Well, my last post appears to have done the trick as my beautiful little girl has arrived and here is how it happened! I’m a waffler so I’ll do it in instalments (nothing to do with adding drama and suspense, no I wouldn’t do that to you...).
After a lovely day celebrating Callum’s friend’s 4th birthday at her party followed by a chilled evening, I went to bed and slept really well until I needed a wee at 4.30am. No signs, twinges, I just went for a wee then back to bed. I had just started to enter the world of snooze again when I felt a pop in my bump like a mattress spring pinging back to place. I quickly prodded Stuart awake as I waited for the big gush of waters to come forth. Stuart stirred “Is something happening?”. But nothing, no big gush, no trickle of water, no contractions…perhaps I’d imagined it or perhaps just an enthusiastic kick from the little lady. I went to the loo again to see if my waters started to trickle…not really. I found myself standing in the ensuite over the security of the tiled floor too nervous to head back to bed in case the gush decided to occur! According to my twitter tweet, this was about 5am.
After 5-10 minutes, this was getting silly and I doubted I was going to go back to sleep so I left Stuart trying to get in a few more zeds, while I went down to bounce on my ball for a bit as I had started to get mild tightenings in my back. I’d bought my ipad down with me with Contract Master loaded ready to start recording. Eventually, I went to the loo again, and there was a trickle of waters tinged pink (this is normal).
Half hour later and contractions were definitely there but had jumped straight in at a regular 2-3 minutes and lasting 35-40 seconds. I had expected them to come in at 10 minutes apart and knew that when they reached about 5 minutes apart and were lasting for a minute then you were to go to the hospital. These contractions weren’t following that pattern! What should I do? They weren’t too strong yet and I could easily talk through them. The TV documentaries had taught me they wouldn’t let you in the maternity ward if you could still speak through your contractions so I guessed I should just hold on. I thought it was about time I got Stuart up and we should think about getting my parents to come over. If contractions were already this close if they got stronger, there wasn’t going to be much time to get to the hospital! By now it was 5.45am.
Stuart called my parents and downloaded the contraction master app to his iphone so he could help with the recording as I kept messing it up. I also called the hospital to warn them I’d be coming in at some point explaining waters had broken and contractions had started, were close together but not yet strong. They told me to call back when they ramped up a gear or got closer together (how close did they want them to be? I ignored this bit and would call when they intensified).
My parents arrived around 6.30am so I called the hospital about 6.45. Contractions were still 2 minutes apart and were getting stronger. I could still talk through them but decided to ‘play it up a bit’ otherwise they wouldn’t let me go in. I knew you should labour as long as possible at home and could understand how going to hospital could slow things down but we had a 25ish minute drive to the hospital and I didn’t want to risk not making it! I craftily added in a pant half way through a contraction while speaking to the MW on the other end of the phone. She noted it and said I could go in (yay). So off we went, around 7am, kissing my parents goodbye (while Callum still snoozed without a care in the world upstairs!). I checked Stuart now knew how to get to the hospital as we hadn’t managed to drive to Poole without getting lost yet! He assured me he did.
Every corner or jolt was quite painful when I got a contraction and the car journey did affect the timings. They weren’t so frequent now – often between 3 and 4 minutes, but were lasting longer – for about 1.5 minutes.
Sure enough, after a while, I noted the scenery outside he car and suspected we had gone past the hospital! Yep! We had got lost again and needed to back track somewhat! Doh!
We got to the hospital just before 7.30 (thankfully traffic was minimal due to time of day). I then had a little panic that I had somehow managed to misplace my phone – one minute it was in my hand, the next not – I had no memory of what I had actually done with it though – I had only walked from the car to the hospital doors! After a silly panic of trying to find it and Stuart going back & forth to the car to look, I found it – I had put it in my hospital bag. So, off we went to maternity ward.
We buzzed but no one came to the door until eventually a cleaner opened it and let us in!!!! Not really correct protocol! We headed to the reception desk and got a surprised look from the lady behind wondering how we had got in! We explained who we were and she showed us into our delivery suite (I love how they try to make it sound so much nicer by calling it a suite! – clinical delivery room doesn’t have the same appeal!). After what felt like quite a long while a Midwife came to see us and explained that they were just about to have a change of shift so she wouldn’t examine me but would start off procedures by asking me some questions while she made her notes. Sure enough, shortly after the first of my 2 actual midwives came in to take over – Louise. By now it must have been around 7.45am and I was panting through contractions for real by now.
Hold on to your seatbelts now and try not to blink for part two – To be continued.
Hee hee - I also had to navigate while in labour with Z2 AND had the contractions coming close together but not lasting a minute so feeling confused about when to go in!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the next bit and glad you got to the hospital safely!