So, yesterday I had a consultation with an Osteopath about Zeno with a view to him having a course of treatment of cranial osteopathy.   It was offered through my sister who works at the therapy centre, as far as I can gather they offer a sort of pro-bono service to relatives of their employees which is pretty amazing, given the commitment of time involved.

The consultant was very impressive, hugely knowledgeable about labour and birth and also about behavioural issues in children.   He apparently has a wide experience of treating children and is prepared to take the treatment sessions entirely at Zein's pace and said we should look at doing some treatment over a period of a year, and that he isn't promising any kind of cure or anything like that but really thinks he can help Zeno feel better, feel more grounded and calmer.   I am kind of in awe of someone who gives their time and professional skills for free like that when they are also very busy with paying clients.  It's really wonderful and I already appreciate it, without even knowing for sure whether it will be beneficial or not.

The consultation involved discussing my son's present difficulties and his pregnancy and birth history.   The Osteo referred to the birth as traumatic which was a bit upsetting but I think he had a point.   It's not that it didn't occur to me before but having it confirmed by a professional makes it harder to push out of your mind.   I've been thinking and remembering the whole birth experience and I'm not sure how exactly accurate all the details are but I've tried to write it all down here.

I was 31 years old when Zeno was born, and he is my eldest child.    He was due on 8th February but that day came and went without any signs of imminent labour.  In fact at the last ante-natal appointment before the due date the midwife commented that the baby's head was still floating high above the cervix and not 'engaged' into it which is the usual indicator of readiness for birth.  He was also in the occito-posterior position, or back-to-back which is a more descriptive name for it.  For the head to be in the optimum position for travelling down the birth canal, the baby's front should be towards its mother and its back along the outside of the bump, but Zeno was the other way around.   Oh yes, and he was a big baby, they kept telling me with a frown and a purse of the lips, but exactly how big - 8 & a half pounds? 9? 10? - they couldn't say.

On 14th February, which was a Sunday, the first sign that things might be starting to happen was that my (substantial) bump changed shape and looked to me - from above - the shape of a missile or zeppilin.  Later on I started getting contractions, they were very weak to start with and gradually got stronger but unfortunately they were very erratic - they would get quite close together - 3 or 4 minutes - and then tail off and I wouldn't get another one for an hour.   I knew from all the pregnancy magazines and birth stories I'd read that there was no point contacting the midwife at this stage, but was still hopeful that things might speed up overnight or next day.   I didn't lose a whole night's sleep but I didn't sleep well either and got woken up by the contractions a few times.

As far as I remember Monday was a similar story, contractions coming and going of varying length and intensity, sometimes quite close together sometimes miles apart.   It was exciting and scary when I timed the contrations to find they were getting from 5 minutes to 4 minutes to 3 minutes apart, but then I wouldn't have a contraction for half an hour or more and would get disheartened.   And so another broken night passed. 

On the Tuesday I had had enough, the contractions were getting more painful, were sometimes close enough together to at least justify being checked over by a midwife, so I took myself off to hospital.    They hooked me up to a machine and declared me 'not in established labour'.   They wanted to send me home but after I tearfully described my previous two nights of sleep broken by contractions they said they would keep an eye on me for a few hours.   They gave me pethidine and put me in a room by myself to try and get some sleep, I was drowsy but still feeling the contractions.   After about half an hour a midwife came and said she'd been timing my groans (!) and the contractions seemed quite regular and about 3-5 minutes apart so she hooked me up to a machine again and somehow the contractions tailed off to little or nothing yet again.

I was sent home as it was decided that established labour was still some way off.   There is a sort of impatience about midwives when women are in the very early stages of labour and having what feel like quite painful contractions but which of course are nothing compared with the full-blown contractions of the late stages of labour.   I think it was particularly annoying in my case because they weren't taking into account how confused and anxious I was about the stopping and starting of the contractions.  Anyway I felt patronised and dismissed.   I would almost say humiliated.

