TV host Anna Williamson shares insight into ‘horrendous’ labour
Anna Williamson has been reflecting on her birth story when welcoming her son into the world.
The Celebs Go Dating agent welcomed her son, Vincenzo, into the world with her husband Alex Di Pasquale seven years ago. The pair are also parents to three-year-old Eleanora.
While opening up about giving birth to Vincenzo, Anna described the labour as ‘horrendous’ and admitted she felt ‘let down’ by her body and the people around her.
During an interview on Giovanna Fletcher’s podcast Happy Mum, Happy Baby, Anna confessed, “I really felt very let down by the world actually, which carried on after my birth because it was a truly horrendous birth”.
Explaining she was “terrified” to give birth, Anna revealed, “I certainly had a phobia of the birth which I’m sure most people do. Again, it’s the unknown and a huge part of having an anxiety disorder is because it’s the complete opposite of control, and I had no control”.
The television presenter then said that while she went on maternity leave at 37 weeks, her son was nearly two weeks late. As she didn’t give birth until nearly 42 weeks, this led to her feeling more ‘irritable, anxious and terrified’ about going into labour.
Williamson went on to share an insight into her labour, revealing, “Something that nobody had taught me in all of the classes that we’d forked out for, I didn’t know what a back to back labour was”.
“I never in that whole labour, never once did I feel a frontal period pain like contraction and that’s all I’d been preparing for. It was all in my back. Where the baby was lying was on my spine. He was back to back. The only way I can describe it was that the pain that would come in the surges was like someone had stabbed a knife in my back and was turning it for the duration of the contraction”.
“That was going on for 16 hours before I got any help so I was in so much pain and distress and then I was having panic attacks during labour because of the loss of control I was feeling”.
After being in labour for hours, leading into days, Anna was administered with an epidural but was later told by a consultant that they needed to ‘help her get the baby out’. After trying a forceps delivery and being told that the next step would be an emergency C-section, Anna’s baby boy was delivered with the aid of forceps.
“I suffered a very large haemorrhage straight after that. I had a large episiotomy. I was a little poorly after that… My immediate thoughts were, I felt let down by my body, I felt angry with my body, I felt angry and let down by everybody around me”.
Anna added, “That left me in this trench of postnatal depression and borderline psychosis where those first few weeks and months after having him, I’ve never felt as lonely as I felt in that time”.
