Hello,
Been lurking, but too tired to type. Finally found some time now as DH is having a snooze with DS. I'm gradually coming out of the shock of LO coming early but am still feeling surprised as most of the women in my family have been overdue and I was expecting the same. Not sure if that's what did it, but I had started to take Raspberry Leaf capsules at the start of week 28 to prepare the uterus. I'd read up loads about it and was confident that it wouldn't bring on labour. I really wanted LO to come in September rather than August. Here's a blow by blow account if you can handle TMI.
I painted the nursery on Monday and then went out for pizza and visited my in-laws afterwards. Probably did about 2 hours of driving that day. There was nothing to indicate that labour was imminent until I woke up at 12:10 to have a wee. That's when noticed some mucusy blood. I told DH, but also pointed out that it could still be a couple of weeks before I go into labour properly. He was sleeping in the spare room that night as he planned to get up early in the morning to go to London for work and didn't want me waking him up with my frequent trips to the loo. I had trouble getting back to sleep as the contractions, which I was still thinking were BH were getting stronger. At about 2am, I called the homebirth number and told them I thought I was in the early stages. They had a MW call me back who spoke to me and was a bit skeptical about how far along I was. At that stage, the contractions were still only about 30 seconds long and roughtly 7 minutes apart. She decided to come out anyway after she heard me having one in the middle of the conversation. I also decided to wake DH up at this point to tell him that the baby is on its way. His immediate reaction was to turn on his computer and delegate his work to his colleagues, then he started to prepare the pool.
I laboured for a couple more hours before the MW decided she'd check me and found that I was about 7 to 8 cms dilated, so I called my doula. If any of you are debating whether or not to get a doula, I highly recommend it. She was excellent and was able to guide me in a way that I wouldn't allow DH to do. Each time he tried to help by reminding me of the things we'd learned in antenatal class, I'd snap at him: DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!! Somehow, it was different when it came from the doula.
I spent the rest of the time labouring in the pool and got to fully dilated fairly quickly. The waters broke in the pool too, but the baby wouldn't come out. The MW suspected it was back to back, so I got out of the pool and walked around and pushed. I can't remember much of what happened after I got out of the pool, even though I didn't have any drugs. According to DH, I was out of the pool for nearly 90 minutes when the ambulance arrived. I think I was in second stage for about 2 hours. Once I got to labour ward, LO came out within 30 minutes, at 10:30 am. I remember asking for ventouse, I was so desperate by then, but the midwife decided to try putting me on my back with my legs in stirrups. This seemed to work and baby soon came out sideways (the little bugger!). They gave me syntocin to get the placenta out because the thought I was at risk of bleeding, given my long second stage. I also had an episiotomy and DH had skin to skin with LO whilst I was being stitched back together. We were kept in hospital until about 6pm because we had to wait for the paediatrician to come and examine the baby and it was a busy day. It was nice to get home eventually though and I've been rather blissed out since then, dispite all the discomfort.
Cheering all of you on and looking forward to seeing you on the post-natal thread.
xx