Why We Said No To Visitors at the Hospital

The thing I love about the first few days with a brand new baby in hospital is that it allows the world to stop. For that time in the hospital there is nothing else – nowhere you need to be, nothing you need to do. It is just about you, and your baby, and breastfeeding and bonding and healing. I needed this time so much.

We asked for no visitors at the hospital (with the exception of my firstborn and my parents who brought her). We told people in advance if we had the opportunity to throw it into conversation (this is important if you want to avoid the friendly pop-ins), but we also had to tell people who texted us asking to come. We decided just to be really honest, to not feel guilty and to remember that this time was not about anyone else, and though it may sound selfish, it really was all about us. 

Here’s why not having visitors at the hospital was good for us:

• We really needed the time to get to know our newest family member, to hold her without having to pass her around, to stare at her sleeping face without being distracted by our toddler.
• We needed to rest and sleep during the day. Nine months of pregnancy is exhausting, birth is exhausting and breastfeeding around the clock is exhausting. Did I mention I needed sleep??
• I needed to focus on breastfeeding. It is much easier to establish breastfeeding when you have quiet time alone with your baby, when you can try different positions and work on the latch without having to hold a conversation or have someone watching you. I am a big advocate for breastfeeding anytime, anywhere and I have no problem breastfeeding in front of people. But in those first few days I just needed some time to discover how to do it (this was especially true with my first, but also true with my second as every baby feeds and latches differently).
• The time in hospital is busy. There’s the midwives checking in, breastfeeding, the physio class, hearing test, first bath, immunisations, full newborn check, lactation consultant, professional photos etc. Even without visitors we had very little time to rest!
• The first few days with a newborn are a special time and with your second, it is the only time that the world stops for you, where there is your new baby and nothing else. We’d waited 9 months to meet our little one, I knew others could wait a few more days.

It is likely you wont know what you want until the time comes. With my first I also thought we didn’t want visitors at the hospital, but in the end I was just so thrilled she was here that I couldn’t wait to show her off. But it was different with my first because we had more rest and recovery time at home. This time around as soon as we left the hospital, we were back to a life of toddler chaos. So it was the right decision for us.

I'm inspired by mums who manage to rest properly post birth. I have never managed to do that properly. But if you are looking for tips I love this piece, How to Postpartum Like a Boss: 

"I look at that one week postpartum as a little sacred space that I will never get back. It's a space where, for the most part, it's just that brand new baby and me. And I'm selfish about it. And not sorry. Life will keep plummeting forward rapidly and I wont ever stop it. But I can have a week with a floppy new baby on my chest in my bed and I'll take it. And I'll protect it". 

Exactly, I couldn't say it better! 

Welcome Zara – Our wonderful, intense, didn’t-make-it-to-the-water birth

A week and a half before Zara was born I had 10 hours of contractions. I was sure that I was in labour and that the baby would be born that night. I had been timing the contractions since 4pm and they were coming consistently and getting stronger. At 2am I eventually fell asleep, expecting to wake later and rush to the hospital. Instead I slept till morning and woke feeling completely normal. No baby.

Up until then I had assumed that the birth would be similar to my first – which was a precipitate labour that you can read about here. These contractions made me think that this birth might be quite different and I wondered if I would cope if it was a much longer, slower birth. With my first I had put a lot of things in place to ensure it was a positive one – I organised a doula, hired a TENS machine, had acupuncture, practiced hypno birthing and pressure points with my husband etc. This time I hadn't organised anything, I was just assuming it would be ok, and the 10 hours of contractions made me nervous. We couldn’t afford to do everything we did last time, so out of all of the things I had to choose. I decided to choose a doula as I felt we needed all the support possible and because having a doula last time made us feel so positive about the birth, both in the lead up to it and afterwards. We organised a student doula through the Australian Doula College, which is much less expensive than booking a fully qualified doula. It’s lucky we went for this option because for the second time the doula didn’t actually make it to the birth. Even though she didn’t make it in time I don’t regret having a doula because you never know what type of birth you will have. You just have to plan for the unknowns as best as you can and be prepared for anything.

Knowing my first birth had been so fast and with such little warning I had started staying close to Box Hill Hospital at 37 weeks. This was not something I did with our first baby, as I had assumed that labour would start slow and gently and give me enough time to get home from wherever I was. Staying close to home, made the waiting very real, it made me constantly think that our baby could be close. But I was feeling great right up until the final day of my pregnancy so I started to think, maybe this bub is still a while away.

