After my eldest was born at 42+4, I had an inkling that my next bubba would follow the same pattern, I wasn’t wrong!
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After being in slow labour and my baby being back to back for 3 days my husband and I decided we’d go in for my waters to be broken when I was 42 weeks. We made our way to West Suffolk hospital and arranged for our doula to meet us there in a few hours (she’d already been an amazing help the previous day helping me crab walk up and down the stairs!)
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After being shown into our room our lovely consultant explained what she was going to do and what if anything would happen after. I was surprised to find out I was 2cm dilated, that slow labour had been doing something!
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We’d planned to go back home after my waters had been broken but because there was meconium we stayed in and if nothing happened we decided we’d try the syntocin drip.
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After 3hrs and a few slight niggles we got settled down in our room, got some essential oils out and made it more ‘ours.’ Within an hour I was having surges that I needed to focus through and in 90mins I decided to use our TENS machine (heavenly invention!)
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Even though I was using the CEFM and attached to the drip I still found it easy to move around and change positions. I was very adamant in my birth plan about being free to move around as with my firsts birth being stuck on the bed with a back to back baby definitely contributing to the difficult labour I had.
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4 hours, a lot of hip squeezes and back rubs from our amazing doula later and I asked for an examination, I was so disappointed to find I was only 6cm dilated as I felt the pain was getting too much and I couldn’t deal with another few hours of this. My other half and doula were so encouraging at this point and told me to stay focused and calm. I changed position to leaning over the back of the bed which really took the pressure off my back.
At this point I felt the weirdest sensation ever as my baby corkscrew turned into an LOA position!
Not long after this, our doula noticed the noises I was making had changed and I’ll never forget her saying, “Rachael I can see your baby’s head!” At this point after 3 days in slow labour and 12hrs of being in hospital I felt a wave of energy come over me my baby was nearly here! The only way I can describe what my body did involuntary was it was like being sick but instead of the force going upwards it went downwards. 7 minutes of my body pushing on its own and my beautiful 9lb 6oz baby arrived! We had immediate skin to skin and initiated breastfeeding. My placenta was taking a while and my blood loss wasn’t easing so I agreed to having the syntometrine injection and a managed third stage. Placenta came away no problem (good job as I was having it encapsulation!) although the injection did make me quite nauseous for a while. I had a second degree tear which needed a few stitches which were done by my lovely midwife in the room.
We were both discharged 12hrs later as my little one needed obs because of the meconium present.
I was a bit apprehensive about being induced but after doing my own research and reading I was confident it was the right decision for me and my baby and it was such a positive and healing experience.
