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Birth, unedited.

Writer's picture: Monique WykMonique Wyk

Incase you haven't deduced from the title, you should expect some overshares. But as a mother the truth is that everything is shared anyways, nothing really belongs to you anymore. Your food, your body, your toilet time, the list goes on and on. Giving birth is a gift, but not always a pretty one. In actual fact it is the ultimate love/hate relationship. Its arguably the most beautiful experience a woman can have, and also easily the most terrifying!

From the first time my OBGYN asked, I told him (rather confidently) that I was opting for natural birth. He still had the audacity to try and scare me into changing my mind and going the C Sec route! But thats another story for another day. Sad though as he was genuinely good at his job, just came with a side of not so great bedside manners. As are all really good specialists… or so they say. “They” being my mom.

But I digress. I really wanted to give birth naturally, because I truly believe that our bodies were made so fiercely when it comes to child bearing. We are incredible! Obviously I read a lot about natural vs C Sec birth and the benefits, risks and recovery of each. Bear in mind that nothing ever goes according to plan during birth. So you can plan all you want, but at the end of the day the most important thing will aways be getting your baby out safely and keeping you, Mommy, healthy! So that could all go down the drain in a split second but it’s good to know what you want going in because your mind is as powerful as anything.


My contractions started at around 3am on November 17th, 2020. I was honestly expecting to feel something like a period pain on steroids. I had heard that the degree of pain you go through during PMS is a good indicator of the level of pain that your contractions will cause. Thinking back I’m not so sure I believe that, because yoh that s*#t is PAINFUL, and I don’t get bad PMS symptoms at all. So no, maybe I was the exception with that rule.


So at 3am I woke up feeling like I needed the toilet. It genuinely felt like I needed a number 2. Those super uncomfortable cramps that just sit at the bottom of your stomach. I was 38 weeks and 6 days into my pregnancy then. So off I waddled to the toilet, sat down and nothing. Went back to bed and after a couple of trips back and fourth I started thinking, ‘maybe this is the beginning of my labour’.


(Picture taken the day before I went into labour.)


DID YOU KNOW - Your waters (yes its plural because of multiple membranes that rupture) can break after your contractions start. It’s not like in the movies where you ‘pee’ yourself in Checkers (local store) and then it’s time to push.


So I googled “how do contractions feel” and found multiple answers, none of which really eased my mind. I then googled “does labour feel like constipation”, and voila!

There was my answer - I was in labour!

Sitting on the edge of my bed at 4.30am, I had to really let that reality sink in for a minute. I remembered our CFT (therapist, see linked article) say that if I thought I was in labour I shouldn’t rush to the hospital straight away. She specifically said I should first bake a cake. Now, as hilarious as this may sound there is logic behind the crazy. The Medical Aid Schemes apparently give the hospital only 8 hours from the time you are admitted to get the baby out. Not for health reasons, but purely because the longer you’re using the hospitals facilities, the more you are costing the Medical Aid. Ridiculous actually, I know.

So I was advised to stay at home for as long as possible, breathing through my contractions, timing them of course and bouncing on my exercise ball. (1000% recommend getting an exercise ball!!!)


Now, I will take a moment here to say that each and every pregnancy is different and you should always listen to your healthcare professional, particularly when you are higher risk. Another helpful tip - save the number of the labour ward in your hospital and call them when you think you are in labour. They will be able to tell you, based on your symptoms, whether you need to go in straight away or whether you can be at home for a bit longer.


I wanted to be in the comfort of my own home for as long as possible. I honestly believe that’s what helped keep me calm and what encouraged baby to move down the birth canal as naturally as possible.

