This is my birth story and also a hope to help other women recognising the signs of sepsis before it’s too late.
I had an emergency c-section on the 24th of january 3 weeks before my due date due to my little girl being footling breach(I’d never heard of it either,and this was my 5th pregnancy) she was defined as footling breach due to her positioning and the fact it would be extremely dangerous if I’d have given birth to her due to the position of her legs enabling the cord to potentially come out first and cut off her oxygen supply.

My story begins when I had to be taken into hospital 10 days before her birth as I was experiencing contractions and my midwife frantically told me I had to go into hospital due to this being my 5th pregnancy and how quickly I usually birth. I on the other hand wanted to stay home as hubby was goin to lay my new carpet 😂…fast forward to 2 days before her birth, and 8 days already spent in hospital,i was told id be having steroids to help develop her lungs and birth her early.

I was initially supposed to have my daughter on the 3rd of February but was rushed through quickly as she kept moving and the doctors felt as if she was in distress.
My baby girl was born 8lbs 2oz and looking extremely healthy on the 24th of January 2019.

Within 24hours of the operation I was asked like all the other women to walk to the far end of the corridor while pushing the baby in her crib,I tried getting up and putting my pjs on only to feel like i had been hit by a bus,all the other women seemed to get up and walk with a little discomfort but for me i felt like i was dieing,i mentioned it to the nurses and they simply brushed it off saying it’s the way i was handling it after the operation.

That walk down the corridor was the hardest walk of my life i sobbed all the way in agony and feeling extremely cold.
Later that day my husband was able to come to visit(as he had to be caring for all 4 children and my son who is epileptic while i was at the hospital) I had never felt so glad to see him in all my life. He came with me to the shower as again they encourage you to walk around to help prevent blood clots.

As i got into the shower i started to shake uncontrollably,I felt so useless and started to convince myself that I was perhaps dealing with this whole thing worse than others.

I went back to my bed and just wanted to sleep and be left alone. My husband which I am extremely thankful for pointed out to the nurses that something wasnt quite right,although they seemed to think I was fine. By the night I started feeling extremely cold accompanied by shivers, I asked them was this normal…

My daughter also wasn’t breastfeeding correctly and they just kept giving me this liquid form of morphine.

Telling me it was just the way I was dealing with things that I wasn’t ill, everyone struggles at first. Later that evening when I was alone I asked the nurse if she could check my temperature as I felt so warm, they tested my temperature and I was told I only had a slight increase and its probably because I was on my own and other women were having visitors, that I felt overwhelmed. That night they sent a nurse to my bed with an intravenous antibiotic, I was told it was just a precautionary measure and nothing to worry about.

Hours later a male nurse turned up at my bed from another department in the hospital, to test my blood…he had large glass vials and used my blood to mix with what ever was in the bottles. The test went terribly wrong as my veins were collapsing and after several attempts one of my veins ruptured leaving me with a swollen hand.

Still at this point I was told there is nothing to worry about and that everything was being done due to precaution. I woke that night with uncontrollable shivering and stabbing pains in my stomach and abdominal area.

I was kept on intravenous antibiotics for 72hours in the end, along with blood thinners then I was allowed to progress to oral antibiotics which I was on for another 2 weeks…due to the antibiotics and amount of liquid morphine the nurses were giving me my daughter who started as 8lb 2oz was now 6lb!!!

My milk didn’t seem to be coming in straight away and instead of encouraging me to breastfeed longer the nurses kept offering formula feeds until the milk comes in, knowing what i do now about liquid morphine and having a baby earlier than expected I know that my body was doing the best it was capable of under these circumstances, it was just handled incorrectly.

I was plugged up to an electric breastpump which made my breasts extremely sore and sensitive, I kept getting told its just my body not functioning correctly and that is why my daughter isn’t gaining weight.

When I arrived home 10 days later I researched into the antibiotics and pain relief I had been given in hospital and it was these medicines that were preventing my milk from coming through correctly, when taking the antibiotics you should always drink 3 glasses(1 pint of water after them) so the antibiotics distribute around the body but dont effect your milk in an extremely negative way. Effects of the antibiotics include making your milk taste bitter to your baby, preventing them from wanting to suckle, hence the refusal to feed correctly and lose weight. It took me 2 weeks from being home to get my daughter to regain her birth weight and start to look healthy once again. I will be talking more about my recovery in my other posts.