both my boys are asleep so gonna try to write
my birth story:
I woke at 4am on Friday 13th having been dreaming that i was running in a race and had to keep stopping to breathe through contractions
Took me about 20 mins to realise that not only had i not been dreaming about the contractions, but they were only 5 mins apart
Logged onto MN (obviously) and called my friend Cath as she was my birth partner. Told her not to worry, just to get some sleep and i'd call her when it got worse (with Matthew I had 5 mins between contractions and hadn't started to dilate).
Decided to have a bath and realised that with Matthew still here it would be a bad idea to do so when alone in the house so called Cath again. she was already getting dressed as she was too excited to sleep
Cath turned up, we checked my hospital bags then i went for bath only to find that there was no cold water, only the hot from the tank. Called Anglian Water, entire area had low pressure or no water at all and with only one engineer looking for the problem it would be a while to fix. Bloke on phone "are you having a homebirth?" me "well i'm not now am i?!"
decided that i'd have to go in earlier than i'd hoped, tried to get daisyMoo on her mobile, no lck, started to panic. looked for email with home number on, deleted in error. SHIT! posted message on here, sent email, sent texts.
Called Matthew's dad and his parents came to take him. they left about 7:15.
I finished off things at home and we got to the hospital just after 8am.
mw came to door of central delivery to meet me, i said i'd like to use birthing pool. she looked at me a little worriedly. "erm, the anaesthatist has said you can't even have a bath because of your narcolepsy". SHIT!. went into room and she started to talk to me about it. I pointed out that I am single mother with 3.5 yr old and no one stops me looking after him, or tells me i cannot have a bath at home, where there would be noone to notice if i fell asleep. I also work, and drive, and only see my consultant every 18 mths. I was mw led care as the hospital consultants decided in both my pg's that they didn't need to see me. SO WHY THE PROBLEM????
I was already 5/6 dilated when she examined me.
mw went off, came back to say they had agreed i could have a bath and Daisymoo had called to say she was on her way. pool was occupied but she would run the bath.
so far i'd only used Tens machine, haad no paracetamol as no water to take it with at home!
i went for bath with Cath there to supervise, then Daisy arrived and joined us.
was in bath a while, ending up on my knees in the water. had a few bad contractions and asked for G&A. then one awful one and no one was sure if my waters had gone with it. decided that i was starting to feel like pushing and wanted to get out.
got back to room and onto bed, was examined and was 8/9 dilated. Daisy rang the baby's father to tell him to get there quickly. i felt more and more like i needed to push and was starting to worry he wouldn't get there on time (don't like him much but still didn't want to deny him the experience), and i think the others were worrying too but didn't aadmit it to me
my waters hadn't broken and in the end the mw said she felt it was only that stopping baby coming out. father had arrived so he was outside the door when my waters were broken, came in then and baby popped out within minutes
I'd decided to avoid 3rd stage injection if possible and in all it took a little over 45 minutes for placenta to be delivered.
having had an epidural with first birth this one was totally different, but didn't take anything away from Matthew's birth, i simply appreciated it more after last time.
it was very surreal to be able to get up and walk to bathroom i can tell you
all in all it was amazing, i'd recommend a Doula to everyone, having someone on my side that i felt the mw respected the opinion of totally (Daisy got used as an assistant to mw at the end!) made such a difference to the experience, and having a female birth partner in Cath was equally as important, she was focused totally on helping my experience.
was very glad that Joe was smaller than Matthew had been tho, the thought of delivering naturally a baby bigger than Matthew's 9lb 3oz was quite scary