WARNING: YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T READ THIS IF YOU ARE PREGNANT.
So yeah, as you probably already know, I went into labour on October 27th. I was getting pains from about 2am. The pains finally got so bad I thought I might need pain relief at about 5:30pm, so I went to the labour ward as I had been instructed to do. When I went to the hospital, the contractions were happening every three minutes and lasting for about a minute each time. At about 6 o clock I was 5cm dilated. I actually managed without pain relief until about 9pm. The midwives were marvelling about my pain tolerance. At 9pm I had gas and air. At first, I couldn't work out how to use it properly and thought it wasn't doing anything. Once I got the hang of it, it was amazing. Yeah, the contranctions still hurt but I didn't care about it. It made me feel like I was somewhere between drunk and stoned. Twas great... Although it did make me talk a load of absolute bollocks. When they examined me at 10pm, I was just under 8cm dilated and they thought he would be born within the hour. They also discovered he was in the posterior position (his back was against my back). By about 11pm, the pain was immense and gas and air made no difference to it whatsoever. The baby was also getting very distressed. I then had syntocinon to speed things up and hartmann's solution because apparently I was very dehydrated (even though I had had 8 bottles of water due to the gas and air making my mouth immensely dry). At this point, I also agreed to have diamorphine. From this point, I don't remember much so I'm going to write about it from what people have told me and vague, blurry memories. Apparently the diamorphine was injected into my butt. I was absolutely off my head. I even agreed to let my mother take me to the toilet (how bloody embarrassing!). I couldn't walk on my own. By this time it was about 1:30 and when the midwife examined me, she decided to break my waters. I remember this being the most painful part of the whole thing. When she broke them, there was apparently very little amniotic fluid. I didn't even get wet. I just felt a tiny drop on my leg. For a while, nothing happened (apart from being in a lot of pain). I went to the toilet a second time at about 3am. The pain was so bad that I had to have gas and air in both the toilet and the corridor. I was accompanied (and being held up) by both my mother and the midwife. I got tangled in all the wires and everything in the door to the toilet. It was rather humiliating. When I came back from the toilet, the midwife suggested an epidural as the pain was exceedingly bad, my blood pressure was going way up and I felt like I needed to push (even though I was only 8cm). Even though I had previously planned not to have an epidural under any circumstances, I ended up agreeing to one. I had to sit on the end of the bed, bent forward while they shoved the needle into my back and stuff. I had 3 tubes of stuff going into me. After I had the epidural, the midwife examined me again and found I was STILL only 8cm dilated. She could feel a bit of the cervix over the baby's head (or something) which she moved off (which even with the epidural was apparently very painful for me). The epidural wasn't working very well so the anaesthetist topped it up a few times. At about hoobs o clock, I had finally got to 10cm and could start the whole pushing thing (after the doctor agreed to it). I couldn't feel the contractions properly, so it was difficult for me to push at the right time. I could only feel some of the contractions and they had to watch the monitor and feel my belly so I knew when to push. It was veryyy slow. After about an hour and a half of only semi-successful pushing, they decided to use the ventouse thing to help pull him out. They were also going to do an episiotomy and they gave me two injections (I actually remember feeling the sharp scratches!) and just as she went to pick up the scalpel, he was born (at 7:44am). When he eventually came out, it was like he'd been shot out and he very almost fell onto the floor because he came out all in one push. Him coming out felt really weird. It was like a slippery, weird feeling. They passed him straight to me and I decided to call him Isaac Sirius. He was perfect. Apparently then I was bleeding immensely heavily and I needed to go to theatre to fix my third degree tear. There was like a zillion people in the room at this point. I only got to hold Isaac for a few minutes. I somehow ended up in theatre and my mum was allowed to be there too. The grandmother stayed with Isaac. After being fixed (which took an hour and 20 minutes) I went to the recovery room and they finally brought Isaac back to me. They stole some of my blood in the recovery room and eventually, they took me and Isaac to the ward.
Isaac weighed 8lb 14.5oz... So it's not surprising I had a third degree tear. His head circumference was 36.7cm. He was 52cm long. He had an apgar score of 9.
It wasn't fun being in the hospital, but it would have been worse if Isaac wasn't there. It was very frustrating not having control of my legs (because of the epidural) and I felt like absolute shite for ages. His blood group is A positive and mine is O negative, so I had to have another anti-d injection. There was a horrible moment in the hospital where I was going to go to the toilet and there was a huge amount of blood and I felt rather dizzy and horrid. It was rather scary... but everything was ok. I had to stay in hospital until like the 30th. I think that was mainly because my haemoglobinz had somehow managed to go down to 8 (even though it was like 12 or something a few days before). We finally went home on the 30th at about 5 o clock.
Yesterday I took him out for the first time. Nowhere interesting... just shopping. I was carrying him in the baby sling thing (couldn't be arsed with putting together the pram). Isaac recieved a lot of attention. Every time I went into a shop, people asked me questions about him. They seemed shocked when I told them he was only 3 days old. He dressed up as a skeleton for halloween. I have to wait until he's asleep and stuff to do things like write this blog. For some reason, I don't mind that he pees on me, poos on me and pukes on me. He's adorable and I loveses him! <3
