Congratulations Val and Mr Pod. Hope you're all doing well. Very impressed at both speed of arrival and your pre-birth activities.
Waves to frak and hands out tissues. Lovely to hear from you and good to know how it's going.
We had a good night here, still awake lots if times but Imogen woke to feed rather than scream. Am sitting in bed now with DH asleep to my left, Imogen in her crib asleep to my right and the cat asleep by my feet. Of course having had the least sleep of anyone I'm wide awake and so what better thing to do than catch up on MN!
Actually this might be a good time to put birth story down. Katee, nickel and bambam look away now and think of val and her no-stitches quick delivery!
I started having regularish contractions on Thursday afternoon after lots and lots of walking. Seemed to be approaching the magical 3 min mark but then tailing off again. Hypnobirth breathing and tens machine worked well and by 2 am I rang hospital who said to give it another hour to see if things warmed up a bit more before coming in. They suggested taking a bath which I did but that slowed everything down again so I was somewhat unimpressed at that.
Eventually went in to birthing centre at 7am. When they examined me I was 6cms. Continued with tens and breathing until 11 or so when a new midwife came on and suggested I try the pool. Problem with this is it means taking off tens so I moved onto the gas and air. It really worked for me but I didnt get the hang of breathing it just for the contraction so was breathing it continuously and got completely spaced out. I think this is where things started to go wrong because I then got confused and frightened when the midwife wanted to check things. After 4 hours in the pool I was only 7cms and the midwife was getting worried.
When she and DH got through to me that I had to get out of the pool I got very upset. Midwife broke my waters and hoped things would move on faster, but no luck. Senior midwife said I had to be moved to labour ward as progress too slow and they needed to keep a closer eye on baby's heartbeat.
Labour ward was very different from birthing centre. Some things were just so silly like the hose on the gas and air was so short that there was no way of moving around or doing anything other than reclining on bed, unlike in birth centre where you could move around with it.
New midwife came on shift and got drs involved as still no real progress and I'd been in labour for 24 hours by this point. I was put on a syntocinon drip (what they use for induction) to strengthen contractions but it didn't work very well. I had an epidural put in at this stage because I was just so tired. By 7pm they decided I was far enough on to start pushing at which point my lovely gas and air was taken away from me.
Pushing for 1.5 hours and DD just didn't move at all. I didn't like that I was being told to hold my breath and push, all completely against the hypnobirth principle, but when you're being strongly encouraged to get on with it someone else's way it's hard to argue.
I could tell from the way the midwives talked at their handover that things weren't going well. They summoned the drs who decided more help was needed. I was taken into theatre and given a spinal block. Was a complete wreck by this point and tried to convince anaesthetist to give me a general anaesthetic so they could do a section and i could wake up and have a baby and it would all be over. He was lovely but wouldnt be persuaded ! They tried to pull her out with ventouse first but she was well and truly stuck. Scissors were involved so that surgeon could turn her. Then they said I had one more go to push or they'd have to operate. Thankfully I did manage to push and work with the ventouse enough that she came out on that last chance.
Part of me wonders if I'd been caught in the cascade of intervention that we hear so much about, but at the end of the day she was stuck completely and not able to descend so if anything intervention earlier might have been a good thing.
Oh and she's awake. Will check this makes sense later
Xx