mum2elouise
13-08-2006, 15:51
I was forty weeks and six days pregnant and dying to meet my little one. I had just gotten out of the shower and was just about to go to bed (it was about 10.30 pm). I went to say good night to mum as she was staying at our place waiting for the birth. I had invited her to witness her 18th grandchild being born. I found mum but could not see her properly. There was flashing lights on one side of my vision. Not one eye, both eyes just one side if you know what i mean.
My blood pressure had been slowly rising throughout my pregnancy, more so now that I was over and I resembled a balloon. VERY swollen - face, hands, feet and legs right up to my thighs. Because of these symptoms I had been reading up on pre-eclampsia so I knew that flashing lights was another symptom of it worsening.
I told Dear Husband and mum about this but decided that I'd go to bed and have a good rest and deal with it in the morning.
Morning came and I felt fine but DH and mum insisted I ring the hospital just to make sure. The midwife I spoke to told me I had better come in straight away to get checked out.
DH had organised 3 weeks holidays from work starting the day bub was born, so his work was expecting him to have time off any time now. He rung his boss to tell him what was happening and then drove me to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital I was hooked up to a monitor, and had a number of blood and urine tests taken, which showed that I had a very high amount of protein in my urine. There was a run around between doctors and nurses after this, and about 1 hour and a half later doc came back and told me that I was to be induced. If my baby stayed in me much longer, the placenta would potentially stop working and leave no life line for my baby. At 11.45am I had a prostoglandin (sp?) gel inserted inside onto my cervix. This was used to dilate my cervix more (I was already 2cm gone) so that the doc could break my waters and bring on contractions this way. After this I was hooked up to the monitor for 45 minutes. 2 and a half hours after the gel was inserted, contractions started on their own at 2.16pm.
Hubby had gone home to have lunch and to get my hospital bag and my mum was doing "business" an hour away so I was all on my own in the maternity ward. The contractions started thick and fast being only 3 minutes apart and lasting 1 minute (what happened to the 20 minutes apart business?). After an hour and a half of this I rung DH and he made his way back to the hospital. I jumped straight in for a hot shower and this seemed to escalate my contractions. They started coming 1 minute apart and lasting 1 minute.
At 6pm, a midwife came and took me to the birth suite. Mum finally arrived back as I was making my way there. I had an internal done and found that I was 4cm dilated. The doc set about breaking my waters. I hopped back in the hot shower but soon waves of tiredness came over me. I sat on the birth stool under the shower but was soon to weak to even hold myself up like that. I laid on my side on the cold tiles (felt so good!) while DH held one shower nozzle on my upper back and one on my bum. Very soon after the pain became to hard to handle on my own, so I asked my hubby to call a nurse for gas. Within about another 10 minutes that wasn't enough either, so I got my hubby to call the nurse again for a shot of pethidine (hubby and I discussed this previously and decided I wasn't going to use pethidine but I gave up, I needed the extra pain relief). I was feeling the urge to push now, so the midwife got me out of the shower and onto the bed to do another internal, where she found I was only 6 cm dilated. I remember hearing her telling me this and thinking "NO! I'm ready for this baby to be out now!" I stayed naked as I was in too much pain to get dressed. This was 7.30pm.
I kept switching positions from laying on either side with my top leg elevated (we have some great video footage of this. Lovely sight) and up on all fours on the bed with a bean bag under my tummy supporting my weight.
At 9.25pm, the midwife gave me another internal and finally told me I could push. The only down point was that I had the gas taken away from me so that I could focus my energy on pushing and the pethidine had almost worn off.
I started pushing in the above positions and also, at the nurses suggestion, on my back with my feet pushing the end of the bed. After 35 minutes of this and our baby's head not yet in sight, the midwife suggested I hop onto a birth stool, leaning on the side of the bed for support, to let gravity work its magic. It worked a charm! Within 3 pushes our baby's head was crowning. I hopped back onto the bed on all fours and within 10 or so more pushes, our beautiful baby girl was born.
She arrived at 10.17pm, 20/02/06, weighing 8lbs 11oz (3965grams), 52cm long and with a head circumference of 36cm.
I had 2 fairly sizeable tears (4-5cm) but they weren't bad enough to require stitches. I also had problems with the placenta - part of it being left inside my uterus. The midwives told me this should come out by itself within the next few days - it didn't - but that's another story in itself!
