January baby birth story

Now my baby girl is 4 weeks old I finally feel ready (and have time) to share with you all my train wreck of a birth story!

Before I start, I want to say I understand people have had it so much worse than me, and it could’ve gone a lot worse for me than what it did, but to me, it really was a train wreck.

So, Tuesday 9th Jan came round and I was awake from 5am, I just felt weird, indescribably weird!! I had a weird pain in my stomach and my back and as the morning progressed my stomach felt so tender to touch. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything! Normally on Tuesdays me and my mum go food shopping, this day, I stayed in the car. After that we stopped by at my sisters, regular Tuesday antics, only this day I couldn’t even lift my 1 year old nephew as it hurt my stomach. Anyway, I got home and decided to cook a mild curry, my partner came home from work, we ate our tea and sprawled on the sofa for a few hours before we had an early night.. whilst laid on the sofa I felt contractions start, it was about 8pm. We went to bed around 9:30/10pm when I started practicing my breathing through contractions, that’s when my partner said the famous line “shit this is really happening isn’t it”. We fell asleep some time later. I woke up in a lot of pain at about 3am and I decided to come into the sitting room and lay on the sofa so I didn’t disturb my partner as he had work that day.. contractions were coming in every 7 minutes. I woke him up for work at 6:30 but he decided not to go to work “just in case” so I laid back in bed and ended up drifting off to sleep until 9:30.. I woke up and my contractions had pretty much stopped. We had breakfast and headed out for a 2 mile walk, we then went to my sister in laws house, picked up her birthing ball and brought it home where I bounced for 4.5 hours straight, timing every contraction, which were coming in between 6 and 5 minutes apart. I got in the bath had a quick clean and shave (lol) and contractions slowed down between 7 and 6 minutes, so I got out of the bath and sat on the ball, alternating between the ball and leaning against the sofa with each contraction as they had gotten too intense to sit throughout them. I bared the pain for another 2 hours when I rang the labour ward. They told me to “take paracetamol because I can’t go in until I’m having 3 contractions in 10 minutes” that’s when I started crying and getting frustrated, I had so much pressure on my bum it was unreal!! My mum stopped by my house and saw how much pain I was in and told me we’re going to the hospital to at least get checked. We loaded the car and off we went. We got to the hospital at 11:30pm on the Wednesday night. I had my internal and I was 5cm (hooray) off we went to the pool room. I was really looking forward to getting in the pool but while waiting for it to fill up I got so comfortable on the sofa bed that I didn’t move for 6 hours, apart from switching which side I was laid on.

I used the gas and air for 2 hours before it started making me feel sick, and then I didn’t have anything for the remaining 4 hours I was on there. I was very very in control and I handled the pain like an absolute boss, with the help of my partner who was pressing a warm compress on my back, then pressing really hard with a contraction. But they were coming thick and fast now, everything was going really well.. Until they came to check me at about 4:30am and I was told I hadn’t progressed and I was still at 5cm. From then, things seemed to go down hill. I realised I could be there for another 12 hours before things really started happening. From that minute my mindset completely changed from “yeah I got this, this is easy” to “oh shit I can’t do this”. I had the choice to either stay where I was and they’d take me off the established labour register, meaning the midwife would leave the room and leave us to it and someone would come in every 4 hours to give me an internal. Or I could go to the high risk ward and have the epidural. I decided at 6am that I’d go for the epidural, so off we went. We got to the room and got comfortable (ish) and waited for the epidural. Finally, I got it in, sat back, but what’s that? I can still feel id say about 75% of the pain from a contraction.. I tell the midwife, they top me up. Nope, didn’t work. They top me up about 5 more times, even with something “stronger”. ITS NOT DOING A THING. I get another internal at 10am, still 5cm. So they break my waters, only barely anything came away and they also decided to give me some hormone drip that helps speed things along (can’t remember what it is called, I wasn’t really bothered tbh) after that’s in tact they decide to re do my epidural, they basically take everything out and put it all back in again, only in a different spot in my spine.. I really didn’t want to do that but ok I was down to try anything at that point, I was exhausted. My mum had taken this horrendous picture of me near this point.

So the second epidural, great.

Only it wasn’t because they couldn’t get the damn thing in my spine. (I literally had 7 pin holes in my back a few days later) about an hour passed and they finally got it in the right place and I could try to relax again. I laid back and I FINALLY feel relief!! So I slept for an hour, to get woken up by pain again 😩 so they topped me up with this “stronger stuff” and I fell back to sleep for another half an hour. Only to get woken up by about 8 different doctors and nurses in my room talking about how I had protein in my urine and babies heart rate was dropping. The heart rate dropping was a possible side effect to the hormone drug so they turned that down a little and this repeated for another few hours, heart rate dropped, they turned the drug down, heart rate picked up, they turned the drug up, and so on... the epidural wore off after another half an hour and decided it wouldn’t work again 😩

3pm comes and a doctor comes and tells the midwife if there’s no change in half an hour they’d have to intervene! So they give me an internal to see if I’d progressed, only to find the baby’s head so low down that I was ready to push 🎉 5 rounds of pushing later, at 3:29pm on Wednesday 11th January my little girl was born at 39+4 weighing 6lb9oz

These last 4 weeks have been the best 4 weeks of my life! Little Alysia Mae, you make me so happy and I already couldn’t imagine my life without you, I beam with pride every time someone stops me in the street to tell me how beautiful you are and I want you to know that you will never, not make me proud ❤️

Here’s a few more pictures of her: