So my birth story! It all happened quite quickly and feels a little dramatic! I will be quite frank with the gory details so that's just a little warning for you haha. Because I have a rubbish memory and some bits are difficult to piece together I am just gonna be as detailed as possible.
So here goes...
Monday night I was just reading my book, as you do, and decided at about 1am to finish up and go to sleep. No hint anything was happening, just a normal night. Went straight off to sleep as far as I can remember. I then got woken up by a pain at about 245, I was just lying there half asleep thinking 'ouch what did I eat? Feels like a no2 pain!'. So I got up to go and see to that, to find that I was really wet and gooey I guess. So at this point I was like oh shit, is this what waters feels like? My mucus plug also came out at this point, which was lovely!
So I called triage for advice at around 330 and they told me to stick a pad on and sit down for 30 mins and then walk around for 30 mins and then call them back to update. They also asked me if I had any contractions and I said no. So I do as I'm told, a little bit scared at this point but I didn't want to wake OH unless it was a false alarm and he had work at 7! Not a lot happened on the leakage front, but I did start getting fairly regular contractions, I guess every 10-15 minutes during the hour I had to wait.
Called triage again to let them know, they said they thought it was probably not my waters and to give them a call again if my contractions got to every 5 mins and were lasting a whole minute. So I downloaded a contraction timer and went back to bed. By this point OH was just waking up for work and I told him I thought things were starting. He started getting ready to go and open up until someone could cover him, but over the next hour the contractions got down to close to every 5 minutes, but lasting about 45 seconds mostly.
At this point I started being sick after the contractions due to the pain, I've had this during really bad periods so I wasn't surprised but I wasn't even keeping water down. As I was being sick and they were every 5 mins or so OH called triage again to see what we needed to do. They said that they weren't really lasting long enough, but if I came in they would examine me and possibly give me anti sickness drugs.
So off we trundled to the hospital, luckily at 615 ish it's a straight 10-15 minute run. We were lucky it wasn't 815 because during rush hour it's probably the busiest road in the city, it could have taken about 45 mins! During that time I had about 3 contractions, and then another once we were speaking to maternity reception. They didn't do very much to begin with as we got there just before the shift change over, so they just stuck me on the trace for about an hour. I was given oral morphine, which did nothing, and the anti sickness injection which luckily did!
After this point it all becomes a little bit hazy. I know they examined me internally at around 8 which hurt like a bitch! She thought she couldn't find my cervix and so was digging about in there, turns out this was because I was 8-9cm dilated already! At this point my OH called my mum, because she was also due to be my birthing partner, whose reaction was ‘you’re joking!’.
I’m not sure of the timings after this. I was moved into a delivery room, thankfully, as this meant I could have gas and air. Once I’d worked out how to use it this was really effective and totally took the edge off things, even if it did make me dizzy. At some point, not long after my mum arrived at about 9 ish, my waters did go, and even through the haze of the G&A it was unmistakable! It was like a biblical flood!
From then it all slowed down really, I don’t think I got to 10cm for a few hours and then I think they thought I was 10cm and told me to start pushing but really there was a tiny bit left which became inflamed. The doctor had a look and then told me to basically just stop pushing for at least an hour to see if that sorted it out. I was finally given morphine at this point, and apparently went to sleep between contractions! I was offered an epidural, but I didn’t fancy having a catheter, so this was all the pain relief I had.
The pushing stage I found very frustrating, having had only 1.5hrs max of sleep and no food I was pretty exhausted and it seemed like I was making really slow progress. His heart rate dipped a few times and my blood pressure was raised, so I had to have meds for this. Once I started pushing properly and worked out what I was doing his heart rate was fine, but I was told to either get on with it or they would have to help him out. After what felt like forever he was born at 222, I ended up needing an episiotomy and still had a 2nd degree tear!
It took a little while for them to sort me out in terms of stitches, because the way the tear and the cut were, but they got there in the end. This was also pretty painful because the local anaesthetic, didn’t seem to want to kick in at this point. At one point OH had to take Theo because I was scared I would hurt him from being in pain.
Other than the pain etc all I can remember is how bloody hot it was in that delivery room. I was a horrible sticky mess and I kept asking how many more pushes and contractions because I was so ready for it to be done! The first thing I really asked for was a shower! They made OH come in with me just in case I fainted, but I’ve never fainted before in my life and I wasn’t about to start now! All in all though I think it went really well considering and I was moved up to the ward at around 630. I realise now how lucky I was to go into labour before I was induced, and that I basically did 0-8cm without even realising it.
So that’s the story of how Theo made his entrance, so much has happened since I could probably carry on writing. But it’s currently 330 and the little man has finally settled on my chest, so I’m hoping I can put him down and get some kip myself.
Until I can get around to writing up the next bit here are some pictures from the first day:
for now, here's a photo of Theo and I aged 2 days:
![23659411_10156501247192580_2713940659395300312_n[1].jpg](https://pregnancyforum-data.community.forum/attachments/120/120881-fad361ea6b9023857a776d9cf8e06c32.jpg)
![23518993_10156493870317580_7191059663009671856_n[1].jpg](https://pregnancyforum-data.community.forum/attachments/120/120883-17ef8ef9b380f97f18fd1bd313c4e8fe.jpg)
![23167613_10156450789837580_5222759592471225659_n[1].jpg](https://pregnancyforum-data.community.forum/attachments/120/120885-6a540bd1c5343ae793a21c4a5488082a.jpg)
