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Well, after a LOT of messing about, including a good week or so of pre-labour, baby Finlay decided to arrive after a 15 ½ hour labour, weighing 8lb 4 oz, in the early hours of 9th November! Here is my incredibly long-winded birth story. Well, it was a bit of a long-winded birth...
My waters broke at about 1.30pm on Friday 7th November and when I called the community midwife she said that there was no way I would be having my baby any later than Monday because the policy round here is to induce within 72 hours. I kept on losing amniotic fluid during the day and DH came home from work at 3.30. We headed to the hospital to get the Group B Strep swab at 8.30 that night and I was booked in for induction at 8.30 am on Monday morning, just in case. And then we went home to wait for contractions.
After all the practice contractions I?d been having I was not at all surprised to not be having much apart from the odd Braxton Hicks contractions and went back to bed at about 9 am after a really early start, saying "I hope I get woken up by really bloody painful contractions, I'm getting sick of this stop-start business".
At 10am, I was woken up by a fairly big contraction and this time they just kept coming, more and more painfully. During the morning and afternoon I went through euphoria, pain, despair and denial ("I bet I'm not really in labour") until I called the hospital at 4pm to be told that it sounded really promising and to give it another 2 hours. At 6pm DH called them for me as I couldn?t talk and they agreed it was probably a good idea if I came in to see them. I was absolutely convinced by this stage that these were just really, really painful Braxton Hicks contractions and was sure I would be told that I had not dilated at all and would be sent home to carry on contracting pointlessly for another 2 days.
The examining midwife told me that that I had got to 6cm on paracetamol, back rubs from DH and swearing (yay!) and was handed some lovely gas and air, which I proceeded to chug down on until I thought I was going to throw up, just in exultation at getting some REAL pain relief and actually being in labour.
After a couple of hours, I suddenly remembered that I had asked in my birth plan for a water birth if possible. Amazingly, the hospital's only birth pool was actually free and 45 minutes later I was underwater and it was bliss, all the weight was off my hips and knees, it was nice and dark and warm in there and the "I can't do this" feeling went away. I don?t have much memory of the next two or hours apart from the midwife checking my baby's heartbeat all the time (he slept through the whole thing and apparently didn't even seem to realise anything untoward was going on), being a bit worried that I would do a poo and then getting past the point of caring, and going from being told not to push to being told to push like hell.
I pushed for an hour and 40 minutes and then the midwife told me that it wasn't happening - they could see the head but the baby just wasn't coming out. DH told me later that this was when it started getting scary, but he didnb't show any sign of it then, bless him. They gave me another 20 minutes and then told me that they had to get the doctors involved. The next bit is also a little bit blurry but involves being told I needed a ventouse and maybe an emergency c-section if that didn't work and therefore I was getting an epidural and I remember agreeing to ANYTHING (I am a bit crap with pain), meeting an interesting cross-section of the hospital staff, being fitted for sexy white pressure stockings, having all my earrings removed, DH appearing in scrubs and me taking the piss out of him ("Hey, George Clooney, over here!"), being told we weren't going to theatre after all because they were going to try the ventouse, and they gave me local anaesthetic. Luckily, little Fin had become slightly unstuck during all this excitement and rushing around and after a few goes at hauling him out with the suction cup, out he came. At some point during this bit the midwife told DH to look at the clock for the time of birth and then I was yelling and pushing like mad and then Fin was yelling as well!
I didn't even notice the episiotomy. I did ask the doc afterwards as she was stitching me up how many stitches she was doing but she said "Well, it's sort of all one big stitch, really" and remained fairly noncommittal. But she did mention "layers", which sounded nicely grim.
They put my baby on my chest and asked DH to cut the cord and I asked "Is it Finlay or Phoebe?" and DH had a look and said "Blimey!" so I guessed it was Finlay and he looked like a little boxer, all puffy eyes and cauliflower ears and gore. They took him away, yelling his head off, for his Apgars and I could hear DH singing to him and Fin calming down.
Honestly, it was the best day of my life, and I was walking on air and couldn't sleep for about a day afterwards. And I was proud of myself for getting through it on gas and air, paracetamol and local anaesthetic, although I would hardly call my performance stoical. I would do it all over again, any day - it was SO worth it.
Great birth story Saurus. I had a very similar experience with the ventouse and episiotomy - I also asked how many stitches as I was curious/scared but got exactly the same answer!!! I still don't know how bad it was down there and I'm too scared to look!
Thanks, ladies - Chocorange, I have not looked either but the community midwife went from saying "ooh, nasty", complete with teeth-sucking impressed noise, 3 weeks ago to "lovely, you'll ALMOST never know you had any stitches". ALMOST? Not good enough!
A mate of mine has JUST had her baby this morning and had a v similar experience, except for 36 hours and forceps. And 3rd-degree tearing, instead of the episiotomy. Owie.
) and Congratulations to you and DH 
