Finn Alexander was born at 2.37 am weighing 10lb 4oz on Wednesday, January 18th. A beautiful brother for Joseph, Max and Leah. Pics to follow on yahoo
Here are the gory details ? I am truly a medical phenomenon apparently!
I was taken into hospital to be induced at 40+5 with symptoms of pre-eclampsia. Over the next 8 days they tried to induce me 7 times with prostin gel ? my cervix never budged a millimetre! Eventually, my consultant admitted defeat (they were worried about over-stimulating my ?grand para? uterus!) and agreed to a planned section the next day or so ( now 40+13). Came to terms with this? turned up at 9am in theatre in scrubs and the senior registrar said ? now, why are we doing a section on you? ? you?ve done it 3 times before?.? Basically she talked me into trying ARM/syntocin and I was reluctant to have a section with all the recovery so agreed. She broke my waters at 1cm dilated (god knows how!) ? I needed a lot of gas n air!!! Probably worst part of the whole experience! We waited a couple of hours, nothing so insisted on epidural before the syntocin drip was put up. Epi only worked one side until very late on ? but I was happy to have some feeling of the contractions as I really felt like my body had a mind quite separate to mine! Could feel and see on the monitor strong contractions but no dilation. Had the drip up (and turned up and up) until it reached 64mml ? apparently very unusual in a multipara ? after 4 hrs still no change and totally fed up. Consultant (another one) said ?well, you?ve come this far? give it another couple of hours? I didn?t really feel I had a choice at this stage! At 8.30pm I was psyching myself up for section but on examination was found to be 2-3cm but effaced, thin, etc? whoo hoo! Finally in active labour. 2hrs later a different mw examined me and couldn?t find my cervix ? you must be very posterior?? well of course, it would be my fault! The ward sister however found me to be almost fully dilated with a bit of a lip! By 11.30 I could feel pressure in my pelvis and some pains beyond the range of the epidural so I knew we were nearly there. Was examined at 12midnight and told to rest for an hour without pushing to get the baby?s head to descend further. This was a challenge and tried to distract myself from pushing with a bit of gas and nearly fell asleep! At 1am started pushing but by 1.30 baby was getting distressed (sudden drop in heartrate) and was transferred to theatre ? two teams of doctors stood by ? they tried ventouse first but his HR was still dropping (and by now the epidural was topped up so I couldn?t feel to push properly) so they (quite literally) pushed him back up and other team jumped in and got me open. Felt all of it but no pain ? very bizarre. Finn was big but the lack of progress was hindered more by the position of his head (ventouse caput on the side of his head rather than the back). He was floppy and not breathing at birth ? his agpar was 5 at 1 min but up to 9 by 5 mins. He had to be incubated and tube fed at first but responded very quickly. Sorry for the massive missive (quite therapeutic!) Am so glad he?s here and kinda wish I had had the elective Caesarian but alls well that ends well!