Our Birthing Adventure
At 9 days overdue, my doctor sent me to Fetal Monitoring in Monash Medical (Clayton) for some tests. These tests are regularly done for overdue pregnancies once they reach Day 9/10 post due. What they usually do is check the baby's heart rate pattern and do a short ultrasound to check the level of amniotic fluid.
At that point, baby wasn't engaged and I hadn't experienced any contractions, not even Braxton Hicks (none that I could feel anyway). I had already resigned myself to the idea that we were going to get to the 2-week overdue mark and I would have to be induced.
Our appointment was at 3pm and we were there on the dot or thereabouts. D convinced me he needed to drive me down there and come with me for the tests. I had originally planned to drive myself but he can be persuasive when he wants to be. Turns out, he was right.
At a few minutes after 3pm, they hooked me up to the heart rate machine thingy and they started monitoring bub's heart rate and my contractions. After about 30 minutes, bub had given them enough of an activity pattern but hadn't quite given them a resting baseline. Knowing how active baby was, D and I resigned ourselves to a long wait as he never seemed to rest for a long enough time. My OB was there for his rounds and he came and looked at bub's pattern and said, Looks like everything's fine.
An hour into the test, while we were still waiting for a resting baseline, one of the midwives looked at the machine, talked to another midwife and suddenly everyone seemed all concerned. In a matter of seconds, I've got 3 midwives around me, telling me to shift from one side to another, hooking and unhooking me to/from the machine and looking all worried. Apparently, bub's heartbeat dropped to around 95 from his pattern of about 140-150.
They called my OB and he said to test my amniotic fluid. One of the midwives told us that it was likely that I was going to have an emergency caesarian that very afternoon. D and I looked at each other thinking, uh oh, we didn't have our bags with us. We quietly discussed swinging by the house first on our way to Cabrini (which is where I was booked and where I still thought I was going to have the baby) to get ourselves organised.
I went for the ultrasound and the midwife administering the test said that the amniotic fluid looked way too low. They called my OB again and he told them to get everything organised and prepped for surgery.
D and I wasn't sure of what was happening at this point but took it all in stride. They then told us that there wasn't enough time to get me to Cabrini and the surgery was going to have to be done in Monash. My OB practiced there anyway so that wasn't a big issue.
After that, everything went fast forward. It seemed like in a matter of minutes, they had wheeled me into the birthing suite, taken my details to admit me to hospital, made me drink this icky salty concoction (still no idea to this day what that was for), changed me into a hospital gown and then set me down on the hospital bed to wait for surgery.
During all this commotion, D had to phone my parents to let them know we weren't coming home for dinner and that I was having the baby that evening. Poor D, he was wearing his not-so-comfy work shoes the whole time.
After a brief wait, I was wheeled into the operating room, attached to an IV drip, given spinal anesthesia and prepped for surgery. Once they determined that the anesthesia was working, they performed the caesarian and at 6pm on the 29th of September, our new baby was born.
So, it didn't happen the way I was dreading, I mean, expecting, but I actually didn't mind it. I mean, what's an hour (max) of prep and surgery compared to 24+ hours of labour? And in the end, we've got our perfect little boy all healthy and safe and that's all that matters.
