SROM Unassisted Childbirth

by Gloria
(Indonesia)

Successful 2nd UBAC birth story,VBAC Jakarta, Indonesia


Dalam bahasa indonesia silakan request ke dcblueskies@gmail.com


I had a successful UBAC (unassisted birth after cesarean) on January 14th 2011, at 12.45 pm Indonesian time.

It was on our 17th wedding anniversary.

I/my uterus gave birth to a baby girl, her name is Sophia Blandine. Later we fixed it into: Madeleine Sophie Blandine.

Now we have 3 boys and a sweet baby girl.

I had SROM (spontaneour rupture of membranes i.e water breaking) on January 12th at 00.30am.

24 hours later, I had great regular contractions until 3am but they were gone after 3.

(Before that there was a contact friend from a UBAC yahoogroups who reminded me that active labour will start after 24 hours of SROM but not always).

Some contacts from the forum suggested to me that I should rest when I told them that I was a kind of worried about the lost contrcations.

I finally let myself rest and had breakfast at 5am.

At 5.30am I felt contractions again, the mild ones.

I went into my bed and took some rest-right side lying.

I let my contact friends' posts strengthen me and HELP me to be a good manager to the great mystery of the DETAILED REAL DUE DATE before me. They told me to relax, rest, bathe, eat, drink and ENJOY instead of to trigger the active labour by walking till I waddled.

One told me that that day could me my day! The phrase I remembered and helped me a lot was from Patti Ramos' blog:

"We know the motion of our true nature by the open embrace and empty surrender and acceptance of everything as it is."
- Julie Sarah Powell.

This phrase was with me during the Walcher Trochanter position I used.

When the contrations got stonger, I started to walk and walk and squat and blow (slow to fast blow) so many times and everything was manageable. Eventually I felt so comfortable. Eventually I knew the exact measures my body needed/to respond the pain from the contractions properly, such as to do lots of side to side rocking, double pressing and blowing and making sexy sounds/moaning, low pitch ones.

I also tried to respond the feedback mechanism from my body by doing the hoola hoop but my body in labor told me it wasn't the right one. It made my tail bone clicking and worsen the pain from the contraction.

I was quite sad because my husband had flu so we couldn't be that close to each other like we had on my first UBAC until I asked him to press my back/double hip pressing and it was soooooo gooood!

At 11.am I checked my cervix with my sterilized fingers (with iodine solution), and I could feel my cervix was asymmetric and something hard inside. I blew (fast blow to more quickly ones) and squatted a lot and had a lot of double back/hip pressures in the bath room.

At 11.45 I agreed with my husband to go back to our room.

I knelt and did the blowing (super fast!) again as I felt my body/uterine doing its job with my baby. This feeling was amazingngngng!

When I could, I got up and I walked again until I felt another intense pressing down inside me.

Then I went back to my room and I knelt again. I asked my husband to close the door and the window.

We were ready for the birth!

I blew and blew as much as I could along with the contractions - my uterus and baby's movement, I felt greattttt cos I was 100% conscious and obviously could feel the uterine working intensely as I blew.

I then moaned deliciously! (My husband told me it turned him on, too bad he had flu lol!)

My husband didn't want me to have a tear in my perineum and or on my portio i had on my first UBAC. By telling me softly, he prudently reminded me not to push when there was no urge to push.

Eventually there was an urge to push and I did a push, the head was out/crowning. I took a deep inhale and I did another long finishing exhaling and moaning 'til my baby was fully born.

My husband was wearing a mask to prevent the flu infection to my baby.

He finally did catch the baby.

My baby cried right away. I didn't use the suction.

I asked my husband whether it was a girl or a boy.

It was too dark for him to see the genitalia.

He told me that it was another baby boy until I lifted my baby up to breastfeed her ... IT IS A BABY GIRL, HONEY!
I whispered it strongly to my husband face to face.

I was very happy to know the great gift God gave to us on our 17th wedding anniversary!

clear crying voice,
black hair,
rose pink complexion.
very feminine look.

