So that weekend I pottered about, did some last minute things in the nursery, repacked my hospital bag yet again! All the going up and down the stairs was having a strange effect on my bladder - I kept leaking and was having to wear a pad and change it frequently. On Sunday evening, after a nice warm bath, I got out and actually wet myself, clearly the baby was really sitting on my bladder! Still I was looking forward to my brother, his girlfriend, and their daughter visiting on the Monday.
(I'm typing this with Froglet fast asleep and vying for space on my lap with the laptop btw!)
My niece, we'll call her Munchkin, arrived with her parents on the Monday morning. Her mum, my sister-in-law, was also pregnant, just two weeks behind me. Now Munchkin is a beautiful, vibrant, loud child. Combine her with my Shih Tzu puppy Max, and there was rather a lot of hyperactivity, shouting, squealing and much laughter that morning. I was having a few contractions whilst sitting on the sofa with my sister in law, accompanied by a few 'Ooh's, and she chuckled at me when I wondered out loud if perhaps Froglet was going to make an appearance before I was induced. No, we both said and laughed some more.
I waved my brother, SIL, and munchkin off at lunchtime, then told my husband I was popping up to the loo. My bladder, honestly, it was getting worse and worse. I waddled up the stairs (by this point my SPD was so bad and my bump so big that it was pretty hard to get up and down the stairs) and went to the loo. I'd got into the habit of checking the loo paper for blood fairly early on in my pregnancy (after a friend had had a miscarriage, my paranoia knows no bounds!) and I still did it at this point. I frowned. Not only was there blood on the loo paper, there was a lump of what looked like, for want of a better word, snot.
"Argh," I wondered out loud. "Is that my show?" - a lovely word learnt from forums like netmums.com and askbaby.com.
I liased with Hubbie, and a couple of mummy friends, and the consensus was that it was my show. I allowed myself to get a little bit excited, everyone I'd spoken to had said they'd gone into labour within a few days after having their show.
That afternoon was spent with my husband asleep on the sofa (he had taken his paternity leave from October 16th as I was no longer able to drive and had a lot of hospital appointments still to go to). Hubbie's excuse was he 'needed the energy for the 4am run to the hospital'.
Photographic evidence of Hubbie asleep on the sofa:
I, for my part, was bouncing up and down on my birthing ball as I watched TV as it was the only position comfortable for my increasingly painful back.
By 6pm Paul had woken up and I phoned my mum for a chat, and to tell her about my leaky bladder and my show. As I sat in the comfortable leather armchair, with my feet up on the pouffe (also a comfortable position), and chatted away, I felt another little gush of wee. I said to my mum, "Oh bugger, I've wet myself again". Then I felt a gush, that just kept coming. "Oooh," I said to my mum. Followed by another, "Oooh!" "What?" Mum asked. "I think my waters have broken!" She descended into laughter and so did I, it was ridiculous. Here I was, on the phone, and my waters were gushing all over me, my trousers and the (thankfully) leather armchair.
I said a quick goodbye to my Mum and rushed upstairs to the bathroom, closely followed by my Hubbie. I managed to get onto the toilet where my waters continued to gush. I managed to salvage the pad I was wearing, the liquid on it was strawcoloured and it smelled like, well semen to be honest! It was now obvious that all the leaking I'd had over the weekend was actually my waters and not urine. Despite the suddenness of it all I was pretty happy at this point.
However the date, Monday the 17th October happened to be the day that the hospital we were booked into (the QEII in Welwyn Garden City) was closing it's maternity unit. I had obviously been informed of this in advance and had checked out both hospitals, but the QEII was our preferred hospital as that's where my consultants were based and also where I was born. I really wanted our daughter to be born there.
So, because it was closing that day we decided to phone the delivery ward to check which hospital we should be going to when things progressed (as when my waters broke I was only contracting irregularly). We phoned the QE2 and they said they were actually accepting people until 0730 the next day, and that as my waters had broken they wanted me to go in to get checked over, so we headed down.
