Hello everyone 
. Well we have had a real roller coaster of events over the last couple of days! But BabyBell has arrived - boy, 9lbs 13, very long and utterly gorgeous 
!
My contractions petered out on their own, so I was moved to the delivery suite for a proper sytocinon drip induction. I was managing fairly well to cope with the harder faster contractions with just the TENS machine. However after hours of contractions my cervix wasn't even fully effaced all round, and hardly dilated at all 
. I was already quite sleep deprived at this point and I was so dispirited that all my efforts had produced basically no effect at all . The midwives were predicting that at this rate it would take at least 2 days to get fully dilated, if at all. So at this point I agreed to an epidural, so the drip could be turned up higher to try and speed things up. And, tbh, to try and get some rest as I had been pacing back and forth the whole time!
However, after 8 more hours on the higher drip, my cervix was still not properly effaced and only 2-3 cm dilated. My waters had been broken for quite a while, my uterus was showing signs of distress at this point, so there was quite a concern about what was happening. For some reason BabyBell's head was malpositioned, and all my contractions had done were to ram his head against my cervix in the wrong place. This had caused his poor little head to become really cone shaped! He definitely wasn't coming out on his own at this point - an emergency c-section was now the only answer.
When they got me open and pulled him out, the remaining waters around him absolutely stank. It was quite clear that they were infected - even though none of the waters that came out of me smelt or were the wrong colour. BabyBell also hadn't pooed in me either. So the paed whacked him full of antibiotics and took bloods to determine the level of infection and the cause. Unfortunately BabyBell was very sleepy and lethargic and couldn't figure out how to breastfeed . At this point the paediatrician came back to say that the level of infection was very high, and that he had a non-blanching rash on his tummy. As you can imagine they (and I) were thinking it could be meningitis or a couple of other serious infections. So he was taken from me and whisked to the neonatal unit for monitoring and more antibiotics. I was absolutely bricking it at this point! Fortunately the test for meningitis is quite quick, and this has already been excluded, thankfully. We are now waiting for the blood cultures to come back to find out exactly what is wrong with him. He is doing ok though, and I managed to express some colostrum for him which my DP gave him via syringe .
I am also a bit poorly too - my temp was sky high, and I was vomiting like crazy. Not good! So i'm on the same antibiotics as BabyBell, and hooked up to various other things as well.
Sorry for the epic post! I just wanted to get it all out, and I can't sleep anyway as there have been women in screaming labour all night. .