Induction

Loaded up with all our bags, plus a massive v-shaped pillow, we made our way to the hospital at 4pm on the Friday. Thankfully, we were given a private room, which was a huge relief! The idea of sleeping on a ward had filled me with horror, and I waddled into that building quite prepared to beg for a private room if necessary.

When we were shown to the room I was told that I’d be induced soon after arrival, so that the baby wouldn’t be left too long without the protection offered by the waters. We got ourselves set up – I had all my snacks lined up ready to go, my husband got the tablet set up on the wifi so that we could Netflix some random comedies to keep my distracted once the contractions started*.

*Other streaming services are available!

I knew I'd be spending a lot of time in this room!

A midwife popped in to introduce herself and welcome me to the maternity building. She explained that they were very busy so they would start the induction process around 6pm. Yes, it was slightly annoying to have to wait when it’s something so exciting but 2 hours isn’t an awful wait really.

6 o'clock came. 6 o'clock went. No induction.

To be honest, it wasn't the lack of induction that bothered me. It was the fact that nobody came to tell me why it would be delayed, or even that it would be delayed. I pressed the call buzzer a few times and the staff told me that someone would see me ‘soon’.

At this point, the excitement had pretty much disappeared and all I was feeling were the nerves! It had suddenly hit me that I might be in hospital longer than I originally anticipated, and that it was really about to happen. I just wanted them to get on with it!

Eventually, at 9:30 p.m. one of the night shift midwives – Julie – came to start my induction. She explained that there had been a delivery on the ward (which is pretty rare because usually the woman is sent down to labour ward in time) and that this is what had caused the delay. It was totally fair enough, but I still wished someone had popped in to explain, rather than just leave me hanging.

Anyway, induction time!

There are a number of stages to induction, which broadly follow the pattern of monitoring, medication, monitoring, and waiting. This process can be done 4 times, at specific intervals, but not everyone will need all 4 doses to successfully start their labour.

It begins with spending half an hour hooked up to a monitor to see how the baby is doing, which provides a baseline for the midwives to compare to later monitoring. For those of you who don't know, when you are on the monitor you have to sit completely still otherwise the pads of the monitor can slip and they won't be registering the baby anymore.

Now I don't know about you, but when I have nothing to do, I can sit totally still for hours, watching tv, reading a book, or even doing absolutely nothing. On the other hand, when I am told that I HAVE to sit still and not move, I become incredibly restless.

As soon as she put the monitor on, I was pretty sure I’d be able to run a marathon at that moment. I just wanted to MOVE.

Still, it's only half an hour, right?

Wrong.

Because, once that monitoring is over, the next stage of induction begins.

This part is when the midwife inserts a pessary of medication into the cervix. It contains prostaglandins, which is the hormone that the body releases to stimulate contractions. Although it isn’t instant, a few doses of prostaglandins is often enough to kickstart labour.

Then you’re put on the monitor again, this time for an hour, to make sure that the baby is not distressed by the medication, and to see whether any small contractions have begun.

This entire process was repeated 6 hours later, which for me was 3:30 in the morning. Joy of joys.

Before my second dose, I had started to have contractions and although they were only about 30 seconds long and were quite far apart, they were still frequent and painful enough that I noticed them! So you can imagine, when the midwife arrived at 3:30, I hadn’t had very much sleep.

3:30am monitoring - baby was nice and sleepy with a heartbeat of 122 beats per minute!

Again, the baby was monitored for half an hour, a pessary was inserted, and I was monitored for another hour. There was some good news though! When the midwife checked my cervix before giving the prostaglandins, she explained that because my cervix was almost completely effaced and I was having small contractions, she didn’t expect that I would need a third dose! Fantastic!

Effacement isn’t really something we often hear about when discussing labour, or when it’s portrayed in tv/film – we hear about dilation and that’s it, but actually a significant portion of that early labour, the part that seems never-ending, is spent with the cervix effacing. Usually, the cervix is a long tube which points down in the top of the vagina. During the early stage of labour, the contractions are forcing the cervix to flatten, or 'efface'. Only once the cervix is fully effaced can dilation begin. This is why the early stage can seem so disappointing – to have been in labour for hours and hours, to be told you’re only 1cm dilated?! It’s just important to remember that in that time, those contractions have turned your cervix from a 2cm long tube, to being completely flat!

My cervix was checked again at around 10 o'clock in the morning.

1 cm dilated!

How exciting!

When being induced, if you need a third pessary, this takes place 24 hours after the first hormones were given, meaning I was preparing myself to wait until 9:30 on the Saturday evening.
A second midwife agreed that I would probably not need a third pessary, but she explained that the final call on that wouldn’t be made until much closer to the time, so she wanted me to make sure that my progress didn’t stall. I was encouraged to walk up and down the stairs in the maternity building, go to the shop in the main hospital building, and take a warm bath.

Knowing that no more intervention would be taking place until late into the evening, I sent my husband home to have a shower and get some sleep. We’re lucky at our hospital that they do allow a partner to stay overnight, but they don’t provide much in the way of comfort. My husband (who has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), had spent Friday night sleeping on the floor and was not allowed to take a shower on the ward.

He didn’t want to leave me, but understood that during this part of the induction, I didn’t need him as much as I would while in full blown labour. I needed him to be in tip-top condition, and that meant a shower and sleep! So off he went.

My Mother-in-Law stayed with me, and after a while timing my contractions while I bounced on a maternity ball, we took a slow shuffle to the shop to buy an ice cream (yes, she also shuffled – if you’d seen her recent ankle injury, you’d understand).

