After 40.5 hours of the latent phase and 13.59 hours of labour Eithne (pronounced Eth-nee) Brianna Helm was born at 4:59am on Saturday 13th October 2007.

My contractions started on Wednesday at 11pm and were strong straight away but very irregular. Neither Michael nor I got any sleep that night or the next 2 nights either. I tried a warm bath but it didn’t really work. I started keeping track of the contractions at 6:37am on Thursday (the midwives really liked this and found it very helpful). They were still very irregular but gaining in strength so I stayed strapped to the tens machine all day. When Michael came home from work around 4pm (he came home early) I had another warm bath. At this point I lost the mucus plug and my contractions started to become a bit more regular.

By 11:00pm the contractions were starting to be quite strong and seemed to be starting to develop a pattern so I rang St Mary’s and they told me to come in. We got to the hospital around 12:30am and I was assessed. At 2am I was only 2 cm dilated but because we had quite a distance to travel and my contractions were quite strong, we were put on the ward to wait it out. We had another sleepless night ahead of us.

By early morning my contractions were coming about every 10 minutes and were a lot stronger. They stayed at this level until about 3:30pm Friday afternoon when all of a sudden they started happening every 2 minutes and were extremely intense. Of course this happened right at a shift change on the ward so it was a bit hectic. They put me on a monitor and my contractions were almost off the chart in strength. The baby’s heart rate decelerated before a contraction instead of during/after so they got me up to the delivery unit and I was kept on the monitor the whole time. Unfortunately, this meant I wasn’t able to get off the bed.

Things kept on as they were – gas and air worked very well for the most part. However, I did need an epidural as I ended up being 6cm dilated and I needed to push. Trying not to push when your body wants to is a very difficult thing to do as I had to wait for the anaesthetist to come and do the epidural. There was a lot of screaming from me and at one point they thought I’d broken the end of the bed as I was pushing my feet against it so hard. My waters broke during one of these horrific contractions. I was like this for 1.5 hours while I waited to have my epidural. Once I got the epidural it was much easier for me to ride out the contractions without pushing. I was more alert and was able to rest.

They had to keep checking the baby’s blood and in the end I had 3 FBS’ (foetal blood samples) done. All of the samples came back perfect.

Eventually around 2am I was fully dilated and given the all clear to push but it wasn’t enough. The baby’s head was down but facing to the side so my pushing wasn’t doing much. They started to become extremely concerned and hooked me up to an oxytocin drip to increase the strength of the contractions. While it did what it was meant to do and I managed to move the baby down more, it wasn’t enough.

The baby was in distress and I was exhausted, so I was prepped for theatre. My epidural was topped up with a super epidural – like a spinal – so I felt nothing. They had me ready for a c-section in case a forceps delivery didn’t work. However, by the time we were ready I had managed a lot of really good and strong pushes and had managed to turn baby the right way. They only needed to use the forceps minimally to get the baby out. I did require a very small episiotomy.

Eithne was delivered onto my tummy and immediately whisked away as she had pooed during delivery and was absolutely covered. They brought her back to us 15 minutes later and she was already making all the right signs indicating she wanted to feed.

There was an issue with delivering the placenta so they had to manually remove the placenta. The doctor kept massaging my tummy and it did come away in one piece.

As I needed to be cleaned up and wasn’t able to feel anything, Michael was taken to the recovery room to wait with Eithne. I wasn’t able to hold Eithne until about 3.5/4 hours after her delivery as I had a reaction to some of the meds I had been given. Once I’d had some food and a drink they gave me Eithne and she immediately latched on and fed for 25 minutes.

We were brought back to the ward shortly after that and were put on the main ward while we waited for me to be able to move again.

Early in the afternoon Eithne was sleeping in her cot when she vomited and began to choke. Michael turned her on her side and picked her up and gave her to me but she kept being sick and choking and was turning blue. I hit the call button and Michael went and grabbed the first midwife he could find. She came and took Eithne away to the resuscitator and called a paediatrician. Unfortunately, it took them a bit to get her to come around and she was taken to SCBU. It was so scary and I can only be thankful we were in the hospital when it happened.

They administered antibiotics straight away in case she had an infection from the meconium and they did a lot of different tests – chest x-rays, ultrasounds of the head, blood tests, abdominal x-rays, ecgs etc – but all of the tests came back fine. Eithne kept being sick so she was nil by mouth for a few days. It was so hard to go and hold her and not be able to feed her. I expressed while I couldn’t feed and was so happy when they told me I could start feeding her again.

While Eithne was in SCBU we had a blessing done for her. I cried through the whole thing.

On Thursday night when I went up to feed Eithne, I was told that if she fed well that time and the next time, they would reduce her fluids by half and if she continued to feed well, they would remove the fluids altogether. By Friday morning, Eithne was no longer on any fluids and she was on a lot less monitors. I was then told that she was well enough to be put into a cot. Eithne hadn’t had any vomiting episodes or breathing episodes within 24 hours. Once she was put in a cot, the nurse asked whether I would like to have Eithne down on the ward with me after rounds if the doctor’s thought she was well enough. Friday afternoon came around and Eithne was discharged from SCBU to the ward. We were well on our way to becoming a family.

I took care of Eithne that night – it was really difficult as she was a bit unsettled with changing from SCBU to the room, but we got through it. Saturday afternoon the registrar came to see Eithne and discharged her completely. We were home by 3:45pm Saturday afternoon and we were more than ready to start life as a family.