Shannen’s story
I was 21, this was my first baby, and my pregnancy was great. I had no major complications, so I didn't expect the birth to go the way it did.
On March 17th at 8.30am my water broke and continued to leak all throughout the day. Three hours later I had no contractions, (I was still at home) so I reached out for help from one of my friends asking what should I do. They told me to ring my midwife and let her know as there is a rule that your baby has to be born within 24 hours of your waters breaking. So that is what I did.
I then found out that my midwife, who had been looking after me through my entire pregnancy, had just gone on holiday for one week that same morning so I was given a backup midwife . Her advice was stay home until I start having contractions, then come in to the hospital. Another three hours went by (six hours since my waters broke at this point) and still no contractions. I rang the midwife again, in a bit of a panic, and she gave me the same advice, "stay at home until contractions start". Another four hours went by, making it ten hours in total of no contractions since my water breaking, and I rang the midwife again.
This time she said "come in and we will check to see if it was your waters that broke". At 6pm that night I went in to the hospital and yes, they confirmed it was my waters that broke. Once that was done I was sent home with an appointment to come back in at 8.30am the next morning (18th March) for an induction (24 hours after my water breaking).
However, at 7pm 17th of March my contractions finally started. I got to 4am on 18th March before deciding I’d had enough, so I went into labor and delivery. to find I was 4cm dilated.
I had to have two hospital midwives look after me while they were waiting for my backup midwife to come. The first hospital midwife was horrible!. She had noticed that my waters were going green because my baby was stressed and had done his first poo inside, but she left it. One of the other midwives there told her to induce me because of the premature membrane rupture and now the meconium in the waters, but the midwife that I was dealing with declined to do so as it was nearly time for her shift to finish .
Thirty minutes later I asked the same midwife for pain relief as I didn't know what the pain would be like as labour progressed, as this was my first baby, but she said "you don't look like you’re in pain so you don't need any".
Then she left as her shift ended.
Fast forward 36 hours after my waters first broke at 3.36pm on 18th March and my son was born. I had no pain relief at all. At the time he was born he was healthy and everything was going fine. I was transferred from Tauranga hospital to the lovely birthing unit they have and it was awesome.
The next day on 19th March, when my son was around 20 hours old, the staff noticed he had a very high temperature and his breathing was faster than normal. Due to our birth story they had been doing hourly checks since we’d arrived. They rang an ambulance and my son and I got rushed to hospital where I found out he had pneumonia in both lungs.
We had to stay in the SCBU unit for five days where they gave him all the antibiotics they could to help him recover. We were told this happened because he wasn't born within the 24 hour time frame and didn't get induced when I arrived at the hospital.
We did make a complaint at the hospital about the first hospital midwife and how she had treated me and my son.
My son is now six years old and from the age of two years has suffered from asthma; he has scars on both his lungs from this trauma as a newborn.