That lying B*#%*

So it’s been a while…

Turns out there is life after midwifery. It’s not nearly as interesting, joyful or sad, but it has a lot more sleep in it.

Life is more level now, way less highs and lows and I’m probably a nicer person due to all that sleep. It took months to sort out but now I’m pretty much the proverbial log. The buzz of going to bed knowing you won’t be disturbed hasn’t even got old yet.

I didn’t get fat, but I’ve got a bit boring. My work stories being a potter are just shit. I make some beautiful things and there is reward and calmness in that, but no adrenaline, risk or bloody money.

So to supplement my meagre creative income I’ve been keeping my hand in with the occasional postnatal client as well as being a ‘midwifery angel’ and helping those midwives exhausted from a long haul labour. It’s different, I’m only there a few hours, usually after baby is born, beavering away in the background with the incessant paperwork and tidying up - and the women most likely don’t remember my name.

Except this one woman that inspired me to blog again. Her name for me is ‘that lying bitch’ 🤣

Possibly appropriate.

But I’ll start at the beginning. My old locum and great mate is pregnant again and I have the honour of being her midwife, she’s done this quite a few times now and it’s always fun. Anyway, she was running an induction of labour for a woman with gestational diabetes having her third baby.  This woman’s second birth had been fast and she thought she would be finished by lunchtime. At 3pm she had somewhere to be and couldn’t get out of it, so I was lined up to go and help after baby was born so she could make her appointment.

But at 2pm there was still no baby, the woman - let’s call her Tracey - was acting transitional and it seemed like baby was very close. A vaginal exam showed she was 7cm dilated. So in the normal scheme of things she could be wanting to push in three hours or three minutes. No one knows with a multip (not a first timer), especially when you have mucked around with their labour with the induction drug of synthetic oxytocin.

So having forgotten that the bridge out of my village was closed for two weeks I had to roar around the 20 minute longer detour and assumed that on my arrival Tracy would be holding her baby. My friend would then be hightailing it out the door after I’d made her late. I did have the forethought to get her to send me a handover with all the important details via text that I read at the lights. Right got this.

But no, I walked in mid another vaginal exam. Never a good time to arrive. You can’t back out, you’re needed, but it makes for a hard icebreaker 😬. Tracey didn’t notice me anyway, she was in her own headspace at that point, very much looking like a baby was about to arrive.

But again, no. There had been no change to dilation since the last exam and baby was very high in the pelvis, not applying good pressure on the cervix to open it further. Basically it must not have been in the right position and needed to wriggle around in there. Then things could change instantly. Scans (although we take their estimated weight with a grain of salt) had said that this was a large baby, so that may have been making things harder for the baby to get in position.

So my colleague bailed and would come back as quick as she could. I could see how bad she felt leaving at this intense time, but at that point I don’t think Tracey minded. I introduced myself knowing full well she wouldn’t retain my name in that moment. Her hubby took that opportunity to go grab more ice and have a breather. I really wanted Tracey to move off her back and after the worlds fastest bonding attempt between contractions I suggested a change of position. She emphatically declined, saying all her babies had been born on her back. She had declined any pain relief and was coping well but must have been getting frustrated with the slower than expected progress.

So then just as I went to read all the notes and familiarise myself with her history the doctor walked in wanting the latest scan’s estimated weight - “due to that previous shoulder dystocia”.  SHIT! That would have been good to know and must have got lost in our rapid handover. I didn’t blink, just helped her find the weight and pretended I knew.

A shoulder dystocia is the baby’s shoulders getting stuck and requiring manoeuvres to get baby out. Needless to say midwives don’t like them. It’s an obstetric emergency I have covered in previous blogs. Having had one before means you are more likely to have another one in a subsequent labour.

AND SHE WAS ON HER BACK! Sort of semi reclined on pillows. A dreadful position for maximum size of the pelvic outlet. She had to move.

But she really didn’t want to. And her hubby didn’t want to make her either. It was up to me. Awesome. I wanted her on her knees leaning over the raised back of the bed. It took ten whole minutes to get her there.

