Ottie’s birth story
Sharing on here as I’ll be documenting a lot of what we’re doing with Ottie and her sleep and how babies come into the world can affect their sleep. This blog comes with a trigger warning - do not read if you’re anxious about birth or have any anxiety around uterine rupture.
I’ll start with giving a little background on Hallie’s birth story. I had a great pregnancy, hit week 36, lost my mucus plug and then at bang on 37 weeks my waters went. I started contracting but not regularly. I didn’t want to be induced so was given another 24 hours to see what happened. Still wasn’t progressing but was still contracting about once every 20 minutes, sometimes longer. It was agreed that I would go to c-section but not for another couple of days as they wanted to give the baby steroids to mature her lungs. Had the two batches of steroids and by this point I’m 37+4, haven’t really slept in three days but I have my c-section booked for the following morning and I’m just psyched to meet my baby. Then that evening my waters went again and I was immediately in active labour. Our nearest hospital was on divert so we had to go to another one 25 minutes away. My poor husband drove with me on all fours in the back debating throwing myself out of the car to make the pain go away.
Get to hospital and I was still only a couple of centimetres dilated. Jump in the pool which helps a little but not much. Ask for an epidural but the anaesthetist overhead my husband and I talking and me saying I think I need to just go to c-section as I’m too exhausted. This prompted a conversation about options and I was told if I took the epidural I’d probably labour for another 24 hours and there would be a 40% chance we’d go to emergency section anyway. We decided to go to c-section.
On cutting me open the theatre team discovered my uterus was dextro-rotated, meaning it’s all twisted and was actually blocking the entrance to my cervix meaning a vaginal birth would have never have been on the cards for me anyway. Due to the position of the uterus they had to make a big incision (or it tore - there is a ? over what happened), to get Hallie out. This resulted in a lot of blood loss for me and ultimately a large scar on my uterus. Please don’t have any concern that your uterus might be dextro-rotated, if you google it, it’s a once in a lifetime scenario for an Obstetrician to come across.
Anyway Hallie was fine and as was I, although the recovery from my birth took a while as I was so weak and tired from the blood loss and the long labour. I was reassured that everything would heal and I shouldn’t have any problems getting pregnant again.
Fast forward a couple of years and one early miscarriage and I’m happily pregnant again. Having another joyful pregnancy. I had been told that this birth would have to be another c-section which although sad that I wouldn’t be experiencing a vaginal birth I was happy to have the decision taken out of my hands.
The c-section date was booked for 25th January when I would be 39+3 weeks pregnant. I did talk to my consultant about bringing it forward given Hallie was born early but they were reluctant and reassured me that if I did go into labour early then they would go straight to theatre rather than waiting around for days like what I experienced with Hallie.
On 12th January when I was 37+4 weeks I started feeling uncomfortable, it felt like Braxton Hicks but they weren’t easing up. I thought I’d just have a nap and they’d go away but luckily my Mum and best friend who happened to be working from mine that day convinced me to call labour line who told me to come in. By the time it came to getting in the car I was in agony. I went straight in to the Day Assessment Unit where I couldn’t even sit down. They sent me up to labour ward for monitoring where they established that I wasn’t contracting. The consultant came and felt my tummy which was rock solid and excruciating in parts, this pointed to there being blood in the womb which they thought might be from an abruption of the placenta breaking away from the uterus. They made the decision to go straight to theatre, it then all felt very much like an emergency. In theatre when they opened me up they came across the baby’s feet. My uterus had ruptured and Ottie was completely out of it and was just in my abdomen, minutes from suffocating.
Thankfully, miracle little Ottie was absolutely fine, cried on coming out and was a healthy 7lb 6oz. Unfortunately when it came to me my uterus was literally only attached by a thread. There was a debate about whether to perform a hysterectomy or not but the top Senior Consultant was called in and he felt there was enough still attached to save it but it wouldn’t be able to home another baby.
From my understanding what happened was another medial phenomenon - my uterus shouldn’t have ruptured without me being in labour - the only times this has been seen is when someone is in a car crash or some other trauma. What happened was also a result of the damage to my uterus with Hallie’s birth.
Although not the ideal births there were positives in both of them and ultimately I have my two baby girls and am very lucky and grateful.
