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.