So in my birth timeline it’s now 5.30am and I tried to sleep some more but I was super uncomfortable. Remember I was just feeling super constipated at this point. So I got out of bed and went to wake up my mom. My opening line was “I think it’s happening” whispered through the darkness. I couldn’t see her face but I laugh now thinking of how it would have looked when those words came out my mouth. What a way to wake up, shame…


Bouncing on my ball in the room I just kept breathing and rubbing my belly. My gospel music playlist was on because that calmed me and baby down while I waited until 7am before I called Daddy Tayo. Another great opening statement, “I’m in labour but don’t worry. I just wanted to let you know so you can wake up nicely, get breakfast, shower and come when you are done.”

My contractions did not follow the rule of 'closer and longer means baby is coming'. If I remember correctly, within those first few hours, I was getting contractions every 15mins or so. But they were very very manageable. To be clear, my waters had not yet broken.


Daddy Tayo arrived just after 8am and I continued bouncing and breathing until about 9am when we decided to leave for the hospital. Contractions had started to get a little more intense. We had phoned ahead of time so the nurses in the labour ward were expecting us. I still remember arriving to fill out the COVID forms at the entrance of the hospital and the lady asked where we were going. When I said “the maternity ward”, gesturing to my very low belly, her eyes almost popped out of her head!

“Hai, don’t you want a wheel chair? Are you sure you’ll be fine?!” Shame she was so sweet, but honestly I felt okay. The pain was still very manageable.




We walked up to the maternity ward and were put into a private room, because we had to be tested for COVID still. At this stage I think we were in Level 3 so Daddy Tayo could be there for the birth process and then daily from 8am - 8pm, provided that my COVID test came back negative. When we first got to the room they strapped me up to a monitor on the bed so that they could make sure baby’s heart rate was all okay. This is when my contractions started getting a bit more intense (see my face in the photo). Time was roughly 10:30am. A nurse came in to do my nose swab test and then it was time to wait. Our midwife also came to introduce herself, the sweetest woman, and she said that as soon as the labour room opened up she would take us through.


At this point my waters had still not broken and the midwife hadn’t yet checked to see how dilated I was. I think they were waiting for the contractions to get to a certain level. Which I definitely started to feel them grow stronger by 11am and I distinctly remember watching the reading on the monitor going higher and higher every time a contraction came. They were about 8-10mins apart still, but definitely increasing in strength. That monitor was just the stuff of nightmares, because as I watched those numbers rise I knew what was coming. It’s like a family gathering that you dread attending but you know you have no way getting out of. It’s going to happen.

If you didn’t know, some women have a bowl movement while in labour. This is completely normal! Other women don’t, and may need to get an enima to help this along. Also completely normal! Obviously you push so hard during natural labour that you may accidentally (more often than not) push out a little more than a baby. Luckily for me it happened naturally which I only realised after the fact. But I tell you what… Sitting on that toilet during a contraction was a special kind of torture hey! I found that sitting or lying down made the pain SO MUCH WORSE so I opted for walking around or standing. I would lean on the edge of the hospital bed when a contraction came. And God be with Daddy Tayo if he wasn’t right there rubbing my back throughout the whole thing. Bless him he did really well in keeping up with my demands.


Side note: If you can see the green number on the monitor in the photos above. It went from 25 to 62 in the time that the two pictures were taken. Anytime it started rising above 40 I knew a contraction was coming.


Still able to walk I was eventually guided to the delivery room at about 1pm.

Once we got in I hopped onto the bed and the nurse did a physical exam to see how far along I was. 6cm dilated! I was so relieved. In my mind I thought if I was more than 5cm and feeling all this pain already then just maybe I could really push through the pain. If the midwife had said that I was only 3/4cm along I don’t think I would have had the confidence to keep going without heavy medication. The midwife that was assisting us was honestly the biggest blessing though! She was my number 1 cheerleader and she kept encouraging me, telling me that I had done so well and she reckons I can do this naturally without an epidural.

I requested an exercise ball and they strapped on a cordless heart rate monitor which made such a huge difference. Trust me, you want to be able to move around when you feel the need to! Sometimes it helps take your mind off the pain, sometimes it’s just that your body wants to be in the strangest positions to get through the pain.



