Anne-Catherine, 32, remembers

My pregnancy was very smooth and I felt extremely relaxed, which must have been the hormones. At 34 weeks, my nesting instinct grew strong. I cooked and froze a range of meals; I tidied the entire house. My husband, David, was a little scared to find me cleaning shoes at 11pm. Mentally, I was not ready to give birth; I was so happy with the baby safe inside. Everyone kept telling me how first babies come later than the due date, so I decided to organise activities into the last few weeks of pregnancy.

I’d always wanted a vaginal birth. It’s scary to hear how painful birth is but I think it’s natural and women have done it for centuries; if my mother went through it, so could I. Furthermore, I trusted my gynae 100 percent; the only thing I could do was to be positive, confident and relaxed.

The beginning of the end...
At 37 weeks, a Thursday, I lost water throughout the day. My best friend had experienced something similar but when she went to hospital she was told that she was peeing on herself, so David laughed and told me I was just incontinent. I looked it up in a pregnancy book and I wasn’t too worried. That evening, we had a braai. I felt a strange kick, ran to the bathroom and suddenly felt something like a period pain. I’d had painful Braxton Hicks contractions earlier so I thought it was just that. I didn’t realise that my labour had started.

That night, David slept in another room; he was tired of waking up every time I went to the bathroom. My contractions started to intensify and by 1am I woke him up. He told me to go back to sleep and take some paracetamol.
I started to practice some positions I’d learned at prenatal yoga. They really helped to relieve the pain. I asked David to finish packing my suitcase; fortunately, I’d prepared a list with all the missing items to pack at the end. David had read that the contractions had to be regular before heading to the hospital, so we timed them; they were still irregular. But I begged him to call the hospital and, when they heard me shouting in the background, they recommended we go in.

Not incontinent - in labour!
The journey from the City Bowl in Cape Town to Vincent Pallotti Hospital at 3am was the worst of my life. Fortunately, I was admitted immediately and an examination revealed that my waters had broken; I was not incontinent! But I was also shocked to discover that I was already 5cm dilated. I took a bath, which helped to relieve the pain, and tried to breathe deeply and regularly. Apparently, I woke the whole floor up, shouting while I breathed out, and scared the poor woman in the room next door who was only 1cm dilated.

I was not sure if I wanted an epidural – during contractions I asked for it but in between them I was fine. But by the time I was 9cm, I decided to have the epidural. The baby was still high up and my gynae recommended it. I was exhausted and it was still going to be some time. It took a while for the anaesthetist to arrive but eventually I had a very light epidural; I felt great and could even move my legs. I read a magazine and ate some chocolate to get my energy back. It was bliss.

Last chance to push...
I was well but the baby was showing signs of distress; the heartbeat was not regular. My gynae looked worried. She was running between me and another birth next door. She gave us two hours to see if there was any improvement. Fortunately, after two hours, a lot of vomiting (the chocolate…) and a lot of moving around like a wild animal (with drips and epidural in tow), the baby seemed more relaxed and the pushing started.

This was the most incredible part; I could feel most of it as the epidural was slowly fading. The contractions were very painful but the pushing relieved the pain. David, the midwife and gynae helped me and I felt part of a very concentrated, very focused team. At some point, my gynae said, “This is the push of your life; it’s your last chance.”

You can imagine how I gathered my energy and concentration, and then the baby’s head was suddenly there. From then, everything went quickly; we had a vacuum extraction as the umbilical cord was round the baby’s neck.
It was surreal to feel this blue and red baby on me; a mix of joy, exhaustion and pain. I had both an episiotomy and a tear. The gynae gave me some gas to help with the pain while stitching me up; I was completely drunk and ended up recounting my sexual life to her while David was away with the baby.

I have incredible memories of the birth. The body certainly releases “happy endorphins” and gives you a certain perception of reality. Yes, it is painful but it is different to normal pain; I am convinced that it is the way you look and feel about the whole experience that makes it so positive (or negative!). Trust in your doctor, understand and accept that you don’t have the control and live this moment to the utmost.

David, 34, remembers

April 3 dawned another sunny autumn day in Cape Town. I’d postponed a work trip that would have seen me out of the country until the 5th and was enjoying spending a few weeks at home. Anne-Catherine was 37 weeks pregnant and that morning we’d been in to see our gynaecologist for a scan and routine check-up. All was well and we’d discussed our “birth plan” – which was mostly to trust our gynae’s decision-making – but she couldn’t tell us how much longer we might wait. As she put it jokingly, “You might start labour in the car park on your way out and I wouldn’t be able to tell you in advance!”

Was it the curry?
We went home for a curry my wife had made and that afternoon entertained a couple of friends on our new deck. Anne-Catherine was tired, so our friends left early and we went to bed – me to my new fold-down bed in the nursery, where I’d been sleeping for a week or so, getting some rest while Anne-Catherine was tossing and turning and getting up four or five times a night to go to the bathroom.

At 1.30am, Anne-Catherine came to my room; I was sound asleep and took a little time to come round. “I’m having contractions again, but this time they really hurt,” she said.
“Really? Have you tried moving to the fat sack?” I asked, referring to the large beanbag that had given some relief from the painful Braxton Hicks that she had been experiencing on and off for a few weeks. Apparently, she’d tried that. Muddled by sleep, I got up and tried to see if I could make her more comfortable, without much success.
“I’ve also been leaking a strange fluid, since around lunchtime,” she said.
“You have? What does it look like?” I said, consulting our numerous pregnancy guides and confusing myself in the process.
“Perhaps you’re just wetting yourself,” I proferred.

