I often watched One Born Every Minute leading up to the birth and now I finally have my very own BIRTH STORY
28th of December 2am. I woke up and went to the toilet, and suddenly realised I had light period like cramps I timed them out of curiosity and found they were every three minutes, but eventually fell back to sleep. In the morning I told Ant what I felt and we were excited to go to our midwife appointment that morning to see what they had thought.
We arrived there at 9am and the lady checked me out and preformed a membrane sweep. Ant asked if she thought it was the start of labour and I asked excitedly if I was dilating. She shot both of us down in one go NO, she preformed a sweep and told us that it would cause light cramping and that there was no way of knowing if the baby would come today, tomorrow or in a few days time.
So we left the appointment thinking it was nothing. The cramping disappeared until after lunch and was still light enough to ignore so we went and spent some time with my mum for her birthday (which was today) We joined them again that evening for dinner at an Italian restaurant. In the middle of dinner I started having waves of back pain come and go, I would elbow Ant every now and then to rub my back- why I bothered I don't know he was too distracted talking to my dad to even pay attention!
By 9pm I thought it was probably time to go home; we were starting to get stares, although I did think about staying for dessert on more then one occasion. As soon as we got home Ant said he was going to bed, I asked him to stay up with me but he said he was tired and wanted to be rested for when I went into labour...lucky him.
I decided I would sit on my birth ball and watch One Born Every Minute (probably not the best choice of show at the time). My back pain started to get worse and eventually I had to stand through all the waves, I wandered around the house waiting for the back pain to go away. The whole time I was annoyed that I would be tired when I went into labour because all this back pain was keeping me awake.
Eventually at 1am I woke Ant and told him I wanted to go to the hospital to get some sleeping tablets so I could get some rest incase I go into labour. We rang the hospital and I explained my symptoms, she said it sounded like an irritable uterus, come in, get checked and they will give me something to help me sleep.
We made it to the hospital and started the marathon walk to labour ward (it was a new hospital and some idiot decided pregnant women could walk a kilometre to get to the labour ward) I turned down a wheel chair and had to stop three times on the way- the poor young orderly just waited quietly every time.
When we got there I was hooked up to the machine for a short amount of time since I was still struggling to lay on my back. The midwife noted that my contractions were fairly consistent- I thought what contractions I only have back pain ?!?! So you can imagine our surprise when she checked me and I was 7cms dilated!! We were so stunned. Ant spoke first- "Does that mean I should get the bag out of the car?"
This was it, it was happening and I didn't even know! I sat in the shower for maybe an hour and then felt a gush- I swear it was my waters breaking but I really don't know (maybe I peed!). I told the midwives it was my waters and they said that my contractions would get worse and offered me gas, which I didn't take initially but changed my mind after a while.
My contractions intensified a million times and I was sucking the gas down like there was no tomorrow- they had to keep reminding me to only use it when there was a contraction coming on, my theory was if I didn't stop then I wouldn't miss the start of the contraction.
I guess I sucked a little too much gas because I clearly remember telling the midwife that I felt like I was on acid and on a roller coaster... ?!?! I must have half realised what I was saying because then I added- I've never done acid tho, so I wouldn't actually know what that feels like. I think its safe to say Ant was a little embarrassed.
Things seemed to progress fairly fast and I started to feel that overwhelming urge to push- anyone that has given birth naturally would know the feeling. The midwife told me to hold and breathe through it to which I replied- I can't, I can't, I'm pushing, I'm pushing!!!
Well I pushed for a while, I'm not sure how long but I was exhausted and begged for the ladies just to suction him out! But they were patient and encouraged me to keep going. It was near the end that we realised my bag was still in tack and that he had pooped in his sac. The midwives were a little concerned by this and really started edging me on to push and push harder. (Not before shoving a mirror down there catching me off guard to show me his head in the sac...ugh not so magical)
Eventually at 5:24am Max Landon Lemura 7 pound 2 oz came into this world screaming! He was placed on my chest as Ant cut the cord and we were both instantly in love.
He was perfect!
I told everyone he came into this world screaming on a full moon night, in his sac! He was our WILDTHING from the beginning!
Being weighed for the first time- we got a lot of skin to skin contact time before all the formalities were done.
A character from the start and oh so alert!
