At 36/37 weeks I got signed off with my wishful thinking birth plan. Where I live we hadn’t long had a wonderful facility up and running. A new birthing suite run by midwives with birthing pools and loving calming lights and just looked absolutely wonderful. As I was low risk and hadn’t had any issues at all I had it signed off that I would be able to go here to have our baby. Well 40 weeks check up pissed all over that.
Doug and I had gone to see the midwife together for hopefully my last appointment as i was finding it a bit uncomfortable behind the wheel now and well it’s nice having your other half there and Doug was very good to come to appointments where he could. Well we went in and she started her usual checks and then blood pressure check and as soon as she went to perform it a second time I knew that was it my luck had run out. She did two readings and by this point I already knew the issue was that it was reading high. She said it was slightly high and that she was going to ring the hospital and see what they wanted to do. She rang they chatted for a few moments and it was decided that we should go up there this evening and just get checked over. Said there was no point getting there before 5 so to go home for a bit make sure everything was in hand and then head up there.
We went up to the hospital for around then; hospital bag ready in the boot just in case (as your advised from 37 weeks, ours wasn’t in from then though we just got it when we’d gone home). Then the wait began, we were waiting in a tiny room for about an hour and then got transferred to another small room. A woman came in, asked a few questions took by blood pressure again, disappeared again for a little bit and then came back again. Also on another side note you never have to wee into so many pots as you do when you’re pregnant. So I had to do that again when I got there, even though I’d just had it checked at the midwife appointment only a few hours earlier.
Then that was it, it was decided I wasn’t going anywhere and I was being admitted and induced. But before I even got transferred to the ward they decided that they would perform a sweep, lovely. So my ideal birth plan had been kicked out the window and now I was going to have a sweep performed. To say the least about no longer being able to go to the midwife lead birthing suite, I was completely gutted! I was transferred, given my bed and that was it until show time. I was strapped up to a blood pressure monitor and belly hooked up to heart rate monitor. Doug was allowed to stay with me until 10 and then he was told he had to go home and that was it. Now another thing that will become apparent about my birth experience is that everything happened to me at night.
As you can tell from this pic, very unimpressed haha
So Doug had left and I was in the ward for the night. So first thing that happened they decided they were going to start the inducing process. As I said things happened to me at night so at 12:15am lovely midwife came through and inserted the cardboard like thing that was suppose to get the ball rolling. The hours unless something was happening for your partners to be there was 10:00am – 10:00pm so Doug returned after doing work on the farm the following morning. Well not much was happening in the morning, was all rather boring but then by the afternoon contractions had started. These weren’t too bad in all honesty just a bit of tightening and so forth. Mum and Dad came in visited and we all went for a coffee at the Costa at the hospital and chatted for a while. The contractions got closer together and more intense as time went on but I wasn’t checked till this had been for a long time and until they were a certain amount of time apart and unfortunately no where near yet. Doug again had to head home at 10 and they told him they would call if it looked like anything would make an appearance. Contractions continued and still nothing. I fell asleep…..when I woke in the morning contractions had stopped and that was that….They checked everything over again and I was told I was dilated enough for them to be able to break my waters and so it was just the wait to be transferred to delivery suite as they would do this there and start the drip for the rest of the induction. Now I got told this in the morning, before lunch that I just had to wait for a bed to be available and I’d get transferred through. Now as you can imagine I got mixed emotions about this because obviously you know that means going to meet baby soon, and be out of this hospital and no longer pregnant and stuff but also obviously its a little bit nerve wracking and well you know you’re being told you’re about to have your baby. However, try waiting nearly 24 for this. So as I said I was told in the morning all was fine and ready and just a case of a bed….well I didn’t get transferred till about 12:30am and then once they got everything sorted and broke my waters and started the drip it didn’t all get started till about 3:15am! !
