My Birth Story!

OK, so a bit of a long one. Sorry!

Reflecting on my first experience of labour, I feel very lucky. I don't remember a lot of it, largely due to the pethadine I'd been given and the fact that labour occurred in the early hours of the morning and I just wanted to sleep through most of it. Was I in pain? Absolutely! It was the most horrendous pain I had ever experienced in my life. It seemed never-ending. It seemed like I'd never get my little boy out. You seem to have these feelings regardless of how long your labour is. You don't trust your body to know what to do. And yet it nearly always does. My labour with Tommy lasted 3hrs 50 mins - a relatively short labour for a first baby. My pregnancy was "text-book" I guess. I felt more healthy during the months of my pregnancy than I'd done in any point of my life and my labour followed suit. Tommy was in a perfect position for an "easy" birth, he turned beautifully when it came to the pushing stage and it was a good job because he weighed in at a pretty impressive 8lb 6oz! This came as a shock to everybody, being as I am just over 5ft!

It's a weird thing contemplating giving birth for a second time. All the questions you had before you gave birth the first time are still floating around your head: Will my baby arrive safely? Will the birth be ok? Will I need medical intervention? Will my birth go according to my birth plan? How long will it be? Will I be able to cope with the pain? I imagine that, no matter how many children you give birth to, those same questions are always going to be there. I'm not sure whether experiencing labour before offers much help when you're thinking about going through it again, particularly if, like me, you pretty much erased most of it from your memory. The second time, for me anyway, there seemed to be more things to worry about. How would I "know" if I was in labour again? Would it start the same way? Be as painful? Last as long? Go as well as the first? Would I be as lucky?

Women always impart their wisdom when it comes to talking about giving birth. They will usually do one of two things: either scare you senseless with their account of their week-long labour that needed every possible medical intervention, leaving you to worry that the same will inevitably happen to you. Or they will proudly announce that their labour was the shortest in history and wasn't actually that painful, leaving you to naively assume it's going to be a walk in the park. The only thing I actually listened to is someone from work that told me: however long, painful or difficult your labour is, just remember that every pain, every push, every hour that passes by is one closer to meeting your baby. When you think about labour like that, you can deal with anything it decides to throw at you. The longer both my pregnancies progressed, the less I cared about what happened to me during my labour. As long as a baby was the result of it, it didn't matter. 

So much so that I didn't even write a birth plan. My "plan" literally read "If I need it, I'll have it." I am all for women having really specific ideas about how they want their birth to go, but it's just not realistic to expect that birth will go exactly as you want it to. Labour is extremely unpredictable. There's no telling how difficult or how long it will be. There's no telling how you will cope with the pain. I didn't want to set myself up for failure, as it were - have really specific plans that all have to go out of the window, leaving me disappointed, let down or like I had "failed." I hoped I wouldn't need any pain relief the second time round in truth. Not because I wanted a pat on the back for being brave. Merely because I feel guilty for not being able to remember everything about my son's birth, largely because I was out of it on pethadine and drifting in and out of sleep. It was all a bit of a blur. If I had a choice, I'd like to remember every little detail the second time round.

I thought having gone through labour once before, nobody would have anything they could add to the conversation about giving birth, no advice to impart, no "tips." It turns out I was wrong. Your second birth'll be loads easier, loads quicker, less painful they said. This was great news to hear. How wrong they turned out to be however!

Labour (or what I thought was labour) started on Tuesday night at about 8 o clock. I'd asked people whether I'd know if I was in labour or not the second time around. The pains of labour are erased from your memory straight after you give birth and you struggle to remember what they felt like. Well, when it happens for the second time, it all comes flooding back and trust me, YOU KNOW! My husband asked the same questions as he did the first time round: Are you sure this is it? Have your waters definitely broken? It's a long way to the hospital if you're not in labour and we have to come back blah blah blah. I was panicking because my labour had been quite short last time, it was a 45 minute-drive to the hospital and I didn't want to be giving birth at home. Little did I know, there was absolutely no chance of the baby coming anytime soon!

I was convinced my waters had broken and I was having regular contractions so, after a phone call, we made our way to the hospital. We didn't have to sort anything out with regards to Tommy, as luck would have it, he was staying for a sleepover at Nanny and Grandad's caravan.

Sat in the car, I felt both excited and nervous. I was getting regular contractions and I felt sure our baby would arrive that evening. That was, until we got within 5 minutes of the hospital, and all of a sudden, everything just stopped. We arrived at the maternity ward and waited to be examined. Something just didn't seem right. How can everything stop all of a sudden? Why weren't my waters leaking when I was sure they had been earlier? I had the usual checks, which were all fine and was told to wait around to see if I would have any further contractions. If not, I was to go home. My waters had in fact not broken but I had some sort of yeast infection instead which I had mistaken for my waters breaking.

