She's a little cracker looks exactly like dd1 did so she will be gorgeous too, hoorah!!
She arrived Monday 19th at 20.47 after 20 hours of labour.
For those of you that like the details here they are:
Contractions started at 01.30 on the Monday am. Not exactly regular but 2 - 8 minutes apart pretty quickly so called hospital and doula and got dd1 out of bed.
Drove the 1 hour to hospital dropping off dd1 at best friends on the way. Having pretty good contractions all the way and shaking and teeth chattering madly (not sure what that was all about)
Arrived at hospital - was 4 cm dilated. Got put onto monitor due to it being vbac. Had blood pressure taken it was raised. Having to lie on my back for the monitor DID MAKE THE CONTRACTIONS MUCH HARDER TO COPE WITH. When I was standing up I could breath through them with little problems. Had to have lots of blood tests and stuff - not sure why.
Anyway after a couple of hours at hospital I decided I was not going to cope with the pain. They had to wait nearly an hour to take my blood test as I couldn't sit down for him to put the tourniquet on.
I was shaking dreadfully and felt very sick all the time at hospital.
Got the epidural - it was like MAGIC - took ALL the pain away. Laboured like that all day with midwives saying 'you are labouring really well' and me just laughing as I wasn't doing AN~YTHING just sitting reading Heat magazine.
It was totally SURREAL. At about 3pm the midwife said I was fully dialated but they would wait for an hour for the baby to descend a bit. When the hour was up the Consultant had been called to do a c-section. She didn't want me to try pushing without him around due to my blood pressure and the scar so we waited, and waited and waited. As soon as he was around and she told me to start pushing the contractions TOTALLY STOPPED. What followed was Syntocin drip to try to kick start contractions. Got prepped for theatre for c-section - epidural topped up. I cried like a baby and shook uncontrollably while all this was happening. My dh said he had never seen anyone look so afraid and react so physically to it. I am clearly a total chicken sh*t. Consultant said we would try with ventouse very briefly but probably would have to do a section. I was scared as anaestth blokey said would have to put me under as epidural not working properly.
Anyway he got her out with the ventouse. Got stitched up which took ages. Oddly we discovered during all this we had mutual friends of the anaesthetist and dh and he were making dinner party arrangements while I was being stitched legs akimbo!!! Still finding sitting down difficult.
On balance although the pain relief was amazing it wasn't the 'wonderful' natural birth I was hoping for and I think I would opt for an elective c-section next time. The Doula didn't really help at all.
Needless to say chuffed to bits with new baby though.