Hello everyone!!
As jj said my little Edmund William was born on Xmas day by emergency c-section, at about 6am (still not sure exactly what time it was!), 6lbs 10oz.
Got out yesterday afternoon, they let me out early, hooray!! Feeling ok considering, bf going well, just looking forward to getting more mobile now, and it not taking ages to get out of bed, etc.
Birth story, so what happened - XMas Eve my waters started going slowly while I was walking over to my friends house, before that I thought I was having just discharge and it was a show. So carried on round to my friends house, as it is only 5 mins away, had a glass of champagne to celebrate Xmas , came home, and rang the hospital, was all set up for a homebirth, and I thought that they would just say to go to sleep and call again when progressed, but instead they said they would send round a midwife to assess me. The midwife took one look at my pad and said that my waters had meconium in them and that I had to go to hospital straight away at least to be monitored.
So was not too pleased at this point, as homebirth was suddenly not going to happen, but was optimistic that they would just check me over and send me home for the night as nothing was happening. But when I got to hospital it quickly became clear that that was not going to happen, and that they would keep me in and would want to induce me straight away because of the meconium. Up until this point I had always said that I wasn't that bothered about whether a homebirth happened, but it had all gone so wrong so quickly that I was quite upset, espeically as I felt ok, and it was only that morning that a midwife had been saying to me that often overdue babies have meconium in the waters and there is actually nothing wrong, and she had actuallly said jokingly "make sure your waters go in the pool so they can't see it!"
So i was convinced there was nothing wrong, they monitored me for a bit and every time I had a (very mild) contraction, the babies heart rate was dropping. They said this was a bad sign but not really why. They also found out that my waters hadn't gone completely, so I agreed to let them break teh rest of my waters, if they would give me a couple of hours to let things get going naturally afterwards before inducing me. But then they monitored me more and contractions got a bit more regular and they sent in SHOs, registrars, senior registrars, etc, and said that his HR was dropping more and so they would have to induce me straight away. I could tell at this point that they were getting a bit worried and already wondering whether he would have to come out by c-section.
so as expected the drip thingy got everything moving very quickly and contraction started to really hurt, and the babies heart rate was dropping even more every time. All gets a bit hazy from here, but at some point I agreed to a c-section, signed form, etc. But then they decided that they might be able to give me longer if they could get a sample from his head so they could do some tests to see if he was genuinely distressed. Unfortunately I wasn't very dilated so this wasn't going to be easy, they decided to get my feet up on stirrups and THEN find out that they didn't have the right light to do it with. (On finding this out I have a vague memory of saying "Oh for F*s sake" out loud! I remember the whole thing really hurting and telling them they had to stop so one of the midwives told me to just keep on breathing the gas and air deeply. I gave this a try and before I knew it I thought I was in a weird hallucinating nightmare type scenario from which I had to wake up from or I would be trapped in it forever. I had no idea gas and air could do this!! Apparently this in the real world involved me removing my feet forcibly from the stirrups, landing on about 5 health professionals and telling them all to eff off as they tried to hold me down and carry on!! I now have a healthy respect for gas and air, I thought it was just meant to "take the edge off the pain"!!
Anyway they then must have decided that I was too much of a pain in the bum, and that I should have a c-section after all (I don't remember really) and I got taken to theatre. After a probably typical trauma getting the epidural in between contractions (which didn't happen, am sure I nearly broke nice midwives hands trying not to move) the c-section was straightforward. I seem to remember them playing the song that goes "You'll be begging me for mercy, why don't you release me"...over and over again though, I suppose they thought this was amusing . Good job I didn't notice it before the epidural went in as I don't think I would've found it funny!
Yikes, that was long. Am going to post it now before I lose it and then do catch up post!! Overall it was an ok experience considering, though obviously not really the nice homebirth I was hoping for! But it doesn't matter as me and the little one are both fine. And he is lovely .