Oh wow, what a scary experience! I hope everyone is recovering well


My birth was a scheduled induction. I went in the day before my EDD, I'd had a sweep done the week before, but apart from losing some plug, nothing eventuated from it. OB attempted to break my waters about 8:30 on the Thursday morning. I ended up having some gel about an hour after that I think. Several hours of lapping the corridors and leaking waters later, a internal showed I was only about 4-5cm so I opted to be hooked up to the drip and commenced more walking. Rang my mum at about 5:30 to tell my other DD that there was no little sister as yet. She had been hoping it would have been all done and dusted by the time she finished school! I had started having bad lower back pain a little later on and thought "hang on, shouldn't this be more centralised around the front?", but didn't think anymore of it. The back pain started to really ramp up while trying to watch Top Gear, lol and by about 10:30 I couldn't deal anymore and the call was made for an epidural. The drip was cranked up to max while we were waiting, yay. While they were doing it, I heard my midwife say to the anaesthetist something about 'only giving such and such amount, because my OB likes them to still have some feeling'.
The epi helped my calm enough to dilate fully and then the pushing started. My first DD was a vacuum delivery with epi in theatre, so the midwife was telling me to push and I had no idea what to do, as silly as it sounds! My contractions stalled for about 1/2 hour for some reason, but then it was all systems go. The midwife let out a surprised "oh" as she was crowing, because turns out she was posterior!
R ylee K ate was born at 00:09 on her due date.
Afterwards I was glad I didn't have the full epi, because I got to 'experience' the birth. I felt the urges to push, the contractions and yes, the tearing! I felt like I had actually birthed her. And the good hour of skin to skin while I was being embroidered was great. I didn't have that feeling with my first. I was flat on my back, couldn't feel much at all and she was whisked away for my DH to have skin to skin while I was in recovery. Even had me considering a third