Anon's story, UK - overdue relatively 'easy' labour

"I am 26 and my partner is 34. We started trying for a baby in September 2009 and I fell pregnant on Boxing Day! My due date was Sep 25th and I was due to have a stretch and sweep on Oct 4th which I wasn't too keen on but I tried to stay as calm as I could and just let things happen naturally especially as it was our first baby.

On October 3rd 2010 I went for a wee after waking up and felt some strong period pain type twinges in my stomach. I got washed and dressed into my specially chosen most comfortable outfit for travelling to the hospital in (not that I'm over organised you understand!) and went downstairs to get some breakfast. We already knew we were having a boy and had already chosen a name so I spent all morning talking to 'Ollie' and asking him if he was ready to come and meet us yet.

I managed to eat 2 crumpets and have a cup of tea before being completely shattered and then had to have a lie down on my sofa - how glad am I now that I bought a wipe clean faux leather sofa!! At around 11am I called the maternity ward to see if this was the start of labour!

They advised me it quite possibly was but that it could all calm down again and not progress so there was little point going into the ward and being bored. I decided to just stay put and ring again if I felt that I was getting anywhere.

During parenting classes it had been often mentioned that the more mobile you can be the easier labour may be, so I duly paced the lounge and hall, pressing my forehead against my fists on a wall and leaning to get me through each contraction. My best friend was due over for coffee and she duly arrived, she said I was eerily quiet, the staying mobile was sapping all my energy and seeing her laughing at the red marks on my face from leaning was enough for me to give up and lie down again. She said I was the quietest she has ever known me she left soon after - I think she was a little spooked. I'm never quiet!

My partner was cooking a roast and I decided I wasn't going to be able to eat it. We rang my friend and asked her to come back to eat the lamb dinner. She came back and her and my partner sat down in our dining room for a lovely Sunday roast whilst I massaged my stomach cramps and then started to be sick! After they had eaten and spent the WHOLE time popping in and out checking on me, why I do not know as I was still flat out on the sofa, she decided to go again and left us with strict instructions to call if we needed ferrying to hospital.

At 3pm my partner decided I should put my TENS machine on otherwise I'd get no benefit from it. I cannot stress how much I believe this did for me; I found this a really effective pain relief. At 5.30pm I was still being quite sick and thought I may be going into full blown labour, so after speaking to the ward again they also agreed and asked me to make my way in.

It took around 30 minutes to leave the house as my contractions were quite strong so I had to keep stopping to breathe through them and press the boost button on my TENS. I rested on the gates at the bottom of our drive for around 10 mins, the neighbours must have been having a field day!

I found it hard to sit properly in the car as I felt like I was pushing the baby back in in a sense and so I had to sit on one hip but still clutching my TENS boost button! We made the 20 minute journey to the hospital and I again had a long wait outside to let a contraction pass before making it up to the ward and being buzzed in.

I was settled into a delivery suite and pretty much left too it, which was lovely - I envisaged nurses running around and Drs bugging me and instead they were there but only in the background and the whole experience was very calm and tranquil and it almost felt like only my partner and I were there. At about 7pm they told me that the TENS would no longer really be having an effect as I was so far into labour now and they wanted to check me out. They announced I was 8-10cm dilated and I should get into a top or gown to birth in. Around this time they gave me Entinox and we prepared to start concentrating on getting our baby out.

I hadn't felt my waters go and suddenly I felt something going on, apparently my baby had meconium-ed prior to delivery - this now meant rather than birthing on one side I would have to be on my back with a monitor attached, as sometimes this can be a sign of the baby being in stress. STRESS! I was about to stress... I had read a book which had described labour as 'popping a large watermelon out of your bum whilst simultaneously poking yourself with hot pokers, then times it by a thousand'. Quite why I decided to read this just before my due date I'll never know, however this was the only phrase I could bring to mind and now I was about to start bearing down!

The midwife stayed with us now and my friend had left after having the unfortunate front seat for my 'check' and seeing more than she had bargained for. My mother had arrived and was delighted when we said she could stay for the labour - this would be her first grandchild. After deciding I was concentrating too much on the Entinox the midwife took it away again... I had done 3 pushes by now.

