Right, one more birth story, have just been catching up with the latest stories - loving the waterbirth Neeko that sounds just wonderful.
So anyway...after all those contractions on Saturday night they all tailed off on Sunday morning. I decided to get up and dressed and carry on as normal, then started having contractions again around 2ish on Sunday afternoon, just the odd one here and there but they felt quite strong. By about 6.30 they'd started again in earnest, we were booked for a homebirth so called the MW only to be told that she was over an hour away. I debated whether to just go to hospital, but decided to stay put and cope with my trusty TENS. I didn't have any dinner as I just couldn't face food, just went to my bedroom and bounced on my ball. MW arrived about 10.30 and was lovely, ahhhh canisters of gas and air but she couldn't find the mouthpiece! By this stage I would have sucked it straight out of the tube. DH was just about to run round to the emergency response guy who lives round the corner to see if she had one, when the MW found it. Phew.
She was really great, encouraging me to stay active and try and drink, but like in my labour with DD everything I ate or drank reappeared shortly afterwards . But the contractions were strong, and regular, and every time she did an internal I'd progressed, so despite being tired I was quite pleased with progress. The second MW arrived about midnight, I think and she was also lovely. So it went on through the night, my hindwaters went about 5am and I had the forewaters broken by MW,and we thought that this would really kick things off...but by about 7 o'clock it became pretty obvious that things weren't progressing very well and I was exhausted at 8cm dilated, so the MWs called an ambulance which arrived in 10 minutes and off we went to hospital, about 30 minutes away.
I was put on a fluid drip to rehydrate me, and the plan was then to have a syntocin drip to kick start the contractions again, as they reckoned I'd gone back to only 6 or 7 cm dilated . I asked for an epidural along with the syntocin, but was told I'd have to wait for the anaesthetist.
Anyway, I was lying on my side on the bed in the middle of a contraction when suddenly I had to push and I let out a huge grunting noise that nearly scared DH out of his chair. It was just the most weird, out of control yet briliant feeling as I knew that the baby was coming. DH rushed out of the room and fetched the midwife, she heard my next grunting noise and called the second MW and also a male medical student who wanted to observe. From then on I pushed with every contraction, the weren't very regular but they were good ones. I had a quick snip to get the head out, and then I lay there looking at the head thinking, wow! Took a while to get the rest of him out, he started wriggling his shoulders and I was going ow, ow stop it! thinking it was the midwife prodding me . At last, 33 minutes after I started to push, out he popped! He is a good chubby baby, 8lb 10oz which I was at as DD was a long, skinny thing at just under 7lbs.
He is very cute and started feeding like a pro, he has a good pair of lungs on him. It was amazing after he was born, I went in a flash from exhausted pathetic Bettymum to ecstatic pain-free delighted energetic Bettymum. Turned out that it was the first birth that the med student had observed at the hospital, so I thought that was quite nice. All home by about 7 o'clock last night, and all slept very very soundly .