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59 hours start to finish...
After a whole week of having shows of different sizes I woke up on Sunday night/Monday morning having a weird dream that I was having contractions, but they weren’t very strong, so it wasn’t worth worrying about. Thought it was rather odd and got up to go to the loo and on the way back my waters broke as I opened the bedroom door.
Mum must have heard me moving about and got up to see what was going on and got all very excited (especially considering it was 12.30 and we’d only just gone to bed) and got up with me for a cup of tea. Nothing much was happening, so I went back to bed for a bit and started getting niggly pains which increased in intensity so I got up about 2am. Continued having these pains which built up all night until about 6.30am when I decided to go and wake H up with a cup of tea. Got into bed for a cuddle and a back rub and woke 2 hours later with the realisation that everything had stopped.
Spent the day sitting on the birthing ball, in the garden, having bouts of niggly pains but not a lot more and steadily losing fluids. Phoned the midwives mid-afternoon and was told to come in to be assessed that evening. Went to the hospital day assessment unit and they confirmed that my waters had broken but that I wasn’t really having contractions and that baby was only 2/5ths engaged. And they don’t induce till 4 days after your waters break in my area… they just give you antibiotics. *sigh*
So went home, got an early ish night and was woken at about 1am by very different pains. Dozed on and off through them for a couple of hours then got up at 3am and pottered round the house, doing the ironing and recording the time between each pain. By 7am I felt that these were definitely contractions and that they were getting stronger and stronger. At 9am we left for the hospital to be assessed and was put on a monitor to find the contractions completely disappeared. And I was only just 1cm dilated.
Got home for the contractions to start up again with greater force. Spent some time on the birthing ball, but found that really increased the intensity of each contraction and that I was better just wandering round the house. Put on the tens machine which made a massive difference and finished packing my bags. Phoned the hospital again at 12pm and they suggested having a bath – if the contractions went away it was a false alarm, if they didn’t then I was in labour and I should come in when I felt I needed to.
As soon as I got into the water and laid back the contractions started coming more strongly and closer together. H poured water over the bump during each contraction but to be honest it made little difference and after 15 mins I got out and strapped the tens back on and got dressed to go to hospital. Contractions were about 5 mins apart.
Had a hideous drive to hospital – its only 5 mins – screaming at H to slow down and not go fast round roundabouts (and avoid all bumps). Had a massive contraction in the car park and an even bigger one in the waiting room of the day assessment unit – packed with expectant Mums and dads waiting for their scans and ante-natal appts. Was assessed and found to be barely 2cm dilated. They suggested I go home, but I knew I couldn’t get back in the car, so they let me stay.
Got into the labour room and was told that entinox at this stage isn’t that effective, so asked for some meptid which just made me even sleepier, but at least took away the pain in between the contractions, so I got a little break. Because my waters had gone more than 24 hours earlier but I hadn’t had 24 hours of oral antibiotics I had to have IV antibiotics and continual monitoring, but at least they could do both while I was moving around. Sat on the birthing ball and bounced about for 4 hours until they assessed me again at 8pm. 3cm.
Was given some entinox, which made everything sound like it had a techno house beat to it and continued bouncing on the birthing ball. By this point I was struggling to stay awake and H kept trying to force feed me lucozade tablets – I’d hardly eaten since my waters broke on Monday am. In between contractions I was falling asleep and rolling off the ball. At 12am they assessed me again – 4cm. H was trying to talk to me and I was rambling incoherently. Apparently like I’d drunk too much gin and wasn’t having any fun. My contractions were coming in groups – 1 huge one, one medium one and 3 little piddling ones – then a great gap.
At 2am (Wednesday morning) they told me that my contractions weren’t coherent enough to get the baby out, so they’d need to augment it with some syntocin and as it was going to make the contractions stronger, did I want an epidural. I did and a very lovely man came and administered it. Considering I’d been petrified of having a needle in my back, it was very easy and not at all painful – other than an odd twinge down my leg. I fell asleep the second it started working.
At 5am a consultant was called and I was assessed again. 6cm. My contractions had stopped entirely when I’d had the epidural and had needed to be started off from scratch while I was asleep. They ramped up the syntocin and I dozed a bit more.
8am the consultant came back. 8 cm. But they’d had to put the syntocin up to a high level and they couldn’t up it any more, so they warned me that if things didn’t start to happen more quickly they’d have to re-think what options I had. They reckoned the baby was moving her head about a lot and not keeping in contact with the cervix enough to maintain the contractions, even with the syntocin. The odd foetal weight assessment chart that they do in Worcester was estimating her size at about 8lbs 12oz at 38 weeks and the midwives kept telling me she was a really big baby and I might have problems delivering her.
10am the consultant reappeared. Did an internal which made me feel like I was in a James Herriot novel and decided that the baby had moved from being anterior to posterior and that now she’d turned her face upwards. So despite the fact that I was now at 10cm, there was a reasonable risk that she wouldn’t come out, especially given her size. They went outside to discuss things and the next thing we knew there was a woman in scrubs asking me about how my epidural was working because they’d use that for my section. Nice.
We were wheeled into the operating theatre very calmly. Had a discussion with the theatre staff about whether David Gray or Robbie Williams was a more appropriate choice of music to play (I chose Robbie – thought it was a bit more uplifting) and then they increased my epidural so I couldn’t feel anything at all, put up the drapes and brought H in – complete in scrubs and looking very funny indeed. Next minute (it seemed) they asked H if he wanted to see the baby’s head emerging and he stood up to get a peek and then sat down very fast indeed. He tells me it looked like something out of Alien. They told us it was a girl and gave her a quick clean and placed her, complete with little hat and wrapped in a towel, onto my chest while they completed the surgery.
We finally decided on her name, Katie Elizabeth, and asked whether they’d weighed her. The midwives had disappeared at this point so the anaesthetist and H put her on the scales. 9lbs 2oz. It wasn’t until we got through to the recovery room and the midwives weighed her again (being rather cross that the anaesthetist had done it already) that we found that they’d done it with her wet towel on and actually she was only 7lbs 15oz.
We’ve had a few teething problems with feeding as I was so utterly knackered after it all, but Katie is doing really well and a week on I feel great. It’s lovely being a Mum!