IF YOU HAD EMERGENCY CS...

CS illustration

First of all, it is not your fault and secondly it does not make you any less of a mother than any of the others out there. Still feeling a bit blue? Then answer these five questions honestly:

1-Are you and your baby both well?

2-would you trade holding him/her in your arms for glory and accolades?

3-do you have scars/injuries besides the cs scar, that were from some nonsense accident?

4-are you doing everything in your power to care for yourself and your little one?

5-are you the only mom you know that went the cs way?

Contrary to strange yet popular belief, not all cs cases go into the hospital and get scared of feeling pain so ask for cs immediately or feel that they're "too posh to push" so just don't believe the hype, there's a reason there's elective cs and emergency cs. And though elective cs is basically the one where you choose long before to get the procedure done, it is illegal in Kenya to book a cs with no known complications. Also, if you go to hospital and they discover at the last moments that you cannot birth vaginally, those I have dealt with will explain to you why you cannot take that path and so you don't get wheeled into theatre on emergency basis but it is still kind of unplanned when you think about it. 

Here is my case in point to give some perspective: I got into labour on a Tuesday evening but it was slow building, so that whole night and the following day was on and off labour and it wa exhausting. Finally, the contractions picked up Wednesday around 4p.m. So my boyfriend, his mum, and I went to the hospital I planned to birth at in good time, when they checked I was 2cm dilated but on the way so they booked me. B.F. And mom helped out with the paperwork and all that, and the second they handed in my scans to the technicians the word cs started getting thrown around which did not sit so well with us. The reason for this was that the first scan was early thus no activity there, but the second one seemed to show the cord was wound around my baby's neck not once, but twice. 

The final scan seemed to show that it was wound once. I use 'seemed to' because the technicians of the scan had a hard time deciphering whether it was even there in the first place as it was rather unclear and being the hard headed trio that we were we didn't believe an implication was enough to send me direct to the theatre so after some bargaining we left and went to the hospital I went to for my clinics, a short distance away. There, they told us we could go ahead and try our luck in pushing but as they didn't have facilities for cs, if it came to it they would refer us elsewhere. We didn't feel so good about getting wheeled a distance of about three kilometers during an emergency so we left and went to the third hospital. This one we had gotten referred to by the boyfriends father who is an anesthetist and has an associate that works at the said hospital.

This whole process was tedious to say the least, as I had to get checked a third time to find I was 5cm dilated hence got booked immediately. When the dads' friend came in he told us they were actually currently at a meeting so they would take my papers and go discuss them then give us feedback as we awaited. In the long run, it was decided it had to be a caesarean but we were still not convinced so we asked them to elaborate, upon which the surgeon said that he lived quite a distance from the hospital, and it was already past his hours so if we were totally against it, he would be on his way home, only coming back if we would need him, so we asked him for time to discuss. 

Join me next week for the rest of my story as I wouldn't want to keep this post super long and bore you all away 😳. Haha anyway keep warm and stay safe, cheers!