My labour lasted 8 hours, 1minute. All DEFINATELY worth it!!:yelclap: :yelclap: :yelclap:
My blood pressure had been slowly rising throughout my pregnancy, more so now that I was over and I resembled a balloon. VERY swollen - face, hands, feet and legs right up to my thighs. Because of these symptoms I had been reading up on pre-eclampsia so I knew that flashing lights was another symptom of it worsening.
I told Dear Husband and mum about this but decided that I'd go to bed and have a good rest and deal with it in the morning.
Morning came and I felt fine but DH and mum insisted I ring the hospital just to make sure. The midwife I spoke to told me I had better come in straight away to get checked out.
DH had organised 3 weeks holidays from work starting the day bub was born, so his work was expecting him to have time off any time now. He rung his boss to tell him what was happening and then drove me to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital I was hooked up to a monitor, and had a number of blood and urine tests taken, which showed that I had a very high amount of protein in my urine. There was a run around between doctors and nurses after this, and about 1 hour and a half later doc came back and told me that I was to be induced. If my baby stayed in me much longer, the placenta would potentially stop working and leave no life line for my baby. At 11.45am I had a prostoglandin (sp?) gel inserted inside onto my cervix. This was used to dilate my cervix more (I was already 2cm gone) so that the doc could break my waters and bring on contractions this way. After this I was hooked up to the monitor for 45 minutes. 2 and a half hours after the gel was inserted, contractions started on their own at 2.16pm.
Hubby had gone home to have lunch and to get my hospital bag and my mum was doing "business" an hour away so I was all on my own in the maternity ward. The contractions started thick and fast being only 3 minutes apart and lasting 1 minute (what happened to the 20 minutes apart business?). After an hour and a half of this I rung DH and he made his way back to the hospital. I jumped straight in for a hot shower and this seemed to escalate my contractions. They started coming 1 minute apart and lasting 1 minute.
At 6pm, a midwife came and took me to the birth suite. Mum finally arrived back as I was making my way there. I had an internal done and found that I was 4cm dilated. The doc set about breaking my waters. I hopped back in the hot shower but soon waves of tiredness came over me. I sat on the birth stool under the shower but was soon to weak to even hold myself up like that. I laid on my side on the cold tiles (felt so good!) while DH held one shower nozzle on my upper back and one on my bum. Very soon after the pain became to hard to handle on my own, so I asked my hubby to call a nurse for gas. Within about another 10 minutes that wasn't enough either, so I got my hubby to call the nurse again for a shot of pethidine (hubby and I discussed this previously and decided I wasn't going to use pethidine but I gave up, I needed the extra pain relief). I was feeling the urge to push now, so the midwife got me out of the shower and onto the bed to do another internal, where she found I was only 6 cm dilated. I remember hearing her telling me this and thinking "NO! I'm ready for this baby to be out now!" I stayed naked as I was in too much pain to get dressed. This was 7.30pm.
I kept switching positions from laying on either side with my top leg elevated (we have some great video footage of this. Lovely sight) and up on all fours on the bed with a bean bag under my tummy supporting my weight.
At 9.25pm, the midwife gave me another internal and finally told me I could push. The only down point was that I had the gas taken away from me so that I could focus my energy on pushing and the pethidine had almost worn off.
I started pushing in the above positions and also, at the nurses suggestion, on my back with my feet pushing the end of the bed. After 35 minutes of this and our baby's head not yet in sight, the midwife suggested I hop onto a birth stool, leaning on the side of the bed for support, to let gravity work its magic. It worked a charm! Within 3 pushes our baby's head was crowning. I hopped back onto the bed on all fours and within 10 or so more pushes, our beautiful baby girl was born.
She arrived at 10.17pm, 20/02/06, weighing 8lbs 11oz (3965grams), 52cm long and with a head circumference of 36cm.
I had 2 fairly sizeable tears (4-5cm) but they weren't bad enough to require stitches. I also had problems with the placenta - part of it being left inside my uterus. The midwives told me this should come out by itself within the next few days - it didn't - but that's another story in itself!
My labour lasted 8 hours, 1minute. All DEFINATELY worth it!!:yelclap: :yelclap: :yelclap: