Phew! I'm delighted to announce the birth of Toby, born on Monday 9th.
Here's what happened:
1 am - woke up needing the loo, when I got back felt a bigger than normal contraction. And another and another, 15 mins apart. Was this it, or were they just stronger BH???
3am - still coming 15 mins apart, more uncomfortable than normal. I decide to get up to see if moving around gets them speeded up
3.30 - that worked! Now every 7 mins and definitely need breathing through. Sitting on the birth ball and bouncing is best - surfing the web also helps takes my mind off. In fact so much so that i don't notice them for a bit so
4 - have a couple of paracetamol and decide to go to bed.
4.03 - having experienced one contraction lying down I get straight back up again - they really hurt a lot more when I'm not walking about or upright!
4.30 - now 4 mins apart. Start wondering when I should wake up dh, how early I can call a friend to look after ds1. Decide to have some toast now while I still can, to give me energy for later.
5 - wake dh. He runs around like a headless chicken when i tell him the contractions are 3/4 mins apart, while I sit on the ball telling him to calm down, get dressed, eat some cereal, and we'll ring my friend at 6.
6 - dh gets ds up, we ring said friend and drop ds off on the way to hospital. Get there 6.40. (All this time the contractions are bad enough to need serious concentration on breathing through, but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting from last time round.)
6.40 get to hospital. I'm put in a room in maternity assessment and the midwife on duty does some paperwork. dh gets in a stew about her not examining me straight away, and keeeps on about getting the birth pool filled. I reckon she's covertly observing me to see how in labour I look! She comes in about 10 mins later and says she'll need to examine me to see if I'm in established labour. Does so and then looks rather surprised and says I'm 8cm dilated so she'll ring delivery suite and get them to fill the pool NOW...I am confirmed in my suspicion that I didn't look in enough pain for her!
7.30 ish - get to pool room. Sit on loo while pool fills - first cos I needed a wee, but then stay there to the midwives amusement as it is the most comfortable place to be during the contractions! Cling on to dh's leg during contractions, while he rubs my back. Dh later confesses he panics a bit at this point, expecting me to have the baby on the loo, especially when I get 2 or 3 contractions without a break in between (looking back I guess that was transition - at the time I remember lauging and saying 'oy, no pause that time that's not fair!'). Get in the pool when it is half full - bliss. Pool carries on filling. Mw asks if I feel the urge to push. I don't, so I just move about breathing through the contractions - not terribly aware of much else at this point. Dh gets in the pool and starts sloshing water over my back to my annoyance!
8.15 - suddenly start pushing. Ok for the first couple, then it feels like my bottom is about to pop out inside out! I comment on this and the mw says thats whats meant to happen...
8.17 (ish) - OWWWWWWWWWW! Head coming HURTS A LOT! Start screaming like mad, mw puts her nose about an inch from mine and tells me to calm down and push. Dh (who I'm sitting on in the water) breaths with me and tells me to shout 'yes'. I bellow the place down for the next few minutes! The pain is unbelievable, so I decide to push as hard as poss to get it out as quick as poss so it stops... except as the head starts coming I distinctly remember shouting 'no, no, put it back in someone'! Next push head is half out - I remember them turning me onto my side in the water to get the other half out as it got stuck half way. Then a blissful pause, followed by the weirdest sensation as the head turned round. Then to my great surprise (I thought it all just slithered out after the head) I had to push twice more to get the shoulders, and then the body, out. Then - bliss - over! Baby is lifted up onto my tummy. Covered in thick vernix, and wonderfully pink and plump.
Turns out looking at my notes the second stage was only 9 minutes!! (I had a slight tear because it was so fast, but its fine.) So we were all rather stunned when on weighing him an hour or so later he turned out to be 10lb 3.... straight into 0-3 month clothes this morning, though we had to squeeze him into the newborn ones we'd taken to hospital that night.
All went a little pearshaped a few mins later - we'd just taken the beaming pics in the pool when I started haemmorhaging (sp??), so got out and had the synt, then even more so suddenly the room was filled with staff like a scene from casualty. The next hour was rather uncomfortable but I'm fine now!
Baby and dh just got in from taking ds to nursery so better go. Sorry so long - jsut braindumping on you all!!