I'm here! On a new ward with 3G and just catching up with everyone. Thanks for all the love and well wishes, sorry if absence concerned anyone. It was a long couple of days!
I can confirm that we had a boyby yesterday morning,17th July. He is currently nameless but hoping to fix this by the end of the weekend.
I am up doing a 3am feed for my son 
so thought I would try write out my birth story. It got pretty exciting and I tried a bit of everything in the end. It will be long though as so much happened. Sorry!
My story starts very similar to rm actually! I woke up for a wee at 4am
Thursday and when I got back in bed I was still weeing and it just kept coming. I decided I wasn't pissing myself (although be aware that waters can be straw coloured so but like wee!) and that maybe this was waters going slowly. I had always remember that fact from NCT - they can dribble, not gush!
Called midwife after 7am to discuss. My midwife was on at 9am so said she would call then. She did, we discussed and agreed she would send someone round to check and do next stages, like talking about induction. That put me straight on edge! By the time this midwife I hadn't met before turned up, checked my pad to confirm and started paper work I was pretty stressed internally. We had talked about induction in class but not in these circumstances! Induction was about bringing on labour when you didn't start naturally, but instead they were putting a relatively arbitrary time on me as waters had broken first. This shoot my BP up and of the 8 readings she did to try and get it lower she couldn't get it to be low enough for BC. Some rational discussion concluded that this was not consistent with my other results from previous appointments, in fact I have low BP! They decided it was just anxiety about BC and I could continue to plan for BC. I am fairly confident that had induction not been the first thing they mentioned this may not have happened. They had booked me in for induction at 7am Friday morning - it was like a deadline to get the baby out before then. When she left I felt down though; it was a massive pressure I wasn't expecting.
Luckily contractions did start relatively soon afterwards. DH still went to work as I just didn't know how long it would take. Timing them showed I was pretty much at three in ten by lunch, just not long enough. He came home about 2pm and stayed with me the whole way through from there. Contractions were just like period pains for me, same place, same pressure but stronger. I found them quite bearable with breathing and counting.
Called midwife at 3am Friday morning when I was contracting about 55secs in length every 2mins 44secs I think app said. She finally agreed to come check me over. Happened to be my midwife on shift that night so that was reassuring. My examination showed I was 6cm so felt pretty happy with that. I had two paracetamol throughout the day but not convinced they did much.
BUT because waters had broken 23hrs ago I was again being told I might not be able to go to BC because I would only have an hour to safely deliver. A discussion with BC decided I could go as I was low risk and had already got over half way there. Wonderful. Traveled out to BC which is in the woods for us, saw a deer in the car park, got into room, got into pool and bossed my labour! Examined at 6.30am they found I was 10cms. I had gone 0-10cm on two paracetamol, gas and air and water. I am a fucking hero and amazing at giving birth! I was already having pushing urges so went with them for a bit. These contractions were more painful than at home, but I still found it manageable. They are shortlived and breathing and counting got me through.
After two hours of pushing things started to change. I got out of the pool for monitoring and things started to go wrong. The main concern being that on third examination they found I had pushed him down but he was facing wrong way and was back to back. This had never been mentioned before! People started whispering about transferring to hospital, my BP went up, temperature went up and babies obs went down. Ambulance was called at 8.30am to blue light me to hospital.
My midwife finished at 8am so another one from the team came with me. I did not like her. I was knackered - at it 28.5hrs by then and straight out of 2hrs pushing - she was bossy and not really supportive I felt at the time. Wouldn't let me finish a contraction before rolling over to my side for example.
Arrived at the hospital after my first ambulance trip which was bouncy and horrible. Into a labour room where I think I must have met rough 20 people coming in to introduce themselves to me whilst I was just totally down heartened, knackered and still contracting. I didn't really take any of it in.
More internal examinations proved he was in totally the wrong position to get out. Their plan was to take me to surgery, try to guide him out with forceps and if that doesn't work then c-section. By then I just wanted it done. DH did a marvellous job as my advocate, asking all the necessary questions, but ultimately I wasn't going to get him out. As soon as I got to the hospital I gave up on pushing a little bit - it felt pointless.
From there things just happened to me. I felt out of control but had to put my trust in all these many women that kept arriving to introduce themselves. In order to go to surgery I would need a spinal and once I heard that I was just waiting out to get it in. I was done. Setting up, wheeling me round and getting started probably took about an hour in total and once I got into surgery they did the spinal and I was just so relieved. Instantly happier and all these people that I had been annoyed at turned out to be lovely. I just couldn't see it through the haze of disappointment and contractions
before. We actually had fun in surgery as we were about to meet the baby!
A spinal is awesome by the way! It is different to an epidural and timid for a fixed amount of time and not constant and doesn't stay in your back but I just felt nothing! They lifted my legs into stirrups and it's like they weren't mine. It wasn't what I wanted for my labour but I can totally see why people would!
The theatre was all women and they were all great. The surgeon tried to forceps turn the baby with my contractions but couldn't get the grip on his head to do it. She tried a few times with no luck, he wouldn't turn. They told me it would be a c-section. By then I didn't care. They worked really quickly to get me prepped and I felt nothing really. DH was there in sexy scrubs and I just chatted away to him. Eventually they sawed their way through my skin and muscles, moved all the relevant organs and pulled out our baby. They lifted him above the screen and all anyone could say is 'OMG he's huge!'. We were so focused on that in fact that we forgot to ask if it was a boy or a girl! I had somehow given birth to a toddler! So after nearly 31hrs in total I was presented with a monster baby. DH held him while they stitched me up and about 40mins later I was back in a recovery room with a baby and no feeling below my tits.
They weighed him as soon as we got in as we had all taken bets on it by that stage. My son is 10lb 1oz! That combined with facing the wrong way and being back to back at least reassured me that I probably did do all I could - I was so unlikely to be able to get him out on my own.
So, it didn't go to plan. I had a c-section which is the ultimate in intervention really but I still feel really positive about my birth experience. It only got unbearable at the stage when we arrived at the hospital, I knew I was going into surgery so I just didn't want the pain anymore. Waiting for the spinal was the worst bit. But labour was fine and felt I could deal with it, forceps were fine (I have a graze but no cuts) and so far c-section has been fine (although see how I feel in a week!). Best of all - the baby is fine. He a bit battered as well and he's going through the wars. He is on antibiotics as there was more than 24hrs between waters breaking and him getting out so reducing risk of infection and he has low blood sugar due to size so is being formula topped up. He's been down in neonatal a few times with DH. I can only imagine how stupid he looks next to all the tiny babies but he needs help too. He's on 6 hourly sugar checks at the moment so they keep taking blood from his heel. We also have matching cannulas for his antibiotics. Even big babies are too small for cannulas, it looks awful.
But those things are not dangerous really and he is doing so well with feeding and sleeping. We are just getting to know him but he was absolutely worth it! 
Well done if you read it all. It's quite refreshing to type out actually. Hopefully hasn't put anyone off - ultimately you will do what needs to be done!