The day before I gave birth was our wedding anniversary. It was a sunny day and mum and dad had our eldest daughter. We went to a beautiful nursery café in Warrandyte with a view. We sat outside in the sun and took some time to reflect. We went for a walk along the river. We took photos of my belly and I realised that it was absolutely ready to pop, that it was the hugest belly I have ever seen. We sat by the river and talked about our baby. We prayed for her and wrote letters to her. Sitting with the man I love and doing this brought me a great deal of peace. I very much felt that as a team we were ready to welcome our baby and become a family of four.

Sunday morning was the end of daylight savings so my daughter woke at 5am. When she woke us up I noticed that I was having cramps. This wasn’t unusual for me though, as I had been having cramps / contractions / prelabour on and off for about 5 weeks. They weren’t strong so I didn’t think that anything was happening. I started timing them and realised that, though they weren’t strong, they were coming consistently about five minutes apart. I was still in denial though as my previous contractions had been a false alarm. Still we started getting ready for the hospital just in case – packing the last few things, putting the bags in the car, tidying up the bedroom, bathing our daughter and doing her hair for a party she was going to that afternoon. At 8:20am I messaged our doula and asked her to come. I said I wasn’t sure if it was going to go away or progress but I asked her to come anyway. By 8:50 the contractions were getting stronger and fast. I realised that we weren’t going to have time to finish bathing our daughter. Luckily my dad was there so I quickly asked him to get my daughter out of the bath and dressed and we ran to the car.

I remember getting in the car when I was in labour with my first and how dramatic it had been, how I was screaming and kneeling and holding back her head. This time it was all very easy and calm. We drove to the hospital and I was able to discuss the best place to park with my husband. We found street parking. I jumped out, leaving my husband to park the car, and walked alone into the hospital, up the lift and into the birthing ward. The midwife who greeted me later told me I was so calm that she thought she was going to check me and send me home.

But as soon as I got into the birthing suite the contractions started coming thick and fast. I leaned on the table and swayed my hips to get through them. My husband arrived with our bags. The contractions were ramping up and the pressure was building. I remembered the feeling of pressure from last time. I tried a number of different positions and ended up on all fours on the bed. When I arrived I had told the midwife I wanted a water birth and she had turned the water on. I wanted to get in the bath but it wasn’t full enough. The contractions were so painful that I was now screaming through each one. I was grateful though that the contractions were coming and going so I was getting a break between each one to catch my breath. My first birth had been so fast that I didn’t have contractions, they just rolled on top of each other without a break for an hour and a half. Now that I remember the intensity of the pain of birth, I wonder how I did it with my daughter, how I got through it without the break between contractions. With my first birth I actually blanked out as I was birthing, so I blocked the memory of the pain. This time I was much more aware of it, I was feeling every little bit. I was becoming terrified of the contractions because I felt they were too much for me. As I felt them coming I said 'oh no, oh no, oh no; because I didn't feel I could face it. I felt I had too much pain and no path through, as though the people around me couldn't and wouldn't help me through. I asked for the bath and I asked for gas but I wasn't able to use either.

Looking back this is the time I would have appreciated having our doula with us, who could have made some practical suggestions to get me through, who could have advocated for me, updated me on where things were at, explained what was happening and why.
 
I asked the midwife if she could see the baby’s head. Although you might think it would be obvious whether the head is out or not all I could feel was pain without being able to identify exactly what that pain was. Luckily, the birth was quick, and before long the baby was out (she was born at 9:30, half an hour after we arrived at the hospital). I was so relieved. I had birthed, again, without intervention or any pain relief.

It is often assumed that a quick birth is a good birth and that it makes it easy. I can’t count the number of people who have said how lucky I am. And while I am grateful to have had two quick births, it is true that short labours are characterised by contractions that are continuous or extremely long and intense. In both births I had no options for pain relief, despite experiencing pain that was more intense than I can find words to describe.

I didn’t see it but I was told my daughter was born in the sack. I wish we had got a photo of that but the midwife popped it straight away and my husband was too busy caring for me in that moment. Within seconds she was placed on my chest, naked and wet and messy, and we were covered in warm towels. She was here! 

