The scariest first labour and delivery but worth it all for my little boy.

So I haven't shared my story with many of my friends as I haven't really felt like opening up to them at this point and it still doesn't seem real, I've been focused totally on my baby boy since he arrived and talking about what happened hasn't been at the top of my list of priorities, but I still feel like I want to share my experience with somebody, I'm just not ready for it to be the people close to me yet.

As far as births go, there are many that rank higher on the scale of terrifying or difficult than mine, I think I'm so shook up by my experience because it was my first baby and I have various mental difficulties that make it more difficult for me to process big events or changes, and nobody believed that I was in labour when I was telling them over and over again that I was.

My consultant and I discussed the possibility of me being induced a week before my due date because of a few fairly minor but persistent issues that followed me throughout my pregnancy. I went in to the hospital with my partner at 8:30am on Sunday the 26th of March, and the nurses put in a pessary which would sit like a tampon for 24 hours and hopefully cause my cervix to start doing its stuff, as at that point it was far back and hadn't dilated at all.

For most of that day nothing happened, but during the afternoon I started having a lot of tightenings which felt like the Braxton hicks I'd been having for the past couple of months. The nurses put me on the monitor to check their regularity as they started to become quite painful, I was having one every 1-2 minutes and they were lasting 20 seconds or so each time. They told me the hormones in the pessary could sometimes cause people to over contract and if so, it would need to be removed. I was given codeine as that sometimes helps to calm them down, which it did. I had an internal exam to see what had happened so far but still no progression with my cervix, still far back and firmly closed. Back to lying in bed and waiting.

At around 9pm I started having intense pains, more painful than the contractions I'd been having earlier in the day. I was given diamorphine to help with the pain, all I can say about that is I was quite disappointed with how effective it was. Felt amazing in between contractions but they weren't any less painful when they did come, I just felt nice and drunk for the periods in between.

My partner phoned my mum at 11pm to come and sit with me through the night so that he could get some sleep back home, I was in too much pain and discomfort to be left alone so the nurses gave permission for my mum to spend the night in the chair next to my bed. She arrived at midnight as my partner left, and by this point the contractions were considerably more painful than before, I would be surprised if people outside the hospital couldn't hear me screaming! All the midwife kept saying was that I was in false labour and was offering me paracetamol, I still can't see what good it would have done at that point, I was in agony and couldn't breath through any of it, nevermind swallow tablets.

My mum continued to sit with me and talk to me through all of the pain, and I felt like I really needed to pee so kept dashing to the loo for not a lot to really happen when I got there apart from a little blood, I told the midwife and she gave me a pad to wear. I got back in to bed and then during a contraction I was suddenly soaked, the midwife told me I'd peed myself. I went in to the bathroom yet again to pee after I'd cleaned myself up and there was so much blood, I ran out of the room leaving it looking like a murder scene and asked my mum to fetch the midwife back. She came and told me I was just having false labour pains but she could examine me if she really wanted me to and see what was going on down there, so I told her to get on with on as I was convinced I was in active labour. I was shouting that I needed to push, the pain was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life, and I knew this baby was coming despite nobody believing me for the last few hours that I'd gone in to labour, I think that was the worst part and why I was panicking so much. The professionals were telling me nothing was happening, I felt like they thought I was massively over reacting to something completely minor and thinking I'm a huge drama queen. (By this point I'd been asking to have the epidural put in for the last hour if that puts the pain in to perspective). The midwife began her examination and I remember seeing her face suddenly change from one of blasé "let's get this over with" to "Oh shit". My mum must have seen it too as she asked what was wrong. "Babies head is right there, we need to get her to the delivery suite now". Then my mum was getting herself into a right fuss worrying about how fast my partner could get here, he'd only been gone an hour and things had moved at 100mph already, the baby was almost with us. The midwife asked how long it would take him to get here and my mum told her we lived 20 minutes away, she said to tell him he had 10 minutes.

On my birth plan I'd said that I wanted the epidural as soon as possible as I was likely to have recurring panic attacks throughout labour, I'd also said that if an epidural wasn't an option for whatever reason then I'd like to at least go in to a birthing pool to help further with the pain on top of the gas and air. I was rushed to the delivery suite where I was shimmied on to another bed, and handed the mouth end to the gas an air (ladies this didn't do shit for me other than let me listen to my own breathing as I was inhaling, I'm sure I would have stopped breathing without being able to hear myself but as far as pain relief goes it was useless. I take my hat off to those who found it enough to make the pain manageable). I wasn't allowed any other pain relief because of how far gone I was with the labour, there wasn't time for anything other than the gas and air. About 10 minutes later my partner arrived, apparently he'd been told by reception to just follow the screams and he'd find my room. I'd been actively pushing now for about 20 minutes, while in the delivery room the new midwife was sat filling out my paper work in the corner of the room, I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be doing! I had no direction from anybody other than my mum who was trying not to panic at how fast things had happened, and she didn't know what to say or advise as she'd never been able to deliver naturally and had to have c-sections with us, I was pretty much on my own. Shortly afterwards my baby's head was crowning, it felt like I was having the worst Chinese burn downstairs that any school bully could give, I felt like I was literally on fire. At this point the midwife got up and helped to deliver the head and talked me through my pushes as she twisted the shoulders so they too could come through. At 2:17am on Monday the 27th of March, my baby Samuel Bryan was born, weighing 8Ibs 6.5oz. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep as I was being stitched back up lol, second degree perineal tearing, I'm not surprised given how big and how quickly my boy wanted to join the world!

We're so besotted with our baby and I'd do all of it again for him. They say you forget the pain but I can still vividly remember it, I don't know if it takes more than 3 days to forget or whether I'll ever forget it at all but I have a beautiful little boy because of it, and it was so worth it!