Megan was born at 41+2 weeks, so she was 9 days overdue. Some women are wonderfully calm and zen about being overdue, and I admire these women so much because I was absolutely not. I was impatient and cranky, and very very hot. I managed to time my due date with the few weeks of British summer that we got in 2014, and the 30 degree heat meant I spent 50% of my time in a paddling pool in the garden like a beached whale, 25% waddling along the riverside, trying to encourage her to get out of me and the remaining 25% trying to sleep but instead actually doing online quizzes titled ‘Am I in labour?’ (the answer is always maybe, but actually no).
I had a sweep booked for 41 weeks, and that morning I was woken by regular contractions. Excitement! Sadly, they stopped before my appointment, so I went ahead and got swept, and headed off afterwards to the cinema because I figured that if I was somewhere really inappropriate, the baby would be more likely to come. She didn’t. In the end I was woken at midnight by contractions, and this time, finally, they never went away.
For me, contractions were odd. It took me ages to realize what they were because although they did ebb and flow, the pain didn’t go away completely in between and I mostly felt really sick. After a lot of googling “Am I actually in labour this time? Seriously, though?”, and some desperate messaging of my very lovely midwife friend who was on holiday in Greece but still kind enough to text me back, it turned out that yes, I was having contractions, they just didn’t feel like I expected them to.
This early labour phase lasted a long time for me, and was largely spent getting into the bath, spending 10 minutes in the bath, deciding the bath didn’t help much, having to get my husband to haul me out of the bath, and deciding another 10 minutes later that maybe the bath would help and I should try again. My husband was a complete rock throughout this, he held my hand, he forced me to breathe long and slow through the contractions, he didn’t complain once about the endless round of baths. After nearly 10 hours of this, and having been firmly encouraged by the midwife on the phone to try and eat something, I ate a slice of swiss roll, and promptly threw it up during my next contraction. During all of this, I became convinced that my waters had broken, possibly in the bath for the hundredth time, so we called the Abbey Birth Centre and they asked us to come in.
Sadly for me, my waters had not broken and I was only 3cm dilated, so it was back home for another few baths. In the end, we had only been home about 15 minutes when my contractions suddenly stepped up a gear, they were more frequent, longer and stronger. We gave it a couple of hours, and I decided that if I didn’t get in the car again soon, I would absolutely never ever get in it. I think the second car journey to St Peter’s was my least favourite part of labour. For me, the contractions were best spent standing up hanging onto my husband, or on all fours, neither of which you can do in a car. I spent the journey alternately singing Joseph and his Amazing Technicoloured Dreamcoat loudly to distract myself, and crushing a pillow and yelling when the contractions came. Other cars passing by must have been quite confused!