The midwife said she wanted me to work with her so I woudn't tear, to do this she would tell me when to stop pushing. For anyone who has given birth I am sure you will agree half way through a push it is nigh impossible to stop pushing, anyhow I tried. I ended up spending about 5 minutes apologising for not being able to stop pushing. I asked for the Entinox back as I was finding the pushing quiet painful which they couldn't understand as I had already birthed the head, but I was struggling with the shoulders. One last push and all I could see were 2 white/grey hands in between my legs and some beautiful long fingers wriggling around!!!

I started with tummy ache at 9am and gave birth at 20.53pm to a 7lb 9oz little boy. I must admit on the whole it was an uncomfortable experience - the actual labour but not excruciating, hence women have more than one baby! I found the cramping/contractions uncomfortable as no matter how hard I massaged they still came strong and hard. And for me it didn't all get forgotten about as soon as I was holding him. My mother cut the cord and they gave me a injection to deliver the placenta. They checked over Ollie and did all the necessary little tests and then disappeared again.

Once we had Oliver we were left again to bond as a family which was lovely. We took photos, I got comfortable, my brother came in to see him and then I was bought tea and toast. Unfortunately after eating one piece I was violently sick which again is apparently normal. My little boy had very long fingernails and although I had not torn I was scratched internally and they could do nothing about that so when I was told to have a bath I found this very painful and had to get straight back out.

When I went up to the ward around 1am and my partner was sent home I finally had an overwhelming feeling of just how responsible I was for this tiny little bundle.I was checked out by the nurses and advised if I didn't have a wee that they could see I would have to have a catheter fitted. I soon managed to have a wee although the cardboard jug given to me to do the deed in so they could measure it had sprung a leak so I ran/waddled back to the ward to get a nurse to come and see before it leaked all over the bathroom floor in the fear that if it all leaked away I'd be made to have a catheter anyway!! A night of no sleep and staring at the beautiful bundle beside me then began. By 10am the next morning my partner was back and we were off home.

As this was my first baby I had no understanding of an easy labour, I still don't really as I have nothing to compare it too however I have heard other birth stories and can see how easy I did have it. I think everyone's different and ordinarily I have a very low pain threshold but something took over in me and I was wonder woman for a small part of one day and for me that was all I needed!"

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Anna's story, UK - pool labour with prolonged 2nd stage and forceps

"A delayed second stage forceps birth.

Sunday 2nd January 2011 about 8pm, just had dinner, sitting at home watching rubbish on TV and contractions started. Like bad period pains which came on, got more intense, and then disappeared. That happened every 3 mins or so, and lasted about 30 seconds.

I left it for about 2 hours to check the patterns weren't a figment of my imagination - and then phoned the midwife unit at the hospital. They said they were understaffed, so I'd have to go to labour ward instead.

We got there, buzzed and was let in, and eventually shown to an assessment room. A midwife called Anna with a very strong Polish accent came and met us, examined me, and put me on a trace for the best part of an hour. I was 3cm dilated, but not totally effaced. She said my "contractions" weren't contractions, but were tightenings. I could have slapped her!

So we came home, and sat it out. My TENS machine helped a bit, so I lay in bed with that on all night, didn't really sleep at all.

Monday 3rd January 2011 - by morning I was feeling quite sick, I think I decided it was the TENS machine, so took that off, and instead went for hanging over my yoga ball and trying to chill out. Contractions were still coming every 3 minutes up to 5 minutes, and lasting about 60 seconds. The intensity was increasing.

By that evening, I was so much less comfortable, they were more intense, and I wasn't coping brilliantly. TENS and paracetamol just weren't cutting it. I phoned the labour ward again, and they said to come in. So off we went again!

This time we met a midwife called Lisa, who took me straight to labour ward, rather than an assessment room. She examined me, and I was 3cm... but this time totally effaced, and the contractions were contractions. She said there wasn't a lot to do there and then, and suggested I could go home, or have a shot of Pethidine to help with the pain, and stay on a ward. Because Tom would have to go home, and we'd both be on our own, I decided not to have the Pethidine, but to go home instead. Got back home (after getting petrol and having several unpleasant contractions and therefore funny looks in the petrol station!) at about 10pm.

Tuesday 4th January 2011 - at about 3am, having not slept for the second night running because of the "discomfort", I decided to try having a bath, to see if that would ease things at all. Well... it didn't! I was still timing things, and it slowed the contractions down a little, but made them longer. Tom got up when I was in the bath, and sat with me with a worried look on his face! I decided to get out of the bath and phone the hospital again, they told me to come in.

