Birth story time ❤️

My water broke on 23 November at 2:45pm. After getting checked at hospital, I was allowed to go home to see if labour would start naturally. Although I did have contractions throughout the night, they were too far apart and irregular. So at 7:00am on 24 November, I went to hospital where they induced me. The first two hours were great, contractions were 2- 3min apart but bearable. Then like a freight train they became excruciating, long with only 1-2min apart! I was in agony and was crying uncontrollably. The nitrous felt like it burnt my throat so I went for the morphine. That took the edge off but did not last long at all. By 4:00pm I had only dilated to 3cm so I instantly became afraid as they could not exceed one dose of morphine.

I decided to try the epidural against my own wishes because there was no way I could have continued in such pain for the rest of the long labour.

Epidural went in quick and within 20min I could only feel the tightness of the contractions. No more pain. At 6:00pm I fell asleep for an hour and at 7pm the midwife found that I had fully dilated!!

Everyone was shocked 😮 so they allowed me to have an hour of seeing whether Bub would start making her way out herself. By 8:00pm I started pushing. It was easy with the epidural only coming in at 20ml doses each hour.

They realised my perineal was too strong so I agreed to an episiotomy and with literally one push, both head and body slid out!!

On 24 November 2017 at 8:46pm we welcomed little Arianne Grace Schaefer in to the world. She came at 38 weeks 2 days, weighed 2.49kg and is approximately 50cm.