I wanted to share my story as i think it’ll be soothing for me to reflect on everything and i do hope it also helps others too in knowing your options and knowing you can do it!!

So i guess i’ll start with the fact that this was my first baby and i really felt like she wasn’t ever coming! It’s so surreal it’s almost like you feel like you just are growing and growing and will never actually have the baby. I also was desperate to go into labour because i was HUGE. Or atleast i felt huge. Here’s a pic for reference - this was two weeks before i had her.

Okay so to the story- it was my due date, 24th of January and i woke up and went to the hospital to get checked and get a stretch and sweep. The nurse said it all looked good but i was only 1 cm and everything else was moving along. She told me i’d likely give birth within the week and i was busting to get her out. So after the stretch and sweep i went for a 3 km walk.

I then went shopping and went home and at no time did i rest... that was a bad idea. I ended up going into labour at 7pm that night and the contractions started at 5 mins apart for 1 min, i thought maybe it was going to go away so i told my SO to not worry and relax until 10pm when i said yep, i’m in labour for sure. I told him to go to bed so that he can sleep and i will labour alone unless i need him or will wake him up to go to the hospital.

I finally woke him up at 3 am as i couldn’t handle the pain at home anymore. I was in and out the bath, bouncing on the ball and walking and breathing for that time prior to waking SO up. When he got up we packed the car through contractions. I had been having the contractions 1-2 mins apart for a few hours at this time and thought okay this is it it won’t be long!

We finally got up to the hospital at 4 am and got checked, i was 4 cm dialated and got moved to a birthing unit with a bath etc as i wanted to do this naturally. I laboured in the bath, on the ball, in the shower etc until 2 pm i the afternoon the next day... Around that time they brought in two other women screaming bloody murder!!! They were having their babies and it was right then and there. I said to my partner and to the student i had that i just could not do it anymore, if that’s how i’ll end up PLEASE give me an epidural. I was crying as i begged for it because i wanted to do it naturally but i had been in labour for almost a day at this point and was exhausted and it was full on.

They then moved me after an hour and went to do the epidural.. as they did it the anaesthetist went in and accidentally hit my spinal fluid in my back, so that was pouring out and they were all rushing around. I was not happy obviously because the epidural didn’t work and they pumped my back full of medicine ( giving me a huge head and back ache post birth). They weren’t sure if it would work so they spent an hour and a half pumping more of the medicine in until i just said please try again. They finally tried again and got it right after another hour of nothing.

I had about an hour of epi time which was magical until the machine broke! i was so upset as the contractions were coming back and sooo strong. I was moaning and so unhappy and they could not get a new machine for another hour. They checked me and said hang in there you are at a 9 we will break your water. At this point it had been 24 hours. They broke my water and FINALLY got a new machine for the epi but by then it was too late, it wasn’t going to work again... i had to give birth completely naturally with no gas even. ( which is fine but i was so tired by this point).

When they broke my water they then checked me again shortly after as the baby had pooed in the water. This prompted them to tell me to push, only to find out my body was not having it and i went back to a 7 from a 9.. They straight away put me on syntosyn to make me contract more and get the baby out.

Finally i got to a 10 in an hour of excruciating pain in which i couldn’t even move as i’d had 2 epi’s. I started to push but KNEW in myself that she wasn’t coming. She was so high the whole time as you can see in that picture. As i was pushing i was pushing her foot out from under my rib cage it was terrible. I told the doctor that this just wasn’t going to happen. I knew it was not right.

The nurses called in a bunch of doctors and nicu doctors after i’d been pushing for 2 hours to no avail. I was so upset. Through every contraction i was screaming ‘ somebody help me!!’ ‘ she isn’t coming!’. The specialist doctor got there and said ‘ i can only help you if you show me you can do it’ i legitimately screamed at her and swore the house down. I practically begged for a ceaser because i knew she was not in position AT ALL.

I kept saying ‘ none of you are fucking helping me!!!’ and was not okay at all about 20 people standing there staring at my vagina while i was struggling so bad. Anyway, she finally said ok she’s not coming out... So she screamed at my SO to look away and gave me an episiotomy and grabbed forceps. She had her foot on the bed and reefed out my baby girl. It was the worst pressure i’ve ever felt and it honestly felt like ripping a bowling ball out of my vagina.

My baby girl was born 25/01/2019 at 10:23 pm

After the birth the doctor told me i’d had a 3rd degree tear internally and i had an episiotomy she needed to stitch. She had to run as another patient was heamoraging and said she’d be back.. my SO said it took 3.5 hours for her to return and i felt every single stitch. It was terrible, ended up with 30 internal stitches and not sure about externally for the episiotomy. In the time she was gone my body was packed with some gauze to try and hold it together, which caused me to pass a huge clot about 2 days later. recovery was extremely hard as my episiotomy did not heal for 5 weeks and had a hole in the end of it.. I also am now 6 weeks post partum and have gone through mastitis 5 days post partum and my internal stitches have an infection at the moment some how. All in all it was a complete whirl wind and i 10000% recommend that FTMs practise a lot of self care. But i can say it was all worth it for my beautiful little girl.

Stella Gray Russell