MyBlackCat - you've reminded me I never posted my birth story on here. I read the hypnobirthing book but didn't commit to it fully, but combined with my yoga breathing & visualisation, I felt pretty calm about the whole thing. Here you go:
I was booked to go in for induction on Thursday, when I'd be T+13. I rang first thing in the morning and was told to go in for 1pm, but when I arrived they were super-busy with various emergencies and several other inductions for higher-risk patients than me, so we waited a few hours and then after bumping into one of my obs reg friends, persuaded him to let us go home and come back later rather than hanging around on the ward all day. We returned later that evening, it was still hectic, but the midwives said I should stay in as they would still potentially start the induction overnight as long as there was adequate space on Labour Ward. Fortunately one of the few perks of being a member of staff was that we got a side room.
Waited up quite late still not knowing what was going to happen, then about 1am, just as we'd decided it was probably time to try to get some sleep (I hadn't slept much the night before due to nerves!) the midwife came in and said they'd got the go-ahead, so I then had to go on the monitor for a bit before starting. Interestingly, at my sweep on Sunday my cervix had been quite favourable (Bishop's 8, I'd been told it was ARM-able) but when she examined me it seemed to have regressed back to about a 4 so we started with Propess about 2:30. Tried to sleep again, but the noise from the monitor kept me awake for the first hour, then once that was off I started having crampy pains which weren't terrible but enough to keep me awake. Then I started to feel generally unwell and vomited a couple of times, though I wasn't sure if it was just stress or something happening/going wrong. Bear in mind that given my job, I see a lot of scenarios in obstetrics where things haven't gone to plan, so was mentally expecting something to crop up at some point!
By 7am I was really not feeling good, and the cramps were getting stronger, with very little break between them - but I'd been warned about "Propess pains" and wasn't sure if it was just that or genuine contractions. Called the midwife in and she put me on the monitor, which showed I was contracting 6-7 in 10 mins, but fortunately the CTG was fine. She then spoke to her supervisor and they decided to take the Propess out, but the pains continued, so they got the doctors to come and review me on the ward round. This took a while to happen, and I was nervous that as the contractions didn't seem particularly strong, they wouldn't be effective, so was dreading being told that nothing had happened, but turns out I was 6-7cm! The poor obs reg had to cannulate me for IV fluids, and they were debating terbutaline but thankfully decided against it, so we made our way to labour ward.
It's only about 50m down the corridor, but the midwife suggested I walk rather than go in a wheelchair - longest 50m ever! I must have had 5 contractions on the way, and of course got spotted by one of the ICU sisters, the theatre manager and a physio - so dignified! However, the walking clearly did something and my contractions were getting stronger, so once we got into my room on labour ward I was very pleased to be allowed the Entonox. I found it really useful, both as pain relief/relaxation and because it forced me to concentrate on my breathing, as my calm yoga preparations/visualisations were rapidly heading out the window and this helped me get back on track. My obstetric consultant came to see me (the one I'd seen on antenatal ward was the on-call one, though I did also know her quite well) and one of the anaesthetic consultants heard on the grapevine that I was here so dropped in as well - both wanted to know if I wanted an epidural but I'd only just started on the Entonox so didn't feel like I needed it at that point - turns out I don't think there'd have been time for it even if I had wanted one! Did end up trying to have a technical debate about why I didn't want pethidine whilst mildly floaty though!
Fairly swiftly after arriving on LW I started to feel pressure down below - this was one of the things I'd learned about when doing O&G but didn't really understand until I felt it. Got re-examined and was fully at 12:25, tried a variety of positions, but unfortunately the ones which were most comfortable were the ones where the CTG wouldn't pick up, so I kept getting moved around. They tried to put an FSE on, but it fell off. After progressing quite quickly through 1st stage, 2nd was tougher, because I was just so tired, but the midwife and DH were fantastic support, and then a random med student showed up mid-pushing to add to the cheerleading squad. There were a couple of dips in his heart rate and the senior midwife came in, so I had another Entonox-blurred discussion about "If I need an instrumental now, will it be forceps or do you think they can do a Ventouse?" However, it wasn't needed and I finally delivered at 1.41pm - as soon as he came out I looked at him and said "He's huge!" but DH, who's not really seen newborn babies before, said "Oooh, he's so tiny!" Turns out I was right - 10lb! Placenta was also enormous. I didn't have a particularly huge bump, so I was quite surprised, had been expecting 8-9lb. Miraculously despite that "only" had a 2nd degree tear, so had that repaired while having lots of skin-to-skin time.
Overall I am really pleased with how it went, and that I managed to avoid needing any kind of intervention from my anaesthetic colleagues, though I feel like I really can't claim much credit for that as it all just happened without me having much conscious input into it! I'm fully aware that having a "good" birth is so much down to luck rather than any preparation or anything I did "right," but I'm glad the jinx of being a HCP didn't get me!