Ok so I thought while I had 5 mins spare and it was all still pretty fresh, I'd write a little about my birthing experience.

I'd always hoped that my second experience would mirror my first. My first was fantastic in my eyes, although very very long (38 hours), but everything had gone so well. I was worried that I now had too higher expectations and that things wouldn't be as easy second time around, so I had tried to go in with a 'what will be will be' attitude.

My due date was originally May 18th according to LMP, but at my first ultrasound it was put back 5 days. I was happy with that as that would give me an extra 5 days to play with if I happened to go overdue.

My pregnancy was reasonably hard. I had my little man to look after and suffered hyperemesis from early on. I was admitted to hospital twice and placed on drips. The HG seemed to calm down alot by 34 weeks and I felt fantastic. Now real back pain or SPD like with DS.

My stomach was HUGE! I loved all the freaked out looks I got especially towards the end.

The beginning of the end:

Monday May 11 was like any other day. Had a few tiny period pains and knew things were starting to gear up, but thought I still had a couple of weeks to go so tried to relax. I was so ready to meet my little girl, but I knew she'd come when she was ready. I started researching natural induction techniques. Sex - no thanks, Castor oil - not on your life and then I read about nipple stimulation. I thought when I got to 40 weeks I'd give that a real go, but didn't really want to play with things before that time. I got my pump out and had a play for 5 mins tops just for fun. I did the same thing when preggers with DS, and remember the weird feeling. I actually expressed about 20 mls combined from my boobs in under 5 mins and was quite imrpressed as I'd had no leaking this pregnancy. I put the pump away, keeping it in mind for a few weeks time.

At about 8.30pm I went to bed. I was really tired this night and hadn't had my nana nap earlier in the day. At 10.30pm I was awoken with a painful BH. Nothing terribly horrid, but enough to wake me up, so must have been half decent. Didn't think anything of it and turned the telly on for a little. Noticed after about an hour that the pains were coming every 15 or so mins. I decided to get up and tell DH. I made sure he wasn't excited...told him it was pre labour and nothing and could go on for weeks, which is what I beleived would happen.

I jumped on the fit ball at times and bounced around, had a look on the net at a few things, watched telly and laid down in bed and slept in between BH's when I could. At 4am, I was starting to get a tiny bit excited. What if they were the start of something? They'd been going on for a while.
I got out of bed and jumped online to use the contraction timer. I noticed contractions getting closer together, some were only about 5mins apart and although they were a little painful and I was having to bounce through them on the fit ball, they weren't painful enough for me to think too much. I decided that if they continued at this rate until 6am, I would go into my parents house as I was a 100km trip from hospital and knew that second time around, anything could happen.

At about 5.30, the pains stopped. I remember laughing to myself, thinking 'just typical! Here's to another 2 weeks of this' before heading back to bed. DH woke as I got back to bed and I told him what I'd been up to all night. He decided to stay home for a couple of hours rather than go to work at 8am so that I could get some sleep. I slept until 9.30am without the tiniest niggly pain, so sent DH off to work.

All throughout the day I would have the very very occasional BH.... once every couple of hours. Decided to call DH at about 4pm and tell him that he was taking me out for dinner and a movie. He got home about 5.30pm I made him take a few photo's, you know 'just in case this is the last night with the belly' and we dropped DS off at the IL's at 7pm. I needed to use the loo at the IL's (surprise surprise) and whilst there a had a huge mucous plug loss that was streaked light pink/brown. That got me a little excited, and I just knew that thigns would happen sometime in the next 2 weeks for sure. Still thought it was a while away though.

We went out for dinner where I was starving so had a creamy chicken mushroom pasta and Shared a chicken ceasar salad with DH. Def no room for desert and needed to make sure I could fit a couple of maltesers at the movies! haha.
Met my sister at the movies at 8.30pm. During the movie (the fast and the furious... DH is a car NUT and maybe subconciously, I thought it might get things going), I had a few contractions. Not more painful than the night and morning before, but they weren't regular.

