hcg
3rd Trimester
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- Jun 25, 2009
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Hello all
I am much more of a lurker than a poster on B&B but 1 thing I did find very usful while pregnant and preparing for the big day was the birth stories especially the homebirth stories.
We attended a hypnobirthing course which I can highly recommend.
So, here is the VERY long account of the best day of my life (warning - you will need a cuppa for this, I've gone on a bit!!
)
Joseph
Born 20th March 2012 at 7.26am weighing 7lb14oz
After months and weeks of anticipation, my 16th March due date came and went without so much as a twinge. The following day we watched Wales beat France in the 6 nations to win the Grand Slam I shouted and cheered from my bouncy spot on my exercise ball. This was followed by a spicy daal for tea. Just as it seemed that Saturday would also be action free, a trip to the toilet whilst getting ready for bed revealed that my mucus plug had started to go. After a bit of excitement and speculation as to what this meant for meeting our little man (including disappointing Google searches which lead to the conclusion that it could be any second or still days and days away) we headed to bed.
During the following evening I started to experience contractions and OH began timing them on his app. They were pretty irregular but seemed to be getting generally closer together and longer. We stayed up quite late timing them and at one point were getting ready to phone the midwife as they were 10 minutes apart consistently and lasting above 40 seconds. However, they began to tail off to very far apart so deciding this had been a false alarm, we settled down to sleep with only the odd contraction popping up from time to time.
Monday morning and OH grudgingly headed off to work having been convinced the night before that he wouldnt be going. I got up and slowly showered etc, experiencing the odd contraction. I would start to time them on my app and they would disappear so I gave up on that, popped a jacket potato in the oven and set off for a walk in the hope of getting things underway properly. It was a fairly long walk and I had stopped a few times with strong sensations wondering if they were starting off again. Once home, I munched my jacket potato and decided to watch something to distract me. I popped The Wire on and plonked onto my bouncy ball. Contractions were becoming more regular and stronger but nothing to stop my bouncing and enjoying the DVD. Mum popped round after work, about the same time as OH got home. Id emailed her to say where things were and that I was going to watch TV to distract myself so she turned up with a huge pile of DVDs to distract me further! They were a little stronger now and required a little concentration causing slight pauses in conversation. Once mum had left, OH and I headed to Waitrose and began the longest shop for a handful of items as we had to stop each time 1 hit which was now quite frequent. I was pretty sure that something was really happening this time as I didnt feel normal but the contractions werent regular and were not following any sort of pattern or trend so I just got on with it. At 7.31pm I phoned the MLU to let them know I thought things were getting started underway (they had wanted me to ring earlier than if I was going into hospital to make sure a midwife was ready). We watched the last in the series of Dirk Gently managing to stretch it over about 2 hours as it had to be paused for each contraction and some of them were quite long by this point. Once we had finished the show, I loaded the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen (all very slowly as I had to stop quite regularly.) At this point, I did have to stop to concentrate on the contractions but they were certainly not painful, I concentrated on keeping everything relaxed and imagining how the muscles were working. We were up late again speculating as to whether this was really it but they seemed to be tailing off again and becoming further apart and erratic like the night before so, disappointed, we settled down to sleep. I woke up with a start at around 3am very confused and it took me a moment to come round properly and to focus on what was going on. Lying down was causing the contractions to come quickly and very intensely so I stood up and leant on the chest of drawers and got everything back under control. We decided that I would call the MLU again and so at 3.18am I rang and they decided to send the on call midwife out to see us.
We headed downstairs and put the ipod on the dock with my relaxing playlist and chatted with the occasional pauses for me to breathe through the contractions. They were still not regular, although much stronger. I would get 4 or 5 that would seem to be following a good pattern 5ish minutes apart lasting from 45-60 seconds but then there would be a big gap with nothing so we werent sure what to make of it. The midwife arrived after about an hour and to my delight it was Mel that was on call. We had met Mel once while Lisa was off sick and she had done our home birth assessment and had been very excited about and interested in hypnobirthing so I had hoped we would get her although knew it was unlikely - but here she was! Having asked me about the contractions and spoken to me she said I seemed to be in the early stages so she would just check my BP, urine, babys heartbeat and position and then would head off for a bit to wait for us to call again. She did my BP, urine and babys heartbeat and all was fine. She needed to check his position but there wasnt enough room on the sofa for me to lie down fully so we headed upstairs to bed. She did the usual pressing to find where he was and suddenly there was a little gush, I got up and said, I think my waters have just gone. She agreed and said she would examine me to see how far along I was so I got back on to the bed and really had to concentrate as lying down was a horrendous position so I didnt hear a lot of what she said as I just had to sort of go inside myself and focus. More of my waters went while she examined me, soaking through the towel, bed sheet and mattress protector! There was some meconium in the waters, my heart sunk when I heard her say that as I was sure they would force me to go in to the hospital. Mel understood my desire to stay at home so said she would ring it in and keep an eye on things and that she would not make me go as long as babys heartbeat showed he was not distressed. I went to the toilet to try and clean up a bit and realised I hadnt heard how far along I was because I had be distracted by the meconium. I took a deep breath to prepare for being told I was only a few centimetres, determined not to let it get my down but there was no need, Mel answered that I was a good 7cm!
