Thanks for all who were asking about the baby - it's been a bit of a long haul but we've finally got home from hospital last night.
We were planning a natural home water birth and had everything set up, pool in the dining room, plastic sheeting candles, aromatherapy and all that but we got the complete opposite - hospital "induction", epidural and eventually emergency c-section...just shows how it can all go wrong!
My contractions started Thursday last week, I had strong, relatively constant ones all day and finally called the community midwife in around 7pm only to find that I was only 1cm dilated so she told me to hang on and ring in when the ctx got stronger. I kept having ctx all day Friday and had a sweep on Saturday but was still only 1cm. This carried on for the next day, I hadn't slept since Tuesday night because the ctx's were about every 5 mins all night and I feel all mine in my back so I couldn't lie down or sit for long.
I had a sweep on Monday and the MW said I was 2-3cm and to phone when the ctx's felt stronger...same old story...she expected a call before she knocked off at 9pm. I was in agony all of Monday night and phoned in to ask for advice - they told me to see my GP in the morning to get some painkillers to see me through. So, Tuesday I got some Cocodamol to try and help me sleep through, now I was on a week without any sleep apart from dozing between ctx's that would wake me up with serious pain - I was so miserable!! Tuesday night I was in even more pain and I just felt that I couldn't handle it anymore so I phoned to say that I was going to pop into hospital cos I couldn't cope with the agony. They offered to send the CMW round to see if I could get my homebirth after all and she timed my ctx's and said that they weren't at all consistent enough, only every 3-5 mins but they needed to be every 3 mins and last for at least a minute, mine were only about 30 secs long. She decided not to give me an internal cos she didn't want to disappoint us and waited til about 4:30am before leaving us to it. We had an induction booked the next morning so she thought it best if we just went for that. The only place I could get any rest was in the bath (just a tip if anyone else gets stuck like this ). We went for the induction at 10:00 and when the MW felt around she said I was 8-9cm and the waters were about to go!! Hooray!!...we thought...expecting to have a little baby in a few hours...so we went up to the delivery suite to push out the last few hours. Anyway, to cut a long story short I was still in the 'transition' phase at about half 5, by now they were worried about my temperature which was sky high and my blood pressure and I felt like my back was going to explode with every contraction that was coming every 3 mins. They tried an epidural (I really didn't want one of those at all) but after an hour it hadn't done anything and although I could feel the baby really pressing down, I had no desire to push and they couldn't see anything. All I felt was horrendous pain with every ctx that wasn't getting anywhere. Finally a doctor came in and shoved her hand up there and had a good old rummage, that freaking hurt!! She said the baby was back to back and trying to look where she was going, and on top of that she was wedged in my pelvis so she wasn't even coming down straight. She said regardless of how long I pushed this just wasn't going to happen. So I was rushed down the hall and into theatre, 15 mins later our little Lucy was pulled out with her umbilical cord wrapped three times round her neck...so she just didn't want to do it the easy way!!
I got home last night after pestering the staff all day to be allowed to go. I've got to do some research on recovering from c-sections now - it never crossed my mind that i'd have one. At least I wasn't induced, that's one decision I managed to stick to