Olivia's Birth Story

EmmyReece

Mummy To Olivia
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So, April the 12th we turned up at the hospital to be induced. Thanks to gestational diabetes and our local hospital not having a special care baby unit we made the decision to give birth in Cheshire at the hospital where my dh was born.

Induction

The midwife came out to greet us and took us through to the induction bay after giving a quick tour of the area we would be in until being transferred to the labour ward. She got me hooked up to the ctg monitor so we could monitor baby's movements before having the pessary inserted. Everything looked fantastic and after doing my obs we had the pessary inserted. We were going to give it 24 hours to work its magic, unless I went into labour before then. If by the end of the 24 hours it hadn't worked we would see if I had dilated at all and then attempt to break my waters.

So the whole 24 hours we spent in the induction bay was pretty boring. I started having cramps about 6 hours in, but because they weren't regular the midwife didn't want to examine me. I did try paracetamol but that didn't touch it and I was managing by breathing through it. We had a really disturbed night thanks to the woman in the bed next to us, non stop snoring, snorting and just generally being noisy. So I was pretty glad when the midwife said on wednesday morning that they would be transferring me half an hour earlier as they needed the bed for someone else coming in :haha:

Labour

From the word go I loved my midwife, she was fantastic, couldn't ask for anyone more supportive and I literally gave birth just as she was finishing her shift and doing the handover :happydance:

When I got to my room there was still half an hour or so before the pessary was due to come out, so we did my obs and monitored baby before taking the pessary out. While this was happening the midwife tried to insert a cannula in case I needed an insulin drip if my blood monitoring weren't coming back as normal and I freaked out a bit so we got the anaesthetist to come to me, which didn't go any better (I think that was the worst part of the whole day) and had a bit of splash back from the vein, covering my pillow case and hand :dohh:

When we took the pessary out at 12:00 I remember saying that I would cry if there wasn't any progress, but, I was already 2cm dilated :happydance: Breaking my waters was a seriously weird experience. I didn't feel her actually do it, but the gush of warm water was so, so, so odd.

From then I laboured on my own, breathing through the contractions, had some lunch, did a blood sugar reading and before we knew it we were at 2.30pm and I was finally classed as being in active labour.

The rest of the day passed in a bit of a blur, but I remember being backwards and forwards from the bathroom as sitting on the toilet was the most comfy position. It wasn't as painful as I thought it would be, but omg the pressure, it was unbelievable. But because of the backwards and forwards the monitor kept losing baby's heartbeat so we decided to put a clip on her head

The midwife checked me again a bit later as it looked like the contractions had slowed slightly and I was 8cm. Olivia was responding fine, so there was nothing to worry about, but we decided to start off on the drip to try and speed things up a little bit. And boy did it work.

My body soon started to take over and it really did feel like I was starting to push involuntarily (there was still a little bit of cervix behind her), but I didn't feel like I was getting anywere, the only problem was the pressure and I will admit I was freaking out, continually saying that I couldn't do it, so I had an injection of diamorphine to take the edge away and calm me down a bit and for the next half an hour or so I just dozed on and off between the contractions.

We soon got to 10cm and the midwife was great. I was lay on my side of the bed pushing that way for the first part and slowly but surely she was making her way down. Me being me, I was being a bit of a fidget so we decided to kneel over the edge of the top of the bed to try and get gravity to help.

At this point it was getting so close to the midwife changing shift and I was desperate for my midwife Michelle to see Olivia be born (she had been amazing the whole way through). Olivia was starting to crown just as the other midwife came to assist. I remember the stinging, not quite what I was expecting, but just tried to carry on pushing through it.

At 08.04pm her head was out and the midwives had me flip over on the bed as I was close to sitting on her head :dohh: But, within a couple of pushes and the midwives shouting at me to open my eyes to look the rest of her body was out at 8.06pm :cloud9:

We did skin to skin immediately, had the injection to deliver the placenta and not long after she latched for her first feed. Chris was offered to cut the cord but he didn't feel confident enough. Coming back to this the midwife actually offered to let us keep the scissors she had used, which I wasn't expecting her to do :lol:

So, yeah, that was our birth story. She was worth every single second of pain. Every single day, hour or minute that it took us to finally get a :bfp: and we're so in love with her it's unreal :cloud9:
 

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Emmy what a beautiful birth story :cloud9: I'm so so happy for you beautiful lady
 
Beautiful birth story and well done you! So happy you have your baby girl in your arms now! Congratulations x
 
Emmy it sounds like you were amazing! That picture of her with her eyes open... So gorgeous!
 
Oh Emmy she's beautiful! You must be so over the moon right now. Amazing to hear breastfeeding is going so well too. Congratulations lovely! Xxx
 
What a lovely birth story! I'm so glad you had a good midwife and your labour went so well!
Congratulations hun, I'm so happy for you, Olivia is beautiful!
 
Congratulations! I'm glad that you had such a good experience with it.
 
Congratulations!! She's so so beautiful, same name as I've picked for my not so little bean! ❤ xx
 
Aww congratulations! What a sweet birth story. She is beautiful!
 
Congratulations!! I'm so happy for you. You probably don't remember me but I remember seeing you post about your ttc journey what feels like a million moons ago! Olivia is absolutely gorgeous. Such a beautiful little face
 
She's absolutely beautiful! Huge congratulations x
 
What a beautiful birth story doll <3, brought me to tears and joy, you waited so long and here she is your little miracle Olivia, cant wait to read in your parenting journo about your adventures and watching her grow up
 

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