I had a feeling that Mini Meltdown would arrive early. The pregnancy had been anything but straightforward so I imagined giving birth would involve the unexpected. And it did.
When I was 36 weeks pregnant, Mr Meltdown was due to give a talk to a local history group. In the week running up to the talk, there were some signs that labour wouldn’t be far off (who knew how much mucous makes up a mucous plug?), so Mr Meltdown had a word with the bump to ask him not to arrive until after the talk. And Mini Meltdown obviously took note. Less than 7 hours after the talk had finished, (and less that 24 hours after writing my birth plan) my waters broke!
As my pregnancy was classed as ‘complicated’ because of my blood clot, I had to go to the birthing centre in a hospital about an hour away for the birth, so with bags in the boot, TENs machine in position and waters leaking all over the car seat and soaking into everything I was wearing, we soon set off. By the time we arrived, I was 4cm dilated and officially in active labour, and it seemed things might move quite quickly. Unfortunately that didn’t end up being the case and things quickly went downhill as it turned out Mini Meltdown was coming out ‘back to back’, so had to try to twist himself round as he descended, and my contractions kept tailing off so we weren’t really making much progress.
At a certain point I was given drugs to help kick start the contractions again and get things moving and that’s when things took a scary turn. I didn’t respond well to the extremely strong and painful contractions the drug inuced, and the midwife left the room to get some assistance, at which point Mr Meltdown, who had been studying the monitor, realised that MM’s heartbeat had disappeared (more bonus points for him) and flagged it to the medical student who was also in the room with us . She flew out to get help too and a flurry of people came in to assist, but after a few minutes of trying to get me to move and adjusting the monitor, things didn’t improve, so the midwife hit the alarm.
I don’t really remember any of what followed with any clarity but when the alarm was pressed even more people cane flooding in and MM and I were rushed into theatre for an emergency c-section. Thankfully, the situation stabilised and MM’s heartbeat came back so the c-section wasn’t necessary – we were wheeled back into the delivery room, much to Mr Meltdown’s relief, and labour continued.
The drug to encourage the contractions was gradullay reintroduced and the process started again. Because of the anti-coagulant I had to inject during my pregnancy, I wasn’t able to haave an epidural within 24 hours of the last injection, so could only use gas and air and diamorphine for pain relief for most of the labour, which wasn’t really fun. At a certain point, I was desperately asking for a caesarean but I was told if I could hang on for an hour and a half (when the 24 hours would be up) I could then have an epidural. With that in mind, and taking on board Mr Meltdown’s concern about me having a caesarean and the risk of bleeding while taking blood thinners, I agreed to hold off the caesarean and keep at it until I could have my epidural. Unfortunately for me, an hour and a half later, I still couldn’t have an epidural as the anaesthetist was doing an emergency procedure down in the A&E š¦
After 17 long hours, and despite the complications, we did eventually get to the pushing stage and I was supported by two amazing midwives who helped me bring MM closer to the world. True to form, that stage didn’t go entirely to plan either, as MM still wasn’t quite in the right position and wasn’t presenting the way he ideally should, so he couldn’t make his entrance without assistance. Cue a second trip into theatre for a spinal injection (the anaesthetist was now free!) and a ventouse delivery, where MM was ‘helped’ into the world with a suction cup on his head. It was a bit of a struggle (and involved an episiotomy for me), but finally MM gave up his cosy slumber and entered the world.
Adventures with Mini Meltdown 