Best laid plans

Sorry for the radio silence but I've been busy giving birth and recovering from the experience.  Sprog arrived on his predicted due date in the second week of March 2012 but the manner in which he arrived could not have been further from what we had in mind.

The last nine months were pretty easy- I've had no sickness and generally very little discomfort, worked up to a week before my due date (and then stopped only because my Mum was visiting and I wanted to spend some time with her), and every meausured parameter was within the normal limits.  I did have a feeling that Baby would arrive on time and had prepared my birth plan with the expectation that everything would happen as planned- the pregnancy had been so easy there was no reason for me to suspect the birth would be complicated.  I could not be more wrong.

We had kept the birth plan fairly flexible, as advised by the midwives, but our preference was for a natural birth with as little intervention as possible and as little pain medication as possible.  To this end, we chose to give birth at a birth center near home rather than at a hospital.  The decision was also due, in part, to us being extremely impressed with the Barkantine Birth Centre on the Isle of Dogs on our various visits and contact with the midwives that were based there.  A big plus was the possibility for my partner to stay overnight with Sprog and I after the birth.  In the end he did stay with us in our confinement but it was at one of the rented private rooms in the local hospital for a week.

I started feeling mild contractions two days before the predicted due date and thought my waters had broken as I felt some leakage down below.  So we popped into the birth centre for a check up and to ask what to expect in the following hours.    We went home and about 24 hours afterwards my waters did break big time and we popped back to the birth centre.  The midwife on duty thought there were traces of meconium in the waters and sent us to the nearby Royal London Hospital as a precaution.  I got to the hospital and was checked by a doctor, who concluded that there was no meconium in the waters and offered for us to go to the ante-natal section to wait for the contractions to get closer together.  We opted to wait at home, and to use the Barkantine when the time came, instead.  Thus, we were discharged, went home, and then checked into the Barkantine 12 hours later.  However, progress was extremely slow over the next few hours- the contractions got closer together but not close enough, and my cervix did not dilate much at all during this time- so we were sent to the hospital again 24 hours after my waters broke. 

The decision was taken to induce me with oxytocin, which meant the use of an epidural and a catheter.  Baby's heartbeat was also being monitored continuously by electronic foetal monitoring, initially just with an external monitor and later with a foetal scalp electrode.   I shivered badly during the night- a side effect from the oxytocin- and didn't sleep very well.  My partner and Mum fell asleep on the couch, exhausted from nearly 48 hours of worry and sleeplessness.  Some time during the night I developed a fever, which is a sign of infection, and in my periods of wakefulness I caught snippets of conversations between the hospital staff which indicated that they thought Baby might be stressed in the womb.  When my partner came round to check on me at dawn, we had a conversation about what I heard overnight.  Early on the morning of the due date, the staff broached the subject of a caesarean section- we had already decided that we would have a C-section should it be offered, and Baby arrived a few hours after that.  As I had a fever, he was put on a course of antibiotics while we waited for results from blood tests.  This meant staying in hospital for a week while we were being checked and treated.  And that was that for a birth with minimal intervention.

Fortunately, Mum was aware that we would like to stay together as a family if we needed to stay in hospital so she arranged for the private room hire while we were in theater and managed to secure the last free room for us.  We spent our first week as a family in a sort of strange camp-out in the hospital, with Mum visiting every day to bring us clean clothes and other creature comforts.  The hospital staff were brilliant and  we cannot thank them enough for the fantastic care they provided.  We are now home and the after care from the local midwives and health visitors have been fantastic as well.

Three things I learnt from this:

1. A supportive partner makes the birth experience bearable.  He is effectively looking after two babies at the moment as I am not completely healed.  I honestly don't know how people do it alone.

2. The presence of Mum- who provided advice from previous experience and understood what we needed- was a great comfort to us.  She's been helping out with all sorts of things so my partner and I could have some rest.  I'd totally recommend getting as much trusted help as you can get.

3. The NHS is actually rather brilliant.