Life a bit of a whirlwind at the moment, I think I've had approximately 6 hours sleep in the past week, so I'm sure things will catch up with me eventually. So, the concise version of my birth story:
As you know I had a few niggles over the weekend, various shows, contractions, bump dropping etc. On the Monday I thought it had all kicked off - started having painful contractions etc, but they all went off when the midwife came. She did examine me though, and things had started moving. Felt normal the next day, until 8pm, when cx started up every 5-10 minutes, and felt like the real business. I tried to go to bed, but cx kept waking me up, so had a bath and then stuck the tens on at about 3am. By 6 I thought I'd better ring the mw, and was convinced I'd be at 4cm, but no, only 1-2... spent most of the morning in the bath and got the mw back at lunchtime. Both had expressed concern about my blood pressure, which was in the 90s (bearing in mind I was aiming for home water birth). I was desperate to get into the pool, but was only 2-3cm by mid afternoon, and the mw supervisor came and said we should head into the hospital to be checked out because of the bp issues.
So we went in, the lovely mw had read my birth plan and put loads of active birth stuff in the room for me to make it more homely, and assured me they would try their hardest to make it as natural a birth as possible. I was knackered by this point, as I'd already done 19 hours at home (double ended cx when lying down, so 10 mins apart but lasting over 90secs, every 3-4 minutes otherwise), so I was quite keen on the idea of an epidural at that point. They encouraged me to try the gas and air, which I hated at first, but then firmly hung on to from that point onwards, there's something very reassuring about it... Anaesthetist finally turned up at 9pm, then promptly disappeared to do an EMCS, so I didn't get my epidural until 11.30, but what bliss! I was petrified of having to do all the pushing without having had any respite, and also really scared of cx ramping up if my waters broke without one, so it was lovely to be able to relax and sleep for a bit. Eventually they said I was good to go, and the pushing began... but mw was concerned the cx were tailing off so the registrar put me on a syntocinon drip. Although the epidural took most of the pain away, I was still able to feel the contractions and they were pretty intense, so I was encouraged to push through them, especially when the top ups wore off and they said I couldn't have any more... Unfortunately although I had managed to keep him in an anterior presentation for the whole labour, he managed to get his head turned sideways and got it stuck, so no amount of me pushing on my own was going to get him out... ventouse just slipped off, so it was with forceps and pushing for England that finally did it. Had to have an episiotomy, so rather sore now, but I was determined I wasn't going to have a bloody c section after all that!
DS was born at 6.33am, weighing 8lb 11oz and with a 9/10 apgar score after a minute that I'm really proud of 
The student midwife gently helped him latch on, and in half an hour of him being born he was feeding well. Since then we've had a few issues with soreness, but I think we're getting there... my milk actually came in yesterday evening, so it's evidently working!
Sorry for the epic ramble, but its been quite cathartic writing it all down 
Although it didn't go to plan, I think it was a really positive experience and I'm looking forward to the next few days and weeks!