My first child had been born a week early, so I was prepared for another early delivery with my second child. However, I wasn’t really prepared for going into labour a month early. The night before,my partner and I had had sex. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it was because my grandmother was visiting and had no signs of intending to leave. Perhaps my going into labour might have given her the idea that maybe it was time to go home. Or maybe I was just in the mood.
Anyway, having waved my partner off to work, and driven into town to have lunch with my gran, my waters broke. I rushed to Mothercare to buy some pads, told my gran what had happened, but still she wanted to carry on with lunch plans ‘because it’s 12 o clock and I’m hungry.’ After a hurriedly eaten lunch, we drove home and I phoned the hospital. They advised me to come in because of the risk of infection but were happy for me to wait until my partner had finished work later on that evening.
At 7pm I was safely in hospital, no contractions, being examined by a midwife who patiently asked if perhaps I had been mistaken about my waters breaking and could it possibly have it just been a ‘little bit of wee?’ After practically filling the contents of a bucket with the contents of my pad, she conceded that it probably was my waters.
I was sent up to a private room (just lucky) and told to settle down for the night and to see if anything would be likely to happen. My partner went home and I tried to get some sleep. Just as my head hit the pillow at around 10pm I started to feel very mild cramps. These developed into fairly regular cramps and by midnight, I was walking around the corridors trying not to hold my breath as they told hold. It was actually great, being able to walk down the dimmed corridors alone at night, with the gently hum of nurses going about their business. I felt very safe and calm during this time. (Much better than my first labour, where I had been told to go and watch Coronation Street at 8pm with all the nursing mothers and trying not to cry out with the pain).
I was advised by one nurse to go and have a bath, so I laid in the bath for about an hour which really helped. I realised how much it had helped with the pain when I got out and was almost floored by how intense the contractions had become. At this point my partner was called and I moved down to the labour ward at around 2am.
When I was examined at around 2.30am I was only around 2cm and not yet in established labour.We were left to it for a while, me practicing breathing and generally getting cross and irritable with anything my partner did or said. When I was examined again around an hour later I was only around 3cm and really starting to lose heart. I was in a lot of pain, the contractions were quite close together and the midwife suggested that it might even tail off to nothing and might not even be proper labour.
At this point I was really struggling to cope without pain relief and asked for some help. The midwife gave me gas and air which took the edge off a lot and made me feel as if I was back in control. However, an hour later I was only 3-4cm dilated and had the seed of doubt in my mind that this might be going on for hours yet, getting increasingly more painful.
At around 5am I asked (shouted) for an epidural, only be told that this may take a while because the guy had to be paged. By now, I was getting really furious with being treated like I was a little bit simple, and demanded to know how long ‘a while’ actually meant. When she said it would take around an hour, I hissed between gritted teeth, ‘I won’t need it by then, I’ll have already had it.’ (Her twinkly little laugh in response is something I still get cross about today).
Funnily enough, around this point is when things started to get easier. Since the contractions were coming thick and fast I didn’t have time to notice what was going on around me. The pain, and breathing in gas and air became my focus. At around 5.50am I gasped ‘I want to push.’ At the time it seemed to me that this took the midwife completely by surprise, as, up to this point, she was waiting for the epidural guy to arrive and shut me up.
After around 40 mins of pushing, Millie was born at 6.30am, 6 pounds, 2 ounces, 4 weeks early, looking a little like Yoda with furry ears to match. The relief that the pain was over was immense. The whole labour has been very quick towards the end and at times I had felt as if the midwife wasn’t listening, or believed what I was saying about my body. I knew that I would have my baby that night. I also knew that I didn’t have hours and hours of labour ahead of me. I had dilated from 2cm to 10cm in just over 3 hours. To all expectant mothers, you know your own bodies, this is a natural thing that you are designed to do. Be confident that you know what’s best. My daughter is now a beautiful 11 year old, just as stroppy as her mother.