Is it false labour?
But the contractions seemed more painful than Braxton Hicks and less regular, so I started to time them. Some were 40 seconds long; some 10 seconds. Some came 10 minutes apart; some two. Back to the book… but searching for “irregular contractions” made me none the wiser.
“It could be false labour,” I ventured, to which Anne-Catherine’s only response was to throw up all over the bed. I thought to ask whether this was maybe her prawn curry but, thinking better of it, suggested that perhaps I phone the hospital, to which she said something rather rude in French.

After many rings and no answer, someone finally came to the phone. I was trying to explain the irregular contractions, diarrhoea and vomiting without much success, when a particularly loud scream came from the far room.
“Is that your wife?” the nurse asked. When I said yes, she stopped asking about contractions and said, “I think you had
better bring her in.”

The car ride was pretty tense, partly because it had taken me another half an hour to pack my bag (Anne-Catherine’s were packed), as well as clean up the vomit and glass that went flying across the room during one of the wilder contractions. By the time we arrived at hospital, the contractions had pretty much stopped altogether. The hospital looked closed, so we wandered over to A&E. Anne-Catherine decided that whatever was going on we were not leaving the hospital without painkillers. We checked in and struggled up to the maternity ward, which looked ominously dark, but we were soon in one of the
labour wards.

Most of all, the nurse who welcomed us was interested in the leaking. She asked me for the pads. What on earth was she on about? So, out came the rubber gloves.
“You’re 5cm dilated,” reported the midwife. I stood there stunned and Anne-Catherine let rip a stream of French which, loosely translated, said, “I told you so, you ****** idiot!”

The nurse and I helped Anne-Catherine into a hot bath; it had not helped much at home but was welcome relief here. I went back down to A&E to “check-in” which, given they weren’t expecting us, took 45 minutes. I tried to use the time productively by phoning my sister-in-law in Belgium (at 4.30am) to ask her advice on an epidural (she is an anaesthetist).

The wild animal look...
Back upstairs, I found Anne-Catherine alone in the bath and not doing too well; her screams had been audible from the reception area and she had a wild animal look in her eye. The nurse and I helped her out of the bath and on to a bed. My last-minute revision had suggested cold compresses; I couldn’t find any towels, so I fished out some clean boxer shorts, damped them down and they seemed to help a little. Meanwhile, the nurse phoned our gynae. We decided that calling the anaesthetist was probably the way to go (as did the woman next door who, at only 1cm dilated, had turned very white when Anne-Catherine started yelling), but the wait for him to arrive seemed to last an age.

Cue plenty of gymnastics on the delivery bed, made harder by the drip we needed to put in ahead of the drugs.
The anaesthetist and our gynae arrived one after another and the situation soon had a more controlled air to it. I can’t speak for Anne-Catherine, but I was greatly relieved. The painkillers worked wonders (once we’d upped the dose slightly) and soon Anne-Catherine had gone from a screaming banshee to sitting up in bed reading a magazine.

The only problem was that our baby, little India, had yet to figure out what was going on. While Anne-Catherine was writhing around in pain, hooked up to a heart monitor and undergoing increasing regular contractions, the little one was sound asleep and hadn’t moved a jot. No “accelerations” we were told, staring anxiously at the baby heart monitor.
The gynae gave us two hours for something to start happening, or we were going to have to revert to a Caesarean. Having made it to nine centimetres dilated before the epidural, Anne-Catherine was not keen at all on backing out now, so we sang to little India, massaged Anne-Catherine’s belly and called in some help from the gynae and her rubber gloves. Something must have worked as finally we saw the little jolts we needed on the heart monitor.

Almost there...
Forty minutes later (it was 7.30am and we had been in the hospital for around four hours) the gynae asked Anne-Catherine to try pushing for the first time. I can honestly say that this is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen; no amount of watching videos can prepare you for it. The concentration and willpower on Anne-Catherine’s face will last long in the memory as she strained and strained for up to a minute at a time. India was still not making life easy so, after a 20-minute break, Anne-Catherine tried again, and this time India responded better but Anne-Catherine was tiring fast. The stirrups came out (she’d been kicking the nurse!) and, eventually, so did the vacuum (ventouse).

We had opted to put our trust in our gynae, so we weren’t about to argue with her decisions. The “last” push came but still India failed to appear, so Anne-Catherine gave it one more supreme effort, with me standing behind her pushing her chin down into her chest to focus the energy downwards. The strain was immense, so much so that the stirrup exploded across the room, and suddenly India’s head was out.

The cord was across her neck but our gynae quickly clamped it off and cut through it; you soon appreciate why they’re trained surgeons. After one last push, the rest of the little body came out. She was immediately picked up, wrapped in a towel and put on Anne-Catherine’s chest, where she screamed with the shock of the bright lights and cold air. What a joyous moment.

A couple of months on, I am still walking around with a wide smile. When I think back to India’s birth, it is with fond memories of the whole experience, despite being largely unprepared. Although I am now a dab hand with a nappy and have learnt to croon the odd lullaby, I am certain that I am still unprepared for what’s to come.
I’m not sure I care though; it’ll be a great ride anyway.