We headed back downstairs, me feeling extremely pleased with myself, other than the brief lying down period, I hadnt found this hard at all so far and I was more than half way!
Contractions started coming on top of each other now so conversation became pretty impossible. The piano turned out to be just the right height to lean on I didnt not want to be in any other position at that point bar standing, anything else made it difficult to concentrate. I had a pillow on the top of the piano and rocked my hips slightly as I continued to concentrate on what was happening inside my body with each sensation. Mel did have to keep listening for his heartbeat with her doppler to satisfy the criteria that he was not distressed but this was getting difficult as he had moved so low. I had to go and sit on the sofa leant back so that she could get a reading. All was fine but the sitting was horrible, I was very glad to be back at the piano afterwards. I was very hot and OH had to get the fan and ice blocks to try and keep me cool, I think he felt a bit redundant other than this though as I didnt want to be touched at all and all his attempts and stroking and light touch massage ended in his hand being batted away. I found I just needed to concentrate fully and didnt want any distractions. I vaguely remember the Mel suggesting that OH put my music back on, he tells me that he did but I really dont remember hearing it. I started to get this intense feeling that my body was pushing and taking over and I started saying that OH and Mel need to get the sheeting down on the floor quickly. I remember being very frustrated that they seemed so laid back and werent rushing to get it down. This is the 1 point I got worked up as I couldnt understand why nobody was responding as urgently as I felt was needed! Mel asked me to get back on the sofa for her to hear the heartbeat again. This was very hard and I was desperate for her to find it quickly as I could not be sitting down now! As soon as she did find it, I flopped forwards on to my knees on the floor this was now the position of choice and I squeaked that I had to push. Claire, the other midwife had turned up by now although hadnt been here long, Im not sure exactly when she arrived, I was only vaguely aware that there was another person in the room and only half listened to Mel telling her the story so far. I began the birth breaths to accompany my bodys own pushing which I seemed to have no control over it was a very intense and almost overwhelming feeling. After not very long Mel was telling me that his head was right there and said I could feel which I did, a couple more pushes and he pretty much shot out, no pausing after the head, he just came out in 1 go at 7.26am and instantly started screaming presumably due to his very sudden appearance in to the world! He took Mel by surprise, she only just got her gloves on in time. The second stage took 18 minutes according to the official birth summary! One of the midwives caught him and passed him through my legs where I held him in front of me thinking oh my god, a baby, where did that come from?!
I managed to manoeuvre myself into a sitting position against the sofa and Mel clamped the cord, OH cut it. Someone popped a hat on Josephs head and Claire sat with me to help him latch on. She also performed a few checks on him I didnt really notice what. He had a short feed but was more interested in letting us all now how disgruntled he was with having been so rudely awakened! OH took his top off and had his skin to skin contact which calmed Joseph down. OH poked his tongue out a few times until he was copied (something hes been dying to do since talking about it on the NCT course!) Joseph pooed down his arm at some point as well a sign of things to come!
Now I was into the very boring and frustrating part of trying to get the placenta out which took a further hour and 10 minutes. It wasnt painful just frustrating as I had no contractions to work with and so was pushing against nothing.
Once the placenta was finally delivered (I didnt not expect it to be so big!) Mel examined me for any tearing etc. The perennial massage had been worth every second and I was glad I had forced myself to do it even though I hated it because I didnt even have a graze despite the very speedy delivery. I had a slight labial tear because he had his hand by his face as he came out but nothing that required stiches.
Mel helped me shower and clean up and then I was back on the sofa with my little boy trying for another feed while the midwives cleared up and did their various bits of paperwork exclaiming all the while about how quick it had all been and how amazing that I hasnt needed any drugs (poor Claire had lugged the bottles of gas and air down our difficult front steps and they had stayed in the hall!) This was Mels second hypnobirth and she was really keyed up and excited about it having seen it work so well twice - I think she is a convert!
They soon finished and left us to start our Tuesday morning and life as a new family.
Sorry for such a long 1!
J is 15 weeks now and doing very well. We love every second and are completely besotted with our little man.
He is breastfed, we co-cleep and baby wear. I would like to say a massive thank you to many of the B&B ladies who have, unknowingly, inspired our homebirth and the various natural parenting paths we have followed. I will continue to lurk on all your jounals!
