Renae sent us through her birth story and shared how the Labour TENS machine helped, even if the birth itself didn’t quite go to plan! (Do they ever?)

My birth story went a bit differently than I had imagined or had hoped!  I guess no-one is ever really sure how it will pan out, and sometimes things happen that that you had never even considered 🙂

I was 38 weeks and a few days. One morning after getting out of bed, I noticed I was leaking fluid. I immediately called the hospital and was told to come in.  They checked me and confirmed that the membranes had ruptured. I was advised to come in for induction the following morning. Active labour still had not begun within that 24 hrs, and I was induced around 10:45am on the 8/6/17.

Things were not quite progressing very well, so they called in a specialist to break the sac of water around the baby’s head and not long after that things really started up. The contractions got quite intense and I was only 1 cm dilated! I had my TENS on already, and was going ok with having that as a distraction for at least a couple of hours but eventually the pain was just too much for me. I tried the gas, but it didn’t give me any relief whatsoever, so I made the decision that I wanted an epidural. I had that around 3pm and what a difference that made!

Finally, around 10pm I was dilated to 10 cm, and soon after  my midwife told me I could begin pushing. That lasted another couple of  hours and not much had happened, so they called in a couple of doctors.  They assessed the situation and then discussed things through with each other. A little while later, they said they would need to assist with the baby’s delivery using the vacuum. I was relieved that it wasn’t forceps as my understanding was that I would have to have an episiotomy for those. I was really not wanting to be cut or to tear! BUT, my relief was short-lived, as after a minute or two, what I had dreaded, unfortunately, happened! My baby’s head came too quickly and the result was a 3rd degree tear and a loss of 1.4L of blood :/

That was the yukky part, but I soon forgot all about it, as next thing I knew, our precious daughter was handed over to me and put on my chest!  It was the most AMAZING surreal moment, and took my breath away. She was beautiful, an absolute miracle!

Today she is just over a month old and doing really well.  I’m healing successfully too, much to my relief, it just takes quite some time for things to be back to normal.  Thanks Sweet Beats for my TENS!  I’m still glad I had it!tens baby newborn

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