I called my family doctor. She asked me whether my baby was blue after almost 36 hours SROM and she was so surprised to hear her crying before I answered her question and she congratulated me: "Your baby's apgar's score is 10!" she shouted by the phone lol! We said a prayer of thanksgiving by phone. My husband almost cried while he was holding the phone in front of me.

I nursed my baby after I found a good position to nurse her for exactly 1 hour long, and I felt a strong contraction. Too bad I didn't experience the breast crawl. I sat down on the floor after the birth on my knees with the cord between my thighs.

Then my husband cut the cord with a pair of sterilized scissors and I went to the bathroom right away.

I sat over a bowl and pushed the placenta out.

A chunk of it splashed into the bowl and the biggest part of it hanging outside my vagina-between my thighs like a ball inside the amniotic sac.

I looked at it carefully and closely because I didn't want to tear it on the blood vessels/to hurt myself inside.

What I saw was a clear hanging torn membrane of it and the rest of red placenta within.

I soon realized that it was retained placenta's membrane.

I was gladdddd, very glad for it wasn't an accreta! (Placenta accreta is when the placenta is very deeply planted in the wall of the uterus.)

So I held the ball like of it and asked my husband to sterilized a pair of scissors again, and then I cut the visible membrane and I got the ball like thing cut from the retained membrane.
Honestly, I laughed briefly when I saw it came out from my cervix like a ball, hanging there between my thighs until I realized that I could've had an accreta.

My perineum was intact, no tear at all. I obviously could feel it when the baby was crowning, it stretched just like that perfectly as my body was ready for the birth.

After that we had a lot things to do. I felt very tired but at the same time the birth was so energizing me just like my first UBAC!

We did the laundry and the announcements, we took care of our two kids and the baby, and of course we couldn't wait to see our big family coming to visit us.

I learnt that:
I had a posterior baby before the birth/during certain timing of the labour,

the evidence of an anterior placenta: from the visible retained piece of placenta's membrane,

a cervical lip during labour, it made my labour take quite a long time to progress into the active labor;

a short cord - that was why my baby was still high during the last trimester and labour and it was quite hard to bring her near to my chest to nurse her.

I also thought that my baby might be born post due date as I saw her looong bent nails and peeled off skin and almost no vernix.

I did the Walcher's as solution for the r.o.p and "high baby".

http://www.spinningbabies.com/techniques/activities-for-fetal-positioning/walchers-trochanter-roll

I learnt that I had a natural, spontaneous, normal labour and birth AGAIN at home AGAIN!


The next day after the birth, we had a visit from two doctors - GPs from a prolife community.

They were following my labour progress from the beginning until the birth of the baby by sms-a lot of worrying sms to my husband considering my SROM - almost 36 hours of SROM.

As doctors, they were very worried about SROM that last for more than 10 hours.

After they saw my healthy baby, they finally agreed that SROM within more than 10 hours is still safe for mom and baby as long as there is no (infectious) insertion into the vagina. They also found it difficult to believe that my perineum is intact. They said episiotomy is a routine in the vk-verlos kamer/delivery room

They led a prayer of thanksgiving with us and took some pictures of us. They intended to share our birth story as a testimony about the goodness of normal birth even after cesarean/s through their FB's account.

Now they know of my 2 successful V/UBACs at home.

Yesterday evening, I finally had no more retained placenta because I breastfed my baby girl as much as she wants. I had contractions every time I breastfed her and it made my uterus easier to let go the rest of retained membrane.

Today, Monday - January 17th 2011, my uterus is getting much smaller than before it expelled the retained placenta, yesterday.

I can do many more things today as my body recover from the labour and the birth activities.

I thank God for you all as well in this hbac, ubac and ican yahoogroups!

Love and love and I apologize for any typos and the bad english.
Thanking you deeply for reading!

dc Gloria,

mother of 4.

1 normal hospital birth - 17 years old teenage.

1 unnecessarean - 4 years old boy.

1 ubac - 1 and a half years old boy.

PS:
not to mentioned the unexpected hilarious things from my little ones (4 years old and 1,5 years old when they were imitating the way I breathed during contractions (",).