My birth story

[belle_lu_1986]

Baby Joseph Anthony was born on November 6th at 2.44am after 46 hours of contractions and therefore by the time he arrived I was exhausted!

I woke up at about 5am on Thursday Nov 4th feeling some contractions and even at that point they were coming around every 8 minutes or so. I got up and went to the loo and stuff before lying back in bed for a while. At about 5.40am that same morning I felt rather damp and so went back to the loo and my pad was sodden. I changed my pad though and went back to bed and there wasn't a lot more fluid, I'm almost certain it wasn't urine in the pad though.

I woke Ash at about 7am to tell him that I'd been having contractions and I'd been timing them for over an hour and they were regularly coming around every 7 or 8 minutes. They were manageable but uncomfortable and so we got up, I spoke to my mum and she came over at about 11.
I spoke to the labour suite at about 9am and told them about the wet pad and they said that it sounded like if anything it was my hind waters as there wasn't an awful lot and I hadn't been leaking all that much since but to keep an eye on things.

Throughout the day the contactions kept coming between every about 7 minutes and 4 minutes and they were lasting for about 45 seconds. I spoke to the labour suite again at about 3pm, mainly as I was concerned about if my waters had gone, they didn't seem too concerned.

In the end I phoned again at about 7pm and they told me to come in at about 8 to be examined.

I went in expecting to be sent home but the contractions began to come more often and they had been getting a bit stronger, by now they were coming around every 4 minutes consistantly. They couldn't say for sure if my waters had gone so they kept me in but on the ward rather than the labour suite and my mum stayed with me (only one person was allowed to stay), at this point I was 4-5cm dilated apparently.

Overnight the contractions increased to every 3 minutes and lasting for around a minute but then they went off at about 3am. At this point I was also told that they wouldn't give me anything to move things on until 11pm the following night as they couldn't say for sure that my waters had gone when I said that they had but I'd had another leak at 11pm on the 4th, so they would only count it as anything ruptured from this point as it had been witnessed by a midwife. I was feeling a bit crap by this time and they suggested I had some diamorphine to help me to get some rest and assured me that it wouldn't slow things down. Well... I had the jab and woke up about 3 hours later and it was like I had to start again.

So Friday came and by about 12noon I was contracting every 2-3 minutes and they were lasting for over a minute, however, there were no beds on the labour suite so they wanted to keep me on the ward!! They wouldn't examine me due to risk of infection and they even suggested some more diamorphone to slow things down due to lack of beds!! I refused it as I was incredibly fed up by this point, and the first lot had made me pretty sick after a few hours; which I could have predicted. In the end I told a white lie that I was feeling the need to push and they quickly found me a bed on the labour suite!! In actual fact I was feeling an awful lot of pressure in my back passage but I wasn't really quite at the point of needing to push! I was transferred up there at about 6pm and examined and was about 6 cms I think but they said my cervix looked good.

I asked for an epidural at this point as even though it wasn't in my plans at all but I'd had enough after contracting for over 36 hours by now with about 2 hours sleep in that time. It was amazing!!! I went from struggling through each contaction to sitting chatting! They examined me at about midnight and said said that I was 9cms dilated but the midwife managed to push the last bit out of the way somehow! They then left me an hour before getting me to push.

The pushes were good but there weren't enough contactions apparently to get the baby out even though I had a drip up to help things along. After about an hour of pushing the head was getting there but they were concerned about the babies reactions to the contractions. So I was examined by the doctor and they told me I had to have forceps and an episiosomy :-s I was worried about that and it really wasn't somehting that I wanted. I did however want to get the baby out safely and so I didn't argue.

In the end it was all ok though, although I thought the dr was going to pull me off the bed with the forceps let alone pulling the baby out!

In the end anyway I had a forceps birth with an epidural and episiostomy and my plan was for a water birth and as natural as possible....! I'm not bothered though, after 46 hours of contracting I'm just glad he's here. I am however a bit pissed off at the hospital as I really feel that a lot of the things that happened was in order to try to slow things down because they were short staffed and short of beds.

Comments

[sparklielizard.livejournal.com]

Very glad all is okay! Sounds like *you* did all the right things even if the hospital didn't. Labour can be utterly exhausting (understatement!) - sounds like you did your very best and you avoided a c-section which is not always easy in those circumstances! Sorry about the forceps and episiotomy though, ugh.

Congratulations again! :-)