I woke up at half past four in the morning and realised I was getting contractions and they were five minutes apart and lasted about forty seconds. So I rung up the delivery suite and they said to come on in straight away. I had to wait about an hour and a half for my parents to turn up to look after my daughter, and then we got into hospital and we taken into a room straight away, and the midwife at the time said not to suffer and if I wanted gas and air to go ahead and use it, but I used my TENS machine for quite some time. I wasn't actually examined straight away, I think I was at the hospital for about two or three hours before they examined me, so I was quite anxious to find out how far along I was. And then when I was about six centimetres dilated I went on the gas and air, and I said to the midwife at the time I don't know if I would like an epidural, I don't know how far along I can go. I didn't want to feel out of control. And she said, “Well, you're doing fine as you are, just let me know once you feel like you need one,” and I got to eight centimetres and I decided that it was just too much and I had an epidural. But unfortunately with that my labour slowed down a bit so… but by positioning myself on my left side it soon sped back up again. I think I was fully dilated about one o'clock in the afternoon, but I wasn't allowed to push for I think it was about an hour and a half because they wanted my son to come down as far as possible. And he was delivered at half past four by ventouse. Because of the epidural I obviously lost quite a lot of the sensation so I couldn't really tell if I was pushing in the right place or not, so I needed a little help in the end. But that was fine by me because I'd rather have that than a caesarean.
…You've told me a lot there. At any time was there a concern that you might need a section at all?
Once I was fully dilated, a doctor came in and said, “We'll let you push on your own for an hour, but that's all you're allowed is an hour because of your previous section.” And then we would have to, then we would have to go ahead and use some other method to get the baby out. And so at that point I started thinking please don't let it be a caesarean. I think I probably even said, “I don't want a...,” you know, “I don't want a C section.” But obviously once I'd been pushing for an hour they then had to come in and help me out, so…
And were you worried that you only had an hour, did that concern you?
I think it did a little bit at the time, but I suppose you're so concentrating on getting this baby out you don't really sort of take much notice of the time, but once the doctor comes back in and you know she's going to say something, you think, oh please, I don't want a caesarean, I'll try anything but I don't want a caesarean right now, just give me a chance. But luckily they said, “We'll try the ventouse and see how we get on with that.” I think they were going to take me to theatre by they decided not to and I delivered in the room that I was in at the time.
And having had the ventouse, was that something you felt prepared for to have assistance?
I knew there was a possibility it could happen, and one of the reasons why I held off so long having the epidural, because I knew if I had one quite early on there was a greater chance of me having a caesarean, so I left it as long as possible, and in fact I was absolutely amazed that they gave me one at eight centimetres because I do believe they don't normally so late on, but because the anaesthetist was available I could have one. But…
But do you think it was something you were prepared enough to have?
I think so, yeah. I think if it meant I didn't have to have the caesarean then I think I would have done anything [laughing]. If they said run and up and down the corridor a few times I think I would have done it [laughs]. |
