Signs of Labour – My Pregnancy Story Part III

I was suffering from Braxton Hick’s in the final stages of pregnancy (they’re sort of practice contractions) and had been admitted to the labour ward during an antenatal class in week 36!  I was so sure he wasn’t coming, but the (very lovely) midwives insisted!  I eventually had to beg to be discharged, I had to call work that I wouldn’t be back in that day and I wasn’t able to miss the next day too!

So as you can imagine by week 37 I was so ready to meet my baby and I felt like I was going to pop any second!  But I finished up in work that week and nothing, and nothing the next week either!  Until this point I had thought he would either be early or on time, the thought of being him being overdue just never occurred to me!

My EDD came around, 10th of October and nothing happened.  I went to see my sister and my baby nephew with Noel.  We talked about all the different ways to help induce labour, and how I’d tried pretty much everything!  On our way home that evening, I decided I wanted Indian food.  (Try eating a hot curry).  So we  stopped into an Indian restaurant and picked up what turned out to be one of the yummiest meals I’ve ever had!  We ate it in our living room and then I lay down on my mattress (which had become a permanent fixture in the room as sitting was so uncomfortable!) We played Xbox for a while and then around 9pm I had to stop, I couldn’t concetrate at all.  I was getting terrible crampy pains that I thought was indigestion of some sort!  Noel was convinced it was the labour beginning but I was sure it wasn’t.

After much convincing from Noel I started using a contractions App, the pains were coming and going but they weren’t regular.  I still wasn’t convinced!

It was getting late so I pretty much forced Noel to go to bed as he was in work the next morning.  We went in to bed together,  but after 10 minutes of lying down I had to get up again.  Poor Noel was sound asleep, so  I went out to the living room and heated up my microwave heat pack and got out the TENS machine and continued using the App.  I tried to watch some TV and by 3am I was on all fours and in a lot of pain!

I went into Noel and turned on the light, I told him we had to go to the hospital!  We got in the car, we needed to get petrol, we needed an ATM too.  There were no petrol stations open, when he found a petrol station they wouldn’t give him change for the parking meter, and we seemed to hit every red light along the way!  It was truly comical, like something in a movie.

When we got to the hospital and I was examined I was only 1cm dilated!   1cm!  They offered me pain relief, but I didn’t take anything at that point it was definitely tolerable and I could only imagine how much worse it was going to get!

I walked the corridors with Noel (walking helps baby come) and he talked me through every contraction.  I’m getting teary eyed as I type this because he was just so amazing, he held me telling me to keep my eyes open, to focus on him and breathe through it.  It was around 10am when I finally gave in and took the pethedine.  I’m glad I did, it relaxes you and helps you to cope with the pain.  I tried not to talk because I felt as high as a kite!  It wore off pretty quickly and I didn’t take it again.  After that I had a show, and I started to feel shaky.

It was around 12 noon when I had another examination, during the examination my waters broke.  And I cried!  Noel helped me change my clothes, he told me not to look at the bed where I had been lying (so I wouldn’t get a fright) and then he and a nurse helped me to the labour ward.

I was still only 1cm at this point and the pain was much worse.  After the waters had gone the contractions were a lot more intense.   The gas and air was not working for me, it was upsetting me because my head wasn’t clear and I was finding it difficult to know what was going on.  At about 2pm, I asked for the epidural.  They had hoped that I would relax and dilate but it still wasn’t happening and baby was distressed.  There was a trace attached to his head and his heart beat kept stopping.  We had two midwives and a doctor in with us.  Eventually they administered oxytocin to help get me to dilate.  I went from 1 to 10cm in 40 minutes.  But baby was much more distressed now.  I had no idea what was going on, they got Noel to remove my nail polish to prepare for an emergency c section.  I kept pushing and suddenly they were telling me to stop pushing and pant.

Seeing Devin come out was, for both of us, one of the scariest moments ever.  He wasn’t moving, he was blue and he was completely limp.  They took him away to work on him in the corner of the room and Noel just held onto me.  I kept asking what was happening, I could see the worry in Noel’s face. Then, suddenly we could hear his cry, it was the only sound in the world we wanted to hear at the moment!  They brought him over to us and left the room, our little family was finally together.  Our lives were changed forever, in such a wonderful way!

You can read part I of this post here

And Part II here !!