Welcome, Persephone

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My baby girl, Persephone, was born on 31st October at 3:00pm, weighing 3.3kg’s or 7.3 pounds and measuring 49cm, a nice average size. She’s wonderful and healthy, and when she isn’t pulling the classic grumpy Winston Churchill baby face, she’s very pretty :)

The name we chose is from Greek Mythology, and is pronounced Pur-seff-oh-nee. We’ll probably be calling her Sephy or some other abbreviation, whatever comes naturally over time. The story of Persephone is an interesting one, and we just thought it was a pretty name. Artist Jenny Heidewald found this video for me which tells the tale in a lovely way.

The birth itself was looooong. Ever since my cancer treatments I’ve been fascinated with medical procedures and how things play out, and more than happy to share my experiences. I also like to write these posts as a keepsake for myself as well. So for anyone else who shares that sort of interest, here are the gritty details of the whole birth. Those who aren’t, feel free to skip to the baby photos below ;)

At about 2:30 am on Sunday 30th (Persephone’s actual due date, punctual already!), my waters broke, or technically “membranes ruptured”. The hospital said to come in for a check up and they would probably let us go home again since I hadn’t really started contracting at that stage. At the hospital they explained that the baby’s head was still up really high, not locked into place ready for birth yet, which could cause complications if the umbilical cord got underneath it, so we’d have to stay in.

One of the doctors at that point was keen to set me up on Cyntosin, the artifical hormone that induces labour, at 7am. He also said that with or without cyntosin I had a reasonable chance of a c-section because of the position and circumstances. I had hoped for a normal birth, and some schools of thought tend to believe once labour is induced, further intervention is more likely throughout the birth, so we said we wanted to wait at least a few hours and see if my body started doing the work on it’s own. The doctors and midwives were happy with that, and I did start contracting within those few hours so they let me keep going on my own.

Unfortunately, it was a long process! The baby had turned over to a posterior position (facing upwards), which makes things a lot more uncomfortable. Contractions were strong but irregular all day. They monitored me on and off but there wasn’t much to be done until contractions became regular. By 11pm that night I was already exhausted and they gave me some morphine based drug to let me get some pain relief and sleep, assuring that the drug would be out of my system before the birth.

I got a couple hours of sleep but contractions kept getting stronger. But because they were still irregular, and I was in antenatal care rather than the birthing suite, my progress hadn’t been examined too thoroughly, and the doctors were still talking about inducing again come 7am. The hours leading up to 7am were tough for me and I was dying to just get to the birthing suite for some pain relief, since the antenatal/maternity area I was in didn’t cater for most birth pain relief and it was too late to take more morphine again.

Finally, back in the birth suite and with some nitrous oxide gas to dull the pain a bit, the doctors inspected me, expecting to hook me up for the induction, and found I was already 8cm dialated. That means 2cm away from the point of pushing the baby out! And, the clever little baby had rolled herself back around to face downwards, a much better birth position. So cyntosin/induction was put off again. By about 2pm, phew, I was exhausted again. Nitrous wasn’t doing much for me and I could barely keep my eyes open between contractions, which still weren’t regular! So we called in an epidural to get me through, and they hooked up the cyntosin to get me to the stage of giving birth. I had hoped to go without an epidural, because it means you’re basically stuck lying in bed strung up to drips, etc, and unable to try any more upright and natural birth positions, but since I was on cyntosin anyway, I was already stuck in bed with a drip and monitors on my belly checking the baby’s heartrate and contraction timing. I’m so glad I got the epidural. It was a low dose one, but was enough to cut down the contraction pain, and the pain that had built up between contractions that was leaving me completely worn out. I still had almost all other sensation still, which I didn’t expect, including “sacral nerve” pain, which is like an intense pain on the tail bone from the baby’s head pressing there.

About half an hour after the epidural and cyntosin went on, it was time to start pushing. I was glad to have had that half hour break on the epidural because I felt ready again to keep working! I’m sure the epidural was still helping the pain a bit but it still seemed like I felt all of the actual birth, pushing impulse and all, which is something I worried about (some types of epidural or experiences with it leave women unable to feel the sensation of when they need to push). Still, I found this part of the birth much easier than the hours and hours of contractions. Soon the midwives told me I’d have a baby in one more push, and there she was, a beautiful little girl who clearly handled the whole birth a lot better than I did, lol.

I had hoped, as a lot of mothers probably do, to get through things with less intervention or pain medication, but I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. I think letting my body labour on it’s own up until the final hit of cyntosin helped the actual birth play out better, but you can never really know. Maybe if I’d had the cyntosin the day before I’d have saved a lot of pain and time :)

Persephone fed straight away, and after some cuddles had her check ups there in the room and the midwives were happy about her and my health. We could have stayed in hospital that night, or longer, but we decided to just wait the minimum allowed time (4 hours), and head home before my adrenaline ran out and I really crashed.

Here is Persephone just an hour after birth-

And here she is, home the next day-

We did freak out a little, being completely inexperienced new parents, with a newborn at home that first night. It felt like we had no idea what to do! Luckily Persephone is very well behaved and lets us know what she needs. A midwife was around first thing the next morning for a home visit which was reassuring for all our initial questions, and she was also happy with how we were going. Having the midwife home visits is such an awesome service. As usual, I’m impressed with and grateful for the public health service we have here!

So, that’s the story of how my little girl came into the world. She got her Halloween birthday which I’d hoped for, and also born on the day that the world population was due to hit 7 billion, so I’m totally claiming her as the 7 billionth person! We’re still learning and adjusting to being parents, but me and Dad are very happy and grateful for our healthy girl.

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