DIARY OF A BIRTH: 'I thought I'd have a fast birth. Then my baby got stuck.'

If there's one thing Michelle Battersby knows how to do, it's prepare until you're confident.

The gun businesswoman launched Bumble in Australia and is the founder of Sunroom, a company that champions female and non-binary content creators. 

When it came to giving birth to her baby, it only made sense to use the same approach.

Listen to Michelle Battersby on what it feels like when your baby gets stuck on Diary of a Birth. Post continues below.

"Going into this birth, I was feeling confident. I was thinking, 'I think I've got this. This is going to be a breeze'," she tells Mamamia's brand new Diary of a Birth podcast.

She had a birth plan and was feeling ready.

"Back when I was pregnant, if I was to write down on a piece of paper how I don't want it to go I probably would have written I don't want to go into labour and then have a C-section."

But sometimes babies have other ideas.

Halfway through her pregnancy, Michelle's fiance Bill Meakes moved from their home in Los Angeles to interstate after signing with the Chicago Hounds rugby team.

The couple were doing long distance for their careers and it meant Michelle threw herself into preparation to survive the end of her pregnancy without him.

"I had been doing a lot of focusing on accepting that being okay with whatever outcome might happen around the birth. Maybe he would make it, maybe he wouldn't," she said.

At 37 weeks, Michelle's cervix was about 1cm dilated.

"That's when my confidence really started to kick up a notch. I was thinking, 'Great, this could happen any day, and it's going to be smooth sailing. The baby's moving. I'm moving. It's all good'."

Her obstetrician said she was looking like a good candidate for an induction, which meant Bill could hop on a flight and be there for the birth.

Michelle had researched inductions and thought she had a pretty good idea about what would happen.

Her body had another plan.

"I thought things would have started to happen. And I felt like it would be really fast, because my obstetrician was also saying, like 'I think this is going to be fast for you. Your baby's got a really big head. Big heads come out'," Michelle said.

Instead, Michelle arrived at the hospital and was still 1cm dilated.

"That news was the start of my confidence being a little rattled."

And the beginning of a longer-than-expected labour.

Michelle felt like things were under control, but seeing Bill walk through the door at 2am flooded her with immediate relief.

"I thought, 'Let's get this moving'."

Twelve hours later, Michelle's cervix was only at 3cm.

"I am an Aries, patience is not something that I understand," she joked.

Her obstetrician offered her a choice: go home or they could break Michelle's waters.

"I was like 'break my waters. I'm not leaving without a baby'."

Michelle got to 5cm within the hour and thought she was finally "back on track" to a quick birth.

"I did start feeling the contractions there… and started thinking, 'Okay, if this continues at this pace, I don't really know how I'm going to go with this pain, and I think I just want to get an epidural'."

But the mother-to-be didn't dilate any further for another 10 hours — her baby was "stuck".

"I think that was the hard part for me is just so many hours passing and you feeling like you're getting somewhere, but you're actually not."

It was time to turn to synthetic oxytocin, a version of one of the body's "happy hormones" that can speed up birth.

Michelle Battersby and partner Bill Meakes after giving birth to Alfie. Image: Instagram/@michellebattersby.

Up until this point, she had gone into birth confident of a vaginal delivery. But still stuck at 5cm, Michelle asked for a C-section.

"I felt immediate relief in that moment, cried of happiness. I was like, 'Thank God. I just know he's gonna get out. This is all about to end'."

Bill was right by her side keeping her calm the whole time.

Michelle will never forget the moments that followed.

"The sounds of Alfie, my son, coming out and just the relief it was over. We had both made it, hearing him squeal and knowing that he was okay," she said.

"I think when you see this little baby brought up to you and you're kind of in shock. It didn't hit me through pregnancy… that I had this life inside of me that was mine to take care of forever."

Knowing who Alfie has grown into six months on, Michelle says it was only fitting her "stubborn little guy" didn't want to come out.

It was a birth far from what she imagined, but looking back, the mother "wouldn't change a thing".

Watch the Diary of a Birth trailer. Post continues below.

What actually happens when a baby is "stuck"?

Michelle's experience of having her baby get stuck is one many pregnant women dread, but sometimes it's just part of the process.

Mamamia's in-house expert Melbourne-based paediatrician Dr Daniel Golshevsky tells us getting stuck is essentially a "failure to progress in the delivery process".

He explains it as a "dance".

"It's a balance that we strike between making sure that mum is safe, and then also at the same time, balancing that with making sure the baby is safe, and when a baby does get stuck, we have options available to us to try to improve that delivery process."

Dr Golly — a father of three and the former Chief Resident Medical Officer at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne — says a baby getting stuck isn't always cause for concern.

"We have options available to us to try to improve that delivery process, whether we're talking about the contraction of the uterus or we're talking about the dilation of the cervix, and sometimes getting stuck means that we don't have an option but to change our plans entirely."

An example of this is an emergency C-section, just like Michelle's.

"Emergency doesn't necessarily mean lights and sirens and running down the corridor," Dr Golly stressed.

"Sometimes an emergency seizure can just mean that it wasn't elective. It wasn't planned, but we've had to change our approach and deliver this way in order to maximize the baby's outcome and protect the mother."

Dr Golly's advice is to head into birth being informed with a birth plan.

"It's about being aware of all the possible ways this could go. It's also about being empowered to ask questions, to ask why certain decisions are being made.

"Because the reality is, you don't want to hear these terms for the first time, when you're exhausted, or when you're in that state, when you're sleep deprived, when you're stressed, you can't process them. So the more you know beforehand, the better."

For more stories from Diary of a Birth click here.

Feature image: Instagram/@michellebattersby.