Cas's birth stories are available here, on the Natural Parenting forums and her last birth story was published in the Birth Matters Journal. Warning: Might be Too Much Info for some!

There are certain events that stay with you for a lifetime. The day I found out I was going to be a mum was one of the happiest of my entire life. It also happened to be the day before my final statistics exam at university and there was no way I could study after discovering that little pink line. My eyes were transfixed on the test strip before me. Little did I know just how much being a mum would change me; little did my partner and I know the journey that was about to unfold. The following is an account of that journey. We hope that our children will grow up knowing just what special gifts they are and what they have given to us just by existing and what they have given to many other mummies, daddies and babies around the world.

Liam's Birth Story

Liam Benjamin McCullough was born on February 16th, 2000. Although it was now five years ago, to me his birth seems like it was yesterday. I walked into my first pregnancy fully trusting my obstetrician (OB) and the medical approach to managing pregnancy and childbirth. Like many women, I expected that my OB would build a relationship with us and believed that she would help me through my moments of self-doubt and be there for me during labour.

Wayne (my husband) and I thought we did all the right things. We went to hospital-based antenatal classes and read books like "What to expect when expecting". However, we were both pretty naïve about the whole experience. My pregnancy had been difficult from the outset. I lost about 10kg due to morning sickness that lasted the whole nine months, had high blood pressure, and pubic symphysis dysfunction (PSD: a painful inflammation of the pubic ligament which stretches in preparation for birth) and of course there was a lot of fear there as all I heard were other women’s horror stories.

Nine days before my due date, I sat in my OB’s office in tears because of the PSD pain and the endless bouts of vomiting. Needless to say I was completely fed up so she decided to "put me out of my misery" and induce my baby the next day due to borderline pre-eclampsia. I know she meant well and did what she felt needed to be done but that seemingly innocuous decision proved to be a butterfly that flapped its wings and caused a tidal wave of destruction on the other side of my baby’s birth. Having the benefit of hindsight and having done a great deal of research on pre-eclampsia since then, I don’t believe she fully informed me of the risks of early induction, nor do I feel other options were adequately explored—especially since the diagnosis of pre-eclampsia seemed a tad premature given my blood pressure was only 145/95.

Allow me to tell you what I perceive to be my experience of the day Liam was born. I woke up that morning not being able to pee and was a little concerned but my fears were dismissed by the midwife and OB and they tried to reassure me that the situation would resolve itself (no one offered me a catheter or offered to delay the induction). However it did not and the induction failed…maybe in part due to the bladder distension or maybe because it was just too early to induce in my case (research shows that if a baby is not engaged in the pelvis and the cervix is not ripe or dilated at all induction tends not to work and more often than not will lead to a foetal distress and an emergency caesarean).

I was in agony, wondering what on earth was wrong with me. Labour hadn’t started yet so why was I in so much pain? Why couldn’t I cope? The incoordinate contractions took their toll on my confidence and physical strength. The midwife was nowhere to be seen. I was tired before I even began and felt unsupported and unable to cope with the pain which resulted from six hours of continuous overlapping contractions on top of a distended bladder.

When the midwife finally made an appearance I asked for a panadol and before I knew what was going on I was strapped to a CTG (continuous external foetal monitor) monitor, pumped with drugs, flat on my back. My OB checked my dilation and I was fully effaced and about 3cm dilated. I felt good for the first time since the gel pesseries were inserted. Then the OB broke my waters, found fresh meconium (the first poo a baby does when born but if a baby does it inside the womb it can be a sign of distress) and said “this baby doesn’t like labour” (more like, this baby doesn’t like chemical induction drugs). By that stage Liam was in distress; his heartrate had gone up sharply then dropped. An internal monitor was screwed into his tiny head (without my consent or knowledge I might add. I only found out later when the midwife informed me) and in 20 minutes flat I was whisked into a theatre to have a C-Section.

I expected things to go fairly smoothly during the operation even though I was frightened (as most women in my situation would be) but things did not go so smoothly for me. During the C-Section I began to feel pain in my pelvis and when I told the anaesthetist he dismissed my concerns but the pain only got worse. Why did no-one listen to me? I felt the same way in the moments before being wheeled into the operating theatre. Nobody was talking to me, just over me as if I was a body in a bag. I remember my OB and the anaesthetist talking about a ski trip to Colorado. What did that have to do with the birth of my baby? It just didn’t seem right they were being so casual about everything when I was worried my baby was going to die.

