I am very pleased to announce the arrival of Abigail Rose at 01:25am on 24th February, weighing in at 6lb 9oz.
Labour and delivery was perfect (around 7 hours excluding placenta) and exactly as I wanted (no drugs/intervention and active/upright positioning throughout although I had hoped to use the birthing pool but then changed my mind) until the third stage when I suffered a retained placenta which took 3hrs 30mins to be removed.
Sorry this is very long but have felt the need to put down in writing the whole tale.
Had a sweep on Thursday afternoon and cervix was found to be very soft and 2cm dilated already.
Noticed stomach cramps had a vague pattern while out for lunch on Friday. Start timing at 14:50pm, seem to be lasting around 1-2mins and coming every 5-10mins but not too uncomfortable although within 1 hour, I was pacing around/leaning over various bits of furniture and sobbing hysterically and had completely abandoned timing.
Managed to pull myself together to ring DH, got hold of him on 3rd contact number and whimpered "please come home".
He arrived home at around 16:30pm and put TENS machine on me. I immediately felt a lot better and calmer but then threw up all my lovely lunch.
DH started trying to time contractions and wanted to contact hospital as he thought they were 5mins apart, I tried to argue that it wass too soon and that they could stop at any time. They advised us to come in to be checked anyway.
Arrived at hospital at 6pm, delivery ward told us to wait in DAU which was deserted apart from cleaners who kept giving me strange looks until DH decided we should wait in one of the rooms. Finally got examined at 7pm and was pleasantly surprised to be told that I was 5cm dilated.
Moved into delivery room where I organised things so I could lean over the side of the bed and rock my pelvis around. DH was very supportive keeping the water bottle full and the flannels cold although by 10pm he felt I needed extra pain relief. MWs offered me G&A mouthpiece which I initially refused saying I was scared of it/didn't know what to do but within 15mins I was puffing away like a pro.
Examined at 11pm and found to be 8-9cm dilated. Waters broke with a pop at around 11:15pm which caused me to vomit up all the water I'd been drinking, comedy moment as DH tried in vain to supply enough cardboard bowls to contain all the water.
Examined at 12:15am and found to be fully dilated at which point MWs dropped the bombshell that I could only push for 1 hour before they had to do an assisted delivery. I decided to try and hold off pushing for a while until I felt absolutely ready although MWs also told me I can't use G&A while pushing which caused me some minor distress - they let me keep hold of the tube in the end. Holding off pushing wasn't that difficult as the contractions weren't as forceful by now although sometimes the pushing urge was unavoidable. MWs turned a blind eye until 01:00am when I officially started pushing (still leaning over side of bed but now hanging off DHs arms) and baby Abigail came out in such a hurry she hit the floor at 01:25am (luckily it wasn't far as I was squatting and there was a cushioned mat underneath me!) and gave me a 2nd degree tear (despite having attempted perineal massage during pregnancy). I wailed "you dropped my baby" to which the MWs said "no, no we didn't" and passed her up between my legs to me where I got to find out what sex she was and put her straight onto my breast. I felt absolutely amazing and couldn't believe that I'd given birth to such a perfect little person.
We then waited for the placenta to appear as I wanted a physiological third stage, MWs ask me to push/cough and I felt like my insides were dropping out of me. After 45mins MWs started to look worried so I had the injection and DH cut the cord. Still no sign of the placenta. They put me back on G&A and registrar tries to manually remove placenta - this was the most painful experience I've ever been through, much worse than giving birth, I was practically screaming (after a fairly quiet delivery apart from a few oh, ohs)and DH was crying. Registrar then decided I had to have a spinal and go to theatre which was quite upsetting to deal with having not needed such intervention for delivery. Placenta was still pretty stubborn in theatre (apparently it wouldn't have made any difference if I'd had the injection straightaway) and eventually took 3hrs 30mins to be fully removed with so much rummaging and stomach squeezing I have bruises.