I am much more of a lurker than a poster on B&B but 1 thing I did find very usful while pregnant and preparing for the big day was the birth stories especially the homebirth stories.
We attended a hypnobirthing course which I can highly recommend.
So, here is the VERY long account of the best day of my life (warning - you will need a cuppa for this, I've gone on a bit!!
)Joseph
Born 20th March 2012 at 7.26am weighing 7lb14oz
After months and weeks of anticipation, my 16th March due date came and went without so much as a twinge. The following day we watched Wales beat France in the 6 nations to win the Grand Slam I shouted and cheered from my bouncy spot on my exercise ball. This was followed by a spicy daal for tea. Just as it seemed that Saturday would also be action free, a trip to the toilet whilst getting ready for bed revealed that my mucus plug had started to go. After a bit of excitement and speculation as to what this meant for meeting our little man (including disappointing Google searches which lead to the conclusion that it could be any second or still days and days away) we headed to bed.
During the following evening I started to experience contractions and OH began timing them on his app. They were pretty irregular but seemed to be getting generally closer together and longer. We stayed up quite late timing them and at one point were getting ready to phone the midwife as they were 10 minutes apart consistently and lasting above 40 seconds. However, they began to tail off to very far apart so deciding this had been a false alarm, we settled down to sleep with only the odd contraction popping up from time to time.
Monday morning and OH grudgingly headed off to work having been convinced the night before that he wouldnt be going. I got up and slowly showered etc, experiencing the odd contraction. I would start to time them on my app and they would disappear so I gave up on that, popped a jacket potato in the oven and set off for a walk in the hope of getting things underway properly. It was a fairly long walk and I had stopped a few times with strong sensations wondering if they were starting off again. Once home, I munched my jacket potato and decided to watch something to distract me. I popped The Wire on and plonked onto my bouncy ball. Contractions were becoming more regular and stronger but nothing to stop my bouncing and enjoying the DVD. Mum popped round after work, about the same time as OH got home. Id emailed her to say where things were and that I was going to watch TV to distract myself so she turned up with a huge pile of DVDs to distract me further! They were a little stronger now and required a little concentration causing slight pauses in conversation. Once mum had left, OH and I headed to Waitrose and began the longest shop for a handful of items as we had to stop each time 1 hit which was now quite frequent. I was pretty sure that something was really happening this time as I didnt feel normal but the contractions werent regular and were not following any sort of pattern or trend so I just got on with it. At 7.31pm I phoned the MLU to let them know I thought things were getting started underway (they had wanted me to ring earlier than if I was going into hospital to make sure a midwife was ready). We watched the last in the series of Dirk Gently managing to stretch it over about 2 hours as it had to be paused for each contraction and some of them were quite long by this point. Once we had finished the show, I loaded the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen (all very slowly as I had to stop quite regularly.) At this point, I did have to stop to concentrate on the contractions but they were certainly not painful, I concentrated on keeping everything relaxed and imagining how the muscles were working. We were up late again speculating as to whether this was really it but they seemed to be tailing off again and becoming further apart and erratic like the night before so, disappointed, we settled down to sleep. I woke up with a start at around 3am very confused and it took me a moment to come round properly and to focus on what was going on. Lying down was causing the contractions to come quickly and very intensely so I stood up and leant on the chest of drawers and got everything back under control. We decided that I would call the MLU again and so at 3.18am I rang and they decided to send the on call midwife out to see us.
We headed downstairs and put the ipod on the dock with my relaxing playlist and chatted with the occasional pauses for me to breathe through the contractions. They were still not regular, although much stronger. I would get 4 or 5 that would seem to be following a good pattern 5ish minutes apart lasting from 45-60 seconds but then there would be a big gap with nothing so we werent sure what to make of it. The midwife arrived after about an hour and to my delight it was Mel that was on call. We had met Mel once while Lisa was off sick and she had done our home birth assessment and had been very excited about and interested in hypnobirthing so I had hoped we would get her although knew it was unlikely - but here she was! Having asked me about the contractions and spoken to me she said I seemed to be in the early stages so she would just check my BP, urine, babys heartbeat and position and then would head off for a bit to wait for us to call again. She did my BP, urine and babys heartbeat and all was fine. She needed to check his position but there wasnt enough room on the sofa for me to lie down fully so we headed upstairs to bed. She did the usual pressing to find where he was and suddenly there was a little gush, I got up and said, I think my waters have just gone. She agreed and said she would examine me to see how far along I was so I got back on to the bed and really had to concentrate as lying down was a horrendous position so I didnt hear a lot of what she said as I just had to sort of go inside myself and focus. More of my waters went while she examined me, soaking through the towel, bed sheet and mattress protector! There was some meconium in the waters, my heart sunk when I heard her say that as I was sure they would force me to go in to the hospital. Mel understood my desire to stay at home so said she would ring it in and keep an eye on things and that she would not make me go as long as babys heartbeat showed he was not distressed. I went to the toilet to try and clean up a bit and realised I hadnt heard how far along I was because I had be distracted by the meconium. I took a deep breath to prepare for being told I was only a few centimetres, determined not to let it get my down but there was no need, Mel answered that I was a good 7cm!
