Birth Centre Arrival

So, Baby Girl has finally arrived. While Boy was born four and a half years ago in a labour ward in Sydney, Girl arrived in the Birth Centre of a hospital in Melbourne – and what a different experience it all was. I won’t put the easier labour (five and a half hours from pre-labour to birth as opposed to around thirty) wholly down to the Birth Centre as I know second babies usually come ‘easier’, but I’m absolutely convinced it played a significant part in reducing my labour time.

The whole Birth Centre approach from start to finish was beautifully relaxed. For every midwife appointment, had to wait no longer than about five or ten minutes (I have nightmarish memories of waiting hours past my appointment time, at times, to see midwifes on the labour ward with Boy). Oh, there were the usual haters: the family members who commented on about how I should have an obstetrician, how I might be putting the baby at risk and so on and so forth. There were also the sceptics who thought the Birth Centre approach of sending patient home within 24 hours after Birth (assuming no complications) was risky and ludicrous.

My reasoning for choosing a Birth Centre was this: I had a low risk pregnancy, my first birth was ‘natural’, though lengthy (I had pethidine and a bit of gas), I detest hospitals, and decided that as was pregnant and not ill, hospital probably wasn’t the best place to be with a newborn baby, I had lots of help at home (Tarzan, Boy, my mother, and my Best Friend, who amazingly agreed to be a Birth Partner along with Tarzan in addition to staying with us for six weeks to help out with Boy and Girl while Tarzan was at work), we live 10 minutes drive from the hospital and the Birth Centre offered 3 home visits with midwives in the weeks after the birth. After exploring my available birth options, the question soon became: why wouldn’t I use the Birth Centre?

Labour onset was at about 3.30pm. After about an hour of semi-denial, with contractions about 8 minutes apart, Tarzan dropped Boy off at his mates house for a sleepover as planned, and BF strapped the TENS machine we’d hired to my back. The TENS machine was an absolute GODSEND. It enabled me to labour at home for 3 hours before going in to the hospital. I used the TENS machine all the way through the labour, using gas in the last hour when the contractions hit really hard. I must confess though, I liked the gas a little too much, with a midwife having to confiscate it when I got so high that I asked where the baby was (the answer, I believe was ‘Ummm...it’s not born yet. Now you have to let go of that gas!’) Girl was born, I believe, about ten minutes after this lengthy negotiation.

With Boy, I remember various midwives continually checking whether or not I was dilating and how much (through internal examinations), constantly hooking me up to monitors and generally having their hands all over me during the labour. With Girl, the Birth Centre midwives were generally just there to catch and check the baby and provide help if I asked for it, which was a welcome change. Basically they said just go with your body: when you feel the urge to push, then push. Girl was born at 9.27pm on October 3, weighing 3.07 kilos (Boy was 3.06) and 48cm long (same as boy), and came out with her mouth wide open waiting for her dinner – just as Boy did...

One of the midwives said to me that birthing a second child can be incredibly healing and I’d definitely agree. After the first birth four years or so ago, I was very clear on what I didn’t want to happen (a long agonising labour), researched pain relief in early labour (hence the TENS machine), and was much more psychologically prepared. During early labour, I kept visualising my son’s first years: the day he learnt to walk, hands held out in front of him like a zombie as he toddled across the polished wooden floor dressed in the silk kimono my brother had just brought back from Thailand, the way he used to scream ‘More please! More please!’ and frantically try and climb back out of his stroller whenever we left a park, even if we’d been there the entire day...I feel excited and privileged that I’ll get all these moment over again with my daughter.