A mom shares her Birth Story
My pregnancy was as smooth as I could wish for. I was measuring equally to my gestation, hardly any sickness, no sore boobs, all in all I LOVED it! Iwas due on the 27th January 2010, I reached 40weeks and had a sweep, which wasnt pleasant, but I hoped it would get our suprise bump (nick named ‘smurfy’) out, but no such luck. I was offered another sweep a week later, which I decided to refuse. The midwife booked me in for my Induction on sunday 7th February at 9pm. She tried to get me to go in on the friday, but I wanted to see if I would go naturally before. In between we tried every safde method known to get baby out, nothing was working.
I went in for monitering on the Saturday because I was then 10 days overdue. Everything was fine with smurfy, but the whole experience was pretty scary, I was put on a ward with about 6 other girls all being induced and writhering around in pain. Not good when I was already petrified about sunday night.
Sunday night arrived, my partner Dan headed over to the hospital (20mins away) but was sent home and told to come back in the morning. Bless him he felt awful leaving me in tears, so stayed in his car in the car park till 8am the next day. The midwife came to see me and gave me the pessaries and told me to get some rest. I tried to sleep but was getting period pains, which started to get stronger and stronger. I decided to go for a walk around the hospital to ease the pain but also get things progressing quicker. Then at about 3am the midwives ran me a bath, which was much more relaxing. I eventually went back on the ward and tried to breathe through the contractions.
When 8am arrived the contractions were pretty intense, I think Dan was pretty shocked. They examined me at 9.30am and I was 3cm. I felt really gutted, although I wasnt making a fuss the pain was pretty bad. They brought me a tank of gas and air, and left me to ramble nonsense to Dan. It worked though and I was much calmer inside. I LOVED the gas and air! They came to examine me again at about midday and I was 5-6 cms. They took me through to the delivery room and I was introduced to my midwife ‘Claire’ who was lovely. To be honest the next few hours are pretty blurry.
I was getting lots of pains in my back but it was managable. Claire checked if I was progressing around, I was almost ready to start pushing. The contractions were every couple of minuets and I could feel the pressure of the baby pushing down, so she broke my waters (which doesnt hurt at all) and instantly the need to push started. I was told to start pushing if thats what my body was telling me to do. After about 30 mins of pushing, she checked to see if the baby was moving down. She told me to STOP pushing, as smurfy had turned and was a bit stuck, not sure exactly how, but she could feel his ear?
She wanted another opinion, so went to get someone. The pain I felt whilst I was told to stop pushing was horrible, never felt anything like it, I was terrified. She mentioned forceps or ventuose might be need. When she came back I was practically begging for an epidural, which shocked me, because I was petrified of needles. She said that would be the next step if baby hadnt moved back to the correct position. Somebody else then examined me and told me I was ok to start pushing again. I was exhausted now.
I tried again and after a while I was very nearly there, they gave me an episiotomy to help baby out, with a couple more pushes our son arrived at 18.52. He was 7lb 6ozs and beautiful. I was over the moon and Daddy was too! Lots of happy tears were shed. Proud Daddy cut the cord and Mummy had lots of cuddles.
Me thinking it was all over, was completely wrong. They gave me the injection to help deliver the placenta, but the placenta didnt want to budge, they tried to gentle pull it out using the cord but it snapped. They sat me up on a bowl (so uncomfy and undignified) on the bed and tried to get our son to breastfeed from me. He didnt attach very well at all and I was getting very upset about the situation. The placenta was not coming away and I was shattered, people were coming in and out of the room for hours. They then came through and told me I would have to go to theater for a spinal and they would then manually remove my retained placenta.
All I wanted to do was be with my baby and Dan. Around about 11pm they collected me to take me to theater where I was for the next two hours, whilst Dan was worried sick left holding our new born baby. He was so happy to see me when they wheeled me back through to the ward at 1am. They took our baby boy Joshua to the nursery for the night whilst I get some rest, and Dan went home.
At about 6am I saw my Joshua, I was so gutted we didnt spend that 1st night together, and they had had to bottle feed him. But we were both well and that is the main thing. We later found out about four weeks later Joshua had tongue tie, probably the reason he couldnt breast feed. I just wish they would of told me in the hospital so didn’t feel such a failure about not being able to feed him.
As much as my birth wasnt as i’d planned, especially the last bit, I think that most of the hospital staff were fab and helped me as much as possible. I will say I would do it all again tomorrow. I LOVE my little boy so much, he’s now 13 months and my little star. I cant wait to do it all again…….
