Partaap Singh’s Birth Story

For the past 9 months I’ve been listening to a lot of birth stories, and now that Partaap Singh is here I can share my birth story as well. Partaap Singh’s due date was December 18, 2019 and this little guy came just a day later and the days since have been flying by.

Now on to the birth story.

On December 18, I had my 40 week midwife appointment and my midwife gave me a membrane sweep making me 2 cm dilated (I was 1 cm dilated at that point). We also scheduled an induction at the hospital for Dec 25 just in case baby still hadn’t come.

I came home after the appointment and went for a walk with Gursheel and both my moms. I live with my mother in law and my parents had just arrived a couple days ago from Vancouver. Their timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I think we walked around for an hour and then after coming home, I continued to pace around the house. I started feeling a lot of pressure and I was sure something was happening, although, I didn’t think it would happen the next day.

That night I went to sleep around 9 pm and I remember waking up to pee around midnight and noticed Gursheel was still awake watching TV. At 2 am on December 19, 2019, I went to the bathroom because I noticed bloody discharge (which is normal after a membrane sweep) and put on a pad in case the amount of blood increased. While in the bathroom I started experiencing diarrhea and really bad lower back pain. I took a shower with hot water and then had a bath right after to help me ease the pain.

I realized soon that the pain I was experiencing was contractions since it would last for a few moments and then stop. So, I woke Gursheel and told him to start timing the contractions. My midwife said to page her when the contractions were lasting 1 minute, but upon timing, I realized mine were only 30 seconds and I didn’t know how I would make it to 1 minute since I was in extreme pain already.

To cope with the pain, I got on all fours and this time, when the contraction came, a gush of water came out as well. Although I was wearing a huge pad, it completely soaked and leaked through. Every time I had a contraction, a gush of green/yellow coloured water would leak out as well.

We called my midwife at 4 am and she came around 5 am to check me. She said I was 2-3 cm dilated but the colour of my water was concerning, meaning the baby had pooped inside of me. She also said I wasn’t quite ready to be admitted to the hospital just yet (I needed to be 4 cm dilated) and I should call her again once my contractions were lasting 1 minute.

The pain was so unbearable for me that I took another bath and when that didn’t work, got on my knees in a downward dog position and tried to get through the pain when the contraction came. I was miserable and I didn’t know how I could make it any longer. Both my moms and Gursheel tried to help me through the pain by telling me to breathe through it, but nothing really worked for me.

Around 9 am Gursheel called the midwife again saying my contractions were now close to 1 minute long and the midwife told us she would meet us at the hospital in an hour. I don’t know how I made it to the hospital, but we did on this cold and snowy day. Somehow I also managed to make it up the elevators and into the labour and delivery unit and got ourselves into a room.

My midwife came around 10 am, checked me and said I was still only 3 cm dilated, but because of the meconium in my water, they would admit me. Relieved, I asked to get the epidural and after hooking me up to the IV and the bands around my stomach to measure the baby’s heart rate and the contractions, the anesthesiologist arrived, gave me the epidural and the pain relief was instantaneous. I was basically back to my normal self.

From around 10 am to 4:47 pm, I went from a 3 cm to a complete 10 cm dilated and was ready to push by 4:50 pm. During this time, I chatted with my moms and drank orange juice, water and apple juice. My biggest regret was drinking orange juice, because as soon as it came time to push, my whole body started to shake and I started to vomit. Apparently this is because orange juice is acidic and it really upset my stomach at the worst time.

I was feeling pretty good overall and pretty motivated to push but every time I pushed, I would puke, which really started to drain me. As I mentioned in my Preparing my body for labour blog post, J-breathing was key and really helped me prepare for the pushing stage of my labour.

Partaap Singh was born at 6:21 pm with the help of a vacuum and the OB on call. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his shoulder, so although I was pushing really hard, the cord was just pulling him back. Because there was meconium in my water, there was a team and paediatrician in the room when he was born and they took him and checked on him as soon as he was born. I delivered my placenta, had a third degree tear, which the OB stitched up and then they pushed on my stomach to get out fluids, which I vaguely recall as being super painful.

Immediately after, I felt completely drained and exhausted and also had a high fever because of all the vomiting. They gave Partaap Singh to me to hold and my midwife and my moms helped me with skin on skin and breastfeeding. Although I was exhausted, it was surreal having our baby in my hands, the baby that we waited 9 months to meet. Partaap Singh was born at 7 lb 13 ounces and 54.5 cm long with black hair, long hands and feet, and just a whole lot of cuteness.

A lot happened after, but this birth story post will get too long if I shared all of that. But we are extremely blessed, grateful and humbled by this experience and having our newborn with us who instantly brought so much joy and happiness.

I hope you all enjoyed reading Partaap Singh’s birth story and I’m planning on being more regular with my blog posts while I’m on my maternity leave. Look out for post-partum and related posts coming soon 🙂