So this week I'm joining in the Brit Mums blog prompt and I'm going to share the birth story of my daughter. Don't worry, it's not gory and I hope it won't put you off having children. However, if you're reading this and you are pregnant with your second child be warned - they can arrive VERY quickly.
Ok, here goes. First, a little background. With my son, I was in labour for about four days. Not agonising, not too uncomfortable, but a long, long time. I was planning a home birth with my daughter, or, if the pool in the hospital was free, a water birth (no room in our house for a pool).
I started with irregular braxton hicks in the
evening on the 27th of Feb that lasted all night but stopped as soon
as I woke in the morning. Throughout
Monday morning I had regular (ish) contractions/Braxton hicks. I had a midwife
appointment that morning and baby was 3/5 engaged. They booked me in for a
sweep on the 4th March. I had
a curry on the Monday night (28th) and was fairly sure that I was in
labour as contractions were about ten minutes apart and fairly strong.
I went to bed
at 11pm and the contractions were 8 minutes apart. I didn’t sleep but let OH sleep
until I thought the contractions were getting rather painful. This was about
2am and we called the labour ward. Contractions were every 4 minutes by now. I
hadn’t had a show and my waters hadn’t broken so they asked us to wait 30 minutes before going in. We got to hospital at 3am and they were preparing the birth
pool for me. They kept us in the foyer for an hour because I 'looked calm'.
They finally took me into
triage to assess me at 4am. At this point the contractions were 3 minutes apart. The midwife put
me on the monitor to check baby and contractions. I was concerned by the monitor - my baby's heart rate was all over the place 175, then 35, jumping everywhere. I assumed it was just because during a contraction, it was harder to monitor the baby, so it wasn't accurate. The midwife never did check it. At 4.20am she examined me and
found I was 4cm dilated (I was just so pleased they wouldn't send me home, and my husband did a little dance!
The
contractions were bearable but I was starting to think about putting the TENS
machine on. Suddenly, at
4.35 I said to my husband, ‘I need to push now’. The look on his face was
classic. He legged it out of the room and got a midwife.
She told me to get up and walk to the room she had prepared for me, the one with the pool in. Luckily another midwife took one look at me and said, 'let's wheel her there'. It was two doors down from triage. It was 4.42am. As I stood up to get to the bed in the
delivery room I had a massive contraction and panicked. The midwife turned to
get some gloves on and I put my hand between my legs and shouted ‘head’! Then
the girl shot out and I caught her between my legs! I got her head and OH got her
back and the midwife managed to catch a leg (no time for gloves)!
She was born
with her waters still intact and the cord tightly round her neck at 4.44am. The midwife
broke the waters around her and got the cord off and then I was finally able to
get onto the bed in the delivery suite and take my clothes off!
So much for the nice relaxing water birth. In my
notes, the second stage of labour is listed as 0 minutes!
Have a look at the other entries for this week's blog prompt here.
