Elizabeth Hawthorne

I've attached the birth story of my last baby. I had NOT previously had a caesarian, but during natural labour with my second child, my uterus ruptured and had to be removed. The cause was the syntocinon they used to induce my labour. The hospital told me they hadn't seen a case like mine in 20 years. It happens to 6 in 100 000 women.

Elizabeth Hawthorne's Story.

At 8:20pm on the 3rd of September 2008 my waters broke. I rang the hospital and was told to head to the hospital. After waiting around for Troy we arrived at the hospital at around 11pm.

We were asked to sit in the waiting area and were there for a few hours before I was examined by a doctor. She said that I was barely dilated – maybe 1cm. I was taken to my room in the ward at around 4:30am. Troy went home to sleep. I was having very irregular contractions, maybe one every 20 to 30 minutes and they weren’t very strong. I was offered a sleeping pill but I didn’t want the contractions to stop. I ended up falling asleep and the contractions slowed down. These contractions lasted for two days.

The midwives took my OBS every 4 hours and they used the fetal monitor but I don’t remember how often. I was told that I was booked in to be induced on Friday morning but the birthing suite was too busy and I was pushed back to the afternoon. The day was getting later and I was told that I might have to wait until Saturday morning, but we were called down at 6:30pm on Friday night. At 9pm they started the syntocinon drip.

I was not spoken to about the drug at all. I was unaware of the side effects and was not given any other option. The contractions became stronger and more regular. The midwife was using the fetal monitor and was continually having trouble with the machine. I was having contractions and the machine wasn’t reading them. She even went to another room and got a different machine but continued to have trouble keeping track of mycontractions.

I remember all of the midwives complaining about how the machines never work and that they need to invent a new way of monitoring contractions. A few times the midwives sat beside me with their hand on my stomach for about 10 minutes so that they could monitor the contractions themselves.

At 11:30pm I was given an epidural. Afterwards the midwife checked and found that I was 4cm dilated. I slept for a while until around 1:30am when I started feeling uncomfortable. I began to feel the contractions in my right side. The midwife called the anesthetist but while we were waiting for him the contractions suddenly became very severe.

I was aware that my left side was still numb but the contractions were so strong that it didn’t feel like I was numb at all. The pain was excruciating. I was shaking from head to foot. I kept asking for the anesthetist to fix the epidural but the doctor checked and found that I was 10cm dilated. It was too late to worry about fixing the epidural but they did give me a stronger dosage for the side that was still numb.

At this point I believe the syntocinon drip was turned down. The Doctor said that we needed to get the baby out now. That was the first time I felt worried. While we were waiting for the next contraction the doctor was telling me how important it was that the baby come out in the first push. She said that the baby’s heart rate was dropping. I was feeling very sick and started to throw up. I can’t really remember how many times I pushed, maybe twice, but I remember the doctor saying how good I was and that the baby came out in the first push, at 2:37am.

As she came out I saw that the placenta had come out with her. She didn’t make any sounds or show any sign of life. The doctors immediately took her over to the other table and began pumping her chest and giving her oxygen. I was still throwing up and cried uncontrollably while we watched the doctors’ work on our baby. I can’t remember who told us or when but we were told that the placenta had ruptured and that the baby was born without a heart beat and not breathing.

They said that they got oxygen into her as soon as they could. I can’t remember if her heart was beating before they took her out of the room. Neither Troy nor I got to touch or even really see her before they took her away. Almost immediately after she left the room I was overcome with exhaustion. I could not keep my eyes open. I remember the doctors trying to talk to me and not being able to concentrate on anything they said.

They let me sleep for about 20 minutes and Troy was allowed to go to the nursery to see the baby. While he was gone the doctor came and woke me up to give me stitches for the episiotomy that I didn’t even know I had had.

The second she woke me up I began throwing up. I was having severe stomach pains but I was so exhausted that I slept through the whole thing. I remember the doctor trying to tell me that she needed to give me some medicine in my rectum. I don’t remember it being put in. While in the middle of being extremely tired, I continued to complain of stomach pains. I was told that they could be afterbirth pains but I knew it felt different.

One midwife guessed that I might have strained a muscle. The pains got worse and worse and eventually a few different doctors were called in to examine me. I was sent to have an x-ray and ultrasound at around 11am. Lying down on the bed to have the ultrasound was excruciating.

Afterwards I was allowed to go to the nursery to see my baby for the first time. I was with her for about 10 minutes and then they took me back to the birthing suite. A doctor came in not long after I got back and told me that they saw some blood in the ultrasound and that it could mean 3 different things but most likely it meant that there was a hole in my uterus. She said that I needed to go into surgery to fix the hole and that it would be a quick 40 minute procedure.

She said that in the future I would need to have caesarean births. She made it very clear that the worst case scenario would be that the hole would be too big to repair and that they would have to remove it. I distinctly remember her reassuring me that that would not happen. I wasn’t very worried at all and certainly did not expect to have the outcome that we did.

I was taken into surgery at about 3pm. After surgery they woke me up and I was in the most pain Ihave ever experienced. I couldn’t believe how bad it was. A Doctor came and explained to me that the tear had gone straight through my uterus, cervix and down through the vaginal wall. He said that it was irreparable and had to be taken out completely, in order to save my life.

I was taken to ICU where I saw my mother and Troy. By this time I had been given enough drugs that I wasn’t in pain anymore. I slept there until 5am when they came in to move me because they needed the room. I was taken to a birthing suite where a midwife took care of me. I stayed in that room until Tuesday morning, when I was moved up to my room in the Ward.

As they were moving me, at around 11:30am, somehow one of the drains from my wound had been undone and there was blood all over the bed. I called for a midwife and she reattached them. The second she did this I felt a massive sharp pain and screamed.

Another midwife, Jo, told me that they needed to let the air out of the tubes and they did this very slowly but it was extremely painful. After they were finished I continued to have sharp pains in my right side – about one every 30 to 60 seconds.Each one was painful enough to make me scream. Jo stayed with me the whole time, when she wasn’t trying to get attention from Doctors and pain relief people.

I don’t know how long it took for everyone to get there, but it seemed like forever. Doctor Will came and said that they weren’t sure what was causing the pain and they didn’t want to take the drains out, just incase they would have to put them back in again. He said that we needed to get the pain under control before they made a decision about what to do. Somebody increased my morphine drip. It calmed me down and I was able to focus more, but the pain was still unbearable.

It wasn’t until 6pm that the drain was finally taken out and immediately the pain was gone. I think of that time as being equally, if not more painful than the birth. The next day Lilah was brought to my room and I was allowed to keep her with me for good!

Elizabeth Hawthorne.