By 2pm it’s safe to say that I was no longer mobile. I was stationed on the exercise ball, practically squatting and hating life every time that monitor started climbing. I literally sounded like one of those woman in the movies, groaning in sheer agony. You actually can’t help yourself! Truly, there is no pain like it, but yet sitting here now I cannot remember the pain itself. The fantastic midwife heard my cries for help and swiftly brought in a canister of Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide). This I just breathed in every time a contraction started coming. It gives you a bit of a high which of course helps ease the pain. I was also like the jaws of life clutching onto Daddy Tayo’s shirt and admittedly rather bossy every time I needed the Laughing Gas. But guys, I couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand, couldn’t sit. NOTHING soothes you or makes you comfortable. So when things are not happening at the pace you'd like them in that situation it's so hard to keep your cool. But I knew I was near the end so I didn’t want to give up. I knew I could do it. I knew my body could do it!


By 3pm the midwife came into the room for the last time and asked me to get back onto the bed so she could again check how dilated I was. Woohoo, 9cm! That meant it was time to call in my OBGYN and start the pushing! One of the single best pieces of advice I received was from a retired midwife. She told me to resist the urge to push until the midwife or Doctor told me to. That was the MOST difficult thing I have EVER had to do in my entire life!!! Everything in me wanted to push from about 7cm dialation. But I didn’t. Reason being that your chances of tearing drastically increase when you push prematurely. You can quite easily tear all the way from your vagina to your anus. So ladies, do your utmost best to breathe through those contractions until it’s time to push.

The pushing itself lasted a total of about 15minutes for me. I was super grateful to have no complications and everything going smoothly with Tayo travelling down the brith canal. Pushing was actually an art within itself. It’s not easy to grasp the technicalities of it. Tuck your chin, hold in your breath, push as hard as you can, but not into your vagina, more like you are on the loo. Its a helluva lot to think about with all thats going on around you. Not to mention that I was feeling super light headed and feint by this time. My body was completely exhausted! We did the pushes in sets of three. By the start of the third set a head had popped out. I thought we were done, but nope there were still a whole set of shoulders to come. 3x sets of three pushes and out came my puffy, pink little alien.


Don’t expect a cute baby right off the bat. I’ve definitely never seen one. They all look very strange to me when they are first born. Tayo came out and went straight onto my chest. Daddy Tayo and I both decided that skin to skin was super important during those first few hours after birth. It was amazing to get almost 2 hours with him before I went to shower and clean myself up. He then went to Daddy for another 2 hours. It was the most special first few hours, just the three of us.


(Stuffing my face after a hot shower)


Incase you missed it, I did not get an epidural or any other drugs besides the Nitrous Oxide. I was dead set on asking for an epidural as soon as I could do so.

Dead set! Somehow everything changed when we got to the hospital. My body took over and I just came to the realisation that my body is such a powerful entity. It was created to do this and I needed to just trust it to do what it needed to do.

To this day I still don’t know how I managed to get through that intense pain. But I wear it loud and proud today, sort of like a noddy badge. As should any mother, no matter how her baby came into the world!


So to all the moms-to-be please don’t let any of this frighten you. You will be sitting on my side of the fence soon enough and anything that didn’t go according to plan will be a distant memory. You’ll look at your baby and do it 20 times over because you love them so freakkin much! Sappy I know, but true.


To the moms who have been there, you are truly spectacular. I imagine you don’t get told this often enough but you are an irreplaceable light in your child’s life. No one could do the things you do or love them the way you do.


Ladies, we are remarkable creatures, capable of more than you could ever imagine.




If you have any question specific to childbirth or would like to ask anything about my experience please feel free to leave a comment below!




 

Important note: I am not a qualified doctor, nor am I a professional in any of the topics discussed on this blog. The topics above are purely opinions based on my own real life experiences.

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