My little munchkin-Victoria Claire Hay
Where to start?
My contractions started on the Friday night at about 11pm and they were around 5 minutes apart and lasting anything up to a minute each. This went on all night and right up until 3pm on Saturday when they stopped all together!!
They then started up about 4 hours later, only they were a fair bit stronger, they weren’t as regular though, 15 minutes apart but lasting over a minute. I ended up getting to bed at about 10.30 Saturday night and was able to get some sleep, not much though!
At about 12.30 I was woken with really strong contractions that were only 2 minutes apart and lasting around 45 seconds. This is when I jumped in the shower and my plug came away. I freaked seeing the blood and got DP to call the hospital and see what they had to say, they said not to stress, that it was the plug and to come in when I could no longer handle the contractions etc.
I was so upset at this stage coz I hadn’t slept since Thursday night and the pain was huge but mostly I was worried about getting to the hospital and having them tell me I was only 3cm dilated or something like that!
DP talked me into going to the hospital at about 1.30, so we woke my friend who had come to stay the night and trotted into the hospital. They put me on the CTG machine to start with to see how my munchkins heartbeat was going etc, I was on that for about an hour which was terrible, having to lie on my back through all my contractions. Munchkin was doing well though so the midwife did an internal and discovered that I was already 8cm!!!!
From there we were moved in the birthing room where I got into the shower and sat on the fit ball with the water on my tummy and back which was fantastic. About 2 hours later DP asked the midwife what could be done for the pain I was in (note; he was the one asking) so she bought in the gas which I then used through the contractions. I’m not sure that it particularly did anything to help with the pain but it gave me something else to focus on anyway.
Eventually my contractions were making me feel like pushing so I got out of the shower. I was about to get on the bed when another contraction started up, this one I thought I would give a little push with and as I did, my waters broke all over DP and my friend! The waters were stained but the midwife wasn’t worried about it.
I got on the bed after that mess was tidied up a bit, I got into my knees and with the next contraction my body pushed out her head, the midwife was telling me to stop pushing but I hadn’t pushed at all, it was all involuntary, and before my DP got a chance to tell me he could see our bubs head, she had fallen onto the bed!!
She needed oxygen for a few minutes because she had come out so fast but apart from that her apgar scores were 6 and 9 so they were happy.
I was happy as I had no tears, no drugs and no real pushing so over all it was a fantastic experience that I would have done again straight away.
We had our baby Victoria finally born on the 9/10/05 at 4.59am. She weighed 3070gm 6lb 12oz, length 54 cm and head circumference 33cm.
We only hung around in the hospital for 30 hours due to the fact that all had gone so smoothly and Victoria was feeding well and very alert again due to the lack of drugs and stress etc.
My final words to anyone about to give birth are, don’t stress, listen to your body and the contractions and stay upright as much as you can during the labour.
Now I have to say I’m sorry for rambling on here but I wanted to get it all down before I forget anything. Now I must go and stare at my beautiful baby girl, I can’t get over the love that I feel for her.
