Sloane’s Birth Story

From the moment I was pregnant, I knew that I wanted a physiological birth. Not because I wanted to be a hero, prove anything, or earn some kind of social media badge of honor. I wanted it because I am, at my core, a physiologist. I understand and trust the body's innate wisdom, and I wanted to give myself the best possible chance of allowing birth to unfold naturally and physiologically, in the way nature intended. This meant setting my environment up to encourage labour (dim lighting, quiet, cozy, familiar, freedom to move) and trying to limit any circumstances and unnecessary interventions that might start an unwanted cascade of other interventions (frequent cervical exams, constant fetal monitoring, an epidural, frequent interruptions, coached pushing, being immobile).

On Tuesday 30 June, I woke up with the faintest hint of a sore tummy. It was so mild that if I had to rate it, I would have given it a 0.5 out of 10. The night before, Jacques had an upset stomach after a soup we had eaten, so I wasn't sure whether what I was feeling was simply that or the very beginning of labour. It was easy to ignore, and for most of the day I did exactly that.

I went for my usual 3km walk with Litchi. It was one of those beautiful winter mornings that are cold and crisp, but bright. The sky was clear blue, and the winter sun felt warm on our faces. We stopped at the local coffee shop around the corner (the same place I first told Jacques I was pregnant) and sat outside together, enjoying the sunshine before heading home.

The rest of the day felt ordinary. I did a little work, tidied the house, watched a movie, and relaxed. Throughout the day, I occasionally noticed the mild tummy ache returning. At first it seemed to happen every three hours, then every two hours, and then more sporadically. It remained so gentle that I barely paid attention to it.

At around 4 pm that afternoon, I lost my mucus plug. Suddenly, everything felt a little more real. Excited, I phoned my mom straight away. But after reading more about it, I realised that losing a mucus plug can happen days or even weeks before labour begins, so there was no reason for my parents to book flights just yet.

Earlier, a friend had invited me for afternoon tea at a nearby wine farm, but by then I no longer felt comfortable being away from home. She came to visit me instead. Around 4:30 pm, she arrived with her toddler, and we spent the afternoon drinking tea, eating pancakes, chatting, playing with the dogs, and enjoying each other's company.

When she left, Jacques arrived home with an unexpected urge to rearrange the furniture. Looking back, it's hard not to laugh (and roll my eyes) at the timing. Together we completely swapped our lounge and dining room around. I helped carry our ten-seater (heavy!!) dining room table outside and move a couch to the opposite side of the house, and I shifted pot plants, picture frames, and all the little pieces that make our house feel like home. By the end of it, the entire layout of the house had changed. Afterwards, I made dinner, and we sat down to eat.

At around 9 pm that evening, we sat on the couch to watch TV. That's when things began to change. Suddenly, I was having actual contractions.They weren't pleasant, but they were manageable. I could still talk through them and cope comfortably enough, but there was no mistaking that they were happening. I started loosely timing them and noticed they were coming every five minutes, although they were only lasting around thirty seconds each. Still, I wasn't convinced labour had truly begun. We continued watching TV and carried on as normal.

Around 10 pm, we went to bed. We lay chatting for a while, but by 10:45 I realised that sleep wasn't going to happen. Every time I started drifting off, another contraction would arrive and wake me up again. Eventually, I got up and told Jacques that I couldn't stay in bed any longer. I needed to be up and moving. So I left him to sleep and went to the kitchen to straighten my hair. While I was there, he phoned the labour ward to let them know I was having contractions and that they might see us at some point during the morning.

At that stage, neither of us realised how quickly things were about to unfold.

While I was straightening my hair, the contractions continued. They were becoming more noticeable, but I could still carry on with what I was doing. Between contractions, I chatted with my cousins in Australia and New Zealand, who had just woken up and were following the excitement from afar. Their advice was simple: carry on as normal until I could no longer distract myself from the contractions.

I felt exceptionally prepared for my birth. I had spent months gathering everything I thought I might need for a calm, physiological labour. I had a birth comb and a TENS machine. I had battery-operated candles, fairy lights, and a Northern Lights projector to make the room cosy. I had affirmations ready to put on the walls, a carefully curated birth playlist, a hot water bottle, cool face cloths, card games, snacks, hydration, and a diffuser with clary sage oil. I even had a peanut ball packed and ready to go. I’d memorized different positions to labour in and I’d practiced different breathing techniques.

