Ok heres my birth story: Its quite long so dont feel you have to read it. I just wanted to get some of the detail down for my own benefit really.
At 5 am Sat morning and only a couple of hours sleep interrupted by back pain and twinges (should have known!) I felt an unusual gush in my foof. I got up and excitedly realised my waters had started leaking. I thought (rather foolishly!) this is it!! I was having really mild surges though, very irregular and far apart so I went back to bed to try to rest but couldn?t sleep. (surprise?) Rang the mid wife when it got to a reasonable hour and one of the team came round and examined me, Babyleaf was still in perfect birth position at this point (well that?s what she said) so all we needed to do was get the surges going. Unfortunately despite hippobirthing, nipple tweaks, snogs, pineapple, homeopathy and clary sage, the surges stayed either too mild, too far apart, or too short all day and over night and after speaking to the hospital we had to head in for assessment at 9 am Sunday.
They had booked us an induction for 9 pm but I convinced them to let me go home and try and get things going over the next 24 hrs and booked in for 9 am the next day. Things did ramp up but again not enough to be considered active labour and sometime in the night surges slowed down again to about every 20 mins (not long enough apart from me to actually sleep!) so again we headed back to the hospital in the morning. Sods law I started having proper strong and regular surges in the car and by the time we got there I as in active labour. Yey! I thought: I?ll be able to give birth in the MLU (still clinging to my dream water birth) Unfortunately, I had to wait in the reception for quite a while before being admitted and TB had to drop me off to find a parking space so I started to panic a bit and got very shakey with each surge. By the time I was admitted to the assessment unit I was in a pretty bad way (apparently my lips were blue!) so they hooked me up to a monitor to check both our heart beats. I hated this as was on my back and things started to get very intense and I was still a bit panicky about the turn of events. I was examined and dilated to ?between 4 & 5 cm?
I really wanted to get up and move around but they said I couldn?t so I was stuck like that for an hour or more. I was still pushing for transfer to the MLU unit at this point but the consultant said that both our heartbeats were tachycardic and they suspected either I had an infection or was dehydrated so needed IV ABs and fluids. ☹ So off we went to the Delivery Suite, had the drip inserted which wasn?t as bad as I had thought despite her failing to get it in my right hand on the first go. and the monitors fixed to my belly. Have to say our MW was lovely, very supportive of our intended birth plan and sympathetic to the fact that things hadn?t turned out as we planned. We dimmed the lights, got the tunes set up and tried to arrange things a bit more homely. I wanted to labour upright, so sitting on the bed and standing up for surges on the G&A but this kept making them lose the babies heartbeat. Around lunch time I switched to the birthing ball leaning up against the bed between surges, which I think saved my legs for later. We were still losing the heart beat a lot due to my rocking on the ball and at one point a junior consultant came rushing it, spouting off about how he needed to investigate (there was nothing wrong with her HB, just their pony equipment!!!) He then started going on about how if I hadn?t reached 7 cm then I would ?have to have? a syntocin drip and that they had ?given me half a cm per hour which is more than the standard? He then looked down at the ball and said the the MW ?whats with the ball?? At which point I think I would have ?punched-- bundled him from the room if I?d been in any fit state.
That said, after 4 hrs of labouring the MW examined me and I was still only 5 cm and it turned out Babyleaf was posterior (AIBU to blame the hour I spent on my back?) We discussed all the options, again MW was brilliant, very honest with me and said that she thought I had a good chance of doing it myself at this stage with the help of the drip so at some length decided the drip was the way to go mainly because I was worried that if things didn?t progress, that in another 4 hrs I would be too knackered to go on and need further intervention. We also decided that attaching the monitor to Babyleafs head would be better as we wouldn?t have to worry about losing the trace and I?d be free to move about more. We discussed pain relief and I said although I wasn?t ruling anything out I didn?t want anything until I knew how the drip was going to feel. Think we set up some IV paracetamol at this point but that might have been earlier.
So that?s when the fun started. Basically leaning on the bed again, with TB behind me to support me, one hand on the bed, one on his knee and rocking with the surges like a lunatic. I admit its all a bit of a blur really. I can remember feeling the surges get stronger when she turned it up (although I only felt 3 and TB says there were 5) and by this time I was taking 3 huge breathes on G&A each time then using hippobirthing breathing to get through the rest of the surge. After the first 3 or 4 after she turned it up I knew I could handle it but there was a point during each one where I had to really convince myself I could go on. I don?t believe I would have been able to do this with just G&A without the hippobirthing techniques although its about as far from the quiet, zen waterbirth videos I?d been hoping to emulate.
About 4 hours later even though I knew I probably wasn?t officially ?ready? I started using hippobirthing breathing down techniques to help Babyleaf move down and I could feel that she must be close to crowning because the probe in her head was almost completely outside my foof. I was examined and at 9.5 cm the MW said if I felt I needed to ?push? then go for it. So up I popped onto the bed, leaning over the back rest with my bump supported by pillows. around 40 minutes of breathing down, mooing like a cow or sounding (to my mind) like I was having the most intense orgasm in the world, I could feel babyleafs head (it was all squashy which freaked me out but that turned out to be a fine head of hair plus vernix) but I have to say I was a bit disappointed with how small an area I could feel! Things got tough now when I thought each marathon surge would be the final one but it wasn?t. Even so, some time later at 8.50 pm on Monday evening her head was born and after a brief pause, her shoulders and the placenta in the next push. Lucky me no third stage!! After a bit of confusion I scooped her up from between my legs, and put her on my chest. Babyleaf was with us!! :D