry…. We can’t offer that with a c section.’ I didn’t argue.

I was placed in the shape of a cross, I remember that. I remember feeling the tugging and pulling inside me. I suppose I remember my baby crying, but I was shaking and shivering, practically convulsing on the table and not able to concentrate. They tried to hold her to me but I couldn’t move. I eventually gave up trying to look at her because it hurt to crane my neck and my eyes could hardly focus on her. She started screaming. They joked about how she was using her lungs, but it was so clear she just needed her mother. The lights were so bright and she had her eyes squeezed shut. I wanted to turn them all off and hold her so that she could relax. Her dad held her, but she cried until she was settled onto me. 

They said she didn’t show any signs of distress. So was this necessary, or did we save her from distress if we’d carried on vaginally? I’ll never know. She did have a big bump on her head, from where she was hitting against my cervix in the wrong position, never opening it, just bruising her. 

I never saw my placenta. Nobody ever mentioned it. 

My daughter latched straight away. A small blessing. She was finally in my arms. I was happy? I suppose. I was probably more shell shocked than anything. I made a joke about the famous NHS postpartum tea and toast.

A pause.

‘We don’t actually do that here anymore, the toasters kept setting off the fire alarm.’

The kind midwife grilled me a bread roll in some sort of toastie maker as a gesture. It helped. 

We were wheeled to our half of a postnatal room, and then my husband and mum (I was only allowed two people, so my mum had joined, and the doula hadn’t come to the hospital) had to leave. My baby girl slept in my arms half the night. 

The aftercare was bad. It just was. Once you were out of the one-to-one midwife care, it was rota staff who knew they weren’t going to see much of you. They are almost certainly understaffed, so it’s understandable, but I was looking forward to birthing at home with all the lovely things we had ready there for after. Instead, I ate Rice Krispies as my post-surgery meal. I was later ‘diagnosed’ with anaemia. I needed nourishment, and there wasn’t any to be found.

I remember them telling me I could go and collect my lunch from a room. They wanted me, nine hours post surgery, holding onto a bag of my own urine and bleeding down my legs, to walk into a shared lunch room. I’d have laughed if I wasn’t so upset. 

My c section was at 3:24am, and I was discharged at 12pm the next day. Half of me is in disbelief of how quickly I was let out, and the other half was delighted to see the back of that place. I was swollen. My feet didn’t fit into my sandals. I fell onto the bed at home.

I had a hard couple of weeks, to put it lightly. Physically, I was in a lot of pain. My incision tugged and felt sore, and I wasn’t able to do much. I had no issues with milk supply - in fact I had an oversupply and I was drenching everything. It was tiring to be wet and uncomfortable all the time. At least, I thought, at least I don’t ever have to go through pain like that again. At least the worst is over.

If only. 

On day 12, I was up sobbing in the night with the pain of my incision. It was so sharp. The next day I noticed it was very red and a little swollen. I called the doctor and they had me in that afternoon. Yes, a wound infection. Common, so probably nothing to worry about. The doctor said the antibiotics should kick in straight away…

Which is why I called the doctor first thing the next morning when I knew it was getting worse. I spent the entire night awake, staring into darkness, trying not to move a muscle because each time it felt like a hot knife was moving through me. I have never felt a night as long. 

Back in the doctor’s office - and initially he wasn’t too concerned. Then he checked my pulse and temperature, and the mood changed a little. He called the hospital and they asked me to go in. 

The same assessment area. I hadn’t wanted to see it so soon….or ever again. 

By the time I got to the hospital, something was seriously wrong. I was dizzy, I could barely speak to the people in front of me. They took my blood pressure and temperature again and found me a bed immediately. In went another cannula, and a bag of fluid. A woman came to draw around the redness in purple pen, to track the infection. I had a large haematoma underneath the incision, and that was what was infected. 

I remember starting to get cold. Freezing. I was shivering. I asked a passing nurse to give me my cardigan and she said no. ‘You’re over forty degrees right now, you need to burn this off’.

What about my baby, I asked, and they said she could come and stay with me. Of course, I’m a good mother, she would stay with me. 

It turns out it’s hard to be the mother I imagined when I was in overwhelming pain, with needles and tubes sticking out of my hands, and without even a minute’s sleep in three days. Every nappy change and cry, I had to call a stranger to come and help me. Again, I didn’t sleep. 

We changed tack the next day. We all sat together for visiting hours 10-10 in the soulless room, and then my daughter would go home at night with pumped milk in a bottle and sleep with her dad and grandma. 

I needed the sleep. I needed to heal. But I still felt like a bad mother. How would this affect her, being without her mum for three nights before she’d even been alive so many weeks? I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t miss her, I was too ill. 

It was probably the second day that the incision split open so that the fluid from the infection could drain. 

They woke me up to check my vitals every 4 hours, so no unbroken nights for me. I also had a cannula that was put over a nerve. I shouted in pain and burst into tears whenever they added antibiotics, until they eventually took it out and placed one somewhere else. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be comfortable and well.

The next day the doctor stood at the foot of my bed. ‘Your infection numbers have gone up, not down’, they said. 