Tuesday night I got less sleep than the previous two nights, I think due as much to anxiety as the still erratic contractions, wildly varying in timing and intensity but as far as I remember not really getting that close together at all.   Wednesday was the same story during the day, but at night the contractions got really strong, I got no sleep at all as I tried to 'walk through' the contractions but was frequently brought to my knees, literally, where I would occasionally doze off at the tail end of a contraction with my head on a chair.  I was still timing the contractions and happy that things were speeding up, but they seemed to be stuck at 2-5 minutes apart with an occasional longer gap, and not getting to consistently 2-3 minutes apart which I knew would be ideal and show some kind of serious progression of labour.   By morning I decided I was going into hospital and not coming out till I had the baby.   It was Thursday by now.

In hospital I was examined and the contractions were monitored for a while, I was asked about pain relief and I said I'd had enough of the pain and wanted an epidural.  The anaesthetist was busy but would be with me at some stage, I was told, no rush.   The midwife stayed with me and asked me if I wanted gas and air, which she proceeded to demonstrate.   I had a contraction, or maybe a couple, and used the gas and air and found it a wonderful relief from the pain.   I sat down on the low chair beside the bed and started to fill in the form while the midwife chatted about procedure.   Suddenly I felt another contraction coming and stood up and leaned over the bed (my memory of this is very vivid even though it was 13 years ago).   I breathed in the gas and air.  The midwife paused in her chat and waited for the contraction to pass, we both waited, me breathing and grimacing and taking some more gas and air.....and we waited....she came over and put her hand on my bump, frowning......and still the contraction went on, I was starting to panic a bit because this was something new, something strange and something I had never read about, a contraction going on for more than 2 minutes.....getting to 3 minutes...the gas and air was no longer working even though I was sucking on that mask as if my life depended on it, and suddenly the midwife, who was 6 months pregnant herself, dashed out of the room and ran down the corridor.   I need hardly say this did nothing to soothe my panic but she returned really quickly with a man in surgical clothes who turned out to be the anaesthetist, and an assistant I think. The contraction had subsided at last, and I asked the midwife dazedly (all that gas and air!) "what's happening?" to which the anaesthetist, a horrible loud jolly person, said "YOU'RE HAVING A BABY DARLING" with heavy sarcasm.    And then he started barking instructions at me which were something like "get on the bed - push your spine out as far as you can - press your chin down on your chest - HARD! - and whatever you do "DON'T MOVE".   I understood he was trying to find the spot for the needle to go into my spine, dangerous if it went in the wrong place, so I tried very hard indeed not to move and prayed that a contraction wouldn't start.   This was when my o/h arrived, at the point of maximum chaos and panic.   Ten minutes later I was sitting up in bed, pain-free for the first time in 4 days, just with a strange sensation of cold liquid flowing along my spine.  

Nothing much happened after that, the contractions were shown on a printout from the machine I was hooked up to, and proved to be just as erratic as before.  My o/h passed the time getting high on the gas and air.   I was examined periodically but labour wasn't progressing and I think they were concerned.  

Eventually I think they thought the printouts were showing possible signs of distress in the baby and I was given a consent form to sign for a c/section.   They gave me an oxygen mask "for the baby" they said and then added hastily "nothing to worry about, it's just in case".    I was wheeled into theatre and prepped and my o/h changed into surgical gown and mask and they put a green curtain between me and my bump.   What I remember most vividly is the light, incredibly bright and hot, shining down on my unseen middle.  'Dad' took a peep over the curtain but decided to stay on my side of it.    There was a surprising amount of rummaging and tugging to get the baby out but out he came eventually, strangely quiet, and was immediately taken over to some kind of resuss table to be thoroughly checked over - I think seconds count in these cases.    But, alhamdulillah, all was fine and he was wrapped and laid down beside me, and 'Dad' held him and whispered the call to prayer in his ear, the athaan for the funeral prayer at the end of his life, a reminder that this life is just a brief moment in our overall existence.   Baby weighed 9 pounds 4 ounces, or 4.2 kilos.

