A week on I guess I better post a bit of a birth story. So last Saturday night we went for the traditional shag and a curry (in that order) and I woke up about 5:30 on the sunday morning with a wee bit of crampy pain. Took 2 paracetomol and went back to sleep and woke at 10am with pains again and a wee bit of a show. Bit of a stop/start day (the roast pork dinner was another story). On the birthing ball through the TDF stage review and Top Gear, at which point I sent DP to bed to get some kip. I bounced around on the ball, with the TENS machine on and listened to the hypnobirthing CD over and over again. DP got up about 1:30am and we rang triage who said to pop along and get checked out. On arrival, (with an obscene amount of luggage!) we were in the assessment room with another couple, but the lady was only 25 weeks pregnant and in labour so by the time they got to me, my BP was 165/107 because I'd gotten a good deal upset for her. Then they did an exam to find I was a paltry 2cm dilated and not fully effaced. I think at this point if my BP had been normal they would've sent me home, but they let me hang around at the hospital. They brought a birthing ball and a rocking chair which was surprisingly soothing during the contractions, which were coming every couple of minutes and lasting a couple of minutes, so not much respite. About 5am they moved us to a delivery room so I could get in a bath, and DP rubbed my back with some clary sage. After a bit I got out and went back on the ball in my nightie. They came to examine me about 6am and as I got up my waters went. The waters had old meconium in them so sadly the water birth immediately went out the window. They did another assessment and I really wasn't much further on. Because of the meconium, we had to go on a monitor which sadly meant I was flat on my back. Martina the midwife came on shift at 7am and had a chat with us about taking some morphine so that's what we did - it took the edge off and made me feel sleepy between the contractions. Because of the meconium we had to move to Consultant Led from Midwife Led so that's what happened next. Sadly then, more waters came and more meconium, so this basically meant the monitor was staying on and I was staying in the stranded crab position until further notice. Progress consequently was extremely slow and we opted for an epidural at lunchtime on the Monday. What a relief!!! It was truly amazing. Within an hour I was brushing my teeth and my hair and feeling altogether more human. By 2pm I was 5 cm dilated and my BP was at last coming down. They put up an induction drip to speed things up a bit at 3pm, and kept monitoring. Hetty was wriggling around so they kept losing the heartbeat so at 4pm I volunteered for a scalp clip to get a good reading on her. Her heartrate kept dipping to 80/90-ish and also racing up over 160bpm so this meant everyone was starting to get a bit concerned and DP & I realised we could be looking at the baby coming out of the sun-roof. They periodically increased the induction drip and kept monitoring, but did seem to get increasingly concerned. At 6:30 they examined me again to find I was finally fully dilated but Hetty hadn't turned her head. At this point all hell broke loose, but in a good way, to get us down to theatre to try a vaginal delivery assisted with forceps, to be swiftly followed by an ECS if it failed, so the epi was topped up and DP had scrubs thrown at him. We were down in theatre within minutes and Hetty Florence was born with 3 pushes, assisted with forceps at 6:45pm on the 13th July 2009
We didn't know if we'd got a pink one or a blue one for a good little while whilst they checked her over. Her APGARS were 9 & 9 so that was brilliant. They had needed to do an episiotomy to get the forceps in so I have a few stitches and then we got some time alone to enjoy our new daughter, who had weighed in at 8lb 6oz.
All in all, we would say we had a brilliant birth experience - Martina the midwife came to us at 7am and didn't leave us until after 7:30pm that evening - she literally only left us for half an hour to get some lunch, and was a constant support for us all - we couldn't have asked for more. Although everything went a bit pear-shaped, especially at the end, it was all done with such humour and with a great sense of happy excitement that it really wasn't remotely traumatic at all. And I'd do it all again tomorrow because our daughter is beautiful