My vision was clear. I would labour peacefully at home for as long as possible, creating a warm, cosy atmosphere. Then, when the time came, I would recreate that same environment in the hospital room, transforming a clinical space into something softer, calmer, and more intimate. I imagined spending hours moving through labour - walking, changing positions, showering, bathing, listening to music, and settling into the rhythm of birth. Jacques even had a 15 page manual to help him support me.

Back in reality, the contractions continued in a pattern that didn't make much sense. They were still coming every five minutes and lasting around thirty seconds. The guideline I had been taught was to go to hospital once contractions were five minutes apart, lasting one minute each, for at least an hour (the 5-1-1 rule). By that standard, I clearly wasn't there yet.

So I carried on. I had still planned to bake a banana bread!

What confused me most was that they seemed to alternate between two patterns. I would have contractions every five minutes lasting thirty seconds, and then suddenly they would come every two minutes but last only twenty seconds. Then the pattern would repeat itself. Five minutes. Two minutes. Five minutes. Two minutes. It felt as though my uterus was practising rather than committing to the real thing.

I tried lying down and resting, but it was too uncomfortable. Lying down made me more aware of the contractions. Then the contractions started coming every minute. Now I was really confused. They still only lasted about thirty seconds, but there was barely any time between them. Around the same time, I felt an overwhelming urge to use the loo and lost more of my mucus plug. I also noticed a pink, watery fluid. I wasn't sure whether it was from my bladder as I’d just done a wee, or amniotic fluid.

I told my cousins what was happening. They immediately suggested that I phone the labour ward. By now, I could no longer stay still during contractions. I found myself instinctively swaying my hips from side to side, leaning over the kitchen counter, to work through each wave as it came.

Part of me still wasn't convinced that this was established labour because the patterns had been so erratic. Everything I had read suggested that contractions should be lasting longer and becoming more intense before it was time to go to hospital. Since they were still only around thirty seconds long, I kept expecting them to last longer or continue for many more hours. I asked ChatGPT and it said my uterus was naive as this was a first labour, and that I must just wait it out and things will intensify in time.

I went to tell Jacques what had been happening. Unlike me, he didn't want to analyse the details. He didn't want to phone the labour ward. He wanted to leave. Even if it turned out to be too early, the hospital was close enough that we could always come home again. There was no harm in getting checked.

By this stage, I needed support through every surge. As each wave came, Jacques would squeeze and rub my lower back and hips while I bent over the bed, swaying from side to side. The movements felt instinctive, as though my body already knew what it needed to do.

We got dressed, loaded our bags into the car, gave the dogs their breakfast at 2am in the morning, and left home.

The Hospital

I remember very little about the drive. There is only one traffic light that I remember stopping at. Beyond that, everything is hazy. I felt as though I had left my body behind. My mind had to go somewhere else entirely in order to cope with the contractions. Being strapped into a seatbelt was unbearable. Every bump in the road felt magnified.

Throughout pregnancy, I had been very clear that I did not want an epidural. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with having one, but because I wanted to protect the physiology of labour as much as possible and an epidural can interfere with that. But, I had given Jacques a code word. If I ever said it, he would know I was serious and needed the epidural. The word was "Guinevere" -  the name of our wedding venue.

On the drive to the hospital, I said the code word. In my mind, I still believed I had another twenty hours of labour ahead of me. My contractions were already coming every minute, and I couldn't imagine sustaining that intensity for an entire day more. There was no recovery time between them. I felt exhausted already, and I couldn't see how I would make it through what I assumed was still the beginning.

When we arrived at the emergency centre, everything happened quickly. The staff ushered us straight through and up to the labour ward. Even then, I apologetically told them, "We might be here prematurely, but I just wanted to get checked."

They explained that they needed to monitor the baby and strapped a band tightly around my belly before asking me to lie on my side. I was immobile. They said they would be back in ten minutes.

They weren't.

Meanwhile, Jacques told a doctor that I wanted an epidural. The doctor assured us that he would be right with us.

He wasn't.

