I know I gave birth to Rosie over 2 weeks ago but I've been meaning to post our birth story since then and only just got round to it . So please skip over if it is too much like old news! I won't be offended and I realise it is a MAHOOSIVE post - sorry...
so. woke up to waters breaking at 3.30, woke dh who lunged around the room like an ostrich looking for a soft towel (who knows why..) before coming back to bed - I wasn't having contractions, so we tried to get back to sleep. a couple of hours later, went to the loo and noticed meconium on my pad. Called the labour ward who said the homebirth was off because of the poo, and asked us to come in asap. Gutted. Gutted. Got to hosp about 6am-ish, some mild contractions. Attached to monitors, baby seemed ok but everyone keen that she was born as soon as possible because of the meconium apparently being a poss sign of distress. I walked up and down the stairs trying to bring on stronger contractions. They got a bit more regular, but still not very long or painful.
Consultant came round and said that because I wasn't yet in labour, they wanted to induce. From home water birth to induction by syntocin drip. I felt so disempowered and disappointed, and sad that my body wasn't going to have the chance to do its thing.
Before starting the drip, though, the mw wanted to do an internal exam. She looked a bit surprised and told us she was getting the senior mw to have a look. She did, and found that I WAS 7CM DILATED!!!! it was fabulous. All those contractions, and the niggles and false alarms in the couple of weeks before, looked like they'd paid off! The lovely lovely mw gave me an (energetic - ouchey) sweep to keep things moving, and the induction was OFF! It was 10.30. the contractions picked up in strength, and were more frequent, but were still pretty short, and so, pretty manageable.
After about half an hour of leaning on the bed and swaying around (still attached to the monitors) they were getting intense, and it was a brilliant surprise when the mw offered G&A because I'd totally forgotten I could have pain relief . So I sucked on that and got dh in a headlock and mooed my way through a few more contractions. I lay on my side on the bed, bit tired by the swaying and standing, and after a bit had a kind of heavy feeling in my bum. The mw said something like "your baby is right there". Dh asked what she meant and she told him to look down. I heard him say 'oh my god' - bump was in the way so I couldn't see what he could straight away - but then I saw a little head. I looked up at dh, totally disbelieving what was happening. seeing him welling up made it click that it really was our little pip being born. Another contraction and she arrived! a 4 minute second stage! (compared to 5 hours for ds!!!). I can't believe it happened like it did, but her birth was lovely, better than I dared hope for. and it only REALLY hurt for half an hour or so! woohoooooo