[ozmidwifery] I've had a baby (long)

[Jackie Kitschke]

Dear all, I have been lurking on and off over the last few months with a midwife and consumer view as I have given birth myself to a girl, Ena, on the 19.11.03. Having loosely followed the thread of fetal hearts, Today show etc along with my own experience I have a couple of comments. We had Ena at home and employed the services of the wonderful Roz Donnellan-Fernandez. She came and saw me about 5 times antenatally and would be here for a couple of hours so that even though I didn't see her lots of times (the frequency was my choice) I had plenty of time to convey to her how I felt, what outside factors may influence me etc and my husband Andrew had plenty of time to ask questions etc. We also invited a midwifery student, Jessica, to share our experience and so the four of us welcomed Ena into the world on a stormy evening. I used the lessons taught to me by the many women I have met over the years including telling no-one our due date (handy as we went a week over), restricting visitors till 2 weeks, (handy as we had some postnatal issues), preparing lots of food before hand and taking plenty of time off before hand (well I am an elderly (38) primagravida!!). The birth was the hardest, bestest, most overpowering thing I have ever done and gave us a girl (first one in Andrew's family for 48 years) in our bathroom. We needed to transfer to hospital for Ena which was fortuitous as we discovered her platelets were 20,000 as I have an antibody on my platelets which were destroying hers and my platelets were 50,000 as I have a lupus anti-coagulant on mine (very unusual to have both or even one but it was a week where everything was unusual!!). So it was lucky I had a normal birth as an operative birth would have been dangerous for both of us and as it was a 6 hour ROP labour I am not sure if wouldn't have elected to have pain relief or what heaps of monitoring would have done. I am now at home with a baby who is wondering what all of the fuss was about (there were a few other issues which I won't go into but were all resolved). I used the maternity services as necessity required and my birth experience was great. I am so glad I didn't have to recover from a LUSCS as I was pumping etc as Ena spent some time in the nursery asleep from phenebarb due to some twitching.  I wanted there to be lots of milk for her when she woke up, which there was (not bad considering my Hb was 7.4 due to a retained placenta and PPH) all thanks to the LW staff at the WCH keeping all visitors out, keeping me in LW and having Andrew stay with me. (I was treated like the Queen of Sheba by everyone and I don't know how Ican ever thank all of my friends and colleuges for what they did for us). Watching part of the Today show really angered me as that is not childbirth. Mess in the bathroom, exhilarated mother, exhausted and relieved support people and beautiful, 4.230kgs, caput and moulded head  daughter is childbirth!!!!! Jackie