My first time birth story

I had quite a difficult pregnancy and the labour wasn’t much easier!

My baby was diagnosed with IUGR. I went to weekly scans to check on bubs growth 4 hours away from home. The plan was to be induced for labour at 37 weeks at the latest. I was given a full round of steroid injections to get my babies lungs ready for an early birth at 33 weeks.

I had an appointment with a specialist at my local hospital at 35 weeks. He was very concerned as my amniotic fluid levels were very very low and was admitted within the hour. The wait was long to see if I needed to be transferred to a different hospital as bub was so tiny. Finally after waiting for 5 hours while they monitored babies heart they told me I would be able to have my baby in my local hospital which honestly was a relief.

At around 6pm the cooks catheter was inserted to soften and dilate my cervix enough for them to break my waters.

At around 3am I started getting contractions which lasted a minute and were around three minutes apart. I was taken to the birthing unit for more monitoring of babies heart and my contractions. At 6am they took out my cooks catheter and broke my waters and I was 2cm dilated: This was when they started me on pitocin to bring on stronger contractions

Many hours later and many painful contractions later they were coming every 30-40 seconds and lasting about a minute. They said my uterus wasn’t relaxing in between contractions. Finally I gave in and asked for an epidural which only worked on one side of my body 😫. It came to 6pm and I was still only 2cm dilated and they said that baby couldn’t take it anymore, her heart rate was dropping with every contraction. I needed to go for an emergency cesarean. Luckily for me my mum and partner weren’t far away and rushed to the hospital. I then had a local anaesthetic in my spine and I was ready to go.

My baby girl was born at 40cm long and weighing 1.84kgs on the 14th of March 5 weeks early

She was in the special care nursery until the 24th of March and it was the hardest 10 days of my life. It broke my heart to have to go home without my tiny baby in my arms.

All of this was so worth my little baby girl ❤️