Pregnancy & Birth
Over the next 24 hours I started getting contractions, every time this happened I was told to go rest or take a nap as I had a long labour ahead of me. I would go have a nap, wake up and the contractions would be gone. Pessary number 2 was inserted at midday on Wednesday 5th September and the same happened again by this point, I was a bag of emotions, and I kept getting told “you are next” but nothing. By the time Thursday tea time rolled around my contractions were still not amounting to anything. I was huge, I hadn’t eaten properly in days, as the food was awful and I felt like everyone who was anyone had been in to see that I just wasn’t getting anywhere!
Finally, at 9pm on Thursday, I was taken down to the delivery suite and my waters broken. I was sent out to do laps of the car park to get Q- tip moving, but by 11pm nothing had happened so I was hooked up to the syntocinon hormone drip. With the drip went any chance I had of a drug free natural labour. I managed to get to about 6cm at around 4am, before my husband said to me “Dee, the anesthetist is outside, I think you should have an epidural” This was my worst fear, but even in my entonox induced haze, I recognised the concern in his voice and I consented, only for the epidural not to work, even after they replaced it the third time.
At 7am I was told it was time to push, I don’t remember a lot of what happened during this time, but I remember being told I was going to need some help. Up to this point it had been myself, my husband and a midwife. Then all of a sudden I had about 10 more people in my room, asking questions, shaving parts of me that I had only ever done myself, and Jake was being sent off to put on some scrubs!
In theatre I was living my worst case scenario, but for the first time in 3 1/2 days, I felt calm and in no pain, those spinal blocks are wonderful! At 12:21 Joshua Todd Lanning was born by forceps delivery! He was calm, happy and perfect and every single second of the last 42 1/2 weeks was forgotten! I had my beautiful baby boy in my arms!
They say you forget the pain of
labour, but for a few months after Joshua was born I would cry every time thought of it, and said I would never do it again. Do you know what? They were right and 10 months on I would do it again tomorrow.
"When my induction date rolled around I did whatever sane, 2 weeks overdue, mum to be does, I cried!"
The number of deliveries taking place in NHS hospitals has decreased by 3.6 per cent since 2012-13 to 646,904.
Nearly two thirds (61.8 per cent, 343,797) of deliveries were spontaneous onset; 13.6 per cent (75,798) were medically induced and 13.2 per cent (73,486) were caesarean onset.
*2013-2014
http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB16725