Yesterday I gave birth to my rainbow baby girl, Liara Diane Elif.

After a week of confirmed latent stage labour (potentially up to a month in reality) I had my waters broken at 9:30am yesterday, I seemed to have more fluid than Niagara falls as the midwives had to keep coming in with towels to mop up after me 🙈. I was due to be examined at 1:30pm but the contractions were so intense by 1:10pm I asked to be examined early and as I was 5cm dilated with regular painful contractions I was allowed to go to the birth centre. I had no drugs or anything other than having my waters broken to induce labour so I was still allowed in the pool. By 1:30pm I was in the pool and my partner was allowed to join me, within minutes I felt a pressure telling me to push but I ignored it thinking I was only 5cm dilated still. Well it got to 2:30pm and I was asking for drugs, so my midwife watched my next contraction and noticed my body was pushing without me so in came the second midwife and I was informed I was not getting any drugs other than the gas (at this point I told the midwife I needed them and I wasn't pushing, you can imagine how blunt my midwife was about the fact my babies head was visible during contractions haha). We spent the next 35 minutes trying to get baby girl's head out as it kept moving back up making me panic a bit near the end. We eventually got her head out and 15 minutes later, at 3:20pm the rest of her body followed. I'm still amazed I managed to push through the burning I felt, I was so sure she was stuck but the midwives were adamant that she WAS coming and I had to keep pushing. The next 15 minutes were spent in the pool holding her while her cord pulsed and she breast fed. At the 15 minute mark I started feeling faint so we had to cut the cord (it was still pulsing which surprised my midwives as they'd never seen it pulse that long) and pass her over to my partner in case I fainted. At this point I was asked to leave the pool but instead I told them I had to stay in it and squatted, this took about 3 minutes in total and resulted in my placenta passing. It was HUGE and overflowed the dish used to catch it, my midwife nearly dropped it due to the weight of it! After this I was helped out of the pool and given lucozade and protein bars, had my blood pressure checked and as my bleeding settled I was left to recover a bit. About an hour later I was feeling better and so I got up to get dressed only to end up standing in a pool of blood. Turns out my uterus was refusing to contract, so I had drugs injected to force contractions and also had my bladder emptied via a catheter. Luckily this worked and it never became an emergency!

Liara passed all of her checks and when she weighed in at 8Ib 10oz I told the midwives they weren't funny (which in turn made them laugh). She's breastfeeding like a pro and settling really well at home. We left hospital 12 hours after I was admitted for induction, from induction to birth was just under 6 hours and only about 2 and a half hours of that was actual labour! I never even grazed and am already feeling pretty much back to normal, turns out natural labour agrees with me.

I'm happy to answer any questions and please let me know if I've missed any information you would be curious to know!