The action begins… birth story

Dear Baby,

Today is July 2nd 2013…your official due date. I do not appreciate any intentions of yours in being “fashionably late”. You are hereby given a formal eviction notice. Please vacate the premises immediately.

Sincerely,

The owner of the OVEN.

37 weeks and over it

Tuesday July 2nd 2013.

D Day….comes and goes (as expected!) although I was “so sure” I would go early…doesn’t every mumma? Lol

I have a check up with my super midwife, Betty Vella, on Wednesday July 3…nothing…nada…zip! Baby is nice and comfy in there with no signs of wanting to leave its snug little cocoon so we book our next appointment together for Sunday arvo July 7. I was so hoping she would offer internal and do a stretch and sweep (where they basically poke around inside to stir things up! Or an official definition: “a sweep involves your doctor or midwife inserting a finger in past your cervix and sweeping around the neck of the uterus. This is supposed to separate the membranes from the cervix, naturally prompting labour ) But she’s a great believer in letting nature take is course AS USUAL”.)

I was just so over it! I was really lucky this time around, this pregnancy was pretty cruisy. I mean I didn’t think much of it or the baby to be honest, I was too busy lounging around doing sweet jack wrangling 3 kids with school runs, Prep drop offs, swimming lessons and trying to work myself out of our business with hiring and training the new office girl at like 35 weeks or something crazy like that!

Sunday July 7

Betty comes over and asks if i want an internal which i eagerly agree to! So she checks me and says that I am further along at this point than last pregnancy when she checked me after being in pre-labour for 48hrs! Music to my ears! I was happy with that news as I hadn’t had a single sign of impending labour.

She ruffled things up down there (with a stretch and sweep of my membranes) and said she would see me within a few days as this would definitely get things moving! Woohoo…the end is near!

Monday July 8

Hmmmm NOTHING. AT. ALL!

No cramping, no spotting, no nothing!

What the? I though stretch and sweeps were suppose to get some action happening? I was beginning to get very annoyed and disheartened. How can one be so close to the end yet so far away…. Looking back i realise, gee us women have some crazy thoughts at the end of pregnancy! We can get so impatient and over it when in reality the end so much closer than our irrational minds want to accept.

Tuesday July 9

2.30am…

Wait was that a teeny tiny cramp I felt? Or was it an uncomfortable Braxton hick that woke me?

No there it was again.

YES!

F I N A L L Y, something! All be it mild and not very regular…but it was something!

I timed them and they were pretty far apart plus not very strong so I knew it wasn’t the real deal but it was a good sign that things were starting to move along finally!!!

That morning I also had a “show” and some pink spotting so I knew the contractions were doing something….woohoo.

This mild pre-labour action lasted all day on and off, niggling but not establishing into anything. It started to pick up a little in the later evening, so Betty said she would pop over around 9pm to check me out since we needed to know how far things were along to decide about hospital travel etc since I would need to travel along the M5 motorway (which is a joke here in sydney!) into Randwick as we live out west of the city in the suburbs and we did not want this to happen anywhere remotely near peak hour or anything.

I text Britt, who is a birth photographer in hiatus (coming out only for special people like yours truly!) and update on what’s going down…

updating Britt (our birth photographer)

9pm – things had moved along nicely, I think I was about 3cm and stretchy so she said to rest up and that she would see me later tonight (early morning), that this definately was it. We decided that since Betty lived closer to the hospital we would meet her there when the time came for me to move. She left and boy did that internal ruffle things up down there big time. It was really painful about half hour after she left, I called her back and told her and she said maybe hop in the shower to see if that helped things die down until the real labour kicked in…they say usually getting into water earlier on can slow labour down or if you are further along it will establish things and ramp them up… Jake went to sleep to rest up.

Well HOLY CRAP I got in the shower about 11.00pm and the hot water was totally awesome, until the damn contractions KICKED in big time within about 15mins of being in the shower. I YELL out to Jake (boy was I irrationally mad at him that he was resting and I wasn’t. While I was stuck in the shower with painful contractions how could he even think about sleeping through this!) that he needed to get is sleepy ass in here pronto start timing them cos they are kicking in really strong. They start coming on hard about 3-4mins apart and I had to really brace myself and work through them. I’m all starting to lose my cool so I yell at him (not sure why I was yelling since he was in the bathroom with me LOL) to get Betty on the phone and tell her I think this is it and we need to get going to hospital NOW!

RIGHT NOW!!

He calls Betty and relays all that has happened with the the last 30 mins and how we both feel that we need to head in… She agrees and we plan to meet her in the foyer at the Royal Women’s hospital in Randwick where i was booked in.

It’s game on.

We’re heading in…