Birth Story Series: My third birth - 2026, part 3
…continued from part 1 and part 2
As time passed, with one contraction after another, I started to feel like I should be seeing more results for the amount of effort I was putting in! The pushing phase with my first labour had been under 1.5 hours, and less than 30 minutes with my second, so I had kind of expected not more than half an hour or so this time. After a while Haylie suggested I could try moving into a lunge position, and although I didn’t want to initially, after a few minutes I decided to give it a go. I’m glad I did, because it was after that I started to feel his head come through. So we’d obviously just needed a bit of a position change to help him get the alignment he needed to keep moving on down. Birthing the head did take a bit of effort, and although vocalising through contractions with a low moan is typical for me, I don’t tend to verbalise. However, this got intense enough that I do recall letting out the odd “mamma mia!” or “mannaggia!”!
Side note… This is something I find fascinating: despite the fact that English is my first language, while in “labour land” if I have to talk it’s more likely to be in Italian. This makes a lot of sense to me, since that’s the language I use with my husband, and he’s my “safe” person who I can be most vulnerable with. He’s always with me during labour, so any communication is going to be with him in the first instance.
Back to the birth… Typically once the head is born another contraction will follow soon after which will birth the rest of the body. This didn’t happen. Haylie already had her suspicions we might be up against a shoulder dystocia (where baby’s shoulder gets stuck against mum’s pubic bone), having seen the amount of effort I’d been putting in, yet without seeing the progression we might have expected with a third baby. Without the prompt birth of baby’s body, Haylie had me change position a couple of times in the pool, but with no evident change she asked me to get out of the pool and get down on all fours on the floor. This could have been scary for me except that we’d actually run through this exact scenario at her 36 week visit. We’d talked about the type of situations where I might need to get out of the pool, and this was one she’d mentioned. In the case of shoulder dystocia we’d try what we could in the pool, but if it wasn’t successful she’d ask me to get out of the pool and down on all fours. So when she used those exact words with me I wasn’t worried. I hopped out and she reached in and got hold of baby P’s arm which was locked straight down his side. She moved his arm a bit and that was enough to make space for the shoulder to move, and next thing he was out and I was pulling him up to my chest. It was 6:59pm, less than two minutes after I left the pool. An obstetric emergency handled with care, calm, expertise, and in good time.
Baby P’s Apgar score at 1 minute was 6, which definitely indicates that the midwife was right to step in when she did. He picked up very quickly, and by 5 minutes his Apgar score was all the way up to a 9. I could see that his colour was a bit off when he was born, but although he didn’t cry straight away he did let out a grunt which reassured me that his breathing was fine, and then he opened his eyes and looked up at me 🥰.
Writing all this down now it sounds like it could have been pretty scary to experience, but I have to say I felt totally calm the whole way through. The dilation phase had been so manageable, easy even compared to my previous births. I had decent gaps between contractions the whole way through till I started pushing, and with all the tools I had at my disposal I really didn’t find the contractions unbearable. Uncomfortable yes, but I certainly didn’t feel like I was pushed to my limits, as is typical during the final stage of dilation, the “transition” to the pushing stage. The pushing stage was intense. I felt like I put in a lot of work, but I was completely mentally calm throughout. And right through the intervention for the shoulder dystocia, through to seeing my baby, total calmness.
I have no doubt that the mental preparation I’d done went a long way to helping maintain a calm state, but I am also sure that it was largely due to the peace of God surrounding me and his answer to the many prayers being prayed for us. Although we didn’t tell anyone but the midwives when I was in labour, when I looked at my phone later in the evening I saw messages from so many people who “coincidentally” had written to me that afternoon to say they were thinking of and praying for us! It had happened on and off through the final weeks of pregnancy that someone would send a similar message, but not this many all at once! Clearly God laid us on so many people’s hearts and used their prayers for us in an emergency situation which we hadn’t anticipated. God is good!
I stayed kneeling on the floor for several minutes holding our new baby in my arms, with Simo and the and girls gathered around admiring him (as per photo). Then we moved over to the lounge which we’d covered with a drop sheet and an old flannelette sheet, and I lay there with baby. He latched on for a feed pretty quickly, a nice strong suck which triggered more contractions for me. After a while I was feeling uncomfortable enough that I decided I wanted the placenta out. I moved through to the bathroom, carrying baby, and sat on the toilet to push it out. We’d opted to leave the umbilical cord intact until after the placenta was birthed, though of course the cord was white long before. Moving back to the lounge, Miss M was delighted to be allowed to choose one of the crocheted cord ties Haylie had on offer, and chose a cute yellow one with a duckling attached to it. She then had the special job of cutting the cord, with help from Simo and guidance from Haylie. Such a proud big sister!
After birthing the placenta, the midwives checked my perineum to see how things were looking. A bit of swelling, and a couple of grazes, but no tearing! It’s amazing how elastic our bodies are, and the incredible design for birth. A “big baby” with shoulder dystocia, but no significant perineal trauma! They also checked over the placenta to make sure it was all intact, and all appeared to be in order. Simo took baby for some skin-to-skin time while I had a shower. After that, the midwives weighed and measured bub - a robust 4.59kg (10lb 2oz), 54.5cm tall, 38cm head circumference!
It was probably 10 or 10:30pm when Nerinne left, leaving the living area clean and tidy with birth pool emptied and packed away. Haylie stayed a bit longer to do some more obs and chat a little, then left at 11:15pm. And that was my cue to go to bed! Baby P slept for 5.5 hours on his first night - my first time experiencing the so-called “hibernation sleep” that newborns sometimes have, since the girls didn't do that! [I, on the other hand, was so full of adrenaline after the birth that I only slept 1.5 hours!] And so our day, which had started as a normal work day, ended up with us all tucked up in bed at home, including baby P!
It’s hard to wait sometimes during those last weeks of pregnancy, but the wait was worth it for such an amazing spontaneous birth!
[Image credit: Photo by Nerinne Chalmers]