Being in labour during the country’s most devastating earthquake is a position that any woman would dread. But that’s exactly the situation that Christchurch mum Stephanie Holt (28) found herself in when the quake struck.
As baby oliver (now two weeks old) calmly sleeps on his mum’s chest at their home in Northwood, Christchurch, Stephanie tells the dramatic story of how oliver made his entrance into the world, oblivious to the chaos that surrounded him.
At 13 days overdue, Stephanie went into Christchurch Women’s Hospital the day before the quake struck to have her labour induced.
“He just wasn’t coming on his own. I wanted him to come naturally, but it was getting to the point where it was just a bit too uncomfortable.”
The morning of that terrifying day, Stephanie was starting to have full contractions, and had decided to have an epidural to numb the pain. She was just moments away from having the anaesthetic inserted into her spine when the quake struck.
“I was so lucky that I wasn’t having it when it struck. Having an epidural is risky anyway, because you’ve got to get it in exactly the right spot. If you get moved or shunted, there’s a risk of nerve damage or paralysis.
“oum was sitting on the bed with me when it struck. Everything went flying across the room. The bed definitely moved – brakes and all. Nothing fell over, which was good because I was on drips and things. My midwife Adrienne Hill came rushing in, asking, ‘oh my God, are you okay?'”
Stephanie decided to go ahead with the epidural, despite the danger from the ongoing aftershocks.
“I decided it was probably worth the risk, because I wasn’t going to get through the labour without it,” says Stephanie.
out the hospital window, Stephanie couldn’t see any damage, but there was an eerie feeling in the air.
“Looking out over Hagley Park, I could see trees which were nice and serene. The only thing that suggested to me there’d been a massive earthquake was helicopters. All I could see was helicopters flying everywhere. You don’t see that every day.”
At 7.30pm, there was still no sign of oliver being delivered, so Stephanie was advised to have a Caesarean, which posed another risk.
“I didn’t really want to have a C-section with aftershocks going on, but the hospital staff were fantastic and they were confident it was going to be fine,” she says.
Fortunately, there were no tremors during Stephanie’s Caesarean and the single mum was soon holding her precious son in her arms.
The earthquake meant that Stephanie couldn’t be transferred to the maternity ward until 3am because the lifts weren’t working. “There were no orderlies because obviously the main hospital was in chaos. We heard that people were rushing in those who needed urgent medical attention,” she recalls.
Ironically, that morning Stephanie and her family had remarked on the absence of recent aftershocks, but immediately regretted saying it, thinking they could be jinxing their luck.
Even so, Stephanie never felt like her life was at risk during the jolt. “I was thankful to be in such a strong building, but cracks still appeared in the walls.”
Stephanie will be staying with family at their holiday home in Picton until it’s safe to return to the city. She now has a birth story to rival that of any new mum, and so far oliver, who friends joked should have been called Richter, has shown no sign of any volatility, despite his shaky start.
“He’s been really good, really calm – and hungry,” she smiles.