The pain was not unmanageable but my anxiety increased because of the powerlessness I felt. You expect pain during labour and accept that it is part of how babies come into this world—safe pain that enables your body to respond as it should, but feeling pain during major surgery is another ball game. After all, it is human instinct to protect yourself and your loved ones from harm so feeling pain during a major operation and being powerless to do anything about it was extremely frightening. And it wasn’t just frightening for me. My husband, who was standing in the background watching the drama unfold, thought he was going to lose us both.

The anaesthetist put me under General Anaesthetic (GA) after Liam was taken out. I did see him briefly before he was whisked away to have a tube stuck down his throat but at the same time I expected to and innately needed to hold him straight away… what was I thinking? I cried out for him but was ignored and I felt like my heart had been ripped out when I realized that noone was going to bring him to me.

The first thing I remember after waking up from the GA was trying to pull the oxygen mask off my face so that I could ask after my baby. It was two hours later and I still hadn’t met my baby. I asked them to bring him to me and after about the 10th request they wheeled him over to me and I was able to hold him and meet him for the first time. He was just beautiful and thankfully okay!

Liam was not ready to be born and he was forced into the world, into the waiting arms of strangers with bright lights, the taste of metal in his mouth, the wasted feeling of drugs in his system, and an absent unconscious mother. We spent those first hours of his life apart and I can never reclaim that time. It is something that I grieve over even though I am thankful for him. If his emergency caesarean was not the result of an untimely cascade of intervention I would probably feel better about it but because I had my doubts about why he went into distress I feel a real sense of loss.

When I awoke from the GA I was made to feel like I was some kind of freak and that I couldn’t handle birth in any form. The midwife who attended the birth said “well that’s never happed before” (feeling pain during the operation) and a couple of days later my OB came and patted me on the hand and said, “not going to have a big family then are we!” It was then the penny dropped. That statement shattered me because more than anything in the world I wanted to have more children. I was one of four children and loved growing up in a big family. Ironically, it was this OB’s insensitivity that led me on my journey to rediscover birth and subsequently to the empowered births of my other two children but I’ll get to that later.

It took so long for me to regain my confidence. I was hurt physically, psychologically and emotionally. After the "birth", thankfully I did manage to bond with Liam through breastfeeding but I didn't feel I could even pick him up without asking someone's permission for a good three days. Then a uterine infection developed and I was very sick for about three weeks after Liam’s birth with a fluctuating temperature and severe abdominal cramps. No amount of cuddles with my newborn babe could take that pain away. Instead it only made me feel more unworthy of motherhood, more isolated. The night we brought him home from hospital I was in tears because I just didn’t think I could cope. No one really wanted to hear about what I had suffered because it is not a mother’s place to complain about the way her children enter this world. I was made to feel it was my lot in life to be a martyr, to sacrifice my own well-being for my child. My baby was alive but I was slowly dying and in the months after Liam’s birth I contemplated suicide many times.

It was mean’t to be the happiest day of my life but the truth is Liam’s birth deeply traumatized me. I was depressed, panic-stricken, hyper-vigilant, racked with guilt, paranoid and anxious. I had palpitations every time I tried to leave the house to do something as simple as go to the post office. Every day I experienced flashbacks of the operation, of me begging for help and being ignored. It took six months for me to seek help and it took 2.5 years for me to really begin to deal with what I had been through.

We moved to the UK when Liam was nearly four months old and when he was six months I was diagnosed with postnatal depression by a community midwife at the clinic I attended in my local area. Thing is, there seemed to be a lot more to what was going on than just depression. I didn’t lie around the house all day and ignore my baby. On the contrary, my house was never cleaner and I paid very careful attention to Liam. However, I started to withdraw from my husband and this just added to my sense of shame and guilt. Needless to say we went through some tough times but we still didn’t really understand what had triggered the things I was suffering, that is until I became pregnant again with my second baby Daniel.... 

Go to Daniel's Birth Story | Adam's Birth Story