My husband and I had named her a couple of months earlier – Zara Lethu – a name that means ‘our radiant dawn’. I held her close to me and was overwhelmed that she was here and by just how blessed I am to be the mother of two daughters. I looked at my husband, I remembered the first night I had vomited at a restaurant and suspected I was pregnant nine months earlier – what a journey it had been to becoming a family of four!

I was lucky because I had no tearing or problems with the birth. With my first I had had internal lacerations which took weeks to heal. This time the recovery has been much easier and much quicker. I believe that this is birth how God created it to be – with breaks between the pain, no damage afterwards and a quick / easy recovery. Having not anticipated feeling so good afterwards I was amazed, amazed at how the body can repair itself and how it can bounce back from something as momentous as birth. I personally am in awe of just what a woman’s body can do.

So now my second daughter is here, and I’ve just embarked on the crazy, amazing and no doubt life-changing journey of being a mother of two. Welcome, little one. 

Zara's first photo - moments old.

Baby Nala's Birth Story

I was blessed with a beautiful, natural and quick birth. At 39 weeks I was ready and waiting for our little girl. I was hoping to meet her soon, but preparing that we might have to wait a while as I’d heard first babies often arrive late. But I had little patience. Each day I would wake up and wonder if today was the day we would meet our daughter.

I’d been having practice contractions and cramping for four days. Each time I felt it I felt excited, thinking our little one might be on her way. But I had to check myself, remind myself that people have braxton hicks for weeks and that she could still be a while away. And each time they went away and I was disappointed, but I continued on life as normal.

We had heard that labour can take hours or even days, so we had prepared ourselves for that. We’d spent a lot of time getting ready. For me it was part of the process of mentally preparing. It was also part of not feeling alone despite knowing that I was the only one who could birth my baby. We’d done a birthing class, we’d hired and met with a doula, we’d read all we could about birth, we’d hired a TENS machine, organised a birthing music playlist, prepared snacks and learnt about acupressure techniques we could use for pain relief. We were planning and hoping for a natural water birth. I had finished work two weeks earlier at 37 weeks and was ready for our baby. I’d nested and cleaned the house and stocked the freezer full of food. As strange as it may sound I was excited by the thought of labour. I had no fear. I felt completely ready, prepared and supported.

In fact few times in life have I felt so supported as the final weeks of pregnancy. From a health perspective I was having a good experience with the hospital, I felt well cared for and that I knew what to do if I had concerns. My husband had risen to the challenge of learning how to be a great birth partner. He had invested lots of time in learning about his role, what he could do to guide me through the contractions and he’d even written poems to help remember all the information. Before I became pregnant we didn’t realise that there was so much to learn and learning about pregnancy and birth reminded me that we are on this journey together. I was confident in having him as my birth partner and there was no one I’d prefer to be by my side. I also had the support of Becky, our doula. It was wonderful to feel there was another women, who was specifically and proactively looking out for me and doing things to support. A few weeks before she had sent me a message while I was at work and said ‘I’m just dropping some birthing tea and dvds in your letterbox for you’. This made me feel very cared for. She also came around to our house to discuss the birth. We created a plan of daily activities to ensure I enjoyed the time while waiting for our baby to arrive. For the first time in my life I felt I had someone looking out for my mental health. I appreciated the acknowledgement that waiting is hard. But luckily for us, we didn’t have to wait too long.  

The day before I went into labour, I did yoga, cooked a huge birthday cake, went swimming and had a wonderful spa at the pool. Sunday morning I had texted Becky to let her know that I’d had quite a bit of cramping, the cramps went away though so I thought it was nothing. Sunday evening we went out to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate a few family birthdays. We walked home from the restaurant and went to bed about 11pm.

At approximately 1am I woke suddenly, my body covered in pain, I jumped out of bed, I knew, without a doubt that this was it, this was not a practice, this was the real thing. We had began a journey that would be fast, furious and change our lives forever. We did not ease in to labour, I didn’t know it but I was probably already fully dilated and in transition.

I ran to the toilet and sat there, shaking from cold and covered in pain. I had not expected so much pain so quickly, I doubted myself. I thought, if this is just starting I don’t know if I can do this. I did not know how to position my body. I remembered all the positions we had covered in our birth class, I ran to the bedroom and knelt on the floor and leaned against the bed. It didn’t help. I went to the couch. I lay on my side, I knelt, I squatted, I stood. Nothing helped. There was no way to position my body.