Me and baby were wheeled to the ward, silent and dark now at about 4.45am.   I wished the o/h didn't have to go, or at least could have stayed for a bit longer, but he was ushered out pretty sharpish.  I fell asleep quickly even though I didn't think I could possibly sleep, and was woken at about 7am by the nurses drawing back everyone's curtains and calling out cheerfully (imagine how annoying that is to a person half dead from exhaustion).   It was the high dependency ward at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, still relatively new in 1999 and state of the art.  There were only 4 beds on the ward and we had 2 nurses all to ourselves to hand us our babies and advise about nappy changing.   I didn't appreciate at the time what luxury that was, not until I had the unfortunate experience of giving birth in St. Mary's Paddington.

Zeno latched on beautifully but his blood sugar was low.   He was feeding a lot but apparently not getting much benefit from it.   The midwife checked my supply by squeezing my nipple and the milk shot halfway across the room.  I was too tired to be outraged.   Another midwife came on duty, she made me feel uncomfortable without knowing why exactly.  Visitors came and went.   Zeno's blood sugar was being monitored and it was decided to try and feed him formula, with a little cup, in an effort to try and raise it.  It didn't seem to make much difference so they decided he needed to be fed gastro-intestinally, with tubes through his nose direct to his stomach.  I had to feed him at intervals through the tube, drip drip drip, I can't remember if it was my milk or formula.   The strange midwife took personal offence at me for something I said or did, it was downright weird and unprofessional and unnerved me and made me think of Beverly Allit.    I was so glad when she went off duty and another midwife came on, took one look at the feeding tube and said let's get this sorted and get this off him.   I think she let me feed him normally as well as through the tube - I wonder if I'm remembering that right?   I was pathetically grateful for a sensible and professional person to take charge of us.   He was off the tube feeding within 24 hours and progressing normally, he fed through the night almost and I still wasn't getting any sleep.   I was put onto a different ward as I could now walk unassisted to the toilet and was off the drip.  I asked the nurses at the station outside to take him and let me get some sleep but they refused, they said they could give him a bottle if I wanted?  yes, yes, take him and give him a bottle.   I closed my eyes and went unconscious immediately but they woke me about 20 minutes later putting him back in his cot, wide awake and grizzling.  

At some stage my mother-in-law came to visit us, she had the hump for some reason, she looked my baby over and said nothing much.  Isn't he big, I said, but she refuted that with stories of her babies born with fat hanging over their wrists..   She advised me, through my o/h, to sit cross legged in order to feed.  I tried to explain that I had an abdominal wound and it wasn't possible but apparently she took offence at my rejection of her advice.   I got annoyed because o/h also didn't seem to understand why I couldn't sit up on the bed cross-legged.  

I was in hospital for 3 nights, didn't sleep much while I was there, so by the time I came out on the Monday I could count on the fingers of both hands the number of hours I had slept in the previous week.   At home I took to the double bed and baby fed through the night without disturbing me much, and 'dad' put pillows all around the bed in case baby managed to roll out and at regular intervals came into the room and stood over us fretting and wringing his hands, which he called 'looking after you and the baby all through the night', when I asked him next day to look after the baby for a while and let me sleep on my own.

Zeno continued to feed through the night for the next 2-3 years and demanded constant attention during most of the day, as his daytime sleep consisted of 'power naps' of 10-20 minutes three or four times a day.   So it took me years to catch up on my sleep.   But of course, as most mothers would say - they're worth it, All the sleepless nights, exhaustion and worry are worth it, many times over.

The Osteo listened to the main features of this birth story - of course it wasn't as long as this! and explained that such a long labour isn't good for the baby, due to the head pressing down on the cervix continually and not getting anywhere, and also due to the amount of adreniline in the baby's body for an extended period of time.  The three plates of the skull will often overlap as the baby attempts to engage with the cervix and a prolonged period of this might cause problems.  that's about as much as I understood from the Osteo's advice.   I'm hoping to learn more in the coming sessions and I'm really hoping that Zeno will enjoy the experience and benefit from it, insha'Allah; he has already agreed to come along and meet the Osteo and see what cranial osteopathy is all about.