A woman in the room next door was giving birth. I could hear everything. At one point, she screamed, "help me! help me" at the top of her lungs. The fear in her voice filled me with fear of my own. Suddenly, every contraction felt harder. I tried to block out the sounds by covering my ears with my arms while shielding my eyes from the bright lights above me.

With every contraction, Jacques did his best to squeeze my hips and support me, even though I was confined to lying on my side with the monitor strapped around my belly. Every contraction felt like my bones were being crushed. Then I began to feel nauseous. A small bucket appeared beside the bed in case I needed it. I asked again for the epidural.

While we waited for someone to return, another unmistakable sign that labour was progressing arrived. My waters broke. With every contraction, fluid gushed out. It was one of the strangest sensations I have ever experienced. Instinctively, I tried to resist it, to stop it somehow, but my body had completely taken over. No amount of willpower could change what was happening. Labour was unfolding on its own terms.

Eventually, about an hour later, a doctor from the emergency department came upstairs to assess me. She was impersonal and abrupt. She checked my cervix. She was rough, and it hurt. I remember crying out.

I was eight centimetres dilated. The epidural was no longer an option. I burst into tears. The relief I had been counting on had disappeared in a single sentence.

Not long afterwards, my gynaecologist arrived. She examined me again. It was already time to push. My expectations of labour collided with reality. I thought I was arriving early, only to discover I was almost at the end. Thank goodness I didn’t listen to ChatGPT - an hour longer at home and we would have had our baby in the kitchen.

The irony of my birth wasn’t lost on me. After months of preparation, I didn't use a single one of my carefully chosen birth tools. The birth comb stayed packed away. The TENS machine never came out. The fairy lights, candles, affirmations, playlist, diffuser, peanut ball, snacks, and comforts I had spent months preparing never left the bag. There would be no cosy labour space. No dim lighting. No Northern Lights projector. No long hours spent moving between the shower, the bath, and different labour positions.

I was told to climb from one bed to another. It felt like an impossible task as my legs no longer belonged to me. was stripped naked and covered with blue drapes. With every contraction, I was instructed to push. Initially, I was told to take a long inhale followed by an even longer exhale while bearing down. But I wasn't directing my effort effectively, and after a while my gynaecologist changed tactics. She instructed me to take a quick breath, hold it, and push as hard as I could. It worked better. But it was exhausting. I became dizzy. There was barely enough time to recover or catch my breath between contractions before the next one arrived.

At one point, my gynaecologist asked when I had last emptied my bladder. "At home," I replied. During the next contraction, she inserted a catheter and drained it. That was awful.

Through it all, Jacques was incredible.I can't remember exactly what he said, but I remember how it felt. Every word mattered. Every bit of encouragement mattered. He coached me, held me, reassured me, and somehow helped me find strength I didn't know I still had.

With each contraction, he helped pull me into a sit-up position while I braced one foot against my gynaecologist's hip and the other against the midwife's hip.

Then the atmosphere in the room shifted. My gynaecologist told me that the baby was having decelerations between contractions. She would give me two more pushes, but if the baby didn't move down, we would need to intervene to get her out more quickly. This was exactly what I hadn't wanted.

Two more pushes came and went. Nothing changed. Working quickly, my gynaecologist injected a local nerve block. "This is the best I can do for pain relief, honey," she said. During the next contraction, she performed an episiotomy. I felt the sting of the slice. Then she attached a Kiwi vacuum to help guide the baby out. That also hurt a lot.

Several times I felt a huge popping sensation. Each time, a wave of relief flooded through me because I was convinced that her head had finally emerged. But each time, it wasn't her head. The vacuum had simply lost suction and popped off. I felt defeated. She was still not out.

We tried again. I pushed with everything I had left. I groaned. I roared. I gave every last bit of strength to bringing my daughter into the world.

Meanwhile, Jacques had become pale, sweaty, and light-headed enough that he had to lie down on the floor. Even in the middle of labour, I found that funny, but observed him in a “here in body but not in mind” kind of way with peripheral vision.

After a few more pushes, I felt the ring of fire, but also euphoria, as her head came out. Seconds later, the rest of her body followed. And suddenly she was on my chest. I cried. Time moved incredibly fast and impossibly slowly all at once. After eight hours of labour, she was finally here.