No contractions came, so I was told I wasn't in labour and that I was to return home and call if I had any concerns. To top it off, they told me my baby was back to back so I should try getting it to turn when I got home. This sent me into a bit of a panic if I'm honest. I knew my baby had been right-occupit anterior through the last half of my pregnancy and I knew it wasn't the 'ideal' position for birth. I knew that babies in this position were likely to go back-to-back because they usually turn in a clockwise direction on their way out. Back-to-back babies tend, although not always, to make labour more difficult, longer and increase the likelihood that intervention will be needed. I'd tried everything I could to try and turn baby, using all the techniques suggested by Spinning Babies, but it hadn't worked. Baby just liked being in that position and there was little I could do in the end to change that.

I found this all so frustrating. The pains I'd been having were not Braxton hicks, but very much real labour pains. When I got home, I couldn't go to bed; I was still having regular, painful contractions. While my husband got some sleep (well he was going to need it after all wasn't he?), I watched a bit of TV downstairs. I opted for some of my favourite comedy programmes but they didn't make me feel like laughing. After further calls to the maternity ward, I had a bath and then tried to sleep, which as anybody who's ever experienced labour before knows, is pretty much impossible. I managed to get a few minutes but I was either in too much pain or too excited to sleep.

At this point, I was beginning to need something to take the edge off the pain. The pain had been very bearable so far and intermittent. There'd be an hour of "contractions" and then nothing for the next. I was just breathing and getting through it. I emptied my kitchen cupboards in the search of paracetamol but we didn't have a single one in the house. At 6am, hubby went out to get some and they helped me get through the next hour or so.

Mum phoned and I told her I thought I was in labour. I'd not phoned her the night before as I didn't want her to worry, or to get excited if it was a false alarm and it was probably a good job, seeing as I hadn't given birth  over 10hrs later! I was coping well up to this point. I was calm and happy to be at home because as far as I could see, the end of labour was not nigh. Mum suggested she brought Tommy over to see me and this was such a good idea. I loved having him around; it was such a help in getting through the few hours that followed.

By 10am, my contractions were getting very close together and more painful than I could cope with. I rang the hospital once again and this time they suggested I should go in. When I arrived at hospital (11am), I was told I was a good 4-5cm dilated. I was told I wasn't going anywhere and they hoped I would have my baby that day. I flipping hoped so! I had a bath and a couple of paracetamol and then got bouncing on a gym ball.

The next few hours that passed by were lovely. No honestly! Yes, I was in pain but it was perfectly manageable without any kind of pain relief. We chatted, laughed, joked. We discussed whether we thought it would be a boy or girl, what names we liked, we talked about Tommy and what he might be up to. I really really was enjoying myself in a way. The midwife spent most of the time sat in our room and told us about her family and her birth stories. She told us our baby's birth would be her hundredth delivery, so she wanted to be the person to deliver it. She also told us she thought we were having a girl - she didn't normally predict babies were girls but when she did, her prediction was always accurate.

At 3.30pm, I was examined again to be told I was 7cm dilated. I was getting a bit fed up this point, not because I wasn't coping but just because everything was taking so long and I had begun to think I'd never get to hold my baby. I was getting so impatient and just wanted to meet him/her now.

The midwife decided to break my waters, as that would help speed things along a little and it definitely worked! By 4.30, I was 10cm dilated and pushing. I had a bit of gas and air at this point, as the pain was getting very strong. To be honest though, while it definitely numbed the pain, I didn't like the drunk, sicky feeling it gave me so I just tossed the mouthpiece aside, knowing it would all soon be over.

At 4.58pm, our little girl, Isla Grace Collingwood entered the world with a deafening cry. She weighed 7lb 3oz, and was a dainty little thing with long fingers and toes. I couldn't believe I'd given birth again. I couldn't believe that beautiful baby I was holding belonged to us. Right there, in that moment and indeed all the moments that have since followed, we felt like the luckiest two people alive. When you give birth the first time, you don't have any idea as to what a baby will bring to your life. When you give birth for the second time, you know just exactly what it means. You know all the joys and experiences that are to come and it makes you anticipate labour and birth all the more.

If doesn't matter how many babies you have, labour is ALWAYS painful, ALWAYS hard but ultimately ALWAYS the most incredible, amazing, beautiful and rewarding experience a woman (and her partner!) can go through. It says it all when, still in hospital holding her one-day-old child, a woman turns to her husband and says "Please don't let that be our last one" and follows it with "I want to do that again." No matter how hard, long, traumatic or difficult a labour is, there's not a single woman on the planet who can turn around and say it wasn't worth it.