One Mum's Story: Emma & Sienna

Sienna - a few hours old

Although my contractions weren't painful, within an hour my husband and I decided it was time to ring his parents to come and pick up our two year old as we had arranged earlier. She was gone by 9:30, totally oblivious to what was going on.

At about 9:45am I rang the hospital to let them know we were ready to come in. Problem number 1: when I told the midwife that my contractions weren't yet painful but were around seven minutes apart, she insisted that I couldn't possibly be ready yet. I told her we were over 20 minutes from the hospital and I had to have my other child taken care of, so we were coming in anyway. I am not normally a pushy person, but in hindsight, that is the smartest thing I have ever done.

Off we went and by 10:30 we were in a birthing suite at the hospital, the same room I had given birth to my first daughter in. Everything had gone really well the first time and so far things were looking good this time...

Shortly after arriving, a monitor was strapped to my belly for about 45 minutes to monitor the baby's heartrate. Problem number 2: I wasn't given an internal examination to find out how dilated I was. In fact, I was even asked whether there was somewhere I could go nearby to wait for a few hours as it appeared that the birth wasn't going to happen for a while yet. Now, my contractions weren't painful at this stage, but they were three minutes apart in the car. I said no way, I'm staying here, even if I have to sit in the waiting room for a while.

Forty-five minutes passed with the monitor on and a midwife came and checked it - no problems. I was then given an internal examination to find that I was already 6cm dilated, yet the baby hadn't even dropped yet! The contractions were getting more full on, but were still just uncomfortable, not really painful.

Shortly after the internal examination I asked for the monitor to be unstrapped so I could go to the toilet and low and behold - my waters broke with a huge gush! This must have been what made the baby's head drop as within a few minutes the pain kicked in and we seemed to go from about three to 10 in five minutes flat!

I was GBS positive so I was given an injection of antibiotics in my arm. GBS is a certain type of bacteria that is found in a lot of women's birth canals and while it has no effect on the mother it can pass on an infection to the baby which can cause potentially life threatening conditions such as pneumonia. They give the mother a dose of antibiotics which greatly reduces the risks once the waters have broken, however it needs 3-4 hours to be effective.

The pain kicked in at about 11:30am, and by around 12pm I was starting to feel like I needed to push. I tried not to though until I was told to because I knew pushing too early can cause tearing and other problems.

By 12:30 I was told to push to get the baby out as quickly as possible - it was intense and I couldn't believe how quickly things had happened. They gave me an episiotomy to move things along and by 12:45 our baby girl Sienna had arrived after only five and a quarter hours of labour and really only one and a quarter hours of established labour.

As any mother would be I was overwhelmed and not really aware of what was going on for the first few minutes. They had her on a table under a heat lamp on the other side of the room so I didn't really know what was happening. It was only after a couple of minutes that I realised that something was wrong - why hadn't I heard my baby cry?

After a few minutes a doctor came over to me with my beautiful baby girl and put her on my chest - but only for about a minute, maybe less. Sienna was as white as a sheet and she was like jelly and very very quiet, not like my other daughter had been. They then told me they had to take her to the special care nursery as she needed antibiotics because the GBS antibiotics hadn't had enough time to be effective. I kissed her good-bye without really knowing what was going to happen...

Sienna - now four months old and thriving!

We have since been debriefed on what happened...
Although the labour was quite fast, everything had been fine up to around midday when the graph of Sienna's heartbeat showed a sudden change in pattern. She started holding her breath for a couple of minutes every couple of minutes, and her heart rate kept going down with each contraction which is normal, but it didn't come back up which it should have. By the time she was born they realised she had the cord wrapped around her neck which was stopping her from getting out and causing her heart and breathing problems. That's why she was "flat" when she was born. If the birth had taken much longer things might have been much worse - possibly tragic.

Sienna had an APGAR score of three when she was born which is not very good at all, however by five minutes her APGAR score had risen to six then by 10 minutes to eight which is much better (the highest is 10). So in a nutshell, although the birth was traumatic for her, she was strong and recovered relatively quickly.

If she had been able to have been born at around midday she may have been fine, however I hadn't been in labour for very long so the muscles simply hadn't stretched enough. I'm guessing that's why I started to feel the urge to push at about that time.

After they whisked Sienna away to the special care nursery we spent the next two and a half hours worrying about her. We thought that the GBS risk was what was causing the main problem, we weren't all that aware at the time of the other complications at the birth. My husband told me that there were seven doctors and nurses around the table just after Sienna's birth trying to get her going - that's when I knew things must have been serious.

We finally got to see our little girl properly at about 3:15pm when she was two and a half hours old. We walked into the special care nursery and saw her in a humidicrib hooked up to a drip with various tubes attached to her. The feeling was a mixture of relief that she was ok but pain seeing her like that. We were allowed to take her out and give her a cuddle and I was thrilled that she breastfed really well straight away.

Sienna was kept on a drip and on antibiotics for the next 48 hours. I had to go into the nursery every 2-4 hours for feeding. Seeing all of the premmie babies around us made me feel so grateful that we had a full-term, strong little girl who was able to breastfeed. She had a tough time during her birth but she gained strength very quickly.

She experienced a couple of "dusky episodes" during the first couple of days which added to our stress. This is when the baby chokes on mucus present in their tummy which has built up from the birth and they actually change colour when they choke. It was very scary but thankfully she was in good hands and the midwives looking after her responded quickly when it happened.

After two or three days they let me have Sienna in my room for most of the day but she still spent her nights in the special care nursery. On the fourth night she was allowed in with me all night and by day five we were allowed to go home. I was so glad because I was really missing my husband and my two year old - I had expected to go home the day after the birth.

Sienna is now four months old and you wouldn't even know she had any problems. She is still fully breastfeeding and has gained plenty of weight. She is smiling and laughing like any other baby her age. We are so happy that she is well and her big sister just loves her!

I'd just like to say that if you're ever in labour and things don't feel right, speak up and let the staff know, don't just let it go. If we had stayed home when I first rang the hospital and had a home birth, or if I had left the hospital during the early part of the labour as was suggested to me, Sienna may not be with us today. The staff can only call things as they see them and they make their best judgement on a case by case basis as it happens. I believe it comes down to listening to what your body is trying to tell you and communicating openly if something seems wrong - only you know your body best of all.

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