Vegan Birth Stories

Please read our collection of birth stories. If you'd like to submit your own, please submit your story here. Vegan or vegetarian birth stories are welcome.

Lachlan James' Birth Story

I finally have some time to share my birth story with you. I phoned the hospital last Monday morning all set to be told not to bother to come in again, but was told to come in as soon as I was ready. We arrived at the hospital at 8:00am. I was put on an external monitor for 20 mins just to make sure he was ok for the induction. After this my DH and I sat around for 5 hours waiting for the doctor. Apparently this was the first working day of the year and they get a whole new bunch of students and doctors and they were in a meeting all morning (why they didn't tell me to come in at lunch time I don't know!!).

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Finally at 12:45pm the doctor came in and put a drip needle in my hand (just in case). He left the room and said he'd be back in a minute, ha ha. Half an hour later at 1:15pm he came in and finally broke my water. I was told to just walk around and if nothing was happening in two hours they would hook me up to a drip to get the contractions started.

We walked up and down the hallway of the hospital in the lovely hospital gown (yellow) they gave me to wear!! I was having contractions, but they were very mild and about 2-3 minutes apart. I was put back on the monitor just to check on the baby and everything was fine. So we did some more walking around (quite boring actually, we should have taken some cards or something!!). At around 3:00pm the contractions started coming closer together about 1-2 minutes apart and they were getting more intense, but didn't seem to last very long.

At 3:30pm the midwife said she would examine me in an hour to see how I was going! I was thinking, I won't be in labour anymore in an hour! Things progressed further and I started thinking I just want this to be over and I had a small urge to push, but nothing I couldn't handle (for that contraction anyway!!). We pushed the button and a midwife came running in and asked why we had pushed the button (Duh.. I was standing beside the bed grunting with the effort of the contractions!!). I was told to get up on the bed so they could examine me.

The next contraction made me want to push and the midwife kept saying stop pushing. She had examined me and said I was only 6cm. I didn't believe her, I knew what I was feeling. She kept saying to me, get up and get in the shower, have some gas, I really recommend you get up and have a shower if you don't want any pain relief. She told me that she didn't think I was coping very well (yes I know, what a very helpful and supportive person she was, she also smelt of cigarettes, yuck!!) I almost screamed at her to shut up and leave me alone.

And then every thing happened so fast. She was going to examine me again and she said "Oh, there's the head." So by that I assumed it was ok if I pushed again. In three pushes he was born. My beautiful baby boy. Lachlan James born 01/10/00 at 4:15pm weighing 7lb 7oz and 49.5cm long. I had second degree tearing (sounds bad, but was only two small tears about 1cm long each). This birth was entirely different from my other two and it never ceases to amaze me the wonderful gift that giving birth is!! Labour vibes to all of you still waiting. It was over all to soon for me.

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