I was typing while you were posting, so please excuse the doble-post.

I use the term 'mismanaged' as that is the term that a couple of midwives have used when I explain what happened. It's nothing too bad, so don't worry yourself, but it was my first pregnancy/labour and I had no idea what was meant to be happening.

I went in to the hospital and had my waters broken at 9am. Nothing was happening, and at 12pm they put the drip in. To me, nothing was happening. I was sitting quietly reading my book for HOURS!! The midwife in charge of me kept coming in every half and hour to take my obs and dial the drip up a bit. She kept telling me that I was in labour contracting, but I felt NOTHING. But here was me, first time, taking her word for it.

At the midwife shift change at about 5pm the new midwife looked at the drip and couldn't understand why it wasn't pushing more drugs into me, so she dialled it up - right up! Within half an hour I went from sitting there quietly reading my book to being doubled over in the most excrutiating pain - now that was what I was expecting labout to be.

Because my body didn't have time to get used to the increasing contractions, I went into shock and couldn't relax - therefore my cervix woudn't dilate. At about 6:30pm I was only 4cm and although I REALLY didn't want an epidural I started to consider it, as I didn't think that I could handle this pain for as long as it was going to take to get to 10cm The midwife conviced me at about 7:30pm to have a pethedine shot, and that seemed to do the trick.

My body relaxed, I dilated, and an hour or so later I was pushing my beautiful DD out without a problem (or a stitch).

Every health professional I have spoken to about this has said that by the sounds of things was dialled up too slowly during the day, it should never have been dialled up as quickly as it was at the shift change, and it surely led to me going into shock.

I should have trusted my instincts then, and stood up for myslef with the first midwife and insisted that I wasn't in labour. I think that even if you've never been through it before, you have to trust your body. You KNOW when you're in labour, and I wasn't.

You'll be fine.

Which takes me back to now. I know that I'm not in labour, but I wasn't too sure about having such intense prelabour symptoms so far out. You know?