I was about to go two weeks over over my due date, so the hospital booked me in have an induction. I remember it so well, a bright Tuesday afternoon on January 20, the US President Barak Obama had just had his inaugural ceremony and it felt like a wonderful time to bring a child into the world.
I was a bit disappointed though, I had been attending NCT classes and was looking forward to having a ‘natural childbirth’. I had even asked to use the birthing pool, but that option went out the window as soon as I went overdue. I was also told a winter norovirus outbreak meant other things might not be available to me but wasn’t told exactly what.
The midwife gave me the pessary and my husband and I waited for it to work. I remember a woman in the bed next to me screaming in pain, when I asked what had happened I was told she’d had the same pessary as me. I read the Viz comic we had brought in to keep me entertained, I laughed at one of the stories – it was probably the last time I ever had a good laugh at anything.
Within a few hours, after which my husband had gone home, I was writhing in agony, but two internal examinations later (I’m sure men would ban these if they had to have them), I was not dilated enough to have pain relief.
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The memories had faded enough so that four years later I got pregnant again (Image: Andrew Soames)
Sitting on a pilates ball in the TV room I watched Ulrika , who had a young baby at the time, sorting out her housemates on Celebrity Big Brother. Despite the waves of labour pains I focused on her strength in that house and thought if she can do it four times I can do it this once (I feel I owe a real debt to Ulrika even though I don’t know and probably will never meet her!).
When I was finally given pain relief – an epidural – but here’s when things went even more wrong. It damaged my spinal cord so I was still getting intermittent waves of pain that I’m sure made me faint a couple of times.
I also had been given a spinal block so I couldn’t move my legs and was being constantly topped up with anti-nausea medication.
The Chemical Brothers were playing out of control in my head when I was asked to sign a document I was in too much pain to read.
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Wheeled into the operating room with about 20 doctors looking at me – I wondered in an out of body way, ‘how things had come to this?’
I’d had such a normal pregnancy, age 37 and slightly underweight to start with I had eaten for England and gone to the gym; a habit I’d largely kept up since I was at university. I was also a vegetarian and had no health problems.
Surely I can give birth?
Bless those doctors. They tried everything to get Imogen out by the front door, forceps followed by a mediaeval looking contraption called a ventouse; a thing that literally clamps on to the baby’s head and sucks it out.
She still wasn’t coming out. So in they went with an emergency Caesarean-section and – just like that – I was literally cut in half.
‘I thought we would die’
Still things weren’t happening. She was stuck fast – apparently not even having entered the birth canal.
So it got a whole lot more serious and I was being pulled around so much I was offered a general anaesthetic. The anaesthetist that offered me the mask told me this was the “strongest pain relief” she could do.
As the mask came towards me I knew if I breathed in that pain relief I would die and that my baby would die with me. We would both die, it was one of the surest most 100 per cent things I’ve ever felt would happen.
I said my prayers – I’m a Catholic. I asked God that whatever was about to come that it would be painfree and peaceful.
At that moment I heard my daughter’s cry – the most beautiful wonderful thing I have ever heard.
It didn’t end there though. I wasn’t able to hold her properly because the ventouse had bruised her and because of the outbreak for the next eight days I was in hospital with her with no visitors, not even my husband, who wasn’t able to visit me even if he wanted as he was suffering from shock.
The epidural also meant I wasn’t able to stand up and threw up every time I lifted my head.
On top of it all was the struggle to breastfeed, now I know my milk ‘didn’t come in’ as my body – like my husband – had gone into shock.
Two weeks later the health visitor wanted to re-admit me and Immy to hospsital unless I started bottle feeding her.
She was a wonderful baby, so happy and content. I had always wanted a big family, and as a career woman first I had planned to give it all up to have my four children, the ones I had in my imaginary photo with me and my husband in quick succession.
Whether my body would have been compliant was neither here nor there. For some time I couldn’t bear my husband to touch me and I kept having flashbacks of all the doctors around me.
The memories had faded enough so that four years later I got pregnant and was lucky enough to get pregnant quickly at just 42.
During my pregnancy every midwife or doctor I saw tried to convince me to go for a VBAC – a vaginal birth after c-section.
I refused, and even offered to go for counselling. Doctor after doctor told me I’d be fine if I tried for the door rather than the sunroof.
I gave birth to Isabella – Izzy – via an elective c-section four and a half years later at 38 weeks and six days. It was not without a bit of trauma but I was out of hospital within 24 hours and 12 weeks I was back in the gym running and spinning.
I was also able to feed her and did for three years.
So many women go through what I have just described and I know we would all go through it 100 times, but we shouldn’t have to.
We should be given the option of a c-section from the start, in my case if they had scanned me (not just the baby bump) they would have seen that my hip would not have allowed me to give birth ‘naturally’.
A record one in four babies born last year were delivered by Caesarean section, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).
Obesity and mothers giving birth later in life apparently lead to complexities’ during childbirth, which makes surgical intervention needed.
Women who have them have been dubbed ‘too posh to push’.
Well, if being ‘too posh to push’ means having a safe and peaceful birth, then every woman should have the right not to push. Giving birth is traumatic enough without being told we are ‘doing it wrong’.