showme I always find eating fruit and drinking lots of water keeps constipation at bay. I'm discovering that this is particularly important when breast feeding!
Well I am finally awake enough and have some time to write my birth story for you ladies :)
It was about 1am and me and DH had just gone to bed and I said we should really put the waterproof sheet on the bed soon as I was full term and baby really could come anytime. I then felt like I needed a wee. I moved my leg about to roll over to get out of bed and I felt a strange trickle. I got out of bed and my waters gushed out of me. Of course my mum had to be working nights on the night my waters went. I spoke to someone on the ward who told me to put a pad on and wait for an hour and then to call back, to see how wet the pad was. I rang back and ended up speaking to my mum who told me I had to come into hospital to have it confirmed that my waters had gone.
So off we went to hospital. To provide a bit of dramatic irony to the situation, there was really heavy rain at the time and torrential rain forecast for the next day or two from the remnants of a tropical storm. When I got to hospital I couldn’t see my mum as she was obviously working and in fact her ward where I was meant to be booked into was full so I went to a different ward. To my surprise the midwife who was to look after me was a girl I did A level sociology with at college. I had no idea she was a midwife as I hadn’t kept in touch since college, so it was certainly a surprise! I never thought that she would be someone to put a speculum up my woo and swab and sweep me, but she was and she did just that. Then she confirmed my waters had gone and sent me home to see if contractions would start on their own. If they hadn’t then I had to go back at 9.30pm to be induced.
Went home to “get some sleep”. Could not sleep obviously. I had some mild period pains at regular intervals but only mild. When I got up I spent the rest of the day bouncing on my birthing ball, going for walk, marching round the garden, trying to eat something etc. I did a bit of last minute nesting involving sorting out some washing and doing the dishwasher. My mum, who had been on nights, came round at about 2pm ish to be with me and DH. She was clearly tired too but I was glad she was there. In the early evening I put the tens machine on as I was getting contractions at 5 minute intervals, but I could mostly talk through them so didn’t feel I needed to go to hospital just yet. The boost button on the tens machine was awesome like having a back massage!
We got to hospital at 9.30pm. I was given a pessary and another sweep by my MW, my friend from college who was back on shift that night. I was given some paracetamol and codeine. If I didn’t progress by 6am then they would give induce me by giving me a drip. I could tell my mum didn’t want this for me so I was a bit nervous I must admit. My contractions were starting to be more painful, but still were every 5 minutes.
At about 2am my contractions got painful enough that I asked DH to go and get someone. I felt like I was losing control to be honest. At each contraction I was going really tense and then shook and chattered my teeth uncontrollably. Apparently this was my body sending adrenaline around my body on overdrive. My MW came in and gave me a shot of pethidine in my leg. Then my mum (who had been getting some kip in another room) came in, gave me the gas & air and she and DH spent about an hour trying to calm me down. The pethidine did calm me down but didn’t really do much for the pain to be honest. Then my MW came in and examined me and I was about 6cm. My MW, DH and my mum all spent a while keeping me as calm as possible to allow me to dilate. They all stroked my legs arms etc at the same time which was soothing. My mum stroked my head like she did when I was a baby which felt nice. Each time I had a contraction though all my muscles went so tense and I couldn’t help but contort my body in all sorts of ways. In between contractions I was pretty sleepy and exhausted.
At about 4am I told them I felt like I needed to push. I pushed for about 30 minutes on my back but then I said I felt too uncomfortable so I changed to my right side for about 10 minutes. My MW examined me again and said that she could actually feel a little bit of cervix still in the way so I needed to stop pushing. I felt pretty devastated by this news and told them no way!! I had to resist the urge to push for about 30 minutes. This involved a heck of a lot of screaming which was largely involuntary. I must have sounded like a complete animal! This was the hardest part of my labour. Finally I was allowed to push but had to go onto my back to change the position of baby to make it easier. They got me to pull on my legs as I was pushing. My legs were put in the stirrups. I felt really uncomfortable with my legs so far apart and I was sitting practically on the small of my back. Still bruised from it now! I was pushing for a while longer.
Then they got the doctor and the co-ordinator in because baby’s heartbeat was starting to get a bit fast and I’d been pushing for quite a while by now. They decided to give me an episiotomy in anticipation that I was going to need a ventouse delivery. I didn’t feel the cut as they numbed me, but I heard the snip of the scissors. They actually snipped me again shortly after to make the cut a bit longer. I had my eyes shut for pretty much all of this but I could hear what they were saying to me. They were going to give me a couple more contractions before going ahead with the suction cup to get baby out. This really scared me so I pushed beyond the contractions until I literally could not breathe (DH told me later that my face went purple when I was pushing like this!) and managed to get her out. It was pushing the baby’s head out that before labour I was most scared of but to be honest this was actually the best bit and I wasn’t scared of it when the time came. At 6.07am she came out with her hand next to her face – DH said it looked like she was swimming out of me. Her hand was the reason the little bit of cervix struggled to dilate earlier. She weighed 6lbs 5oz.
Baby was put onto my chest and she had some cord around the back of her neck which I tried to grab and get off her without a seconds hesitation. My mum got it off her and all I could do was stroke her and say wow and how beautiful she was. I always imagined that I would cry when I was given my baby for the first time but I didn’t. I think I was just so dehydrated to be honest and also a bit shocked! I held her for a short time but then DH had skin to skin with her for about 20 minutes while my mum (!) stitched me up. I didn’t have any other tears or grazes though luckily. Maybe the perineal massage I’ve done did some good!?
I remember thinking that I am no way doing this again! But i’m sure I probably will as it was definitely worth it. My labour was 26 hours in total timed from when my waters went and I then spent another 4 nights in hospital due to Jessica having jaundice. Finally we got home on Thursday 14th August!
That was rather a mammoth post! But the whole labour from start to finish felt like quite a while lol! All worth it of course :)