On Friday the 8th of November I had a non-stress test at the hospital which basically means they listened to May's heartbeat for an hour on a monitor and also hooked me up to see if I was having any contractions. Apparently I had two during the test, but didn't feel a thing. I brought a book to the hospital that day, Sunset Park, but didn't read a single page during the monitoring as I just couldn't stop looking at the chart and listening to May's heart rhythm; loud and strong!
After my 10am hospital visit I thought of getting some things done before the weekend, especially as the shops are so busy on Saturdays here given the restrictions on trading on Sundays. I went to H&M and bought a couple of nursing tank tops and a button up blouse in preparation of nursing May after she was born. At our local butcher I bought some ham and decided to treat us to some of their homemade burgers to cook for dinner. I knew my preparation time for Christmas was limited with a November due date so I stopped off at the little boutique card shop to get Christmas cards. I frustrated several customers as there is barely enough room for one person to bypass another in the shop and here I was with a 9 month bump and weighed down by my shopping bags. I wanted to go to the supermarket to get some milk but was feeling a bit unwell at that point and decided to rest a bit before making dinner instead. By 10pm I had to go to bed as I felt 'off'.
Saturday morning at 3am I woke up feeling a little more unwell and put it down to eating the greasy burger before bed. As I mentioned before, during the last trimester my interest in food in the evening was non-existent and I often felt ill in the evenings if I ate too much. Then I noticed that I was starting to feel sick around every 10-15 minutes. At around 4am I woke my husband up to tell him I was not feeling good at all and to check whether he was feeling any adverse burger effects. I think we both knew I was going into labour but we were in complete denial. After about an hour we realised that it wasn't the burger. I was having contractions and we began to time them, but we convinced ourselves that this was false labour. One reason we were so adamant about it being false labour is that in our hospital the OB/GYN you see throughout your pregnancy only attends your birth if it happens during the week. At the weekends you get whichever doctor is on call. It was so important to us to deliver with our doctor that we just simply did not want to be in labour. We knew that as it was a holiday weekend here in Belgium that my doctor would not arrive until Tuesday so I would definitely deliver with a doctor we probably had not even met before.
By 8am it was clear that this was no false labour, and we needed to face the reality that May had decided she wanted to meet us. I arrived at the hospital at 10am and despite my contractions being less than 5 minutes apart for almost 3 hours at that point, I was only 3cm dilated. I was gutted. My doctor had checked me at the monitoring appointment the previous morning and I was 1.5cm dilated, so really I had made very little progress at all.
We moved around and tried different positions but all I could really do was bounce on the yoga ball leaning over the bath in the room and my husband put pressure on my lower back during contractions. For those not familiar with the Belgian health system, in labour you have two choices. Have an epidural or have no pain relief at all. The prospect scared me but I did not want an epidural, so faced with an all or nothing scenario I chose nothing.
Eventually at 4pm I was finally 6-7 cm dilated and decided to move to the bath. The relief was immediate and it felt great to labour in there for an hour with the warm water soothing the pain and aches of my body. However, the urge to push was all consuming and it took far more mental strength to resist the contractions and to concentrate on not pushing than I had anticipated. My husband got me through it all with encouraging words and a wet facecloth after each contraction. I was simply not prepared for the mental aspect of giving birth and dealing with a labour where contractions came on top of each other from very early. After around an hour I decided it was a good idea to get out of the bath as it was finally time to give in to the urge to push, and at 5.55pm May was born. What had started off as slow progress went with lightening speed at the end and to be honest is mostly a blur.
The procedure at the hospital where I delivered is to weigh the baby, measure her length and dress her as soon as she was born. However we requested that we have skin to skin contact which was respected and we spent almost 2 hours with May in the delivery room, just us three together. It was the most amazing experience, I was exhausted but so elated to meet our little girl, who looked exactly like her father when she was born. We had been completely wrong about when May would arrive and instead of spending the weekend together as a couple and still pregnant, we were a little family of three by 6pm on Saturday. I could not have asked for more.
I don't know how long it was following her birth, but after some time on my chest I gave May a little help to find her way to the breast. To be honest I'm not sure what we did was right, if she was properly latched or if she really got a real feed that first time. We bonded and I certainly tried to feed my newborn the best I could. It was magic in a lot of ways. I thought to myself that this would be easy, I would breastfeed like a pro. Unfortunately I could not have been more wrong, our breastfeeding journey was not at all simple and we faced many obstacles, which at times felt like they were insurmountable. I had been very naive about what it would be like to breastfeed my baby and the complications you can face. This was just the beginning....
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| Our first meal together |
