As soon as I was introduced to my midwife, Trudie, I knew that this was actually happening! We were taken down and shown into my room on delivery suite which seemed like total luxury compared to the ward, I had a fan, a CD player and 2 guest chairs!! Mum pointed out the crib all ready for baby and that made everything seem quite real.
We talked to the midwife and I explained about my previous labour and how it hadn’t been the experience I had wanted. We discussed it at length and I discovered I was just on the boundary of gestation that would have been dealt with by a midwife, but instead I got put under the gynaecology department. She asked about Effy-Mae and was incredibly sympathetic. It felt nice that someone from the hospital seemed to care when before it seemed they didn’t.
She explained to me that she would attempt to break my waters, and once they had gone I would be encouraged to walk around for a couple of hours to see if that would kick start my labour. If after that it hadn’t worked I would be put on a hormone drip to start contractions, but she explained that this was painful and she would like to not have to use it.
She started by examining me and decided I was possibly 3cm dilated, though still fairly posterior. Atleast the contractions I had had had done something! She told us that her shift ended in half an hour, so she should have time to break my waters before her replacement turned up. It took ages for her to get everything set up and eventually she attempted to break my waters. This wasn’t at all painful, but I was worried about her scratching his head with what looked like a crochet hook as unfortunately the membranes were tight to his head and not bulging. She thought she might have managed to break them and pulled out to examine, but realised she hadn’t. She then offered that she try again or go and get someone else to have a go. I told her she was more than welcome to try again if she thought she could and this time she thought she had managed to nick it as a little liquid trickled out, but she wanted to find someone else to check. While she was out of the room another midwife, Fiona, came in and announced that she was taking over from Trudie and would be the midwife with me over night.
Fiona spent a while going through my notes – doing her own handover as she put it, questioning with me anything she didn’t understand and talking to me about what complications I had had, medications I had taken and was on and what I wanted. I told her that I didn’t want an epidural if at all possible and would like to try with just gas and air, but other than that I didn’t know how I’d cope or what I wanted so I’d leave it all to decide as and when.
Trudie eventually came back and explained to Fiona how far she had got. Fiona pointed out that unless I had had a massive gush of waters it was unlikely to start labour and that if Trudie hadn’t been able to break them she doubted she would be able to so she went to find a doctor who from what I gathered can do something different in terms of breaking the waters – all I know is whatever she did hurt a lot more than what the midwife was doing! The doctor was lovely and friendly and managed to break my waters fairly easily. (Yes it felt like I’d peed myself) after this she did another sweep – ‘just to stir those hormones up again’ – and then she left. Fiona explained that she was one of the top doctors and that if that hadn’t worked nothing would. Fiona also wanted to not have to use the hormone drip as she told me I would be unlikely to be able to cope with the pain with the pain relief I wanted to use.
She then suggested that I go for a walk, me and mum had planned to take my tea (which had arrived just before I was taken to delivery suite) on a walk round the hospital and have a picnic while I waited for things to happen. As soon as I got off the bed to attempt to walk I realised that there was no chance I was leaving the room, I was contracting already and I could definitely feel these! She suggested I walk around the room instead which I agreed to, and she went to get me a ball to sit on, neither really happened as as soon as I was off the bed I fell to my knees and the contractions started coming almost one after the other!