Carolyn’s Perspective

I was booked for a sweep on Monday morning, 10th October, when I would have been one week overdue. However, things actually kicked off the day before around 1630, when I woke up from having a nap.

Shortly after I woke up I became aware that I was having contractions, not particularly painful and not especially regular, but they were coming appoximately once every eight to fifteen minutes and lasting between forty-five and seventy-five seconds. During the evening I started writing down their frequency and duration, and debated whether I should call labour ward or not. As I was booked for a homebirth, and given the speed of my labour with Aidan, I had been instructed to call them as soon as anything happened.

About 2300 we took the decision to make the phone call, and I was told that they would send someone out to check my progress. We also called my parents. My Mum arrived about midnight, and the midwives arrived about thirty minutes later. It turned out that I was about 4cm dilated, and the midwife performed a sweep to try to get things going a bit faster. Now the contractions began to hurt and gradually grew more and more painful over the next couple of hours.

In spite of the fact that, by this time, the contractions were twice the length of the contractions that brought Aidan into the world seven minutes after my waters were broken, I didn't seem to be making any progress. All of us kept expecting that the next contraction would bring the baby out, but still nothing happened.

Eventually we requested that my waters be broken in the hope that this would speed things up as I was getting pretty tired. The midwives agreed, and at 0350 this was done. And this was the point at which we realised why things hadn't progressed. What the midwife felt when she broke my waters was not a head, but a bottom. Megan was breech! And not one of the eleven different professionals who examined me during the last seven weeks of my pregnancy had guessed.

What happened next was an hour that I would rather forget. A breech presentation is an automatic emergency and an ambulance was immediately summoned. Everyone switched from being encouraging me to push when I felt ready to shouting at me that I must not, under any circumstances, push! When you consider that it only took seven minutes from the same point in my labour with Aidan until his arrival, fighting contractions of similar magnitude, but twice the length, took everything I had.

I spent the next hour in the very inelegant position of being on my hands and knees, bottom in the air (to try and keep baby in) - bad enough on my living room floor at home, but almost impossible being driven along an motorway at 90mph, and whizzing round roundabouts. I had two midwives (one of whom seemed to be physically trying to stop Megan from coming out!) and a paramedic holding onto me to stop me falling off the trolley!

And throughout the whole journey I was having agonising contractions, and having to fight my body's overwhelming urge to push. They kept telling me to "blow the pain away"! What's that supposed to mean?!! I knew that pain wasn't going to go anywhere until the baby was delivered and they weren't going to let me do that until I got to the hospital. The Etonox didn't even begin to touch the pain, but it did give me something to help me focus my breathing. And all the while I knew that what was waiting for me at the other end was an emergency caesarean section. I didn't even have Keith with me by this point - he was in the front seat of the ambulance. It was terrifying.

An eternity later, or so it seemed to me at the time, we arrived at the hospital and I was rushed straight into theatre. There seemed to be so many people milling around, but Keith wasn't there and I was on my own (he was actually putting on scrubs so he could come in). I had another couple of contractions, but they were still telling me not to push.

Then, as another contraction was starting up I heard someone say "let's get the spinal in", and someone else reply "it's too late" as I realised that I simply couldn't fight it anymore - I was up on my knees before I knew what I was doing... Keith arrived in theatre to see a foot hanging out! Another couple of contractions, and Megan Lindsay McEwan Wansbrough arrived in this world at 0449, just minutes after our arrival at hospital.

They immediately whisked her off to the resuscitair but, despite being a little blue on arrival, within a couple of minutes she cried for the first time and Keith brought her over for me to see. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised how fortunate I'd been not to have torn much (I only needed a couple of stitches), or needed an episiotomy, and to have had such a straightforward delivery of a breech baby.

After a while we were transferred to the ward. The midwives then checked both Megan and myself over. Thankfully Megan was fine. Unfortunately I started to bleed again (see Aidan's birth story), despite the syntometrin injections I'd received, so I was immediately given a syntocinon drip to stop the bleeding.

Megan had her first feed about 0600, and Keith and Mum went home an hour later. Megan and I were transferred to the postnatal ward around 0830, and I was well enough to get up and have a shower. I started feeling much better after the syntocinon drip finished, and we were discharged from hospital at 1500 that afternoon. Megan arrived at home for the first time less than 12 hours after her dramatic birth.