Hello again! Sorry for keeping you waiting but here are some of the (gory) details! Warning - mammoth me post!
As I said, I had acupuncture on the Monday afternoon (and a thai chicken curry). Started contractions around 11pm on Monday night - tried to go to sleep but couldn't so had a bath, thinking that might slow them down or speed them up. If anything, it made them more painful so woke DH up at 1am to help me put tens machine on. Watched (well, in the loosest possible sense!) a film, by which time they seemed to be coming every 3-4 minutes - hospital said not to come in until I'd had an hour like that. However, then had another bath which somewhat annoyingly seemed to slow them down. At 10.30am rang them again, as I didn't think I'd felt the baby move for some time so they asked me to come in for monitoring, though said they might send me home again. Naturally, felt it kick on the way to the hospital!
Spent most of the day and night in the midwife led unit, mostly with gas and air. However, when the midwife who'd been with me left at 8pm, she reckoned I was nearly 9cm dilated. However, new midwife revised that back to 5cm - where we'd been hours earlier - suspect truth was somewhere in between. As you can imagine, that was very disheartening and whilst we ploughed on with gas and air, a shot of pethedine and the birthing pool, it was a very slow process - think I was just too tired. Though I did eventually get back to 10cm by the early hours of the following morning, the second stage was taking forever (ok 2hr 43 - but felt forever, after two nights with no sleep!) and baby's heart rate was dropping so eventually I was taken to the delivery suite and then the theatre and given an epidural followed by a forceps delivery at 6am on the Wednesday. Was a slightly surreal experience as the last bit all happened very quickly (had to sign a consent for C-section in case the instrumental delivery didn't work so DH has a photo of him in scrubs ) and not quite my planned water birth but the important bit was that he came out healthy and happy!
He is gorgeous - will post his name on my profile with a picture when I have a moment - if exhausting though last night we managed to get him to sleep all night (well, not without waking up!) in his moses basket which was a breakthrough. I lost a bit of blood so DH has been feeding me lots of iron rich foods and generally being a star - gave him a bit of a shock when I woke up on Monday afternoon shivering with a temperature of 41C - some kind of infection that seems to be responding to antibiotics and am much better now. Breast feeding is going well though feels a bit non-stop at times.
Thanks for all your good wishes and a big wave from me and baby hobnobs to everyone.