The bacteria was resistant to the antibiotics I was on. When they discovered which strain it was, they switched to a different antibiotic and my condition started to improve.

I was in the postnatal ward. Me, without my baby, with an infected incision, sharing with 3 other women and their newborns. Always covered by curtains, I never saw them, but I felt their sadness, or maybe they just felt mine. I remember a nurse scolding a mum for having helium balloons. She told her a balloon had once deflated onto a baby and it suffocated. That poor new mum, she had nothing to do with the balloons. They were gifts. 

I eventually was moved to a private room, where I spent my days doing very little. I couldn’t move much. I was probably standing for a total period of 20 minutes a day. I was able to breastfeed through it all, and we napped together, but mainly it was just sitting and waiting for the day to end. I collected plasters on my hands. Every morning, someone would try to take my blood, they’d fail, and a few hours later a doctor would come and manage to get it after a lot of vein slapping. Twice the needles, just for fun. 

After four nights, I was well enough to go home, although my incision was wide open on one side. I was assigned home nurses, who visited every two days for six weeks to clean and dress the wound. It healed very, very slowly. As a young, healthy, fairly fit person, I couldn’t believe how my body was not willing to respond and mend. At one point I was referred back to the doctor, because the wound seemed to be getting bigger. 

It’s healed now, although the scar is uglier and healed wide. I hate it. 

The thing with getting a c-section is that it is not a moment, it is a ripple. My first nights with my baby I was on a lot of medication, and she was bundled in a plastic crib. It was everything I didn’t want. I always imagined drinking a warming herbal tea out of my favourite mug; I drank water from a plastic cup.

I imagined her first bath would be with me, a ceremony of its own, but by the time her cord fell off, I had an infection. I missed out on that experience. Changing her nappies was agony as I couldn’t bend over properly, and I couldn’t reach out and pick her up in the night to breastfeed her. 

I have a baby with bad eczema. ‘That’s the c-section’ they tell me. She also has a very sensitive gut. ‘That’ll be the c-section, and all the antibiotics.’

Every time someone asks about the birth, I flinch. 

And the final blow - I had a downward ‘extension’ during my surgery, a tear beyond where the surgeon cut. An extension increases the risk of uterine rupture in future births. The ripple extends to my unborn children. Right now, my husband is so traumatised by the experience we had, that he said he would never want another child. I hope that will change, but I have to accept that it might not. 

And if I do get pregnant again, we have to take into consideration the new risks. How do we do this? If we plan for the birth I dream of, we may be dealing with a uterine rupture outside of a medical facility - an even more traumatic birth. But the idea of birthing in a medical facility fills me with such a dread, such a misery. The official recommendation is a repeat c section. To go through this again? That’s a lot to ask of me. On my notes it says failure to progress. There is the soul hurt, printed in black ink: My first moments as a mother - a failure. 

In the weeks of my physical healing, many women reached out to me to share their stories and offer some solidarity. It was a lifeline for me to know that I wasn’t alone. There are so many of us who are hurting, who are searching to reconcile the birth experience with the joy of motherhood. It was in these women that I found my faith again, in the connection, the bonding of experience. It felt bigger than me, in a good way.

The irony is not lost on me that I wanted to be an unknown shadow slipping through the NHS birth system, and ended up being known by name to all of the nurses on the ward. I had morphine, antibiotics, anti-d, blood draws, anticoagulants and probably other things I don’t even know I’ve had. I was on multiple painkillers for weeks and weeks. I avoided western medicine as much as possible, and then somehow became the poster girl for it. I lost a lot of who I thought I was in this birth story. 

I want to finish this story off with an apology, because I know that, prior to my birth, I shared an extreme confidence for being able to have a home birth. I know that I came with judgement towards people who had any kind of intervention. 

I’m sorry if anything I wrote upset you, or made you feel any less than. 

I still hugely believe in home birth. I would have given anything to have it, and I believe that if you feel safe at home, the euphoria and peace and joy of being at home, in your nest, with your new baby, is magical. But I am not prescribing it, and I know now, deeply, that it doesn’t always work out that way. 

I am concerned by the accounts I once loved on social media. Accounts that interpret and imagine women in history and how they would birth. I see the intricate nature of birth flippantly distilled into a cute Canva tile. I see the weaponizing of women’s experiences and the attack on mothers who, just like me, tried their best. My god, I tried.  

When I reflect on my birth, I follow the thread in a hundred different directions. What if we’d known she was sunny side up earlier? What if I’d tried this position, or that one? What if we had waited after the epidural? What if, what if, what if? Maybe we saved her life, or maybe we acted out of fear. It’s not for me, in this lifetime, to know. 

Finally, I don’t want my story used as a warning against homebirth. Being at home had nothing to do with it. My contractions were never at the intervals for going into hospital if that had been my choice. But if I could go back and change something for definite, I would have packed a hospital bag. I hadn’t because it felt like tempting fate.

But now, in that bag I would have put a nightgown, good quality disposable underwear. I’d have put in my favourite mug, and herbs. I’d have brought my own pillows, and things that smelled like home. I’d have brought homemade rich, nourishing food. I’d have used that bag to lessen the stark contrast between home and hospital. And I think it would have helped, just a little.