We didn't call Becky straight away as it was the middle of the night and I thought labour was just beginning. I didn’t want to wake her for no reason. I had planned to use water to help with the pain. I ran the bath and jumped in. But couldn’t find a position for myself. I needed my back and my front in the water but I couldn’t sit or lie down. I tried squatting and kneeling on all fours and rolling around to try to get the water to cover me. But the pain was too much and we needed support so we called Becky. The first question she asked was how far apart my contractions were. We had tried to time them, but I could not tell when one ended and another started. They rolled over me constantly, like a powerful hurricane, one after another, non stop. I seemed to have missed the first stage of labour, where contractions build up in timing and intensity. My mind ran through everything we had planned – acupressure, water, heat packs, TENS machine, hypnobirthing etc. But I was well beyond any of these things. Thinking of them seemed like treating an amputated leg with a bandaid. All I could do was scream. My husband was calm and my absolute pillar of strength. He reminded me to breathe in low tones, looked at me closely and showed me how to breathe. I followed his cues. It gave me something to focus on when I had nothing else, it helped.

The pressure was building, I stood up. It felt like I was about to give birth. But this can’t be it, I thought, this has only just started, everyone knows that birthing takes hours. I was in disbelief until I grabbed a mirror to have a look. I could see a head, covered in hair. I felt like the pressure was going to break me open, I thought there was no way I could get to the hospital. I couldn’t move. Yet I didn’t want to birth the baby at home. In a split second we decided to try to make it to the hospital.

It took all my strength to put on some clothes and walk to the car. I climbed in the back seat on my hands and knees. Percy started driving. I was screaming. I could hear him on the phone, but I couldn’t stop screaming, I had no control over it, it was the only thing I could do. I remember looking up and out the window and seeing we were turning out of our street. It felt like it had taken so long just to get to the end of our street. The hospital is very close to our house, yet the drive was taking forever. I imagined for a second getting pulled over by the police and almost laughed. I thought about how much I would scream at them and how ultimately they would be the ones who would be scared. We turned in to the ambulance entrance of emergency at Box Hill hospital. I got out of the car and leaned my hands against the door. I felt our baby was about to be born right there, like there was no way I could make it inside the hospital doors. An ambulance officer was there. He brought me a wheelchair. “I can’t sit down,” I screamed and I started walking towards the entrance.

I walked in to the hospital and from there everything is a bit of a blur. They told us we arrived at 2:11am and she was born at 2:21. Between that time I climbed on a bed, the first one I saw, on all fours. The room was full of people. I didn’t know who they were and I didn’t care. I couldn’t really hear or see what was going on. I remember my husband was holding my hand. I remember a midwife giving me instructions and me saying “I can’t hear you, speak louder”. I later didn’t recognise the midwife. I don’t remember any pain from this point on, I think I’ve blocked it out. Like a traumatic event, my memory of the actual birth is mostly missing. I don’t remember the first moment that I saw our little girl or when she was placed on my chest, I wish I could remember that second. I know my husband cut the umbilical cord. And the midwife said she was going to give me an injection to birth the placenta. “No, I’ll birth it myself,” I said. And I am so glad that I did. The whole birth had been completely natural and drug free. I had birthed our baby, she was here, I could do anything. I certainly could birth my placenta.

I was wheeled away to the birthing suite, our baby girl on my chest. In the birthing suite Becky arrived. She had come as quickly as she could, but she couldn’t believe it when they told her I’d already delivered.

We looked at our little princess, lying skin to skin on my chest. Her eyes looked back at us, her fingers felt around my chest. All this time we’d waited for her and she was finally here. All the birth preparation and we didn’t use any of it. The birth was everything I had wanted – natural and drug free, quick, with no complications or interventions and in our baby’s own timing.

“Hello Nala, hello Joy,” said Percy. These were names we had already chosen for our little one, and when we saw her we knew they suited her perfectly. Percy was glowing with pride. Our little princess, our joy and our beauty had joined our family. Our life as parents was about to start. It was incredibly overwhelming. I held her and thought – I’ll never let you go. She is our most beautiful gift, our ultimate pride. Fully formed, beautifully and wonderfully made. It blew my mind to think that a person, so perfect and so complete, had been hiding deep inside me all this time. She was exactly as I had imagined her – perfect and peaceful and bright as a button. Welcome little one. Our darling daughter – Nala Joy.