My Birth Story- Part 2- MY WATERS... NOT AGAIN...
Part 1 ended at our cheeky Nandos... What I hadn't mentioned, is that I hadn't felt my baby move all day. My normally active wriggler, was now a mellow bean. Something didn't feel right. I had voiced my concerns to my partner, but I was adamant that we needed our hospital bag ready, despite him trying to convince me to go to the hospital as soon as. I opted for a refillable soda in Nandos, hoping that cold bubbles would wake him or her up. Nothing...
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After grabbing a small suitcase from my mum's house, we headed to the maternity ward, having rang on the way over. I was once again hooked up to a machine to be monitored, although, typically... Baby woke up...
In the meantime, I luckily managed to re-schedule my newborn session to the Saturday and got some lovely smiley pictures of baby Mia.
My mother's intuition was telling me that baby was going to arrive soon. The constant visits to the hospital were draining. Spending time at a noisy maternity ward, without your baby, is hard. You are just desperate to hold your little one!
At 34 + something (I definitely lost track) I had one of my monitoring sessions where we were discussing the gender of the baby. The doctor felt my tummy as everyone made a guess. Baby moves-a-lot was back, and most of the medical staff reckoned that it meant that baby was a boy. I however piped up "actually, I think that means that baby is a girl... Taking after me". I had felt through my pregnancy that I was carrying a girl, I wanted a girl, but I tried hard not to get my hopes up! I'm an impatient person, and the not knowing was killing me!
Fast forward 2 days (ish), I was 35 weeks pregnant, and we had been asleep for only an hour when... WHOOSH... a gush of water fell from me. Had I wet myself? No, definitely not... MY WATERS... NOT AGAIN... I ran to the toilet, the water would not stop!
"Baby..." I yelled from the toilet "it's time!"
"Are you sure this time?" He replied (understandably sceptical!)
"Definite" I responded, still waiting for the water to stop.
Another late night trip to the hospital, but this time, they took us straight to the labour ward. As my waters had broken early, and my baby still wasn't "cooked", I was now classed as high risk...
High risk... AKA you must lie down attached to machines to give birth... this was far from the home birth experience I was dreaming of not so long ago...
My contractions still didn't hurt, they were irregular and nothing exciting had happened since the gush of water. We were told to try and get some sleep... A few hours later a large group of, I'm assuming, doctors (I couldn't fully understand what they were saying, a lot of people were talking), filed into the room. They had a portable sonogram that they used to see if there was enough water still surrounding baby. Luckily, there was, but it did mean that we were moved to the maternity ward...
A day and a half of monitoring passed boringly. We tried everything... copious amounts of pineapple... bouncing on the yoga ball... to no avail. We were about to try a hot curry, but my appetite went (completely not like me). Myself and my parter were just getting fed up when... regular contractions began. I timed them on the app that I downloaded. They felt like period pains, but went a long my back the around my belly. I knew we would meet baby soon!
I had asked to be checked, but it wasn't until the middle of the night that I was checked and told my cervix wasn't opening. Told to take paracetamol and i'd be discharged in the morning, after my consult to discuss the plan for my delivery. I managed to sleep, but in the morning, contractions began again, yet I was still to be discharged. At this point, the pain was getting worse, to the point where I had to pause through each contraction.
We met with the doctor to discuss my birth plan. I couldn't sit down in the waiting room, I had to pace! The doctor confirmed that I was contracting, but scheduled me to be induced on the Friday anyway. We headed back up to the maternity ward to collect our things and I told them that we'd see them later...
Tomorrow will be the third and final part of my birth story! Thank you for reading so far!
Francesca
What was your birth story like? Who else's waters broke early? Would anyone like to have their birth story featured in my blog? - get in touch! Email me at: francescaweeksphotography@yahoo.com