Only then did we understand why she had struggled to descend. Her umbilical cord had been wrapped tightly around her ankle twice. The cord had pulled her knee up toward her belly, leaving her leg bent at almost a right angle. She hadn't been able to move down through my pelvis in the way she should have. The same bent leg that had prevented her descent caused significant tearing as she was born. As she emerged, her knee tore through the tissue perpendicular to the episiotomy. My biggest fear going into birth had always been tearing or needing an episiotomy. I had even written in my birth plan that I would prefer to have a caesar than an episiotomy or tear. In the end, I experienced both. And to a significant degree.

Despite all my preparation as a physiologist, birth ultimately reminded me that physiology is not the same as control. My body knew exactly what it was doing. Labour unfolded rapidly. My carefully crafted plan fell away piece by piece. I accepted interventions I hadn't wanted. I experienced outcomes I feared. And yet, underneath all of that, the physiology I wanted to protect was still there - the involuntary gush of my waters, the instinctive swaying, the overwhelming urge to push, the roar that brought my daughter into the world. This story isn't one of a perfect physiological birth. It's the story of surrendering to physiology when it refused to follow the script. 

After months of anticipation, planning, preparing, hoping, worrying, and waiting, my daughter was finally in my arms. Eight hours from the first unmistakable contractions to the moment I held her on my chest. She was here. For almost two hours after her birth, the rest of the world disappeared. I held my warm, wrinkly baby against my chest. I fed her. I kissed her. I studied every tiny feature of her. After everything that had happened, it felt as though time had finally slowed down.

Then I was told that I needed to go to the theatre to repair the damage from the birth. My heart sank. Panic settled quietly into my chest. I don't think anyone knew how frightened I felt. Before I left, the nurses gave me a facecloth bath, and I managed to wee. Blood ran down my legs as I stood. Then it was time.

I was wheeled away from my baby. Away from Jacques. Away from the room where I had just become a mother. They were in an arm chair, skin to skin, getting to know each other.

In theatre, the anaesthetist inserted medication into my drip and placed a mask over my face. He told me to keep my eyes open for as long as I could. I remember trying. And then everything disappeared.

Until it didn't.

At some point during the procedure, I became aware again. My eyes remained closed, but I could hear voices around me. I could hear conversations taking place in the room. More disturbingly, I could feel what was happening. I felt pulling. Pressure. Poking. Stinging. Stitching. I felt my knees twitch in response.

Panic exploded through me. I tried to move. A finger. A hand. An arm. Anything. I tried to speak. I tried to say "help." Nothing happened. My body would not respond. 

One of the worst parts was hearing my gynaecologist talking about me. She was telling everyone how I hadn’t wanted interventions but that she told me she couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t have a third degree tear. “And now look where we are” were her words. I was confused because I had done everything she’d said - the purple pushing, the episiotomy, the vacuum. I felt betrayed.

I could hear the monitor beside me. Beep. Beep. Beep. Then faster. Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. I could feel my heart racing in parallel to the beeps.

I tried to breathe. But something felt terribly wrong. I was intubated, which I only found out afterwards, but to me, in that moment, under the muscle-relaxing sedative, my lungs wouldn’t work. My breathing did nothing. With every inhale it felt like I was taking on water. Or being buried. Every breath became harder to take. I pictured my naked baby on Jacques’ chest where I had left her. After all that I had just gone through and I was going to die on this table, leaving them behind. The fear was absolute. I took my very last breath. And died. At least that’s what it felt like to me.

It was at this point that they had realised I was aware during the procedure and administered additional anaesthetic.

The next thing I remember is waking in recovery. The moment I became conscious, I started crying. Not from physical pain. From remembering. The fear, the helplessness, and the overwhelming certainty I had felt that I was never going to see my family again came rushing back all at once.

A little while later, I was wheeled back to my room. Jacques was there. My daughter was there. For a little while, we tried to settle into our new reality. The three of us. A family. There were feeds and cuddles and nappy changes. Visitors came and went. We marvelled at her tiny fingers and the perfection of her face. On the surface, everything looked exactly as it should. But underneath it all, something had changed. I was carrying an experience that I couldn't make sense of. While I was still trying to process what had happened in theatre, Jacques had already stepped into his role as a fiercely protective father and husband. He wasn't prepared to let it go. Almost immediately, he began asking questions.