I got in to an assessment room, met Claire the midwife, and she examined me (4cm and totally effaced), and put me on a trace, contractions were much stronger now, and I definitely needed some help with the pain. She gave me a shot of Pethidine, and told us we weren't going home without our baby... that's what I needed to hear. The Pethidine made me feel very warm and fuzzy, that's the only way I can describe it really. It did take the edge off the pain, and I got about half an hours sleep listening to the trace. Claire suggested we went for a walk around the park opposite the hospital, so we got outside just in time to see a crowd of people with big cameras standing in the middle of the park staring at the sky. Apparently there was a solar eclipse, but it was cloudy, so I think some very expensive cameras went unused! We did two laps of the park, with Tom predicting which lamp post we'd get to before the next contraction hit... and when it did I'd hang off his neck. Thank god for a tall husband!

When we got back from the walk, I got back on the bed in the assessment room and Claire brought us some tea and toast - having been aware we hadn't really eaten all night. The tea and toast was great, but the effects of the Pethidine hadn't left me and as soon as it went down, it bounced. I was very proud of not throwing up on myself... I was passed a bowl just in time!

After that joyful experience, we were told there was a room with a view down on labour ward for us. So we were moved to a room which overlooked the car park - and told that having a window was a massive benefit... well it was, but strangely enough I wanted the curtains closed so that no-one could gawp.

We were fairly soon introduced to Hilary the midwife and Beth the trainee. They were the day shift. They told us the room with the pool was free, and so we moved across the hall into there. I got into the pool at about 9.30am. It was lovely and I was quite comfortable in there.

Contractions were getting stronger and so I started on the gas and air. I can't say it took the pain away, but each contraction was a distant memory as soon as it was over. So much so that when Hilary was asking me how the contractions were, I had to say "ask me on the next one"!

After a little while in the pool I felt a pop and a gush, the strangest feeling, but it was obvious to me my waters had gone. It was like my ears had popped... but of course it wasn't my ears!

We had local radio playing, which matched my taste in music pretty well. Although I have no idea how many times we heard Take That, Ellie Goulding and Adele. No bad thing really!

I think the midwives decided I was transitional when Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing came on the radio and I just lost it. Absolutely sobbing. I can't really say now if it was transition or second stage, or if it was the sentimental side of me thinking of my amazing friends from the miscarriage groups one of whom has made that song very poignant - you know who you are!

At this point (about 12 noon I think) Hilary said, "I think we'll have a baby by 2pm". Well if that's not tempting fate, I don't know what is!

Hilary asked me to get out of the pool so she could examine me at about 1pm, I was 9cm dilated, but a tiny bit of my cervix was thicker again. They decided that my baby had turned back to back and possibly had changed head position so her chin was pointing upwards - not great news for a nice easy pool delivery.

They suggested I leant over to the left hand side to try and help the baby turn back, so I got in the pool and kept going, trying to lean over as much as possible.

I think it was at this point that I remembered I wanted to donate placenta/cord... anything that would be useful for stem cell research. So Hilary called in the lady who works for the donation team and I filled out some paperwork. They were very amused that I was in a fit state to do so!

At about 3pm, Hilary asked me to get out of the pool again so I could be examined to see if anything had changed. I was still 9cm, and still have this lip on my cervix. At this point, the contractions were making me pretty tired, and were quite intense, but I had no urge to push, so it was declared I had a delayed second stage and that a Syntocinon drip was a good idea.

I then asked for an epidural, because I was scared of not being able to cope when it got more intense than it was.

The anaesthetist was called, and the obstetrician came in to set up the drip. I felt a bit of a failure, but had a weird feeling that I'd always need help... so went with it.

There was a change in shift of midwives at this point, so in came Fanny the French midwife (yes really). We had a good chat, and it turns out she knows my obstetrician friend in Poole... small world!

The epidural was absolutely fine while being placed, the anaesthetist was very complementary about my ability to stay still while having it administered. He said he hadn't had a lady at 9cm who could stay as still before.

Unfortunately the epidural didn't quite do it's job. It was perfect down my left hand side, totally numb, and couldn't move my left leg at all. But on the right hand side, it didn't completely work. I had a pocket of pain on my right hand side, in fact it felt like I had a big bubble of trapped wind (who knows, maybe I did!). Because the baby had turned back to back, they wanted me to lie on my left, and this was just impossibly agonising, so no matter how many times they suggested it, I couldn't do it.

