----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:34
PM
Subject: [ozmidwifery] I've had a baby
(long)
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