Lets talk about the drip. The horrible needle popped in your hand which twinges every time you move or get it stuck on something, that was fun but luckily I had a lovely midwife who came an popped this in and was really efficient. But that bastard drip! It gets increased every half hour until your at a certain point which was fine. With me though I reached that point before all the interval increases. So contractions where happening when they should for as long as they should but I hadn’t had one of the suggested increases. My midwife at this point was newly qualified and she felt we could probably leave it at this level for a bit see how it went and then possibly increase again later on, but because she was newly qualified and stuff she just wanted to check with the ward matron and get approval. However she came back a little later on and after talks they decided to go with the normal planned increased. This tipped me and my body over the edge. I was having contractions less than a minute apart and baby wasn’t getting a rest either and so they were then worried about babies heart beat. So they wanted to take bloods from the top of her head to check that she was ok. So this was done, not the nicest of process for either of us I’m guessing and that was all fine and so we continued. At this point I found gas and air and lost a bit of time so not sure how long that went on for. Again contractions where still a minute to less than a minute apart getting worried about babies heart rate again and so took more bloods. It was at this point that every one was telling me to have an epidural. Now prior to having all this happen and being in labor the one thing I was adamant about was that I did not want an epidural, the whole idea of it just freaked me out. But yes I went again against my prior judgement and also when Doug was telling me to just have one as well I did.
Two lovely gentleman came in to administer and that was that, everything went a little bit calmer for a bit and then I was told it was time to push. So when the midwife instructed I pushed and oh my god they expect you push for a ridiculous length of time. Anyway they allowed me to push for about 10 minutes and then they were getting concerned about baby’s heart rate again. The other thing you should know at this point was that you could clearly she her head. Next thing I knew there was another 4 people in the room and I was being given another decisions, they wanted to take more bloods from her head again to check whether she was getting enough oxygen, and then they were like but we’re also concerned so could either rush through for emergency c-section or can do an instrumental. Did I mention you could see her head! therefore I was like how the hell you going to do a c-section surely she’s gone to far already. By this point as well I felt like baby had had enough needles in her head and so I didn’t want her to have to go through this again so I just said lets go with instrumental, with no clue really what I was agreeing too.
Turns out I was agreeing to have forceps. I tried to ask the main doc what this entailed and I was given a look and spoken to like I was an utter moron. Well how the fuck was I supposed to know in the antenatal classes we’d gone to they didn’t really cover this as obviously they talk about all the details of having a natural birth and the process your body goes through etc etc and they just mentioned about instrumental in a sweeping statement rather than full detail. The amazing student midwife who was in with us could kind of see that I was clueless and that doctor was a prick and so she kindly explained what would happen and made things clearer.
So again another 4 people came sweeping into the room and that was that. Lady who was assisting it all she cut me (Doug likens this to a gore scene out of a horror film, because of the amount of blood), inserted the forceps and with two pushes and pulls out came baby Henrietta. They took her over to one side gave her a check over, all was fine, kind of wrapped her and popped her on me. Now as you can imagine I was a little out of it an over whelmed and didn’t really know what to do or expect.
One reaction I did have thought was I was really hungry and craving sugar. Remember I said I’d got transferred middle of the night and ball got really rolling early hours of the morning well it was now 6:30 in the evening, I hadn’t eaten anything all day and barely drank anything either. As a result of being cut they were now working on the next part, stitching me back up! Also I was really lucky not only did I have the cut from where they cut me but I also tore just inside by this cut also, therefore I was getting stitched on top of stitches. Unfortunately as well by this point my epidural had began to ware off so I started to feel things. Luckily she was really quick and was all done in not time.
As I said I was really hungry so Doug had nipped off to get me something to eat and drink while they were doing the main bulk of this stitching but unfortunately this is when they took Hetty to one side also to take her measurements clean her up a bit more and weigh her so regrettably we missed out on being able to take any photos of this.
But that’s ok we got some cute lovely photos and we get to take more and more photos and videos while she grows. Following pics are shortly after and one from during the night once we had moved back to the ward.
another thing to add is that Doug was made to go home that night which I think is really harsh. I was suffering a bit as because they were treating me for high blood pressure after I’d been transferred I had lots a fair amount of blood during the birth that my blood pressure dropped really low so I was having the effects of this. Dizzy, feeling very weak and obviously I’d just had a baby first time mum and all but yep at around half 12/1 they sent him home. He came back straight away in the morning but harsh just harsh.
Mrs Roper 