I think at some point here, there was another change of midwife, and we met Lottie - who I think was a trainee, or recently qualified - she was being supervised by Lisa who we had met the night before. I didn't warm to Lottie... but by this stage I wasn't warming to anyone!

The drip kept getting upped... which I hated. I really do think it's quite an evil invention. The obstetrician came in, examined me and finally the lip in my cervix had gone and I was fully dilated. Time for pushing.

But there was still no urge to push, of course the epidural had taken that away. So I was told to push anyway. I started pushing, and kept being told to push into my bottom. Well, I couldn't feel my bottom, all I could feel was this pocket of pain on my right hand side. So every time I pushed, it hurt. I wanted the gas and air still... but they kept taking it off me so that I would use my breath to push, not use it for gas and air.

So pushing wasn't going well, and the obstetrician came in (a different one now!). She was very unhappy with me, as I had pretty much given up pushing as I couldn't feel any urge, any progress and it just hurt more and more. She said I had 30 minutes to push the baby down or they were taking me to theatre. She also doubled the dose of the Syntocinon drip at this point - so I told her she was inhumane!

I knew I had to keep going and didn't really want a section (although if anyone had said it was a possibility I'd have said 'just do it). So I pushed and pushed and pushed with all my might. In a little under half an hour, I had pushed pretty well and they could see the baby's head. Thankfully the baby's obs were absolutely fine the whole time, no distress at all. I was so tired, that they took pity on me (I think you could call it that) and wheeled in a forceps kit, and the ventouse machine. They were telling me all about the ventouse machine - but then suddenly I was having the forceps positioned.

The obstetrician told me it would be at least 3 or 4 pushes for the head, and then the same for the body. Well... one push later the head was out, and then a half push later, the body was out. We were told we had a little girl... it was such a shock. I don't know why as for the first half of my pregnancy I was convinced she was a she! It was also a shock that she had so much hair!

Tom was handed a pair of scissors and told to cut the cord - he hadn't been sure he wanted to, but the scary obstetrician didn't leave him with much choice! Our daughter was handed to me and she lay on my chest for a minute or so. The paediatrician then had to check her over because it was an instrumental birth.

I had had a cut, and then started losing blood (750mls in total). Our daughter was declared fine (10 and 10 on her APGAR) so handed to Daddy while I was stitched and sorted. Once that was complete, she was weighed, and then handed back to me.

She weighed 4535g at birth, and was born at 22.12pm on Tuesday 4th January 2011. She was 13 days overdue, and just beat the appointment we had for induction on 5th Jan. Her due date was 22/12 - so numerically she arrived on time, it was the time, not the date though!

The name Sadie Beatrice was at the top of our list for a girl for the whole of our pregnancy, and so at some point I said to Tom, "is she our Sadie then?" and he said yes with a big grin.

We finally brought her home on Friday 7th January and I can honestly say I have never been as happy to get her home. She's changed our lives in so many ways."

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Anon's story, UK - overdue home waterbirth

"I'd had to fight to keep my homebirth because I was past term + 14 by scan dates, although that was a week ahead of where I was by LMP & ovulation (so according to the scans I was already a week pregnant when I started my last period!) and I have a strong family history of "late" babies. Had to see the consultant at T+15 (Monday) and the one I saw basically bullied me into a hospital birth, which left me me very upset (mainly because I dreaded the thought of being strapped up to monitors the whole time, which he told me I'd have to be because I was now "high risk"), but then I went home and researched my position and the risks involved. Basically the NHS claim that the stillbirth rate trebles after 42 weeks is based on very dodgy - not to mention old - data, and more recent research shows that the risk only really begins to rise significantly after 43 completed weeks. (In fact at 42 weeks the risk is only about the same as at 38 weeks!) So I wrote a letter to the Supervisor of Midwives (based on the one on www.homebirth.org.uk but with some personal justification added) saying that I was continuing with my plans for a homebirth. Handed it in at the antenatal clinic when I went for monitoring on Tuesday, and also showed a copy to the nice mw who was doing my monitoring, and she took it upon herself to make a phone call and put a copy of the letter in my file to make sure that the message got through. I'd been booked in for induction on the 11th if he hadn't appeared by then; considered backtracking on that too, but decided to stick with it in the end.

