Labouring At Home – Part 1 of My Birth Story

I’m a week away from the 3^rd Trimester and I’m really starting to think about labour and birth second time around. What with 'One Born Every Minute' being on TV at the moment and also a lot of my friends having had or on their way to having second babies it’s making me re-live the first experience in my head in a big way.

I’ve spoken about my first labour and birth experience before but never actually written about it. It’s really hard to make sense of it so long after the event and as is meant to happen my brain has chosen to make things seem easier than they actually were! So here goes....

It’s the early hours of Tuesday 14^th July, and I start to get period style cramps, obviously I can’t keep this information to myself, I have to tell the OH who’s snoring next to me. I try to go back to sleep and do this on and off till about 6.30am when I get up as I cannot see how you can sleep being continually squeezed on the inside. They’re only about every 45 minutes or so but it can take me that long to relax and nod back off again, so I’m up and about. By late morning we’re on our way to the Maternal Assessment Unit (MAU) at the hospital because I think I’ve had a show (mucus plug has left the building!) and as its the first time I’m one of these women who needs to know what’s going on rather than staying at home, baking, relaxing and bouncing up and down on my birth ball.

We get to MAU and they hook me up to the monitor, big belt round my belly and yes I’m having contractions and scarily I can see the machine and every time the numbers on the display go up I think ‘uh, oh’. The midwife very hopefully says to us, ooh won’t be long now and sends us home as contractions are too far apart. Tuesday goes by with me and the other half at home watching films, me contracting intermittently and bouncing on my birthing ball, TENS machine hooked up to my back. The only relief I can say that the TENS gave was the distraction of playing around with the buttons/ turning the dial and swearing at it that it didn’t do more for the discomfort! I tried to sleep Tuesday night but it wasn’t happening, contractions about every half hour, needless to say I wasn’t very good at keeping my sleeplessness to myself....

Wednesday we had another day of films and box sets, think I managed to walk around the block but I was just so tired. We called the hospital but because contractions were not regular enough – sometimes every ten minutes, sometimes every 25 minutes, advice was to take some paracetamol or a nice warm bath. This only slowed them right down to about 40 minutes again at which point I’d get all upset and be in tears. We were regimentally writing down every contraction and timing them as well and it felt like it was going on forever! Wednesday night passed by and again I had little or no sleep, just couldn’t achieve it when I was doubled up in agony at least every 20 minutes!

Thursday, a new day. Contractions all day, another phone call to the hospital, more advice to have a warm bath and paracetamol – absolutely exhausted, as was OH. We were verging on delirium and I was starting to feel like I was under house arrest!! By the evening there was now some blood appearing and I decided that was enough to warrant me needing to get to the delivery suite, contractions were nearly always between 7 and 10 minutes and I made another tearful call to the hospital to say I just could not cope at home anymore with just the TENS machine, breathing and all the other things we were doing to alleviate the pain (it was more than discomfort by then!) and that I was now bleeding. So thankfully they finally said come in.

The drive to hospital while writhing around in the passenger seat wasn’t great and we weren’t exactly alert after having little sleep since Tuesday. On arrival at the hospital I was put in my own room and examined and joy of all joys I was told that I was 3 centimetres and I could stay. Just being there made me feel better and getting started on the Gas and Air felt like a step in the right direction! Unfortunately due to the blood loss I’d mentioned it meant that I had to be hooked up to the monitors and was immobile on the bed. This wasn’t how I’d wanted to give birth but I think on reflection considering how tired I was by then, not having slept for at least 48 hours at that point I don’t think I could have done the whole natural birth without drugs route.

And so I’ll leave part one there, part two is here

Listography - Books and Babies

Ever since Isla was very little I have always read to her, reading is one of my favourite past times and I very much hope that she follows in my foot steps. I've blogged about the importance of reading on my Library  post recently. Reading really does fire up the imagination and I loved becoming immersed in a book especially on winter days. I grew up in the 80's, in the days when TVs in kids bedrooms started becoming popular, but I just didn't want one! I was happy listening to tapes (!) and reading books - does that make me a geek?!

The following 3 books are regularly thumbed in our house, and we never tire of them!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

We love this book, Isla has had it read to her millions of times practically since birth! The colours are beautiful and when she was really little she just loved putting her fingers in all the holes that the caterpillar made in the food. I like to get her to point out all the things that she recognises - the cakes on the last day of the caterpillars gorge-fest are her current favourite!

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell

A really nice lift the flap book that helps babies to recognise animals and it gives me the chance to ad-lib and do all the animal noises. Isla's favourite of my animal impressions is when I pretend to spit like a camel! OK, not very ladylike but it gets a laugh every time!!

Spot's Noisy Night by Eric Hill

Spot goes camping with his friends and they have a very disturbed night what with owl's 'twowittwowooing' and frogs leaping around the tent! This one is so fun and brilliant because throughout the story there are sounds to play and for each of the sounds is a puzzle piece that your child can fit into the pages. This is such a great interactive book and is the latest in a line of Spot books that we own.



The next two books are obviously a bit too advanced for Isla right now, but they are two favourites of mine from when I was a child and I really hope she takes to them like I did. When I was at primary school I had to write book reviews of all the books I read and I've still got the folder up in Mum and Dad's loft! I read so much, I was a book worm, so choosing just these two was a struggle because I could have gone for Ramona and Beezus or Pippi Longstocking and actually all Roald Dahl books hold a special place in my book loving heart, so it was hard to pick one of his.

The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton

This series of books by Enid Blyton are just pure fantasy. I loved Moonface and Silky the fairy. Through the Faraway Tree they showed us magical lands and all manner of creatures. My favourite of all the lands is 'The Land of Take What You Want'
where, as the name suggests, you can take whatever you want for free!


Thinking about this book has made me feel all nostalgic about the Enid Blyton books I used to own, they all had hard covers and the pages felt so good (does that sound weird!?).


I'd love for Isla to get lost in these books imagining that she is visiting all these wonderful places. They are so escapist and can really help you forget about the real world...

The Twits by Roald Dahl

This is one of my favourite Roald Dahl books (along with The Witches, Georges Marvellous Medicine...). The descriptions of Mr and Mrs Twit are fantastic and I always loved how Mr Twit was just so extra disgusting with food in his beard and you could almost smell how unclean they were from the descriptions. They hate children and they torment animals but as is the case in all Roald Dahl's books the mean characters always get their come uppance!

Roald Dahl's books also have the extra benefit that they have gorgeous illustrations by Quentin Blake - something I have blogged about previously here.

One of my things I want to do at some time in the future is go to the Roald Dahl museum, something to save for when Isla is older.

This post is part of the Listography Linky that Kate Takes 5 runs every week. Pop over to her blog to see her book suggestions and also a whole host of others!