The Wonderings of Wibble: The Birth of Eric

I've lost a lot of weight since I last blogged, and I did it all whilst eating biscuits. Yes, its time for a birth story. The prequel to this is Percy's birth story from 2 1/2 years ago, but to sum that up it was a ridiculously painful induced labour where I had an episiotomy (when someone chops your bits to make way for the head) and ventouse (a little baby hover that sucks the baby out). I remember sending out the "I've had a baby" text and the main point I tried to get across was the pain. Everyone ignored that and texted back "congratulations", they really missed my main point of the text. I said to Dan at the time that the only way I would ever give birth again would be by planned c-section.

So this time was a bit different THANK GOD! I was quite scared about it after my previous experience, I had had a bit of birth trauma counselling with a doctor friend who has just set up this as a business. I wanted to make this birth experience as different from the last one as possible, I considered home birth but then when I thought it through it involved my mum being there to look after Percy while I made mooing birth noises, and I really didn't want to moo in ear shot of my mum.

So I decided on either the hospital pool or the epidural (which numbs all your bits) the problem is that neither of these are guaranteed. It depends on if the pool is available at the right time and if the anaesthetist is available in the relatively short window of time that you can inject the magical epidural. There's two bits of the hospital you can give birth in (unless you're my mum: she'll give birth anywhere in or out of a hospital, the rebel). So there's the Midwife Led Unit, which they claim is a "home from home" for lower risk patients. I mean, if at home you have gas and air hidden under a picture frame and limited access to good drugs then I guess "home from home" is an accurate description. Then there's the high risk bit with doctors around, where you are likely to need continuous monitoring with straps that go round the bump to track the heartbeat, which means you can't go in a pool but they do store the Magic E there.

They sort of imply you have a choice of where you go, but you don't really. If I was being induced, which was the plan for today, I would be high risk but if they had let me go naturally, which was the plan a few weeks ago when the baby was deemed normal size, then I would be low risk.

So I started having mild contractions early in the morning of Tuesday 2nd May. It was annoying because the adrenalin starts going as I packed bags ready to go in, but also I knew it might be nothing, which it turned out to be when I eventually went back to sleep. Dan went in to work as normal on the Tuesday which I kept changing my mind about whether that was the right decision. I had a bit of pain but carried on with a normal day looking after Percy. When Dan got home contractions had started again and Dan started recording them. We contacted our emergency childcare people to see who was free and Rachel became the chosen emergency person. She got the bus over to ours after work, we told her to come straight here as we were worried it had started to get quicker, and then we felt a bit stupid when she got here and it all slowed down a bit. Dan later drove her back home so she could get an overnight bag, and I warned my mum to come up for 7am to relive Rachel and get Percy up in the morning. Finally around 10:30 we decided this was actually going to happen and we phoned the hospital who gave us permission to come in.

There was some discussion as to where I should be because this was natural non induced labour but the baby was still measuring small. In the end I had to start off in the Midwife Led Unit because there was no room in the other bit, and then they said they would transfer me to the other bit when I was ready to deliver. I was measured at 3cm dilated, but you need to get to 4 to get taken seriously and given drugs and you need to get to 10 to start pushing. So we had a walk round the hospital and I spent a lot of time sitting on a big bouncy ball. After a few hours and much more painful contractions the midwife said she could examine me but she doubted I would be more than 3 because the contractions still weren't following a regular patten. I'm glad I asked her still to do it, because I was 7-8cm! At that point she started taking me seriously and got me some gas and air. This is the 3rd time I'd used gas and air. The first was when I dislocated my elbow aged 16, I somehow managed to swallow the gas and air which resulted in a lot of stomach pain. This meant I was fearful of it in Percy's birth and ended up doing it wrong and then giving up on it. This time I finally got the hang of it. It's pretty fun.

I got transferred to the high risk bit ready for the babies imminent exit. My waters were bulging but for some reason wouldn't break. I asked again for the epidural, and the midwife were like "oh but you're doing so well, you don't need it" The last thing the midwife from the low risk bit said before going back to the Midwife Led Unit was "good luck and I hope you don't get the epidural" which I felt was a bit too opinionated. You sometimes hear people saying "it's better to give birth naturally" but when you've already had a traumatic birth experience I think it's pretty natural to want to avoid that horrendous pain ever happening to you again. No one goes for a c-section and says they want to do it naturally do they?

It was a bit difficult to then decide whether to really demand more drugs or not because I was just coping on gas and air but I knew it would get worse when a head started getting squeezed out and it's too late to ask then. In the end I didn't get anything, I don't feel like that was my decision though it's just what happened.

So I got to fully dilated and still the waters hadn't broken and I wasn't pushing. Whereas last time I started pushing when I was 8cm, they told me not to but I couldn't help it my body was just doing it. They felt I was holding back and gave me a little pep talk, the midwife was really nice and she was aware of my negative past experience and tried to make it different so she let me do a kneeling kind of position which I preferred to lying and she explained that she would have to press the button to get another midwife at the last bit which was normal. That was good of her because last time the button kept getting pressed and more and more people ran in because it was a bit of an emergency.

So anyway...we're nearly there thanks for reading this far. There was a back log of things I needed to get out first the waters finally came splashing out wetting my midwife and my sock. Then I needed to poo! ww it's so gross but apparently the poo had to get out before the baby. So I pushed that out and had a midwife wipe my bum. Thanks NHS I owe you one. And now it was time for the main event: The head. I was in so much pain I was moving around nearly falling off the bed screaming almost being sick, I got a telling off got back, into position and pushed him out!

The relief when you finally hear the cry and you've done it is immense! I now only had one thing left on the to do list of things to to push out, the placenta, no biggy that flopped out a minute later. It was 4.15 am, little Eric was here, and I could immediately claim my free tea and toast. Hurrah.