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Baby Girl's Birth Story

When you become a mother, you become your mother.

We laugh at my mum every birthday we have because without fail, every year she reflects.... "This time X years ago I was in the delivery ward getting ready to meet you"...... and it goes on. We teased her for so many years anticipating when she was going to bring it up. I laugh at myself now because so far, every one month birthday my princess has I find myself doing exactly the same thing.

Now I am a mother I get it. That was the best day off my life, I got to meet my princess. It was the start of my life as a mother and a celebration of baby girl's day of birth. I am amazed with both how quick time is going but also that life before Baby Girl feels like a very distant haze. Grab a cup of tea, get comfy, this is going to be a long post. The story of her birth.


I'm going to go into detail because these kind of stories helped me prepare for my own birth experience and what to expect.

It started on the 19th August. I was 3 days over my due date. I was tired, sore, hot (it was the peak of summer) and ready to meet my baby girl. I was in the maternity unit of my hospital super early in the morning. I was in for a scan because I was measuring larger than average and they had to monitor how big Baby Girl was. The sonographer started having a look and to my horror told me that baby girl's estimated weight was 10 pounds already and she was super comfy in there. Her legs were crossed and she looked like she was going no where fast any time soon. I looked at J and said "this baby needs to come out now!".

The doctor came to analyse the scan results and before she could even look at anything I begged her. My baby was already 10 pounds. I was told they normally don't start induction until you were 2 weeks overdue. That was another week and a half for baby girl to get even bigger. I begged her for an induction. Up until this point I was happy for nature to takes its course but I was so scared of giving birth to a big baby.

She looked at me with understanding but explained to me that every woman's pelvis has a different capacity and she couldn't just recommend an induction based on an estimated weight from a scan but she would do my observations and if there were any concerns at all she would reconsider.

Just like it was meant to be, the nurse took my blood pressure on 3 different occasions and each time it was slightly higher than normal. It had never been a concern throughout my pregnancy and it was never high again after that, so for that moment the heavens had aligned and what was meant to be was to be. I was booked in for my induction and admitted due to my blood pressure. Things just got real. The next time I would leave the hospital I would be leaving with baby girl. The nerves kicked in for real right about then.

I didn't have a structured birth plan. All I knew is that I wanted the birth to be as stress free as possible for both me and Baby Girl. I'd been practising some hypnobirthing so I was hoping to keep things as natural as possible but I was open to drugs if I really needed them.

I was shown to my ward and at 4pm I was given a pessary. From what I understand this is a tablet that is inserted into your cervix (this was extremely painful) and then let's off the same hormones that your body would normally to kick start labour. From there it was a waiting game.

Hours passed.

J was with me and we were just waiting around for something to happen. I have fond memories of passing the time with my husband in the hospital before Baby Girl was born. All we had was each other. We were shut off from the rest of the world. Our busy jobs no longer mattered, we weren't worry about who was counting on us for what, our normal every day stresses no longer mattered and we were so excited and eagerly anticipating the birth of our baby.

The 19th of August drew to a close and visiting hours ended so because I hadn't felt any kind of progress, J had to go home when visiting hours ended and I was told to get some sleep and prepare for the day to come. I'm not sure I got any sleep before 4am rolled passed and they needed to check on my pessary and do my observations. The nurses hooked me up to the monitor and were a little bit concerned about Baby Girl's lack of movements. They kept me awake for a couple of hours and continued to monitor me. Turns out she was just asleep and after some cold water and a change of position she was back to her active self again.

It was around 6am on the morning of the 20th August that I felt what I could only describe as bad period pain towards my back. Thinking this might be the start of something I forced myself to sleep for a couple of hours. As soon as visiting hours started again J was by my side. I told him I thought labour was processing but as my pains were no worse than a bad period I thought it may take some time. I didn't know if these were contractions because I had been told when you are having contractions you would definitely know and I didn't know so perhaps they weren't.

By 11am I had lost my mucus plus and I spent the day chatting with J and bouncing on my birthing ball. My pains were getting stronger but I still wasn't convinced they were contractions. By 4pm I was examined again and was told that I was dilated by 2cm which was enough for my waters to be broken and it was nearly time for me to head to the delivery ward. I was having this baby!!

It was only around this time that I realised there was an obvious pattern to my pains, they were getting closer together and they were definitely contractions. It was as I was walking to the the delivery ward at around 6pm that they started to get really uncomfortable and I had to take a few rests in between contractions before we reached our delivery room where we would meet our baby.

My waters were broken and I was told I was now 3am dilated, shortly after that I was offered some gas and air and I felt on top of things. I could do this! My midwife burst my natural delivery bubble and said that it's likely I will have to have the drip to help speed up labour which intensifies my contractions so she recommended I get an epidural then whilst the anethesist was available and while I was still able to handle the pain on gas an air. It made sense so I agreed and within 5 minutes I had signed my life away and the anethesist was in the room administering the epidural.

As soon as I'd had the epidural they put me on the drip. It was about 9pm at this stage and I told J to get some sleep because if I was going to dilate a centimetre each hour it was still going to be a long night. He's never one to argue with a nap so he pulled his two chairs together and went out like a light.

I noticed that half of my body was numb and half was feeling contractions which were intensifying. I suffered through this for a while but my midwife could see it was getting unmanageable so she asked me to change the way I was lying and topped up the epidural. Within 10 minutes I was completely numb and could feel no pain even though I could see my contractions on the monitor were super strong. J woke up after about an hour and there was more of us just waiting around, talking and anticipating what was to come.

At 12am a doctor came in and examined me. She said that I was only 4cm dilated. I was shocked and worried because I had been in labour for hours and I knew that progression was too slow. Then the doctor said what was more worrying was that each contraction I was having, Baby Girl's heart rate was dropping and after some further examination confirmed that her head was getting stuck and she doubted I would be able to give birth naturally. Worried that my baby girl was getting panicked I agreed we needed to get her out as soon as possible and so I was prepared for surgery and an emergency caesarean.

For the second time that night, I signed my life away. They increased epidural so much that I couldn't feel anything below my neck and the next stage was all a bit of a blur. I remember bring wheeled into a really bright room with people everywhere. I was shaking like mad, probably because of the dosage of drugs. J was right next to me in his scrubs holding my hand. I was shaking so much that they found it hard to get my blood pressure. I was cold and I was scared and all of a sudden what felt like a really calm decision put me in a really scary situation. The surgeon explained what would be happening which calmed me ever so slightly.

It was all so quick and before I knew it I felt a huge amount of tugging on my insides and my baby girl was born. The first thing I remember was her cry which was great relief. Then I remember seeing her tiny little hands come up over the screen as if she was trying to reach out for me. Then they cleaned her off and I saw my beautiful baby for the first time. J placed her next to my head and I kissed her, said hello and told her how much I loved her.

She was born at 2.10am on August 21st weighing 8.10 pounds - the scan was wrong after all!


My perfect girl was perfect in every way and as soon as I met her I felt instant love, the desire to protect her and keep my innocent baby from any harms way. Baby Girl came out so quickly - within minutes and then it took 20 minutes to get me stitched up. Once I was out of surgery I was wheeled to the recovery area and we bonded as a family for the first time.

I think because I had the epidural so early on, I was lucky. I can never really remember my contractions being worse than bad period pains and my labour never progressed enough for me to try and push so I didn't have to deal with tears or any other injuries down there.

The 6 weeks it took to recover from my cesarian was very hard. I wanted to do so much for my baby and I couldn't. Part of my scar got infected a week after the birth and I had to spend a whole day in bed where I felt awful and had the worst fever I've ever experienced. I also wasn't prepared for the pouch that I still carry today, you don't read about that in info about a caesarean! Or when my cut got infected I had to lie on the couch and physically lift my pouch up to give my cut some air. Dignity went out the window then. J would tell me off for now doing it enough.

I was very lucky to have a lot of help. J was my hero and my mum came to visit from Australia when Baby Girl was just 3 weeks old. She didn't let me lift a finger whilst she was here and I honestly don't know how I could have got through those early days without her.

I think back so fondly on those few days around her birth. The whole thing was just amazing. I've erased from my memory anything that might make me feel uneasy. I don't remember the pain. There is no element of horror in my birth story. Just a story of the best day of my life filled with the pure joy, a few unexpected twists and turns, and the meeting of the new love of my life.


* I previously posted this very soon after I started this blog but April 2016 is caesarean awareness month so I have updated some of the detail and decided to repost it in support of this. Every birth story is different, most of them don't end up as planned. Having a caesarean does not make you any less of a mother. This is my story.

Kat x

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6 comments

  1. Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing it with us. It will make a great read for your little girl one day.

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    1. It's a pleasure! Yes I hope she will enjoy looking back on this whole blog one day. After all, it is pretty much all about her :)

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  2. Wow! What a beautiful story indeed. She is gorgeous. xx

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    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    2. Awww thank you so much for your lovely comment. I found that every single birth story is so unique. It's such a huge event to happen in a woman's life, reading birth stories helped me mentally prepare and helped me on the day when things went from 0 - 100 in no time xx

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