Hello again folks!
WARNING THIS IS VERY LONG!!!
Well I had my 3rd VBAC in january, not at home as I planned, in fact nothing like I planned at all! Ella was eventually born in hospital, after I had a fairly large bleed ,went to hospital, spent a day on the most uncomfortable bed in christendom,for some unfathomable reason holding ctg leads on so I could actually move a bit,having a reg perform a sweep on me without my consent and spending the night in a bay on the ward on my own - anyway by 2am i'd had enough of this mallarkey and took up residence in the day room. When someone actually noticed I wasn't in the bay and came looking,2 hours later - I laid my cards on the table: I had been up at this point since saturday morning (this was monday morning)and I had no intention of becoming so exhausted that I ended up with a section because of it,especially in light of having SPD and 3 more kids at home, so i told the midwife that if i was still in the same state by 6am, she'd have to get the consultant in as I would be having the CS before I 'bloody collapsed'.
10 minutes later I had another bleed and that concentrated their minds wonderfully, so I found myself walking down to the labour ward. The midwife I was allocated to was real old school,but my reputation must have gone before because she was really anxious to do anything possible to stick by my birth plan. after a discussion and an examination we decided that at 8cm,breaking my waters would probably get things moving , and it did- I went to fully delighted as soon as she'd done it! next thing a junior came in with instruction to get a venflon in - grrrr, I only consented because I'd no idea why I'd had the bleeds and if it would start again,and by this stage I was feeling very anaemic and looked it too(never had an FBC done the whole time though, which was a bit pants - normally, i'm the same colour as the lebanese reg who did the sweep,but I think she thought that my being the colour of a dead pig was the norm for a brit)
anyway, MW pops out for her kit, and i decides to get on all 4's and sod the CTG,and the pain in my hand where the DR had put the cannula straight across my wrist joint, there was no way I could tolerate being laid on my back a second longer, she comes back in and i announce,have you got your gloves on cos I'm going to push NOW , She has a mad flap cos apparently she's not delivered anyone on all fours - I says don't worry about that, I'll tell you when to catch(yes, i was that direct- my gobby reflex didn't suffer a bit) . Next thing I told her the head was coming,next push I asked if that was the shoulders, and then it was all over bar the shouting(and some more of the red stuff, but not much).
Ella was born at 5am (ish)with 2 true knots in her cord, one on top of the other, and her cord was amazingly long, it just kept coming and coming .I think it was around 4 feet in all. no cause was found for the bleeding, no cervical erosion,no abrubtion,no clotts behind the placenta, nothing - I can only imagine that the way things went was meant to be, and I'm pretty sure that if I'd known about the knots beforehand, I would have chosen to go in, mainly for the monitoring, so I could see that she wasn't in trouble, as it was,as my mum said- She meant to arrive safely, and my body took me to where things could be sorted out if they needed to b, and I was back home within 6 hours.
Anyway, she is 4 months old today, breastfeeding like a pro,and looking like a mini sumo wrestler after a very shaky start(the anaemia affected my milk supply and I had to pump to get extra into her after she lost weight fairly dramatically in the first week, My midwife's first words when she saw me the day after were 'bloody hell, you look like crap, what's your HB?' and i had no idea, just crammed in as much spatone as I could stomach for a fortnight)
Anyway, sorry it's been so long before I supplied the gory details I'll go away and write out a hundred times -i must not neglect mumsnet
LisaX