The Story of how Evie Primrose Luckett, entered the world..

15/09/2021

Waking up on Wednesday the 14th of July still pregnant had honestly left me feeling very deflated, I was so emotionally & physically drained from the past 9 months of growing this human, I was just so ready to meet her & the added pressure of having a due date that had been and gone, was a lot for me to take in.. I had a routine midwife appointment at 1:00pm, where they performed my second stretch and sweep for the pregnancy before deciding, this little baby was going to need a little more encouragement.. I was booked in for an induction. A balloon catheter was going to be inserted and I would go home overnight, come in the next morning at 6:00am and they would break my waters. I went into hospital, to get my catheter in and a midwife preformed a third stretch and sweep and then decided she had got my cervix to be favourable enough to just break my waters in the morning.. no catheter needed.

Well after my very rough but I guess effective stretch and sweep, I started to have some contractions in the car on the way home, they we’re definitely uncomfortable but not to intense.. I thought to myself, we are booked in to have my waters broken in the morning, I’m sure these pains will die off.. I cooked some chicken enchiladas for dinner (I had been craving them all day!) had a nice shower, organised the last of our stuff, ready to just get up and go in the morning.. and went off to bed. 12:30am I woke to my contractions getting noticeably stronger, I could still breathe through them, but they 4-7 minutes apart and I would rather be safe than sorry.. I rang the hospital & they encouraged me to labour as long as possible at home, and come in if I needed pain relief or for my booked induction in the morning, as no waters had broken.

I waited out the contractions as they gradually got stronger and at 6:00am as planned, we arrived at the hospital (feeling very exhausted, thanks to the 12:30am wake up that we had not been back to sleep since). Jake held me as I went through each contraction on the way up to the birth suite, I was in pain & my body was feeling the effects.. knowing how my last labour progressed, I didn’t expect to be any more dilated.. so I was immediately ready to ask for some form of pain relief, when we got up to birth suite, I was given an examination to determine if my waters had broken, and if not they were going to break them.. and continue to start an induction to get things progressing.

My waters had not broken, so in the most uncomfortably painful process, they were popped. A few contractions later and the pain really started to intensify (remembering, I was already, ready for pain relief when entering the hospital) I was now struggling to breathe through the pain, and with each contraction, my body would tense up and I would scream in pain. I asked for the gas but it made no difference to my pain levels, in fact I couldn’t even breathe through the tube when contracting as I was in so much pain the only way I was coping was by taking really short breaths. After three hours of trying to use the gas to help manage the pain of contractions, I was at breaking point I begged for an epidural, I could no longer deal with this level of pain, I had only dilated to 5cm.. At 11:00am the anaesthetist arrived to give me the epidural,this is the time a student midwife also joined my labour journey. they both entered the room and introduced themselves as I moaned in pain, unable to open my eyes recall saying hello in between my contractions, as tears streamed down my face.. The anaesthetist worked very efficiently, to get my pain maintained.. Jake held me as a sat up over the edge of the bed, and they gave me the epidural.. As I was in so much agony, they boosted the anaesthetic up as much as they could to help get me at a stable level. After 20 minutes, I was in a much better place. The pain had eased and I was only feeling the tightenings.

I continued to progress through, and at 1:50pm I was 10cm dilated and 100% effaced. time to push! I had a little bit of a push just before the midwife had come to tell me to try with the next contraction.. I vividly remember looking over at Jake as I felt babies head move right down.. the midwife came over, had a look and said “okay, babies head is right there.. push slowly!” One contraction, her head was out, and 4 minutes later with my next contraction her body was out.. 2:01pm she was here.

They lifted her up, The umbilical cord was tightly bound around her neck three times, and she was completely blue.. her heart was still beating however she had no oxygen, they placed her on my chest and vigorously rubbed her pat her and flipped her around in an attempt to get her to breathe.. I looked at the midwife and said “take her” they got Jake to immediately cut the cord and ripped her away from me, next thing I knew, there was 20 people in the room, all gathered around my tiny baby, trying to get her breathing.. they popped an oxygen mask over her little face and began manually inflating her lungs, I cried and kept asking if she was going to be okay, and every persons response was “she is in the best hands”or “we are doing everything” all I wanted to hear was “she is going to be okay” or better yet, just hear her cry… I looked up at Jake as he tried to reassure me, but he could see her better than I could, and look on his face did not look promising, he came and stood with me and held my hand.. After, what felt like forever, she let out a weak cry, I burst into tears.. as they brought her back over to me. I shook uncontrollably as I held her in my arms, trying to convince myself that she was okay. The colour slowly started coming back to her little body... No one could have prepared me for that moment, without a doubt the most traumatic event of my life.

Evie primrose Luckett was here, I fed her for the first time as she opened her eyes and looked up at me, we stared at each other.. I was just so thankful to hold my littlest baby in my arms, I shook uncontrollably, was vomiting & being stitched up all while having that first bonding moment together.. nothing was going to take away the magic of this moment.

After a few checks over, I unfortunately had a fever (something I’m sure was caused due to shaking & vomiting) but to be safe both me and Evie needed some antibiotics, so as I went to take my first shower, Jake went with Evie over to Nicu to get her cannula, and have another check over by the Neonatal nurses. They thankfully decided we could keep Evie with us over in the maternity ward, and we would just bring her over when needed for observations and antibiotics.

At 5:30pm we were all ready to head back to the Maternity ward, ready to soak up our Little Evie…

Trigger Warning: Birth Photos. - This was after they had got Evie Breathing, but she is still quite purple.