Читать книгу Blooming Birth: How to get the pregnancy and birth you want - Lucy Atkins - Страница 77

For most of us labour quickly becomes a numbers game. Rates of dilation, effacement, station, blood pressure, time, body temperature, contraction counts, fetal heart rates and IV infusions may zip around the room while you’re trying to have productive contractions. Sometimes these stark facts can be reassuring (10 cm! you’re doing brilliantly – you’re ready to push). But most of the time, they’ll just make you anxious and demoralised (only 5 cm – how will you go on?), not to mention distracted from your ‘real’ job.

‘When I found out I was only 5 cm dilated, after what seemed to me hours of really strong contractions, I started to despair,’ says Emily, 34, about her second birth. ‘I couldn’t believe it as I assumed I’d be at 8 or 9 cm by that time. It really shook me. I went on for another hour, but when I was still only at 7 cm, I kind of lost it, mentally. I now think if I hadn’t become so obsessed with how dilated I was and how long it was taking me, I’d have coped much better. I had a fixed idea in my mind of how I should be progressing, and hearing the discouraging numbers dented my confidence.’

The same can be said for your partner. ‘I was reading the electronic fetal monitor print out,’ says James, 29, a first time father. ‘I could see the baby’s heart rate dipping, and I became obsessed by that print out, watching it spew out of the machine – noting every little deviation in the figures. I almost forgot Kat was there.’ If your partner is doing frantic mental arithmetic, one eye on the machine, he is unlikely to be the fully reassuring presence you need.

When I had my first baby I was hooked up, or so it seemed, to every mechanical device available to modern obstetrics. At any given moment I could probably have told you exactly how many minutes I’d been in labour for and the exact dilation, or lack of it, of my cervix. Midwives and doctors came and went, barking stats, checking and rechecking print outs, monitors, IVS. I felt increasingly inhuman and irrelevant and slowly it dawned on me that I’d never be able to push a baby out like this.

When I was having Sam, my second baby, Julia encouraged me (and my midwives supported this) to approach the whole thing differently. I asked to have as few vaginal exams as possible while in labour. I asked not to be told how dilated my cervix was. I didn’t want anything to do with a clock or a watch. I negotiated so that no abstract time restrictions would be placed on how long I could labour for – unless there was a pressing medical reason for them. This allowed me just to get on with giving birth. The whole experience was radically different. The only time I heard a fact was when my midwife told me I was fully dilated and ready to push. Consequently, my confidence that I could give birth to Sam never wavered. The same happened when I gave birth to Ted, my third baby, at home. My midwife Penny knew I didn’t want any ‘interference’. I had no vaginal exams, no sense of time, or progress, and just got Ted out my way (with Penny monitoring his heart rate frequently, and unobtrusively, the whole time).

When Julia had Larson, this strategy really came into its own. She’d agreed in advance with her midwife, Kim, that they wouldn’t ‘talk numbers’. After she’d been in hard labour for a few hours, Kim checked her cervix and reassured her that she was progressing well. I noticed a fleeting look of concern on Kim’s face as she turned to her notes and Julia was clearly in a lot of pain. I peered at what Kim had written – she was only 5 cm dilated. I had assumed Julia must be almost there (10 cm), and began to worry that she’d never make it through the long hours it would take her to dilate another 5 cm. Over the next 20 minutes, and a few massive contractions, Julia’s cervix dilated to 10 cm. Julia says not knowing the numbers was crucial. ‘Regardless of my experiences as a doula and my strong belief that labour happens in its own time, I know I would have succumbed to the pressure if I’d known I was only 5 cm at that point. I was in a lot of pain and I would have felt utterly defeated. Instead, I trusted both my midwife and my husband to keep me safe and I was able to labour without my brain undermining me.’