We left for home and arrived at about midnight. The IL's had suggested they have DS that night (which we didn't refuse) and I was planning on possibly attempting DTD. Well that didn't happen. We were so tired we decided to get some sleep. All quiet on the western front here.

At 4am, I was awoken again with pain. Great! This will be a daily occurance until bubs arrival in weeks. They were a tiny bit more painful this morning, so I got up again and jumped on teh fit ball and the comp.
I started timing them at about 5am. 7 mins apart. Ooo that's cool. If they ever got to 5 mins I would think about heading into my parents, but that wasn't going to happen, and I had an appt at the AN clinic at 11.30am that I would make.

At about 5.30 they were about 3-4 minutes apart. That actually had me a little worried. If this was the real deal, I could already be too late! I decided to monitor them for another half hour and see how they went.

By 6.30... they stopped AGAIN! I couldn't beleive it. haha just my luck. I went to the loo where I had a HUGE HUGE loss of mucous plug that was blood streaked. I wasn't convinced it was my show, but I was convinced that these pains were getting my body somewhere and that I'd have to let the doc's at my AN appt know all about this.

I jumped in the shower at 7am where I had a couple of contractions I had to breathe through. DH and I left for his folks place. We arrived at 8am, where DH went to work and I went inside as MIL was taking me to my appt. She grabbed her fit ball out and I bounced around on it for a while. At 8.30 I started timing the pains. 7 mins apart. I kept an eye on them until 9.30am when DS decided to play games with mummy and pulled the plug out of the fit ball causing it to lose air. I jumped off before I fell of. Little bugger. I took the ball down to the shed to get it pumped up where I had another contraction. I spoke to DH and he told me to call the hospital just in case. I was determined to wait until my appt, but worried about having to breathe through these pains in front of everyone in the waiting room looking like a goon, so I called the hospital.

I told them I would have waited but was worried about how far out of town I was. They agreed that at 5-7 mins apart and at least 45 mins from town, it was time to go in. I was expecting to get sent home, but DH and I drove in anyway. The drive was long.. but not as bad as I expected. The bumps hurt, but I was still my chatty self in between contractions. We found a park close to the hospital, grabbed my bag and walked up to the maternity ward. They took me through to room 17 and I laughed as I commented that this was the room I gave birth to my son in.

At 12 ish I was given an internal. 3cms dialated 50% effaced. I laughed again. I was exactly he same with my son at 12pm on the Friday before I had him on the Saturday morning at 2.43am. This could go on for a while yet.
I went to the loo where my midwife Christine told me I was not allowed to give birth. LOL I assured her if I felt the need to push I'd be off the loo in a hurry.

I walked around rocking my body through contractions. At about 1pm I got DH to get the heat packs happening. At 2pm I decided that I wanted the gas handy, in case I needed it and started using it as required. By 3pm I was in a fair amount of pain. I was sucking on the gas with heat packs on my belly and DH rubbing my back. A short time later a new midwife Tania started and Christine went home. Tania offered me the shower which I decided was a good idea and organised the portable gas as I wasn't going anywhere without my friend. I stayed in the shower for a while and then decided I needed to get out. It was more uncomfortable contracting in that small space. I was starting to think to myself about having some pethidine... these contractions were more painful than I remembered.

I jumped on the bed at about 4pm and laid on my side. The contractions spaced out slightly, but were painful as ever. I fell asleep in between 2 or 3 contractions, but when they came on I used one hand to hold the gas and the other to help rock my entire body on the bed.The bed would move a little when I did that, but I didn't care. I kept going. At 4.30pm I looked at the clock and decided that I wanted my baby out by 6 and that was that.

I mentioned to Tania at about 5pm that I really wanted pethidine. She stalled me for a little, but then said she'd get the doctor to do an internal and we'd see where I was at. She guessed 8cms by my breathing and groaning.