loopyloulaura

Zach’s birth had a lot to live up to after the ease of Anya’s. It didn’t 🙁

Everything was planned to coincide with the Easter holidays and therefore my break from all three school jobs. He was due on the first day of the holiday. He didn’t come. I waited…and waited…and waited… until I had to be induced on the last day of the holiday, two weeks overdue.

I was booked in for my induction on Sunday at lunchtime and I was praying that I would be home in time to take Matthew to his first ever Beavers session on the Monday evening. It didn’t help that when we arrived there was a woman vomiting, weeing and pooing with every contraction on the ward. Not a great impression for Chris’ first experience of the birthing process! Zach was being as uncooperative as ever and I had to spend extra time on the baby heart monitor because he wouldn’t relax after the induction gel was used: little did we know that he just hates sleep!

I sent Chris home to check on Matthew, Anya and (obviously) Ollie. By 5 pm I was getting contractions but not much. By 7pm I was begging for pain relief but the contractions weren’t regular and I felt like a failure needing drugs when I still had such a long way to go.

After a lot of nagging I persuaded them to move me to the labour unit to get my waters broken at 10pm. The midwife suggested I call Chris as things might speed up. So I did but told him not to rush as the contractions still weren’t building up like in my previous two births. I was having all double contractions where one doesn’t fully go before the next one arrives and then there would be a gap of several minutes before the next double.

I was therefore a little surprised when I got the urge to push. Not as surprised as the midwife. She told me to push the button to call for help (not easy to concentrate on doing when a baby is coming out of your bits!). The senior midwife came in in time to say ‘the baby’s coming’ and then with a couple of pushes he was out.

Chris missed it by about a minute but he arrived to cut the cord. I was actually quite relieved as I didn’t really want him seeing me like that. Zach shouted A LOT: he was definitely not happy to be out, maybe the speed was a surprise to him too. Again I had to be stitched up and Chris only told me (after a year) that there was A LOT of blood.

And now here he is as we approach his first birthday in a couple of days! Where did a whole year go?

So to sum up: all of my experiences of birth have been different. The worst experience was actually being my sister’s birth partner and feeling completely useless. I can honestly say the pain is unimaginable if you haven’t been through it. But I would do it again and endure any pain for my beautiful, clever, incredibly annoying children.