What had happened? Why had I been awake? How could I have been conscious and aware during surgery? Why had nobody realised sooner?

Over the following hours and days, there was a steady stream of people coming in and out of our room. Client relations. Risk managers. My gynaecologist. The anaesthetist.

Everyone wanted to talk. Everyone wanted to know what I remembered. Everyone wanted to reassure us. But nobody could explain what had happened. There was no clear answer. No obvious mistake. No satisfying explanation. No accountability. Again and again, we were told that it had never happened before. That it should never have happened. That they didn't know how it had happened. I kept waiting for someone to make sense of it. To connect the pieces. To tell me why I had experienced what I experienced. But that explanation never came. No resolution.

Amid the joy of becoming a mother, I now had to learn how to carry both motherhood and trauma. The birth ended when my daughter was placed on my chest. The trauma began afterwards. Nobody else can understand this part. Everyone could see the labour. Everyone could celebrate the birth. But the most frightening experience of the entire journey happened when I was supposed to be safe, asleep, and beyond the difficult part. There was no visible wound for that fear. No scan that could explain it. No neat answer that could make it disappear. 

Once the questions, meetings, and explanations that weren't really explanations began to fade into the background, we tried to focus on what mattered most. Our daughter. One of the first things we did was unpack the fairy lights I had packed for labour. I never got to use them during her birth, but we hung them in my hospital room instead. At night, they transformed the room. The soft twinkling lights created a little pocket of magic in an otherwise clinical space. Some of my favourite memories from those early days are sitting awake in the darkness, feeding her beneath those tiny lights and staring at the baby we had waited so long to meet.

Jacques' parents came first. My parents arrived later that day. I don't think I have ever seen grandparents so completely besotted. They fell in love with her instantly. Every tiny movement, every stretch, every yawn was met with sheer joy. For three days, we lived in a newborn bubble. And then it was time to go home.

At Home

Leaving the hospital felt monumental. We walked in as two people. We left as three. It was the very first time she would see the sky, hear the traffic, and drive in a car.

But once we were home, reality arrived quickly. Postpartum was hard. Much harder than I had anticipated. It wasn't simply a matter of bringing a baby home and adjusting to a new routine. I was recovering from surgery. I was caring for significant wounds. I was managing pain. I was taking medication. I was learning how to breastfeed. I was functioning on very little sleep. And at the same time, I was trying to process everything that had happened.

Perhaps most importantly, I was trying to protect something precious. I didn't want 1 July to become the day of the theatre experience. I didn't want it to become the day of fear. The day I thought I might die. I wanted it to remain the day I met my daughter. The day I became a mother.

The first week brought a different challenge entirely. Anxiety. Not about myself. About her. The responsibility of keeping such a tiny, fragile human alive felt overwhelming. When people told me to sleep when the baby slept, I couldn't. Every time I lay down, my mind found a new danger. What if she suffocated beneath a blanket? What if her clothing covered her face? What if she rolled into a position where she couldn't breathe? What if something happened while I was asleep?

So instead of sleeping, I watched. Hour after hour. Night after night. I lay awake staring at her, listening for every breath, checking every movement, making sure she was still safe. Eventually, after making a few changes to her sleep environment, her clothing, and her cot setup, I started to relax. Not completely. But enough. Enough to close my eyes. Enough to trust that she was safe. Enough to begin finding my footing in this new role.

Motherhood, I was learning, wasn't something that arrived all at once. It was something you grew into, one sleepless night at a time.

My story is about coexistence. Joy and fear. Gratitude and grief. Wonder and disappointment. My daughter's birth is the happiest moment of my life but also the most frightening. Neither cancels out the other. Both are true.

Although my story is one of trauma, it is also one of tenderness.

The winter walk with Litchi.

Tea and pancakes with my friend.

Moving furniture while unknowingly in labour.

My code word "Guinevere."

Jacques coaching me through contractions.

The fairy lights in my room.

Grandparents falling in love with their granddaughter.

Watching my baby breathe through the night.

These details are what give my story its heart.

The trauma is part of the story, but it isn't my whole story.