first time mum wandering how her birth experience was compared to others?

[crackpotdog]

1st sign was waters broke 5.40pm, as on phoning birth unit i realised not felt baby move that day, went in.
on way i now realise braxton hicks startes 6pmish, by 9pm having fairly bad contractions every 3 minutes, lasting a minute at a time. these contractions continued all the way through, only a minute or so between!! what happened to having a bath to relax?? by 12am 2cm dilated, 2am 4cm, then by 4am 10cm, and ds arrived after 50 minute pushing, he was back to back, but having had growth scan day b4 was never told he was!!
think it was a quick pushing stage but?, bloody hurt though, and only had g&a, but didnt find it very usefull, just did breathing in the end!

i was 38 wks 2 days

Sounds like an OK labour - much better than mine, but not sure you want to hear that.

i was suprised how quick!! thought i'd at home with contracvtions for hours, but once it started it was look out!

sounds like a nice, normal labour to me, you were really lucky. Hows new motherhood?

Am very glad for you Crackpot - sounds pretty good, especially for first time - well done.
How are you getting on with motherhood?

well i was hoping as he was back to back it was more painfull that normal delivery and therefore if have another go it may hurt less!! you catch my drift!!??

honey, it kinda hurts like hell anyway, big or small, forwards or backwards

but in our classes they banged on about back to back being more painful as having to turn baby round?

my first was 10lb5, when they're that big its gona hurt which ever way you look at it.

Crackpotdog - sounds very similar to my first labour, which I consider very average.

Well done!

i'm aware it all hurts but they talk you through all different births, but then nobody tells you how you did after, if it was quick, if you coped well? nothing

Sometimes OP babies can mean longer labours and more interventions. Not sure why they bang on about it though in antenatal classes - that will only scare women!

Your next labour is likely to be faster and easier (fingers crossed)!

It sounds like you coped very well, epecially as you coped with just g&a.

jesus!! if its quicker i'll be shitting meself if we have another!! we live 40 miles plus from hospital!! dont think i could go with a home birth

The reason nobody tells you how you did after is because it's not up to them to make that judgement- it's up to you. If you think you did bloody well then say so (even if it took 30 hours) and give yourself a huge well deserved pat on the back!

Congratulations on the safe arrival of your ds x

10 days overdue...waters broke at 4pm as I sat on the toilet to pee! I had to waddle to the bathroom and stand in the bath, lots of water!....contractions started at abt 5pm....just felt like light period pain. Abt an hour later contractions only abt 60 seconds apart...but they werent tht bad....this lasted til i got to the hospital, and they put the monitor on me and everything stopped!! so went to the motel (we live ova an hour from hospital) and contractions started again as soon as we left..got in bath at abt 8pm, contractions really got bad, started throwing up, got to hospital at 9pm, had a shot of pethidine and stayed in the hot shower, screamed hospital down with each contraction! until abt 1am with urge to push, got on the bed and could barely feel contractions by then...doc had to tell me when to push basically ....pushed and pushed and was born just before 3 am (almost 2 hrs!! ouch!). No tears, just a graze...pretty lucky coz baby was almost 9lb.

'could barely feel contractions' - sounds wonderfull!!

I had a very long pre-labour - DS was back to back at the start- nice MW told me that the way he was position on my cervix was making me feel a lot of pain at an early stage. Not sure if the same applied to you or not. My labour was longer than yours, and I had more pain meds and intervention, and a 2 hour pushing stage, I couldn't just manage on gas and air.

A friend of mine was one of the lucky women in a zillion who had a completely painless first stage labour!!! (!) Lucky bitch lady...

Although I doubt VERY much that the pushing-the-pineapple-out-of-nostril type exercise for stage two was painless!! (!)
At least, I bloody hope not anyway

hehe... i think maybe i couldnt feel the contractions coz i was totally focused on trying to get bub out...too exausted to notice! Im not really sure....in comparison, I would say tht I preferred the pushing to the contractions...1st stage was horribly painful....2nd stage was just exausting..

A lady i work with had a two hour labour with hardly any pushing and she gave birth to a wee doll of a girl...of course she keeps telling me that its really easy etc. except that i am twice the size that she was at the end.....:-)