From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I googled and googled and googled trying to find ANYTHING about how my birth may go as a grandma uterus holder or whatever society portrayed it as. Especially any info on someone who’s has multiple kids, multiple (7) miscarriages and haemorrhaged 3 times before. There never seemed to be any info….because people aren’t as insane as me perhaps? But I thought hey, maybe I could help someone else by giving my birth story.
I know not all births are the same, but when you’re dealing with age (I’m 40) the anxiety can be quite high! First piece of advice I can give you. Stop listening to the “statistics” and start listening to your body. Especially if you’ve done this before, your body is an amazing thing and highly recommend hypno-birthing as a great way to start. I made sure my blood count and iron stores were in tip top shape the whole way through just in case I did bleed a bit more than usual. Luckily my little womb nugget only wanted fruit and vegetables so my diet wasn’t much of an issue.
I was so sick of being told how everything would go wrong when I had my last baby, that I avoided anything to do with the hospital and just stuck with my midwife. She always gave me the option of the hospital way but after a lot of thought I always came down to the conclusion that I didn’t want them to put that fear in my head that I knew they would tell me. So I planned for a home birth!
The pregnancy itself was HARD. I’m talking, I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed for the first 3 months. Bless my amazing partner and my mum for taking the household on and dealing with literally everything! Once the worst of the sickness went away I was so tired, like more tired than a Netflix server on a rainy Sunday type of tired. Then the prodromal labor came at around 27 weeks. If you haven’t heard of prodromal labor then I envy you. I hope it doesn’t happen to you! Unfortunately it’s very common when you’ve had multiple births, and seems to start earlier each time!
All the research I had read about advanced maternal age grand multi para, suggested that I was going to either miscarry, have a special needs child, have a still birth, get pre-eclampsia, have multiple children (twins, triplets etc), need to be induced due to a placenta that didn’t work properly, or need a cesarean. Well I can tell you with confidence I had NONE of those. The most exciting thing I had going on was a teeny tiny fibroid which didn’t grow and affected nothing.
So 3 days after my “due date” on Friday the 13th, the last day of school before the Christmas holidays, I stood up out of bed at 6.30 am to go to the toilet and my water broke right there on the floor. So I nervously rung my midwife, who informed me that she had to be at this course for her midwife licence (or something along those lines, I was not really listening to be honest). To which I was like “You’re going to miss my birth AGAIN!” She apologised profusely, (In 2021 my little girl was born 10 minutes before she arrived) and told me her backup midwife was available if I needed someone before 3 when she was finished. But I knew there was no way I’d still be pregnant by then! She wished me luck and I tried to hold myself together.
I went out to the lounge at 7.30 and told the kids that my water had broken and it looks like the baby was coming today. Kissed them all goodbye and my mum drove them to school while my partner stayed home with me. by 8.30 my contractions had become more frequent and I rang the midwife who I had never met before and told her I don’t think I’d be long. She came by 9, she put a line in just in case I did have trouble with bleeding, which was something I had in my birth plan, and we chatted between contractions. She was telling me I am quite hard to read and wasn’t sure how close I was because I was so quiet. But that is honestly the magic of hypno-birthing! 10.30 rolled around quickly and I pushed the baby out in about 3 pushes. So my labour was about 2 hours long and 4 hours from water breaking!
My partner caught him in another gush of amniotic fluid and I thanked God several times that it was over! I bled a little bit more than I liked and this was something I was already nervous about due to a near death experience with number 4, so the midwife gave me tranexamic acid through the line in my arm which I think helped, but she wasn’t concerned and was certain I would have been fine without it. I had skin to skin with my new beautiful little human and breastfed him while I stared in awe at how amazing he was, and how he was now finally in my arms just as perfect as I could have ever hoped for.
I showered and jumped back into bed where I actually rested for several days while my amazing partner and mum took care of the kids and me. And honestly it was the easiest recovery and least dramatic birth I’ve ever had.
The final piece to our family Travis Thomas Marshall-Toon. He weighed in at a whopping 9 pound 3 or 4.2kg He has been an absolute pleasure and the sweetest baby!
I hope this helps anyone who is older and is nervous about having a baby because of what you keep being told. Those things have a higher chance of happening, however they are still low. Take care of your body and your mind and trust your body to do the thing it was made for. ❤
The Great Eight 