My Water Baby

On the 17th September 2017 at 01:26am, I gave birth to my 7.4lb little boy, Ripley Kit, after a beautiful and intense 24 hour natural labour.



FASHIONABLY LATE
My due date was the 8th September but I instinctively knew that I would be late.  I didn't obsess about this date or get stressed when there were zero signs of labour.  My bump was still comfortably compact so as far as I was concerned, the later baby arrived, the more time I had to indulge in the last few nights of undisturbed, precious sleep.

STRETCH & SWEEP
On the 12th September, the midwives suggested a sweep to get things moving but I decided to delay it since I didn't want to interfere with natures plan.  In some countries, you're simply given a due month instead of a specific date and I preferred this approach. At the same time, I wanted to try and avoid being induced (an artificial way of bringing on labour) so agreed on the less intrusive sweep if I went one week over my due date.

CONTRACTIONS
Dan and I had just finished watching an episode of Breaking Bad (late to the party, I know) when my contractions started at 1:30am on Saturday 16th September...I guess the sweep had worked!  I spent the night focusing on my breathing whilst timing the contractions via a phone app.
Exhausted after 9 hours of contractions, I decided it was time to pull out the Obi TENS Plus machine. This dinky gadget was an absolute lifesaver in aiding the pain.
At midday, my amazing midwife friend Amy (and her little baby Eran) came over to check how I was doing.  She advised that with my contractions coming every 4 minutes, I was ready to head to the hospital at 2pm.

HOSPITAL
The midwife didn't believe I was in labour when we got to the hospital because I was so calm - I guess that's the only negative to reading a hypnobirthing book. She told us to go home but I refused.  When she finally assessed me 2.5 hours later, I was 6cm dilated.

BIRTHING POOL
While the pool was filling up, Dan kept himself busy dotting tea lights around the room, linking our spotify to the speakers and spritzing lavender to keep me relaxed.
At this point I was still using the TENS machine.  I was too scared to remove it since it had been such a huge help up to this stage but you can't use it in water.  So, the midwife introduced me to gas and air and I instantly became BFF's with the mouth piece. 

Fast forward 8 hours and I don't know how my skin hadn't turned raisin textured from being in the water for such a long period.  Between that time, a catheter had been used to empty my bladder and my waters were forced to break with what looked like a knitting needle - this really helped speed things up.

At midnight, my body had it's own agenda and naturally started to push. I was exhausted and unexpectedly calm and didn't feel any pain when the head was coming out. Yes, it felt stingy but the contractions were way more brutal than this part.
Next were the shoulders which I thought would be agony but baby just shot out.  It was a perfect, beautiful birth (just a bit too long for my liking).

NO GOLDEN HOUR
Sadly we didn’t get the opportunity to have our ‘Golden Hour’ following the birth.  Ripley had some trouble coughing up the birthing liquid from his little lungs and needed assistance from the excellent staff at The Princess Alexandra Hospital whom spotted the problem immediately - for this we will be forever grateful.  The NHS take no chances and due to further monitoring we were unfortunately unable to spend the first two nights together which was really tough for me after just given birth - all I wanted to do was cuddle my baby.
I don't want to focus too much on this specifically since it was an intense and stressful period that Dan and I would like to keep private.    What I will say is that it made our love towards Ripley grow even stronger.  In the end, we spent 5 stressful, sleepless nights in hospital whilst Ripley finished his course of antibiotics, before rejoicing and leaving to begin our life as a family with a very happy and healthy Ripley Kit, our tough little cookie.