Birth of the mother

Each year when I celebrate my eldest son’s birthday I am reminded of my purpose and why I now offer my full support and love to women as they become mothers, why I coach women through pregnancy and the post partum period to be their healthiest and happiest selves, why I honour women as they are, as they come.

River turned NINE yesterday, his birth radically changing my life. From his conception I began to change, I became super conscious about true health and wellbeing, I became far more environmentally conscious, I realised that my life would no longer be a selfish pursuit. I would lay my life down for the baby growing in my womb.

I did all the right things, hypnobirthing and lots of chiropractic care and healing. Everything I requested and bought was organic. I planned to cloth nappy and wear my baby. I did not at all plan on co sleeping nor the extent of my crunchy ways.

Being me, I worked up until the Thursday in my 39th week. I had the Friday off work and felt myself start prelabour. It was so exciting. But I couldn’t sleep much with regular contractions, even if they were 8-10minutes apart. Saturday was interesting, I walked a lot, cried a lot, and I also threw up a few times. Once more I couldn’t sleep. On Sunday we called the hospital as I was exhausted already and they told me to have panadol and stay home. On Monday was River’s due date and we had an appointment at 10am. By this stage my contractions were quite powerful and the car was an awful journey. The midwife we saw did not believe I was in active labour (and I believed in my hypnobirthing calm powers) until she put a monitor on me and performed an internal exam (one of about a million). My labour of course stalled due to the change of scenery, the dismissive attitude of the midwife, the internal exam amongst my own mental chatter. Within 4hours I had only progressed 1cm and though my contractions were powerful they were useless. The midwives broke my waters. A few hours later with minimal “progress” a catheter was inserted and as I was dehydrated from throwing up, a drip was attached to me. I was told I could not have the water birth I envisaged. Truly I think at this point I gave up. This is why birth support is VITAL. True support and advocacy would have meant that the cathetar was removed once my bladder was empty, I could have eaten and chugged magnesium/water/honey/powerade rather than a drip. True support and consent would have meant I was told before intervention that I could not have a water birth. True support and care would have someone on my side, believing in me. During my pregnancy I would have learned about Optimal Foetal Positioning and that if my baby is posterior, a lengthy pre labour would be “normal and expected” for baby to move into the right position.

After 14hours in the hospital and a total of 62hours of contractions, I had an “emergency cesarean” due to my “failure to progress”.

I loved my baby with all my heart and had no issues connecting to him immediately, but I was so sad, so disappointed in myself, I felt like I had failed my first step into motherhood.

How could I stand by and let women be treated like that? How could I let babies be born to depressed mother’s? When we fail, we learn, and I learnt I had the power within me to birth without intervention, coertion, according to someone else’s agenda and that my baby and I could work together. I didn’t know it just then, but after my second home birth, I had learnt the power to help women achieve a birthing experience that created a great foundation for motherhood.