Oooh good, I wondered if there would be an spd thread on here!
It was me that mentioned to glitz about the ribbon!!
Little history on me, it's my 5th pg (first 3 ended in mc) and I have a daughter who is 21 months old. With her pg I developed spd at 8 weeks pg and was off work by 14 weeks on crutches and codeine. By 22 weeks I was quite genuinely bedbound on buprenorphine patches and oramorph. By 30 weeks I was only really able to get downstairs once a day and by 38 weeks not at all. I was hospitalised at that point as it would take me an eternity to get to the loo and back (even in hospital with an en-suite it would take me 10 mins on crutches to get the 4 feet to my loo and 15 minutes to get back again) and my oramorph usage was 2 hourly, day and night. I started having daily sweeps at 38+4 which, with by that point, a 6 inch pain free gap, was absolutely agonizing.. Not least because it was the consultant who was doing them rather than one of the midwife so she could sweep my tonsils (were I to still have them!) at the same time! This resulted in no change to the favourability of my cervix so, eventually, at T+4 we started inducing me.. 4 Prostins later I was just about coming up to the 6 hour mark where I would have been counted as a failed induction when my waters broke (typically the mw had just been in and said I'm coming back in an hour, if there's no change then I think enough's enough and they broke 5 minutes later!). Immediate contractions ensued - 3-4 in every 10 minutes, strong on palpation and lasting at that point for 45-60 seconds.. Good good good everyone thinks, lets see how it goes! An hour and a half later the ward manager was getting twitchy about how strongly I was contracting and pushed me down to labourward herself with hubby (also a nurse, I'm a mw too) and there I was thinking well if I have got to 5cm when they examine me I'll be really pleased!! So they do all the usual bits, leave me for a couple of hours and then examine me to see how I'm going. 1cm, uneffaced cervix still 1cm thick and posterior. Pants. So an epidural was sited and off we went with synto - this REALLY stepped up the pain in my pelvis with each contraction.. Epidural topped up and topped up again. Still no difference - hulking down G&A with each contraction even though her head was still at -3 (so not really anywhere near my pelvis, lol!). After 15 hours of contractions she started getting a bit fed up and I was beyond fedup of the pain in my pelvis even though I had an overblocked epidural so had a section! Since then we've done attatched parenting, we carried her in a sling everywhere until at 16 months old I was too pg with this one to carry her so we bought a buggy! We've just stopped bf too at 21 months.
So - this pg! I started again with spd before I'd had a bfp - in fact it was what made me doubt the bfn I'd had on what I thought was 13dpo but turned out to only be 8dpo! I think because we were still bf the ligaments just never went back and so I used to find it worse around the time of AF but this was something else! By 8 weeks pg I was off sick with my pelvis, my gp was happy to sign me off there and then for the rest of the pg but I tried 2 weeks of intensive physio and went back in for one shift - within 3 hours I was home again in agony and that was that for work for the rest of the pg! I started trying BOWEN at that point - do do do do do try it, I cannot thank it enough for the difference it has made this pg. Sure my pain free gap isn't great at times and the amount of pain I'm in is completely hideous at times and the limitations I have on walking/pushing a supermarket trolley etc are very real - but at 33 weeks I can still walk and still get out of the house, I remember my parents visiting at 24 weeks and me trying to get to the pub 3 doors down in our village and it taking me 20 minutes to get back again.. I saw someone twice a week, I haven't been for a bit with one thing and another but what she did for me still seems to be helping so it's all good!
I'm hoping for a vbac this time because my pelvis is so much better (although after last night I'm debating this, lol!) and hope to stay at home in labour for as long as possible! She's still breech at the moment so fingers crossed she turns!
Anyways, looking forward to chatting with you all - and just to give you all a bit of hope actually, my senior reg (who is a very senior reg who runs her own clinics etc, she's pretty much a consultant without the tag) said she had never seen anybody who suffered with spd to the extent I did - but that doesnt, thankfully, seem that you're definitely going to be that way in subsequent pgs! I was pretty scared when I was off work by the time my spd started with my first pg, we didn't know how we were going to get through the following 32 weeks.. But we have - and I do attribute it to the Bowen and that's something my Pain Team Consultant has been very interested in and is now looking into Bowen with a view for recommending it to his patients!
, but I have had no experience of this at all lol)
