Hello ladies!!
Woo hoo, I have a baby and she's so gorgeous!! And I'm so flippin' relieved it's all over I just can't tell you!
As I posted last night, waters went at 11pm while I was reading in bed, but just a trickle, with contractions starting about the same time. Poor DH went very pale when I called him upstairs to pass me a towel!!! I tried to get some sleep, cos with DD1 (hee hee, now I have to write DD1 and DD2, not just DD!), it was still well over 12 hours of mild contractions until labour really kicked off properly. After a little while, I gave up trying to sleep cos the contractions were really quite painful, and went downstairs to watch TV. At about 2am I had a big gush of water while bouncing on my ball, followed by much bigger contractions. I went upstairs to change, got DH out of bed and asked him to get up and get the pool started. At around 3am, the contractions were getting really painful and got DH to call the midwives.
Now keeping in mind that DD1 took 27 hours to arrive, and after an 11pm water-breaking, it wasn't until 2pm the next day that we even bothered with going into hospital, and that was just to find out if I really was in labour! So to have everything happen so fast this time was a bit of a shocker!! The pool was filling, the midwives arrived, TENS machine was doing a great job but I was really not happy! It darned well HURT!!
Not sure about the time scale from here on, but midwive did an exam, told me I was 6cm, which was good but I thought that meant I still had ages to go. Got started on G&A, which got me from feeling all teary and upset to mellow and giggly - for about a minute! After that it was just lovely to puff on during horrid contractions.
I sat on the sofa for a little while longer, but then started to feel a bit of pressure and the TENS was annoying me, so I got into the pool. Aaah, it was wonderful! So warm and floaty! The midwives (there were 2 by this stage) said I was free to push if I wanted, which I thought was a bit soon since I'd only been 6cm a minute ago (or so it seemed), but if you gotta push, you gotta push!!
The pushing went on for a little while, and it was weird how in control and empowered I felt! With DD1, but the pushing stage I was totally in a state - only vaguely concious (total exhaustion and lots of G&A), not in control at all and just screaming to everyone that I couldn't do it. This time I was calm, all was well, and the pushing didn't seem too difficult. The mw seemed to feel it was going on a little bit too long though and got me to change position a couple of times. The baby's head was coming out but going back in, and she said not to worry cos it doesn't sting in water. I told her it damned well does!!!! Finally baby's head came out properly, and mw said that she was looking up instead of down, so she was OP and that's why the pushing was so hard. I was amazed because while it was taking a while, it didn't seem that hard to me. Baby was stuck under the water with just the head sticking out, and my contractions stopped for a little bit so I couldn't finish pushing her out. It was very weird cos she was wriggling and it felt sooooooooooo strange to have this wiggly thing sticking out of my bits!! Eventually another contraction came along and out she popped, and mw put her straight up onto my chest.
I wanted to wait until the cord stopped pulsating to cut it, so we just lay in the pool for a while and I put her to my breast to see if she was interested. She wasn't, but we had a lovely cuddle anyway. Eventually cord stopped, mw cut it and took baby for a check-over while I pushed the placenta out. It came out pretty quickly so I didn't need any drugs for that, which was cool. Then baby and I cuddled on the sofa, she finally had a feed and we watched everyone else clearing up!!! She weighed 7lb13, arrived at 5:35am and is gorgeous and perfect in every way (though her head was a VERY odd shape when she came out!!!).
DD1 slept through the whole thing, and woke up about 7am when baby cried. She was so excited, yelling "baby come out!!!" and is totally smitten with her little sister (as are we all!). We didn't settle on a name until this evening, but we're calling her Alexandra Rachel.
She's been asleep all day (and so have I, mostly!) but woke up this evening to feed lots and show us how effectively she can fill her tiny fluffy nappies!!!
So that's my long story. I'm so happy that I got exactly the birth I wanted, and pretty quickly too. I won't say it was fun, cos birth just isn't!!! But it was the best I could have asked for and I'm over the moon!!!
I hope it goes as well for all the rest of you too!
After-pains suck, though! Should have asked the mw to leave me some G&A!