Beautiful Births #14: Jessica's Placental Abruption & Emergency C-Section

I absolutely love reading birth stories as every experience is so unique, and after sharing my own two very different birth experiences [emergency c-section and natural VBAC] I decided to ask other mums and dads to share their beautiful birth stories with me, too. If you’d like to share your birth story, send me an email or get in touch via Twitter or Facebook.

This week the lovely Jessica from Babi a Fi, is sharing her birth story. She is the only person she knows who didn't have a labour at all, as the doctors discovered her placenta had ruptured after she went in for her scheduled induction.

How old are you?

27 now, but I was 26 at the time.

Is this your first baby? 

Yes.

Was your baby early, overdue, or right on time?  

Overdue. My health board induces at 12 days overdue, so I went in for my scheduled induction on New Year’s Day 2015.

What type of birth did you have?  

An emergency caesarean section. When I arrived at hospital they put me on the monitor to check everything before they decided the ‘plan of attack’ for the induction. As soon as I was hooked up they realised something was wrong and I was rushed straight down to theatre.

Did you use pain relief? 

I was put under general anaesthetic. When I came round it was all over!

Who was present at the birth? 

My mum was going be my birth partner, but she didn’t get chance in the end. She waited in one room, while my partner was taken to wait in another. As soon as Marianna was delivered - thankfully breathing independently - she was carried out to Anthony. The midwife asked if he was going to have some skin to skin with her, but she was covered in thick meconium so he declined the offer...

What did your baby weigh? 

7 pound and 14 ounces. I was so huge we were all sure she would be heavier, but she was very long to make up for it.

Did you have a boy or a girl? 

A girl! They hadn’t been able to tell the gender during my scans, but said it was more likely to be a girl - I was secretly hoping they were right, not least because I spent a fair chunk of the pregnancy looking at cute little baby dresses on the internet.

Was it straightforward or were there any complications? 

Well, it was absolutely nothing like I imagined! As far as I was concerned it was all done and dusted in the blink of an eye. The problem was that the placenta had ruptured; I had to have a few blood transfusions while I was under, while Marianna had swallowed a lot of meconium and been in severe distress. They let my mum and Anthony bottle feed her while I was out though, and they let her stay on the recovery ward with me until I came around and we had had a few photos. 

After that Marianna was taken up to the neo-natal intensive care unit for observation. The following morning she had a fit so spent another week on intensive care, then two more alternating between the high dependency and special care wards being tested for everything known to man before we could take her home. A year on she’s happy, healthy, and fast becoming a boisterous toddler!

What an unusual birth story and how amazing that the doctors were able to detect that something was wrong just in time! Thank you for sharing Jessica, it's lovely to see that Marianna is doing so well a year on.

You can read more beautiful birth stories here.

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