birth story: my unexpected nightmare

So I needed some time to process how my birth happened because it was the complete opposite of what I had imagined/wanted. (Sorry this got kinda long)

While I was pregnant everyone told me "Oh you're healthy, baby is healthy, you will have a great birth!". I planned to have an all natural water birth without any interventions and was actually looking forward to going into labour. What happened then felt like my body let me down and I no longer had any control over what happened to me.

So early morning on May 21st, about 15 minutes after having climbed into bed, my waters broke around quarter to 1am. when I pulled my pants down the water was bloody which immediately made me a bit nervous. So we called the hospital and went there immediately. Once there I kept losing insane amounts of amniotic fluid and it was still bloody. So they ran all kinds of tests, two ultrasounds, a doppler test, ctg, took some blood but couldn't figure out what was up. Baby seemed perfectly alright though so they weren't too concerned. Because my blood showed elevated inflammation levels I had to get intravenous antibiotics (I have a horrible needle phobia so that was already awful) and they decided to induce me to speed things up. So they put the little fabric thing in onto the cervix (ended up needing three because they kept being flushed out by gushes of amniotic fluid)...and so it went on for hours and hours.....I was kept on the ctg to monitor baby and contractions came, became stronger and then disappeared again. This went on for hours, without any progress and I started to lose hope. About 20 hours in, the contractions suddenly became insanely intense and with only about a 5 second break or none in between them. All of a sudden I felt like the air was knocked out of my chest and the pain was so overpowering I was screaming, crying and begging for help. I felt like the pain would rip me apart and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. The doctor however kept being unavailable due to l&d; being overrun with emergencies that night. So for two hours of absolute hell I had no pain relief, no help, aside from a midwife who kept trying to reach the doc and kept saying that she will be here "soon". This was honestly the worst pain and the most helpless and desperate I have ever felt. My boyfriend was my absolute rock. I don't know how I would have done this without him. When the doc finally came she could tell sth was seriously wrong. She said that induced labour is often worse than natural contractions, but that I shouldn't be in this much pain, and that it seemed like baby wasn't being pushed down but against my pelvic bone, which made it so intense. When she checked me I still hadn't progressed at all and was still at two centimeters. At that point she said she wanted to do a c-section straight away, and I just didn't care anymore. I had no more strength left and I just wanted it to be over. It all happened pretty quickly then, I was scared and felt completely defeated when they rolled me into the OR. Once they started I felt really dizzy and nauseous and briefly lost conciousness twice due to blood loss, so while I do sort of remember the operation it was all very hazy. Afterwards they told me that there was a lot of blood when they opened me up and that the placenta had partially detached already and it seemed a big blood vessel had ruptured which must have kept bleeding into the amniotic fluid. Baby and I could have died if we had waited much longer. They sent the placenta to a lab for additional testing...so we'll see what they have to say. Finally at 11:24 pm after about 22 hours my beautiful baby boy Liam Yunus was born and immediately took my heart by storm. I am just so relived he is alright. Had to battle anemia and iron deficiency for a couple days but I am now thankfully feeling much better and I am just happy to be home! The staff and my boyfriend kept trying to console me saying "next time will surely be different" Next time?! Um...yeah. let me process this first cause for now this kid will be an only child lol

almost two weeks old:

💙