Waiting for Baby

Today I am 40 weeks and 6 days pregnant, that's theoretically 6 days overdue. This shouldn't surprise me as Aston was 9 days late but it is starting to get a bit tiresome.

I know the baby will come when he's ready and I know that technically full term is anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks. However I'm well and truly ready to have this baby!

This afternoon I have my "postdates" appointment at the hospital where we will probably be booked for an induction. I'm not terribly keen to be induced especially if it means being confined to a bed strapped to monitors. I'm also not terribly keen to have a 2 week overdue baby who weighs almost 5kg!

I've been praying for baby to come and praying for patience and I know that in 2 weeks time all this worry and stress will be irrelevant but I just want to get on with it and have a baby!

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Aston's Birth (Part Two)

As mentioned in Part One I've tried not to include too much information but this is the nitty gritty bit so apologies if you're not into this kind of thing...

We were put into one of the birthing rooms and left to it, I’d decided beforehand to do as much as possible without pain relief and the midwife seemed pleased with that. In fact, the whole time I felt like she and I were on the “same page” which was really nice and I hope that happens again.

I don’t remember much about the next few hours, I felt bored but also couldn’t concentrate on reading or watching any of the movies we’d hired from iTunes. The contractions became stronger and more frequent. At one point I freaked out because I felt like I needed to go to the toilet and remembered my sister telling me that she had that same feeling but she didn’t need to go, she needed to push a baby out. The midwife told me that was a good sign but I wasn’t quite ready yet. After that I spent some time in the shower and moved onto the bath.

The bath was amazing, it was somehow relaxing even while being in intense pain, I was a bit out of it by then, I kept dozing off but was somehow still aware of what was going on around me. I’m not sure how we got there but soon it was time to push and I was back in the real world and thinking clearly again (well kind of clearly). At one point the midwife told me “3 more pushes and we’ll have a baby!”

Not quite…

I was pushing but Aston was being stubborn and kept creeping back up the birth canal. I got out of the bath in the hope that changing positions would help. After about an hour and a half of pushing, they decided to give me oxytocin to try and increase the intensity of the contractions. It worked! I felt like I needed to push non-stop but Aston was still happy to stay where he was. I was becoming more and more tired and frustrated. Everyone kept telling me what a good job I was doing and I remember thinking “If I’m doing such a good job, why isn’t it working!”

After 3 hours of pushing, it was decided Aston (and I) needed a bit more help and we would proceed with a ventouse delivery (aka vacuum extraction). At this point the whole mood of the room changed.

Up until now it had mostly been Stuart the midwife and I on our own with the lights dimmed, we’d been visited by a few other midwives at different points and the obstetrician on call as well but on the whole it had been pretty private and quiet.

Now there were about 10 people in the room, midwives, pediatricians, the obstetric registrar and her supervisor. The lights had all been turned on, equipment had been wheeled in, it was busy!

They gave me a local anesthetic as I’d had no other pain relief and before I knew it Aston was born, I didn’t even realize his head was out until someone told me. They put him on my chest but he was still unresponsive so they whisked him away to be examined by the pediatrician.

The next few minutes were the most emotionally taxing for me, lying naked and exposed while being stitched up and seeing my baby at the other end of the room surrounded by strangers. Having stitches was also quite traumatic, I’m not quite sure how to explain it but it took me a long time to come to terms with the physical damage.

Aston 1 day old

However, all was well with Aston, soon he was having his first breastfeed and we were trying to decide if we would actually name him after a car!

Aston's Birth (Part One)

Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time preparing for our new baby, however, I haven’t done much to prepare for the actual being in hospital and giving birth part of the process.  I feel as though no matter how much you prepare, you are never really going to know how it will all turn out, I’ve done it before, theoretically I should know how to do it again but it will probably be completely different anyway so I shouldn’t think too much about it… I’m not sure any of that makes sense to me either.

As part of getting ready to give birth again I thought it might be helpful to write Aston’s birth story, I don’t think I’ve included too much information but I know some of you might find it a bit awkward to read so feel free to skip these posts.

In the week or so before Aston’s official due date (11^th March 2009) I was pretty laid back and calm, I was enjoying being pregnant, I wasn’t too uncomfortable, I was happy for him to decide when he wanted to arrive. His due date came and went and my relaxed, laid back attitude started to disappear. I was still keen for Aston to choose his own birthday but I also wished he would hurry up and do it! 

At my 41 week appointment at the clinic (that’s one week after the due date), the obstetrician declared that if I ended up being 10 days overdue I would need to be induced. She booked me in for the induction and performed a “stretch and sweep” (stretching the cervix and sweeping the membranes with her fingers) without asking, something I was a bit cranky about. 

The stretch and sweep must have worked though as the next day I had a couple of signs that perhaps labour may be happening soon.  

The night before my induction appointment I woke up a few times with stomach cramps, they went away when I moved around and each time I was able to go back to sleep so I didn’t think much about them. At 5am I woke again and this time found it hard to go back to sleep, I thought the pains may be real contractions but they weren’t as painful or overwhelming as I thought they would be so I wasn’t sure. I decided to get up and have a shower as we were due to be at the hospital at 7am. It was 20^th March 2009.

While in the shower the contractions continued, they were occurring fairly frequently so when I got out I decided to time them, they were 4-5 minutes apart. 

At the hospital I told the midwife who was going to break my waters in order to induce me that I thought I might be in labour, however I didn’t think the contractions I was having were painful or strong enough to be real, they were just very frequent. She told me that I didn’t look like I was in labour. She hooked me up to a machine that monitored the baby’s heartbeat and my contractions, when she saw the readings she changed her mind and told me they were real contractions, I was also 3cm dilated so the induction was called off.

To be continued...