MY LABOUR RUINED OUR LIVES
Laura's delivery left her and her partner traumatised
Laura Fox, 33, Norwich
My partner Karl and I had always said we wanted a large family. And I’d just found out I was expecting again. We already had three boys of our own – Ryan, 15, Callum, 6, and Quinn, 4 – plus four kids from Karl’s previous relationship.
But, by six months, I started getting a lot of pelvic pain. Relying on painkillers and crutches, by 37 weeks I was begging to be induced.
Doctors agreed, so leaving the boys with grandparents, Karl and I went to hospital.
I thought the worst was behind me. Wrong. When labour kicked in, the pain was horrendous. Miles worse than every other time. I was sobbing. Then a pain ripped through me.
‘I feel like my insides are being ripped out!’ I cried. ‘It’s just the baby’s head moving down. Keep pushing,’ the midwife urged.
The room swam as I tried to cope with the pain, then… ‘I can’t find a heartbeat,’ a medic’s voice said.
‘Can’t you do something?’ Karl begged, distraught.
Special care
Doctors decided to give me an episiotomy to speed delivery.
My little boy Jenson was blue when he finally came and was rushed off to be resuscitated. ‘Is he OK?’ I cried.
Then the painkillers kicked in, knocked me out. But when I woke up, the bed and my gown were saturated with blood.
At first, doctors put the blood loss down to labour and the cut, but I was losing urine, too.
‘You’re incontinent,’ the doctor said, after patching me up. ‘It’s down to the trauma your body’s been through. It’ll only be temporary.’
Later that afternoon, Karl wheeled me down to the Special Care Baby Unit and I held Jenson for the first time.
He was 6lb 11oz, so like his big brothers.
‘They’ll adore you,’ I cooed. But, by the next day, he deteriorated. We were told he had necrotising enterocolitis, a bowel condition brought on by lack of oxygen during delivery.
He had an op to remove two-thirds of his bowel and would be fitted with a stoma bag.
‘Jenson is extremely poorly,’ the doctor warned. ‘You need to prepare for the worst.’
After the op, we went to see him.
He looked so frail, covered in tubes. I so wanted to hold him but he was too ill – we weren’t allowed to touch him.
Thankfully,
Jenson grew stronger. But things still weren’t right with me.
As Jenson was recovering from his op, I was taken to theatre to have a camera inserted into my vagina to investigate what’d gone wrong.
Shockingly, it revealed a uterine rupture, a rare but serious childbirth complication.
My uterus had torn and Jenson had slipped into my abdomen.
I had extreme damage
to my cervix, urethra, vagina wall and bladder. They didn’t know what had caused it. ‘To be frank, it’s a mess down there,’ the doctor said.
He said once I’d recovered there were surgeries that could help. But, to be honest, I was more worried about Jenson. I was discharged from hospital at the beginning of February, but visited my baby daily.
I was still incontinent, had to wear thick pads. The moisture made my skin red-raw and I still had pain down below. I tried to live with it, remembering that it was temporary. On my birthday, visiting Jenson at hospital, my consultant came over. ‘We want to admit you,’ he said, ‘We’re not happy with how you’re healing.’ But Jenson wasn’t doing so well, either. His bowel had retracted from his stomach and closed up, so the stoma wasn’t working. He’d need an op to remove more of the dead bowel and some of his colon. Devastating.
I hated to leave him to have treatment myself.
The doctors inserted a catheter into my kidneys. The tubes would drain the urine into bags, giving my genitals time to recover.
I had my op and Jenson had his.
‘He’s still fighting,’ Karl said, rushing between the two of us.
Finally, when he was 36 days old, we brought Jenson home. It was a relief, but I worried how I’d cope with him and the boys, still so ill myself. Karl gave up his mechanic job to help.
My body rejected the catheters. I was incontinent again, had constant skin and urine infections. Worse, though, was the pain.
‘Is there nothing more you can do?’ I begged my consultant.
Last August, I had a hysterectomy and vaginal repair. But, despite a huge scar held together by 27 staples, the repair failed. Fitted with a long-term catheter, I spiralled into depression.
Anti-depressants
‘You’re suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and postnatal depression brought on by the birth,’ my GP explained, prescribing anti-depressants.
It wasn’t just me struggling. Karl had problems, too. He was snappy and not sleeping. ‘You have to get help,’ I said. Eventually he went to see the doctor and was diagnosed with PTSD, too.
This January, I had another op to graft skin from my labia to repair the scars that remained on my bladder.
But a scan a few months later showed a small hole remained.
Now I’m waiting for another op and praying this one works.
Jenson’s 18 months old and Karl has only just returned to work. We’re both still on antidepressants and haven’t been intimate since I was pregnant.
I’m reliant on painkillers, just to get through the day, and I’ve been diagnosed with ME and fibromyalgia, brought on by the trauma of the last year.
I feel terrible saying it, and I love Jenson, but his birth ruined our lives.
I just hope, one day, I’ll get over this. All I want is to be the kind of mum Jenson and my other kids deserve.
It wasn’t just me struggling. Karl had problems, too