@Sa11yCinnamon and @cosylife sorry to hear you’re not having a good time! @Sa11yCinnamon Do you have a birth ball? There’s a lunge type exercise you can do on it to open up your pelvis and it’s meant to help baby drop. I don’t know if it’s what worked for me but baby was 1/5th palpable on Thursday. @cosylife when is your section? Hopefully not long to go.
We welcomed our baby girl this afternoon, weighing a lovely 7lb7. It wasn’t the birth I’d hoped for but it’s ended in a positive story.
I went to triage on Wednesday for reduced movements and was told because baby was so low we thought we’d try the cool balloon to help dilate me further in the hope of my waters then breaking naturally. Well I cannot tell you how awful the balloon experience was in my individual experience. We tried for 20 mins to get it in and whilst I was dilated the midwife couldn’t get my cervix forward enough, enough with a speculum and we had to give up. This was at my birth centre and they recommended I try again at the hospital later on so off we went to the hospital. During this time I had a significant bleed and didn’t want to proceed with trying the balloon again so asked if my section date could be brought forward as discussed and agreed with the doctor the day before. The midwife was quite horrible to me and kept trying to push me down induction route even though I knew my cervix was not favourable enough and I have always said that I did not consent to induction and if she needed out it would have to be section. The midwife said she’d get the doctor but I should really consider induction even thought I’d said no repeatedly and got upset and cried, I was in a lot of pain from the failed attempt and she didn’t even want to see my blood soaked pad!
We waited about 2.5 hours for the doctor to see us and thankfully she was wonderful. She came to say she’d booked us in for section on Friday if I was happy to proceed. I agreed and we got to go home Thursday night.
We arrived at the hospital at 11am today knowing there was some people in before us and we were last on the list. We were constantly informed of progress, I was prepped in plenty time and my partner was included in everything and even sat with me for getting the spinal.
Baby arrived with a little fight to get her out because she was so far down 🙈 but she’s absolutely perfect and almost exactly her predicted weight. I ended up losing a lot of blood during the op and needed a transfusion straight after. Everyone in the room remained so calm I didn’t even know we were having an emergency until they told me what they’d done to fix it, I’d already consented to transfusion if needed.
Baby managed to latch quickly after I was sorted out and had been an absolute milk monster since! I’m so pleased with how we’ve both taken to breastfeeding ☺️
I have to say my experience on Friday has totally made up for my terrible day on Thursday. The planned section was so calm and a really positive environment to be in, the whole team have been amazing. Since my op someone has regularly come round to change my pad and empty my catheter. I’ve had plenty of pain meds and feel really good just now.
We are having a contact nap til she wakes to get her nappy changed again and will try to pop her in her cot after that. She gets hungry so quickly after going down! We might get home tomorrow if they’re happy with everything, not it’ll be Sunday.
Good luck to everyone still to go, I’ll be keeping an eye out for updates!