6cm to 10cm in 7 minutes!
So this happened on Saturday morning but it's taken until now to get my head around what happened. I was induced on Thursday night after being told my baby's 38 week growth scan was showing a slightly reduced abdominal measurement from her 20 week scan. I had a pessary put in at 10:37pm and by 3am I'd started having contractions every 5 minutes for 1 minute at a time. They were pretty manageable until about 9pm the next night. 
As the pessary has to be in for 24 hours, I wasn't checked until Friday night at 11pm, when they discovered that it had done its job in softening and lowering my cervix but they felt like it needed a little more help. So they then put a stronger gel in to try and get things moving and said they'd check me again in 6 hours time... it did one thing alright and that was strengthen my contractions to a level I couldn't really cope with! They started coming every 2 minutes and doubled in strength until I was doing everything I could to pant my way through them. I spent a lot of time in a hot bath which helped but whoa. At that point I decided that I wanted an epidural when I went to delivery as my original water birth was ruled out due to the induction and was just praying something had happened and I could go to delivery, have my waters broken and get this started. Getting to 4am was HARD but I made it and thankfully they said I was 2cm dilated and luckily there was a delivery room open so I could go right down.
Lucky for me. I arrived at delivery at 5:10am. After some paperwork filling, a check of my cervix and finally giving me gas and air, it was about 5:45am and they told me the epidural would take about an hour as the guy who needed to do it was in surgery and to breathe through the contractions and it'd be fine...
Then everything goes blurry to be honest. The lights are dimmed and the pain gets stronger. I hear the midwife say that I'm 5cm and she's going to break my waters. Then she turns around, goes to get the hook and by the time she's back, I've got to 6cm. By this point, it's 6:18am. I'm told the anesthetist is coming to give me the epidural. There's a sense of rushing now. My husband has to read out the warnings and I agree but by the time the epidural is ready and my husband and the midwife have sat me up, I'm doubled over and can't sit properly. The midwife pushes me back down and has a look and by 6:25am I'm 10cm dilated and pushing. The epidural is cancelled, I'm told to push and by 7:05am my baby girl was born. I cannot BELIEVE it went that fast and that I did it all just on gas and air. The pressure was unbelievable and I tore the right side of my labia but it's only second degree and I was stitched up there and then. I had a bath, got dressed, had some toast and was on the ward by 10am. I was in the bath longer than I was in labour.
Meet Lillian Emma, 6 pounds 8 ounces, born at 38+3 and the most perfect thing I've ever seen. The daughter who couldn't wait to join us. 😄
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