First son, 2021:
First time mum, induced at 40+6 weeks
Baby was previously breech, had a successful ECV (procedure to flip baby) at 37+1.
Induction began at 4pm on Friday. We were on the monitoring for nearly 2 hours because baby was being such a wriggly guy.
Once he settled down, we had cervidil inserted and then some further monitoring.
At 10pm I asked for pain relief and a sleeping tablet and was able to sleep for 2 hours before painful cramps woke me up.
I paced the ward for about 4 hours then tried to lie down again for a bit more sleep.
At 05:45 am I heard and felt what seemed like a party popper in my tummy. Turns out that was my waters breaking and 15 minutes, painful contractions began.
I was contracting 2:10 with moderate strength for about 4 hours on the ward before there was finally a bed free in birth suite for us.
We arrived there and were assessed by my obstetrician. To my disappointment, we were only 1cm dilated and baby’s head was still sitting high.
My contractions were ramping up but still somewhat irregular so we started the syntocin drip. This took them to a next level of pain and I got in the shower to cope.
The wireless monitoring kept malfunctioning in the shower so we decided to attach an FSE (monitor in baby’s head).
This was about 4 hours after our last assessment and contractions were regular and strong.
I’ve never been more disappointed to hear the words “cervix unchanged and head still high”.
It was recommended that we get an epidural to give me some relief with the hopes that things would progress. It took an hour to get the epidural working, with me maxing out the doses for it.
Once it started working I felt vaguely human again. The syntocin drip was increased once more.
After a couple of hours, baby’s heartbeat kept dropping scarily low (into the 60s) with each contraction and his baseline was rising (from 140s to 160s).
We ceased the syntocin drip whilst we waited for my obstetrician to review.
Again “unchanged and head high”.
It was at this point that she recommended an emergency C-section. I trusted her judgement completely, however I was feeling so overwhelmed and exhausted by this point that I just cried my eyes out.
Thankfully my mum and husband were really supportive and we chose to proceed.
The process was as gentle as possible and I am so so so grateful to the whole team for making it so.
The drapes were lowered as soon as his head was about to be born, my husband was able to cut the cord, our music was playing, a nurse took amazing photos for us and I had skin to skin as soon as his APGAR scores were done.
We found out that he has an enormous head (37.2cm) and was completely deflexed which explains why he never descended and I never progressed.
So this definitely wasn’t a failed induction, but a case of cephalopelvic disproportion. I’m glad we tried but I am so glad for modern medicine meaning that we have a healthy, happy baby at the end of it all.