It's a 30 minute trip to QEII from our house (the new one, the Lister in Stevenage, is actually closer) so it was just gone 7pm when we got there. I got checked over and whilst it was my confirmed that it was my waters that had broken (I brought a pad in and they did the good old sniff test!) my cervix was still less than 1 cm dilated and fairly high still, though it was 'soft and stretchy'.
We headed home again. We were told to come back to QE2 if we needed to until 0730 the next morning, and after that to go to the new hospital. If nothing more had happened by 4pm the next day we were advised to present ourselves at the Lister to be induced given it would be coming up on 24hrs since my waters went. Once we were home contractions were getting more frequent and stronger, and I was determined to bounce up and down on my birthing ball till I got her out! My mum came over about 2200 and we spent the evening chattering as the contractions got stronger and a lot more painful. By 0200 I decided I needed more pain relief than the two co codomol I'd taken at 2200, and we phoned the delivery ward again. They obviously thought I sounded like I was in pain as they told us to come straight in.
Again, another 30 minute journey back to the hospital, this time with my mum as well as she was my second birthing partner - both my mum and my husband had their own hospital bags with them. Daddy and Nanny bags respectively!
I walked up to the delivery ward (fairly slowly, and stopping when I had contractions) with my mum whilst Paul parked the car, and just as we walked into the delivery room I felt another massive gush of fluid. I went to the loo to clean up as my trousers were soaked, and realised this time my waters were full of meconium - they were green with streaks of brown mucus/poo. My mum fetched the midwife back and they put me straight on the CTG machine. Baby was ok at this point but my BP and pulse were all over the place because I was so frightened and in a lot of pain.
Unfortunately it was rather down hill from here really. My contractions started coming very fast and very painfully. I breathed through them for a few hours as I was coping and didn't want to 'waste' the pain relief. Then by about 4am I wanted something to help so tried the gas and air. Well, bad reaction is an understatement. I was ok for the first half hour or so, then I started getting very dizzy and nauseous (and I'd used the gas and air sparingly). Then I started throwing up. Anyone who read my posts about hyperemesis will know I am terrified of being sick, and am like something out of the exorcist when I do it... I threw up with every contraction (obviously I stopped the gas and air straight away) for the next few hours.
By 6am, I knew there was something wrong, the contractions were merging into one another. I had started getting diarrhea as well as vomiting with every contraction. I was getting more and more upset and tired. At one point I was on the toilet for 15 mins with one continuous contraction, constant diarrhea and used about 6 vomit bowls (at this point it was luminous yellow bile) and I started having a panic attack as well. I will forever be grateful to the midwife who cuddled me whilst all this was going on - at this point I was too embarrassed to have my Mum or my Hubbie near me. Somehow a stranger was easier to deal with.
By this time I was so scared of the pain and the being sick (I started choking every time I was), and I felt something was going terribly wrong. They couldn't get me on the CTG because every time I put my head back I threw up again, it was just awful. I had three different anti-emetics, including one very strong one that is apparently given to cancer patients (this one worked), which my husband (who's a paramedic) actually asked for - I'm so lucky he knows these things!
I also had some pethedine and with the combination of that, the anti-emetic and the adrenalin from the panic attack, it was like my body went 'enough' and my contractions slowed down to the point of stopping by 8am on the Tuesday morning. I was still only 2cms dilated.
At this point the staff made the decision to transfer me to the Lister hospital in Stevenage (which was our back up hospital) by ambulance. Because they were closing the maternity ward at the QEII most of the staff and equipment would already be at the Lister that morning. My mum and the midwife came with me, and Paul drove the car up. The crew were friends of my husband and were amazing. I usually get sick in ambulances but they drove so well the midwife was more car sick than me despite us going on blue lights most of the way! My sister (who's also a paramedic) also managed to put her head in as we left and it was lovely and rather cheering to see her.
The worst bit about the trip was that the ambulance overtook a funeral cortege on the wrong side of the road, with blue lights and sirens, and it was a horse drawn carriage! I was so embarrassed as I worried what the poor family must have thought. Thankfully the horses didn't seem too worried.
And so with some disappointment that my daughter would not be born at the QEII, we headed north to the Lister hospital, and the next part of my Birth Story.
To be continued ...
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