We headed back downstairs, me feeling extremely pleased with myself, other than the brief lying down period, I hadnt found this hard at all so far and I was more than half way!
Contractions started coming on top of each other now so conversation became pretty impossible. The piano turned out to be just the right height to lean on I didnt not want to be in any other position at that point bar standing, anything else made it difficult to concentrate. I had a pillow on the top of the piano and rocked my hips slightly as I continued to concentrate on what was happening inside my body with each sensation. Mel did have to keep listening for his heartbeat with her doppler to satisfy the criteria that he was not distressed but this was getting difficult as he had moved so low. I had to go and sit on the sofa leant back so that she could get a reading. All was fine but the sitting was horrible, I was very glad to be back at the piano afterwards. I was very hot and OH had to get the fan and ice blocks to try and keep me cool, I think he felt a bit redundant other than this though as I didnt want to be touched at all and all his attempts and stroking and light touch massage ended in his hand being batted away. I found I just needed to concentrate fully and didnt want any distractions. I vaguely remember the Mel suggesting that OH put my music back on, he tells me that he did but I really dont remember hearing it. I started to get this intense feeling that my body was pushing and taking over and I started saying that OH and Mel need to get the sheeting down on the floor quickly. I remember being very frustrated that they seemed so laid back and werent rushing to get it down. This is the 1 point I got worked up as I couldnt understand why nobody was responding as urgently as I felt was needed! Mel asked me to get back on the sofa for her to hear the heartbeat again. This was very hard and I was desperate for her to find it quickly as I could not be sitting down now! As soon as she did find it, I flopped forwards on to my knees on the floor this was now the position of choice and I squeaked that I had to push. Claire, the other midwife had turned up by now although hadnt been here long, Im not sure exactly when she arrived, I was only vaguely aware that there was another person in the room and only half listened to Mel telling her the story so far. I began the birth breaths to accompany my bodys own pushing which I seemed to have no control over it was a very intense and almost overwhelming feeling. After not very long Mel was telling me that his head was right there and said I could feel which I did, a couple more pushes and he pretty much shot out, no pausing after the head, he just came out in 1 go at 7.26am and instantly started screaming presumably due to his very sudden appearance in to the world! He took Mel by surprise, she only just got her gloves on in time. The second stage took 18 minutes according to the official birth summary! One of the midwives caught him and passed him through my legs where I held him in front of me thinking oh my god, a baby, where did that come from?!
I managed to manoeuvre myself into a sitting position against the sofa and Mel clamped the cord, OH cut it. Someone popped a hat on Josephs head and Claire sat with me to help him latch on. She also performed a few checks on him I didnt really notice what. He had a short feed but was more interested in letting us all now how disgruntled he was with having been so rudely awakened! OH took his top off and had his skin to skin contact which calmed Joseph down. OH poked his tongue out a few times until he was copied (something hes been dying to do since talking about it on the NCT course!) Joseph pooed down his arm at some point as well a sign of things to come!
Now I was into the very boring and frustrating part of trying to get the placenta out which took a further hour and 10 minutes. It wasnt painful just frustrating as I had no contractions to work with and so was pushing against nothing.
Once the placenta was finally delivered (I didnt not expect it to be so big!) Mel examined me for any tearing etc. The perennial massage had been worth every second and I was glad I had forced myself to do it even though I hated it because I didnt even have a graze despite the very speedy delivery. I had a slight labial tear because he had his hand by his face as he came out but nothing that required stiches.
Mel helped me shower and clean up and then I was back on the sofa with my little boy trying for another feed while the midwives cleared up and did their various bits of paperwork exclaiming all the while about how quick it had all been and how amazing that I hasnt needed any drugs (poor Claire had lugged the bottles of gas and air down our difficult front steps and they had stayed in the hall!) This was Mels second hypnobirth and she was really keyed up and excited about it having seen it work so well twice - I think she is a convert!
They soon finished and left us to start our Tuesday morning and life as a new family.
Sorry for such a long 1!
J is 15 weeks now and doing very well. We love every second and are completely besotted with our little man.
He is breastfed, we co-cleep and baby wear. I would like to say a massive thank you to many of the B&B ladies who have, unknowingly, inspired our homebirth and the various natural parenting paths we have followed. I will continue to lurk on all your jounals!
you did really well xxxxxxx