50 second contractions, 5 minutes apart. Still not close enough. I was starting to think I’d be having that third pessary after all!

On the way back to my room, we ran into my husband arriving back at the hospital. We returned to the room, to find a Midwife knocking at the door.

I introduced myself.

“Ready to come downstairs to labour suite then?” Was all she said.

I responded, rather foolishly, “What, now?”

“Well that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” The Midwife replied.

Yes. Yes it was! She gave us a few minutes to gather all our things and then we were off! To labour suite! To have our baby!

Here. We. Go!

What an exciting and exhausting few weeks we’ve had!

15 days before his due date, at 5:30am on the 6^th May, our Henry made his entrance into the world, weighing in at a healthy 7lb 12oz (3.52kg, for you strange people who use metric to measure babies).

So let’s go back to the beginning.

(And by the beginning, I mean last year).

4^th May 2017 – I spent the day in hospital, had my laparoscopy and we found out that we needed IVF to have a baby.

Fast-forward to 3^rd May 2018.

It was a Thursday, and was both the Local Council Elections and a Parents’ Evening at my husband’s school (NOT for a year group he teaches, thank goodness). On Parents’ Evening days, his school finishes slightly early and any staff who don’t have appointments are encourage to go home straight away, so he made it home around 3pm and we immediately drove to the local church to vote. Once we’d finished there, he suggested going home via the shop so that we could get an ice cream – music to a heavily pregnant lady’s ears when it’s so hot outside!

On the drive to the shops, it’s lucky no police cars were around because we’d definitely have been pulled over for my husband to be breathalysed! Swerving the car all over the road and hitting every. Single. Pothole.

“I’m trying to jiggle the baby out of you!” he responded when I asked what on earth he was doing.

Fair enough.

Anyway, we bought our ice creams and drove (swerved/bounced) home. Standing outside the front door as my husband unlocked it, my waters broke.

You mean it WORKED?!    

        

Side note – had I tried to work up to my original maternity leave date, I’d have been dismissing the children on the playground at the end of the day when my waters broke. Thank heavens I took maternity leave early because THAT would have been a story that never got forgotten at school!

Now let me warn you – these next few posts are going to go into specifics about labour and childbirth, so if you’re squeamish about it, or just don’t particularly want to read those details about someone you know, I’d stop reading now!

Ok?

Sure?

Righty-ho, here we go!

I honestly don’t know how some people say that they weren’t sure if their waters had gone or if they’d wet themselves because for me, the feeling was so alien that there was no way I could confuse the two! Maybe that isn’t how it feels for some people but for me, there was no mistaking what had happened.

Still, I said nothing about it to my husband, just mumbled something about needing the toilet, and escaped to the downstairs loo.

More waters. And more.

By the way, for any pregnant women reading this – they don’t warn you quite how much amniotic fluid there is. It’s a lot. Just… a lot. Buy all the maternity pads. Seriously, all of them.

Once I was sure that I wasn’t imagining it, I told my husband, “So… we may have a Star Wars baby yet!” (May the 4^th be with you, for anyone who has been living under a rock).

I then ran back to the toilet because yet more waters made an appearance.

(I told you – a lot! Pads. Get them).

So the next job was to call the hospital but for some reason, I felt really silly doing it! I shouldn’t have – waters breaking is a perfectly legitimate reason to call the maternity assessment unit – but I did.

They asked me to put a fresh pad on, wait for an hour and then come to the assessment unit, bringing that pad with me so that they could check it was my waters and not urine. So that’s what we did.

We arrived at the hospital around 5:30 and I was taken to labour suite to be assessed, as the assessment unit hands over to labour suite at 6, so they figured they may as well send me straight there. They confirmed pretty quickly that it was indeed my waters breaking, and hooked me up to a monitor so they could see a) how baby was doing and b) whether I was contracting yet.

Hint: I wasn’t.

Medically, this is called PROM (Pre-labour Rupture of Membranes), which is when the amniotic sac breaks more than 1 hour before the onset of actual labour.

The pad with the blue strap is measuring our baby's heart and the pad with the pink strap is measuring my contractions.

I did have to stay in for a few hours (about 4 in the end) because the baby’s heartbeat was a little bit too high for the midwives to be completely happy, but eventually he settled down. I was sent home with the instruction to return to the hospital the next day (the 4^th May) at 4pm to be induced.

Blimey.

Logically, I knew that would be the next step if my contractions didn’t begin on their own overnight, because they can’t leave the baby out of the protection of the amniotic sac for very long, but still, eeep!

I asked the midwife what I needed to bring with me for the induction and she replied, “Everything. Once you come in tomorrow, you won’t be leaving until you’ve had the baby.” Double blimey.

Off I went home, hoping of course that my contractions would start overnight, would increase relatively quickly, and I’d be able to go into hospital the next morning, avoid induction and just pop a baby out.

No such luck, of course!

I did have twinges of pain throughout the night, and I found it very difficult to sleep because of the heat, the twinges and the fact that every time I moved, yet more waters came out. So I spent a good portion of the night sitting on towels and plastic bags on the sofa, making lists of housework to do throughout the Friday before I was due at the hospital.

To be honest, the only thing that stopped me actually doing those jobs overnight was the fact that I was too scared to move, lest I ruin the furniture or the floor with more leaking waters!

We spent Friday morning and early afternoon doing housework, making sure that when we returned from the hospital, we wouldn’t be greeted by a house that was stressful.

That afternoon, which was exactly one year to the day from when we found out we would need IVF to have a baby, we went into hospital to have our IVF baby induced. There’s some kind of poetry in that, I feel.