Blooming Birth: How to get the pregnancy and birth you want. Lucy Atkins

sobs my active labour quickly began. Larson was born four hours later.’

      YOUR PARTNER AND LATENT LABOUR | Your partner may leap into a whirling state of anxiety at the first sign that his progeny is on the way. He’s been waiting nine months too. And he’s probably worried about you. He may show this in odd ways. Many men take a sudden interest in mechanics: the camera, the PC, the camcorder, setting the video to record the big match while you’re gone. He may suddenly need to call a relative or mate, balance his online account or pay some bills. Julia has attended many births with very long early labours. In one, the husband sat at the computer the whole time buying and selling stocks. It worked well for this couple, as he was calm and distracted and not bugging his wife, who was happy to get on with her side of things.

      It is important that your partner eats and rests too so that he can be there for you over the course of this birth. If you don’t need him, and he feels that organising his fantasy football team is a necessity at this point, it may be for the best.

       TEN WAYS TO HANDLE LATENT LABOUR

      1 Think in terms of your ‘birth month’ rather than due date (i.e. two weeks, roughly, either side of the due date). This way you will not become obsessed when your labour is ‘supposed’ to start. And remember latent labour can go on for days.

      2 Sleep: you’ll need all the sleep you can get so if you can possibly kip, do so now.

      3 Distract yourself: if sleep isn’t an option listen to music/walk your dog/ bake a cake/watch a movie/make some phone calls/put photos in the album/knit/organise your files and try not to think about what’s ahead: it’ll only make you tense.

      4 If you can’t stop thinking about it, talk to your midwife/birth partner. Go through your birth plan and your list of fears and what you’re going to do about them. (See Chapter 4: Fear and Pain, page and Chapter 7: Expect the Unexpected, page).

      5 Practise your relaxation and visualisation techniques (see Chapter 4, page).

      6 Refuel: eat a healthy protein-filled meal, preferably with whole grains for sustained energy. Julia recommends quinoa – a grain you can buy in health food shops; it’s high protein, quick to make and easy on the tummy (you can eat it like a salad, with chopped tomato and cucumber, and French dressing, or hot, like rice).

      7 Call your female birth partner: for moral support as well as to give her some warning. (See Chapter 9: The Love of a Good Woman for ways a friend, doula or other female companion can help you in labour.)

      8 Before you phone the world to tell them you’re in labour, consider whether you really want your mother barking orders/threatening to call an ambulance for you or friends calling every few hours to see if the baby’s ‘out’ yet.

      9 Let your partner do his own thing if he wants. Encourage him to stay calm and distracted, and to eat and rest. Get him to re-read Chapters 8 & 9 of this book to remind him of his role.

      10 If you are obsessively thinking about the birth, re-read sections of this book that you found the most comforting and relevant.

      Getting going: labour by numbers

      For most of us labour quickly becomes a numbers game. Rates of dilation, effacement, station, blood pressure, time, body temperature, contraction counts, fetal heart rates and IV infusions may zip around the room while you’re trying to have productive contractions. Sometimes these stark facts can be reassuring (10 cm! you’re doing brilliantly – you’re ready to push). But most of the time, they’ll just make you anxious and demoralised (only 5 cm – how will you go on?), not to mention distracted from your ‘real’ job.

      ‘When I found out I was only 5 cm dilated, after what seemed to me hours of really strong contractions, I started to despair,’ says Emily, 34, about her second birth. ‘I couldn’t believe it as I assumed I’d be at 8 or 9 cm by that time. It really shook me. I went on for another hour, but when I was still only at 7 cm, I kind of lost it, mentally. I now think if I hadn’t become so obsessed with how dilated I was and how long it was taking me, I’d have coped much better. I had a fixed idea in my mind of how I should be progressing, and hearing the discouraging numbers dented my confidence.’

      The same can be said for your partner. ‘I was reading the electronic fetal monitor print out,’ says James, 29, a first time father. ‘I could see the baby’s heart rate dipping, and I became obsessed by that print out, watching it spew out of the machine – noting every little deviation in the figures. I almost forgot Kat was there.’ If your partner is doing frantic mental arithmetic, one eye on the machine, he is unlikely to be the fully reassuring presence you need.

      When I had my first baby I was hooked up, or so it seemed, to every mechanical device available to modern obstetrics. At any given moment I could probably have told you exactly how many minutes I’d been in labour for and the exact dilation, or lack of it, of my cervix. Midwives and doctors came and went, barking stats, checking and rechecking print outs, monitors, IVS. I felt increasingly inhuman and irrelevant and slowly it dawned on me that I’d never be able to push a baby out like this.

      When I was having Sam, my second baby, Julia encouraged me (and my midwives supported this) to approach the whole thing differently. I asked to have as few vaginal exams as possible while in labour. I asked not to be told how dilated my cervix was. I didn’t want anything to do with a clock or a watch. I negotiated so that no abstract time restrictions would be placed on how long I could labour for – unless there was a pressing medical reason for them. This allowed me just to get on with giving birth. The whole experience was radically different. The only time I heard a fact was when my midwife told me I was fully dilated and ready to push. Consequently, my confidence that I could give birth to Sam never wavered. The same happened when I gave birth to Ted, my third baby, at home. My midwife Penny knew I didn’t want any ‘interference’. I had no vaginal exams, no sense of time, or progress, and just got Ted out my way (with Penny monitoring his heart rate frequently, and unobtrusively, the whole time).

      When Julia had Larson, this strategy really came into its own. She’d agreed in advance with her midwife, Kim, that they wouldn’t ‘talk numbers’. After she’d been in hard labour for a few hours, Kim checked her cervix and reassured her that she was progressing well. I noticed a fleeting look of concern on Kim’s face as she turned to her notes and Julia was clearly in a lot of pain. I peered at what Kim had written – she was only 5 cm dilated. I had assumed Julia must be almost there (10 cm), and began to worry that she’d never make it through the long hours it would take her to dilate another 5 cm. Over the next 20 minutes, and a few massive contractions, Julia’s cervix dilated to 10 cm. Julia says not knowing the numbers was crucial. ‘Regardless of my experiences as a doula and my strong belief that labour happens in its own time, I know I would have succumbed to the pressure if I’d known I was only 5 cm at that point. I was in a lot of pain and I would have felt utterly defeated. Instead, I trusted both my midwife and my husband to keep me safe and I was able to labour without my brain undermining me.’

      Progress tip:

      Real labours can progress in spurts. Sharon, 28, mother of Joshua (2) and Maria (6 months) says, ‘With Maria I’d been in painful labour for several hours, with regular contractions and when I was told I was only 1 to 2 cm dilated I was distraught… I kept labouring but increasingly I felt that my pain wasn’t being acknowledged. I couldn’t breathe through the contractions anymore. I wanted out. The midwife gave me some pethidene [an injected drug for pain management] to calm me down (I was hyperventilating) then went out to find the doctor. But then I felt I needed to push. She said that was ridiculous as it had only been half an hour since I was 1 to 2 cm but she examined me and could actually see the head. So I pushed and pushed and my baby was born at 10.16 p.m.!!! No extra help, no major tears. My first words this time were “I did it!”’

      Midwife Jenny Smith says, ‘It helps to remember that labour progress is multifactorial – it’s not just about cervical