The Birth Story – Second Time Around

So I know its taken a while to get around to posting this blog – the world is crazy with two kids but I will save that for another post.

We welcomed our new baby girl Thea Shay into the world on 29th June 2016. She was 2 days overdue and weighed in at 7lb 1.5oz. The birth story has proved to be very popular and much discussed and many people have asked when its going to appear on this blog – so here it is from the horse’s mouth so to speak.

In the weeks leading up to my due date I had been experienced really bad braxton hicks. On a few occasions they had kept me awake and had been so regular I swore I would be going into hospital and then they would just disappear. So when I woke up on 29th June, 2 days overdue and with my sweep booked for 2pm that day, with mild period pains I thought nothing of it.

I was getting a few pains all day but nothing much and not painful so, although I was timing them and they did seem to be regular, I had presumed they would just disappear like they had previously. Lenny finished pre-school at 11.45pm and it was raining so I had to run down to school to fetch him. At this point I was still getting pains but they clearly weren’t painful if I ran the school run.

My husband was between jobs at work so had decided to come home for a few hours to come to the sweep with me. By 1.30pm I was getting proper pains and this is probably the first time that I knew I was in labour – at this point though they weren’t bad and I believed that I would be at this hours. However, the app i had downloaded to track my contractions kept insisting that because they were coming with certain regularity I should ring the hospital. I rang the hospital at 1.30pm and they said that I wasn’t i established labour as I was able to talk through contractions and that I should have a hot bath and some paracetomol. I decided to go to see the midwife for my sweep at 2pm in the hope that this would speed things up and put me into proper labour.

We arrived in the car park of the doctors at around 1.55pm and I had quite a bad pain in the car but it can’t have been really bad because my husband was asking me how much the car park charge was whilst I was mid-contraction. (Idiot!). At this point I did say to my husband that I was defiantly getting somewhere and I would definitely be having the baby that day. I asked him to get the TENS machine out the back of the car (my hospital bag had been situated there since my due date which was wishful thinking on my part) and get this set up for after I came out from my sweep.

I got into the doctors waiting room and had quite a serious pain. The pain was accompanied by a gushing feeling and I told my husband that I needed to pop to the toilet and check things out. When I got into the toilet I realised I was bleeding quite bad. For some reason I rung my sister (who lives in Nottingham and really couldnt have been much help) and she told me to ring my husband to get the midwife. As soon as I got off the phone to my sister my contractions started coming thick and fast and were unbearable.

I managed to get hold of my husband and asked him to get the midwife and thought I needed to unlock the disabled toilet door. From there things went crazy. My midwife documents that at 2.10pm she was called out of surgery by Scott to say i was in the toilets having contractions. I think it was clear to the midwife, if not to me, that things were progressing very quickly and she rung an ambulance within a few minutes of coming into the toilet.

My midwife was absolutely fantastic and was the same midwife that had attended me throughout my pregnancy. When she checked me at 2.28pm I was fully dilated and she said to me that we would not have time to wait for an ambulance and that I needed to push on the next contraction. I really really didn’t want to have a baby in the toilets, as you can imagine, and I really really wanted some pain relief but there wasn’t any time and my little girl was born into the world at 2.37pm. The ambulance didn’t arrive until 2.55pm and the midwife sent them away by this point there was no need for them.

The midwife passed Thea up to me and she was attached to the placenta for some time whilst we were waiting for a cord clamp. Thea was wrapped in mine and my husbands jumpers as there wasn’t much else available.

I delivered the placenta naturally a little while later and left the doctors with my perfect little baby at 3.44pm and came straight home. As I was leaving the doctors the staff were cheering and blowing kisses out of the window and it was such an incredible and surreal moment it will stay with me forever. Needless to say Thea is quite the little VIP at the doctors surgery now.

Everyone who has heard this story asks me if it was really traumatic. The answer is no. The whole experience was incredible. I was so very lucky that the support team of my midwife and my husband was faultless. Throughout the whole experience they were both dead calm and reassuring and there was not a single moment of panic (from them) which meant that I stayed calm. My midwife knew instinctively what I needed and when and I could not have done it without her. I have heard often that the midwife you get in labour can dramatically change your birth experience and after this I would agree with this whole heartedly.

I am lucky enough to have remained friends with my midwife and I am hoping that this continues far into the future. She is considered a hero in my family and always will be.

If nothing else this will be a fantastic little story to tell Thea when she is older and I dare say we will be telling this story for years to come.