Labour and Delivery Story – 2nd time around

 

On the 8th May 2017 my 2nd baby girl was born at 40 + 1 weeks. This is her Labour and Delivery Story…

It was Sunday 7th of May, my due date. I was most annoyed that I had reached my due date as Rosalie was born a few days before and I was banking on it being the same again. I spent the day gardening and drinking raspberry leaf tea. I drank ALOT of tea.

Around lunchtime I started to feel like I needed to go to the toilet but before I could get there, like immediately, it came out. This kept happening, I was basically weeing myself. My waters had broken gently with Rosalie, although there was alot more liquid then. Still, I wondered if this was happening again, if it was the start of labour and if later things would speed up. We had planned to go to Nick’s mum’s house for dinner that evening and we decided to still go as nothing was going to happen any time soon. I carried on leaking all afternoon and wore maternity pads to catch it all. At around 4pm I called my midwife to let her know. She advised me to go to my local hospital so that they could check to see if my waters had broken. If your waters break and labour doesn’t start naturally it can be dangerous for the baby. She booked me in for an appointment at 8pm.

We left Rosalie at Nanny’s house before heading to the hospital for our appointment.

The midwife checked me over and said that they would need to test my waters. I had to lie on my back for half an hour to see if my waters gathered. As it was going to take a while I asked Nick to go and collect Rosalie and put her to bed at our house as it was already getting late. Once the test was complete, it was painless and a little like an internal examination, the midwife said my waters hadn’t broken so it must just have been urine. How embarrassing! I had just been weeing myself all along. The midwife did say that baby could have been sitting on my bladder which was why the need to go was so immediate.

I was feeling pretty disappointed so I asked the midwife if she would do a stretch and sweep as I was lying on the bed anyway. The midwife said she would so I had a stretch and sweep there and then. Oh my goodness! This WAS painful. I have a pretty high pain threshold and this actually bought tears to my eyes and made my glasses steam up. A little bit of my mucus plug came away. The midwife advised I may get some spotting and that it could take up to 48 hours for anything to happen and sent me on my way. My mum came to pick me up and took me home.

It was around 10pm by the time I got home. It had been a hot day so I was hot and bothered and feeling a little sorry for myself. I had geared myself up for meeting our baby girl that day and I felt a little let down. I decided to have a nice bath and head up to bed.

During the night I was tossing and turning in bed.

There is no easy way of turning over in bed when you are 40 weeks pregnant, think of a sea lion on land. I was hauling myself over when all of a sudden there was a massive gush of warm liquid. I shouted at Nick, who was lying next to me, to ask what had happened. He turned the light on to find my waters had broken spectacularly.

It was 3.30am at this point, Contractions hadn’t started so I waited a little while and then phoned my midwife to let her know what had happened. She said she would start to get ready and make her way over. I then phoned my mum to update her as well. She said she would head over for around 6am so she would be with us for when Rosalie woke up.

Nick and I started to prepare the birth area in our bedroom. We laid out the shower curtain and I got my birthing ball into position. I already knew what position I wanted to labour in from Rosalie’s birth. I wanted to be on my knees laid over my ball. I filmed my first live pregnancy update which you can view here. My Contractions started to get more intense pretty quickly. They soon became so strong that I asked Nick to text my midwife to tell her I needed gas and air asap. I was still on the floor, laid over my ball, labouring away. My midwife arrived, she’d come straight to our house and the second midwife had gone to collect all the equipment so I still didn’t have any gas and air! I filmed my second live pregnancy update then at 5.30am. 15 minutes later the 2nd midwife arrived. I asked for the gas and air but by this time I was too far gone.

The baby was coming!!

Maeve Elizabeth was born at 5.50am. Only 20 minutes after the last update. I couldn’t believe how swiftly everything went or that I’d managed to do it all naturally with no pain relief. To give you an idea of how quick it was, 2nd stage of labour was less than 10 minutes!

I had wanted to do skin to skin with Maeve on our bed while the cord was still attached but because it had all happened so quickly our bed was covered in equipment. It took a while to get it all cleared off, meanwhile I was being helped by one midwife whilst the other midwife was holding Maeve as she was still attached. I think this was when Maeve got a little cold. We had skin to skin for a while and Maeve had her first feed.

Maeve’s airways got occluded during her birth and she was bit mucussy. As my labour came on so quickly my fore waters broke but my back waters did not. The back waters broke during labour and showered my poor midwife! Maeve ingested some of these waters as she came out, so she was frothing at the mouth a little bit as she tried to get rid of this. At the 10 minute check she was a little floppy and her stats were down so the midwives were a little worried. We had to cut the cord pretty quickly while they warmed her up and gave her some oxygen. I remember looking at Nick and him looking quite concerned at this point, I don’t know if it was all the hormones flying around but I was still feeling quite calm. The midwives were amazing and took care of everything.

We wrapped her up in two towels and a hot water bottle to warm her up. She was still looking a little blue. I think she was 34 degrees and she needed to be 36 degrees. The midwives kept checking her temperature and as her temperature was rising they didn’t think I needed to go into hospital. I was so grateful for this that we were able to treat her at home. They arranged for another midwife to come and visit us at 10.30am just to check Maeve’s temperature again and then started to pack up. Nick and I filmed an update at this point which you can watch here.

We’d done it! I had my home birth. It was so wonderful to have my baby at home. After birth I was able to sit in my own bed and nurse my newborn. If you are considering having a home birth I would say to go for it. It is just amazing what our bodies can do and you’ll surprise yourself!

I recorded live updates of my labour as it happened and you can watch them all over on channel mum. Later that day I recapped our birth in a final update.

I am so grateful to the midwives that made it happen. We truly had the most perfect birth.