They weren’t fun.

Once there she hated it. How to tell her I wanted her even more uncomfortable yet? I wanted her to raise up one leg into the ‘running start’ position (think like a 100m sprinter on the starting blocks).

So I lugged her leg up, feeling my back scream and got her to ride out  a contraction in that position and then swap legs in between each wave. Something had to create space to bring this baby down and this was the best way I knew to avoid a shoulder dystocia.

But she couldn’t maintain it, physically it was too hard as well as out of the norm for her. She thought I was weird. My next thought was maybe a full bladder was getting in the way and keeping the baby high.

It took some cajoling but she eventually believed it might help. I was starting to get uncomfortable with how long things were taking. Usually I can sit on my hands and patiently wait, but waiting didn’t feel right this time.

So the mission to get the 5 metres to the toilet began. She was attached to the baby’s heart rate monitor so that was unplugged at the machine and the cords wound round her neck. I threw away the pulse monitor on her finger and unplugged the hormone drip and fluids from the wall so it went on battery and wheeled it along with us to the loo.

She plonked down with a very heavy flop that must have jarred baby lower as she immediately wanted a poo. A great sign! Often women feel like they want a poo but it’s actually just the sensation of baby’s head getting lower. This time it was both. She proved it by pooing on my hand. Her sounds had changed and I had reached around to check for a head. Sure enough she was crowning. Then my hand got jammed against the loo as she sat back.

Right,well you can’t have the baby in the toilet - I can’t catch it and it’s poor head would go clunk. So she had to get off and FAST!

Tracey doesn’t do fast. Turns out neither does hubby, he was tangled in all the cords and struggling to get where I needed him to be to support Tracey in a standing position against the toilet wall. Meanwhile she was yelling “you f*#* ing tricked me!”

But we made it. Head not quite at the widest point and me in a position to catch, kneeling on the loo floor. One inco sheet as my only equipment.

And that’s when the alarms started. The drip machine was beeping from going flat. The baby warmer wasn’t happy left on standby and the emergency bell for all of delivery suite went off - a high pitched constant beep to keep the other two company. I couldn’t do anything about any of them. Hubby asked if he should push the staff button for help, now this was something I could have really used right then, if only to fetch me some things. But with the emergency bell going I couldn’t really justify asking for some warm towels. So I put on my fake chill voice assuring him we were all sweet. Really I wanted to let out a manic laugh.

I was very conscious that I had no soft padding underneath baby as it slithered toward me. It initially was a slow birth of the head (sometimes a sign of dystocia) so I was pleased we were standing and ‘running start’ would be easy with the toilet to put a leg up on if needed. But it wasn’t, baby’s body slithered out just fine - and I didn’t drop him on the concrete floor. He did poo on me as well though.

Not everyone can achieve two different people’s poo on them in only three minutes.

So I used my one inco to smear that poo all over the toilet floor in a token effort to clean up, then back toward Tracey’s beloved bed the four of us shuffled, dragging all the now silenced machinery. Dropping poo and blood as we went no doubt.

Then the abuse started. Turns out Tracey is quite fun. Apparently I had lied to her about the reason to go to the toilet and always knew she would have a baby in the loo. Well no, but it worked didn’t it! However, not only was I a liar, I was also a sadist getting her in that  f*#%ing frog position and had probably dislocated her hip.

A while later she asked what to do if you can’t feel your legs - after the debacle about everything else I didn’t even engage - “Move them” was all she got in a dry response from me. Poor woman. But we had certainly bonded. Now we were close enough to be brutally honest 🤣

All’s well that ends well.

I asked my friend the next day if Tracey had forgiven me for making her have a baby in the toilet. She said she was all sweet with that part but had warned her that when her own labour started (and I was the midwife) that “she will lie to you and rip your hips out of your sockets”

Maybe not what I will put as a client review.

So now I’ll go back to my limbo land, part time potter / sometimes midwife / wannabe author. I’ve missed you. Wish me luck while I figure this road out!