Hello everyone! Thank you so much for all your well wishes, you don’t know how much it means to me! It’s been a whirlwind week and we were finally discharged yesterday evening so spent our first night home as a family of 3 last night and it was wonderful.
Trigger warning- my birth story- as a few of the ladies have asked I have decided to tell my birth story, it was very positive and almost comical so I’m hoping no one will mind. I‘ve tried and failed to keep it fairly brief and but it’s not graphic or scary I promise! On Sunday, after feeling very down of the weekend, my husband decided we should go to our favourite pub for Sunday lunch as it was going to be one of the last times we were going to be just the two of us. We went out and had a lovely lunch and arrived back home at a around 5pm. Had an uneventful evening and went to bed. I woke up at around 2am thinking that I really needed to go the toilet as I had tummy pains (I had treated myself to a lemonade at lunch which I hadn’t done in months as the bubbles had been upsetting my tummy). I got up had a peppermint tea and went to the toilet and the pains easier. I woke up again at around 4am and the pain was back although I noticed this time it was coming in waves. I decided to start my contraction timer to see if there was a pattern. By 6am there we’re coming every 5-8minutes so I decided to call the hospital. They said I wasn’t I established labour and to call back when I had 3 contractions every 10 minutes. The contractions continued in that pattern until 9am when they stopped entirely, I was very disheartened so decided to for a lie down. I woke up at 12 and there were no signs of contractions so I decided to have a bath. When I got in the bath the contractions started up again but were very irregular. Between 5-35 minutes so decided it was false labour and thought nothing more. At around 6pm on Monday night, the pains were still very erratic but I thought I could feel my waters trickling with each contraction. I called the hospital back and said I thought my waters had gone. Again, as I wasn’t having regular contractions, they didn’t want me to come into the hospital as they would just send me home again. I asked to go in for a check as I had been contracting irregularly for over 12 hours and I thought I hadn’t really felt many movements during the day other than right before a contraction. The hospital begrudgingly agree.
At this point, my husband decided he wanted to eat dinner so quickly ate a pizza with me pacing around in the background trying to get things moving!
We arrive at the hospital just after 7pm and my husband helped me to the assessment unit but then had to return back to the car. The midwife asked to check my sanitary pad which was damp and my bloody show was also now on the pad to. The midwife asked me to lie down so she could check baby’s position and as she lowered the head of the bed my waters went spectacularly, all of me, all over the midwife, all over the bed and floor and with every contraction they were gushing out. Needless to say I was a bit embarrassed!
I asked whether or not I could now stay and whether my husband could join me but again, they didn’t deem my waters breaking as active labour and suggested I went home and to come back for an induction in 24 hours if the contractions were still irregular. The midwife then asked if I wanted to be examined and to have a sweep to give me an idea of my progress. I agreed as I wanted to know if I had dilated at all. On examination, I was 2-3cm so still wasn’t enough to stay at the hospital as I had to be at least 4cm to be admitted. The midwife asked me to get dressed in the hospital gown they gave me (as my clothes were soaked!) so I could go home.
As soon as I stood up I knew something was wrong as the pain had gone from a level 2 to a level 10. I was shaky, could barely stand, completely lost control of my breathing and was panicking. I asked for pain relief and I couldn’t talk or focus on anything, they offered me 2 paracetamol and said I couldn’t have any more before established labour to avoid the risk of interventions later. I also asked if my husband could come in and collect me as I could no longer was unaided. I had to wait for the 7pm handover to finish and they agreed to let me husband in to collect me. He brought the tens machine with him so they could apply it to my back before we left. As soon as he saw me he was worried, it was about 7:30 at this point so I half an hour I had declined rapidly, was crying and was very shaky. He helped me get dressed as best we could, the tens machine was applied to my back and we were getting ready to leave. By this point it was around 8pm and I was pacing the room. The idea of having to sit in the car and trying to get home was unimaginable. The delivery suite was full and I was in the last vacant room so despite what I thought was my incredibly low pain threshold and inability to cope, they still said I had to leave until established labour. I decided to use the toilet before we left and as soon as I sat down I began involuntarily pushing! I screamed for my husband who came into the bathroom as saw I was pushing, he ran out of the room to grab a midwife.
The midwife casually strolled in and said I can’t be pushing properly as I was only 3cm and I was probably just doing a pre-labour poo! When she came into the toilet she looked at me and said maybe we had better just check again. My husband and the midwife helped me to the bed and again, I couldn’t stop pushing. The midwife examined me and I had gone from 2-3cm to 9.5cm in an hour! She was so shocked, pulled the emergency alarm and a whole delivery team came rushing into to prepare for the delivery!
At this point, my only pain relief had been 2 paracetamol (which I had only taken about 15 minutes before!) and a tens machine! I begged for gas and air and they immediately gave it to me. I started properly pushing with the delivery team at around 8:30 but I was so shocked that I just couldn’t concentrate and I was shouting out with the pushing rather than concentrating my energy in the right place.
Once I was being coached and my husband tried to calm me down, I started to push more effectively. Everything was going well but she started to have slight decelerations at around 10pm so I agreed to have an episiotomy to help speed it along. My baby girl Emilia was born at 10:16pm and placed straight on my chest, I was so shocked. I had gone from waters breaking to fully established labour, to pushing and delivering in around 3 hours! It was the most amazing experience of my life and I fully appreciate how lucky I was that it was over so quickly but would have loved a bit more pain relief than 2 paracetamol and a few puffs of gas and air! Anyway, I hope this story instils confidence in you ladies that we can all do it and it doesn’t always have to be a horrible experience! I will upload a picture in the next few days that is slightly more artistic than the baby spam I currently have on my phone!
I had the most beautiful and poignant moment with my husband last night, as the lift closed on the postnatal ward and my husband and I were on our way home with our little bundle in our car seat we looked at each other and both cried. There was a very dark point in my life before Christmas were I had just had my miscarriage and a pcos diagnosis and I cried to my husband that I wasn’t sure we would ever leave the hospital with a baby. Yesterday our dream came true and I have never felt so much love, for my husband, my baby or our new little family. We hugged and sobbed in the lift together before walking out of the hospital hand in hand with our little bundle in the car seat.
Thank you all again for your well wishes and I cannot wait for this thread to start filling with beautiful rainbow babies!