On Tues night / Wed morning I got up for my customary 3am loo visit and things felt a bit wet, so I put in a pad and went back to bed. Contractions started at 4.10am, about 10 mins apart and lasting 45-60 seconds. I was feeling them in my back to begin with, and had had no back pain at all up to then, so that was how I knew they were the real thing starting. Around 5.40 I called the hospital (having been told to call early in labour since it was a homebirth) and at 6.30 the on-call mw came round. She established that I was 2-3cm and "nicely effaced" (I'd had 4 sweeps, the last one at T+13, and each time was 1-2 or 2cm but with cervix still long & posterior, so it was a relief to hear that I was actually progressing, especially as the trickling seemed to have petered out by then) and stayed for about an hour. I was coping fine by breathing through the contractions - using HypnoBirthing techniques - so after that she left me to wait for the community mws to come on duty. The lead mw arrived around 9.40 and was very impressed that I was on the Internet in between contractions right up until I got into the pool at 4cm! She told me that because I was beyond T+14 my case was outside their normal protocol and so they had to have a third, supervisory, midwife present for the birth, and they also needed to listen in to the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler every 15 minutes. That kind of monitoring was no problem at all! The second mw was my usual community mw, so it was nice to have someone there whom I already knew, and the supervisor (consultant midwife) was delighted to be asked to attend a home waterbirth because it's something she hardly ever gets to do in her current role.

At 11.40 I was starting to groan through the contractions (though I was still getting a decent break in between - I think the interval was about 7 minutes, and I don't think they were lasting more than a minute or so) so I was examined and told I was 3-4cm and could get into the pool when I wanted to. I pottered around online for a little bit longer then decided it was time to get into the water. Almost as soon as I got in, contractions started to pick up and I had two without a break in between - though apart from that they never really got to the stage of coming too thick & fast to give me a breather. Started using gas & air at 12.30 and was soon bellowing my way through the contractions (DH said I sounded like a moose!). The hardest thing was not being able to make a single out-breath last the whole contraction, and having to stop and inhale. I'm not sure how much the gas & air actually helped but I wasn't about to stop using it to find out! The mws were great, very encouraging but respecting my request to be left to get on with it as far as possible. I started to feel the urge to push at 12.48 (according to my notes) but it still took a while after that: my waters went with a big "pop" at 1.32, the mw had a quick feel at 2.12 and said the birth was imminent, and Xander was born at 2.19. I fished him out of the water myself and within a few minutes he latched on and started to feed. We noted that he still had loads of vernix on him - not post-mature by any means! 

One mw estimated his weight at about 7 1/2 pounds but in fact he turned out to be a whopping 9lb 7oz when weighed! Not only that, but I realised later, when I looked at his charts in the red book, that he had an enormous head - just short of the 99.8th centile line for boys and would have been off the scale for girls - in other words, if you were to line up 300 newborns in order of head circumference then he'd probably be the biggest!

We were left skin-to-skin for nearly an hour and I could feel the uterus contracting, but after nearly an hour the placenta hadn't yet come out (I didn't realise I had to push it out!) so I was asked to get out of the pool so that it could be given a gentle helping hand (I had asked that the cord not be pulled). I managed to stand up but couldn't lift my leg over the side of the pool, but gravity, a bit of bearing down and some very gentle coaxing by the mw got the placenta out intact within a minute or two. Left the pool water rather red though!

Blood loss estimated at 350-400ml, and I had a 2nd-degree tear - with hindsight, it was no wonder given the size of his head! - but it was left unstitched as suturing would have required a trip to hospital. (It healed up OK.) The after-pains were a lot worse than they were with DD, but I gather that's normal for 2nd & subsequent babies - and they did seem do their job very effectively, according to the mw when she visited the next morning. Was told by the lead mw that I shouldn't take ibuprofen if breastfeeding, which was news to me (and to my normal mw!) but the paracetamol wasn't helping so I looked it up online and the NHS site said that small amounts get into breastmilk but it's unlikely to harm the baby, so I went ahead and took it anyway.

Incidentally, it turned out that both of my children were born at T+10 by my dates - if that's not consistent then I don't know what is!"

Click here for a link to comprehensive home birthing information

Submit your story to marvellousmummies@live.co.uk - please state whether you would like your name and location published otherwise by default you will become 'Anon'.