Regan's arrival into the world
My OB decided to put me in hospital for an induction due to obstetric cholestasis. So on Monday 21 November at 4pm I went into the hospital to have some prostoglandin gel inserted to hopefully soften my cervix with a view to rupturing my membranes the following morning should nothing happen. So at 5pm they inserted the gel. I felt crampy type pains during the evening, DH went home and I went to bed at the hospital.
At 12.45am I awoke to a sharp pain, I got up out of bed and my membranes ruptured with a little pop and tiny gush and I started contracting. I called the midwife and she wasn't sure that my waters had broken but took my word for it. About 20 mins later I had another gush but bigger and I called the midwife again. She looked and noticed that my waters had meconium in them. This was a bit of a worry so they put me into the labour room and on a CTG to monitor bub's heartbeat. But bub seemed to be fine.
I was having contractions but wasn't timing them, they weren't all that painful and didn't seem to be progressing too much. Dh returned to the hospital at 7am. The midwives checked me and I had dilated 2cm and was 50% effaced. I felt quite good about this progress and hoped that it would continue. At 8am nothing much had happened and my contractions were starting to slow down so they decided that they would put in the oxytocin drip. But before they did that I requested an epidural. Well this was a bit of a drama and they got an anaethetist who was in a bit of a hurry (gggrrrrr). He was so rough and attempted to put the first epi in which caused me great pain (after being anaesthetised) so he had to re-do it above where he first started. At this point I was shaking and terrified as the pain I felt from his first attempt was very scary and I was worried I'd end up with some sort of spinal cord damage.
After his second attempt he successfully put the epidural in then they put in the oxytocin drip. The epi was not strong to numb me completely and I still felt contractions although they weren't as strong. I laboured until 2.30pm when they midwives decided to check me as I had felt really strong contractions for a couple of hours. The news wasn't good, I was 2cm dilated still and at this point I started crying as it was very disheartening to be breathing through contractions with no progress. The midwives were so wonderful trying to encourage me and I had to remind myself that this happened with my second daughter as well.
My contractions became increasingly stronger and it was at this point that I was telling the midwives that the epi wasn’t working, they topped me up twice unsuccessfully as the pain was just increasing, At 4.45pm I felt the urge to push and was extremely irritated so the midwives decided to check me to find that I was 10cm dilated and they could see the baby’s head (all in 1 ½ hours). So I started pushing at 4.50pm. I felt so strong and was determined to get the baby out without any further intervention. I was on the CTG and bubs heartbeat was starting to drop and the midwife got my attention and told me that I had to push the baby out asap as she was becoming distressed. This made me even more determined, it was incredibly painful but I pushed the head out and my DH and the midwives told me that the head was out but I screamed at them that I didn’t want to know and kept pushing and out came our baby girl Regan. They put her on my chest and let us rub her down to get her breathing which was a really wonderful experience.
I had a second-degree tear, which my OB stitched. Even though pushing her out was painful and it was still a longish labour I felt so good afterwards that it didn’t matter at all.
