On Monday 25th September 2017 at 1:45pm I got up to talk to my sister and was walking to her room when I felt a small gush of fluid. I went to the bathroom to check and when I wiped I there was a little pink spotting on the toilet paper. I called the hospital to let them know I thought my water had broken and wasn’t having any contractions they advised me to monitor it for an hour and if a pad was wet to call back and we’d go from there. I called my partner Paul and let him know as he was at work, told him what was happening but to stay at work for the time being and then went and told my sister who had a little freak out.

Fast forward an hour I was still feeling little trickle of fluid and still had pink spotting so I called the hospital and they said to come up when I was ready to get checked and to have Bub monitored to make sure everything was okay. Got to the hospital around 3:30pm and went into the birthing ward and saw a midwife who checked to see how dilated I was (cervix was still closed) but they confirmed that yes my waters had broken. They hooked me up to a CTG machine and monitored baby’s heartbeat, it was a little high but eventually it came down and they sent me home to wait to see if labour started itself (was told to come back at 7am to be checked again if nothing happened overnight).

26th September - 7am: back at Hospital to be monitored again as nothing happened overnight. Baby’s heartbeat was fine, had ultrasound to confirm that baby definitely wasn’t breech and was told I could either go home and wait another 24hrs to see if anything happened or they could induce me (if nothing happened in the next 24hrs i was told they would definitely induce me). At this stage I was having tightenings that felt like period cramps but weren’t unbearable so Paul and I decided to go home again to see what happens.

27th September (EDD!) 7am: Back at Hospital again to get monitored, tightenings were stronger this morning than they had been. The Midwife checked me, I was dilated to 2cm and told they would induce me this morning and they’d go get the admission paperwork ready. Midwife came back in shortly after to tell us that they had 2 other ladies being induced and a lady coming in that was already in labour so they weren’t sure they’d be able to induce me as planned so they said to go for a walk, get something to eat and come back in an hour to see whether they’d be able to induce. We did as asked, came back to birthing an hour later and was told they’d be able to induce me today - yay!

11:55am - They got me hooked up to the drip, CTG machine and started the sintocinin, my student midwife arrived (she had been following my pregnancy and was the one familiar face besides Paul in the birthing suite) and stayed with me and monitored baby. I remained standing walking around the room until the contractions (which still felt like period cramps never really felt my bump tightening with each contraction during the whole labour) started to intensify. About an hour in I asked for the birthing ball so I could sit on it as I couldn’t stand any longer I spent the next hour and a half on the ball just bouncing gently and rocking my hips back and forth through each contraction until I couldn’t take it any more and decided to lie down. At 3:15pm I felt like I needed to use the toilet so I had Paul and my student midwife help me up so I could go to the toilet, while sitting there I felt the sudden urge to push. They got the registered midwife to come back from her break to check how dilated I was (while waiting for her to come back I asked for the gas as the pain was starting to get to me and was thinking about getting the epidural) the gas was getting set up just as the midwife came in (3:30pm) she checked me and told me I was 10cm and was ready to push! I had 2/3 puffs of the gas before they took it off me. I pushed for no longer than 10 minutes and my little boy was here and in my arms! 💙 I lost 1200ml of blood and had a second degree tear and a couple of grazes but otherwise went well. I’m completely in awe of my body and what it did.

Love my little man 💙💚