I was due to be induced on the Sunday and had absolutely no labour signs at all. Baby was stuck on my hip in an oblique back to back position and my midwife thought that was probably why I wasn't going into labour.
At 3am on the Saturday morning my daughter woke me up complaining of a sore tummy. I was up with her for a while and that's when the contractions started out of nowhere. I wasn't sure they were contractions at first, but it wasn't long before they were becoming extremely painful so I woke my husband up.
I phoned the hospital and they said I could go in. Because of the position of the baby there was a risk of cord prolapse if my waters broke before I was in hospital, so they wanted me to go in as soon as possible. We called my parents and they came over to look after DD who was extremely excited that baby would soon be here.
The roads were nice and clear at that time of night so we got to the hospital quickly. There weren't many ladies in having babies, so we got seen pretty quickly there too. The midwife said I was 5cm dilated which surprised me as I had only been contracting for a few hours. The contractions were unbearable, just like they were the first time round, I couldn't even sit down they were that painful and I was almost sick with every contraction. I just cannot cope with contractions and asked for an epidural. The midwife said she would try to get one as soon as she could, but since this was my second baby I could be pushing in ten minutes so it would be too late. I didn't like the sound of that at all!
I did manage to get the epidural though. I had gas and air until then but it didn't really help much and it made me get such bad pins and needles in my hands that they seized up and I couldn't let go of it! Once I had the epidural I was feeling much better but after a while it started to wear off and I was feeling bad contractions just on one side, so she did a top up, which made me almost faint and I was sick.
I got to 9cm dilated by 9am but baby was still quite high up so we needed to give him time to move down. When the midwife was checking how dilated I was she accidentally broke my waters so she had to keep her hand in there so that they wouldn't gush out at once and bring the cord down.
I was fully dilated for ages but baby still hadn't dropped enough, so we waited a few more hours. Once he was lower I started getting the urge to push so the midwife let me start straight away. Pushing is my one of my favourite parts of labour, I'm so good at it! Yeah, I'm weird, I know!
His head was soon out and then just needed a few more pushes to get the shoulders and the rest of him out. I was only pushing for less than ten minutes. I had a graze and a small tear so I needed one stitch. I pushed the placenta out and the midwife couldn't believe the size of it, the cord was huge too. I don't know where I was hiding this big baby but it's no wonder I had been so uncomfortable!
We called him James Alexander and he weighed 9 lbs 11.5 oz. He was the biggest baby on the ward and I couldn't believe I had made such a big baby! It was a great labour and it went so much better and simpler than my first labour where I lost a load of blood and needed blood transfusions and iron tablets. I felt much better after it and had a quick recovery and was home the next day
although that would only be another 4 to 8 days from now.
