Penny's story, UK - 1 hour labour for first baby

"I had my 1st child when I was 21. As a single mum I was terrified of giving birth but had decided I wanted as natural birth as possible. I was booked in at the midwife unit near my home with the hope of using gas and air only.

The day I went into labour it was extremely hot (August 05). My DD was due 29th August and on the 18th decided to go for a nice long walk with my family. We stopped for ice cream and I noticed that my hands had swollen and for some reason knew today would be the day. I didn't want to worry my mum so I didn't say anything but later decided to have a sleep once we got home as I knew I would need as much energy as possible.

After a 3 hour sleep I woke up with the feel of a pop; my waters had gone. 

I went down the stairs to tell my mum and half way down I was overcome with the most intense pain I had ever felt in my life. After a quick call to the maternity unit we were swiftly on our way. The contractions were coming thick and fast. When we arrived at hospital we tried buzzing but no answer, it was then that I felt the urge to push! Luckily my mum found a chair which I clambered over backwards and desperatlely resisted the urge to push while my mum franticly kept on buzzing. Eventually a very stressed midwife quickly showed us into a room and raced off (a lot of women were in labour that day).

I was climbing the walls with pain at this point and a midwife was sent down from the labour ward upstairs, she assumed that she would just be coming in to examine me and establish how far into labour I was. Well she took one look at me and knew it was imminent after a quick look she realised I was 9cm dilated and ready to go. The poor woman franticly tried to find gas and air and help me the best she could but the cylinder just wouldn't work. It was then that she asked if she could take me upstairs where she knows where everything is.

Wheeling my bed out and into the lift the urge to push was just too much and I had to start pushing much to the horror of the four men coming out of the lift, seconds later we were in a room. Two puffs of gas & air later and my DD was born.

My waters had broken at 6:15pm and she was born at 7:30pm.

A few hours later the original midwife who showed us into the first room came in to see me. She could not apologise enough for not realising how far into labour I was. Bless her she felt terrible. All the midwives were rushed off their feet and they work so, so hard. 

I wouldn't change my birth experience for anything, I'm just glad she wasn't born in the corridor or that lift."

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'.

Lauren's story, Coventry - unplanned home birth!

"My unexpected home birth!

So, its Thursday 21st January 2010, 4 long days over my due date and I have an antenatal appointment with my midwife. I sit and wait to see my midwife and finally go in about an hour late and she can tell I am about at the end of my tether, she does her usual checks and all seems well with baby number 2. She then offers me a stretch and sweep (joy) so I immediately accept. I never had one the first time as baby number 1 was early, and it really hurt!! In a haze of pain I vaguely remember my midwife saying that I was 2cms but at this point that did not go in as I had a very dull ache in my tummy, like a period pain that was all I could think about. The midwife said to me she had definitely dislodged my 'plug' and that hopefully this would be the start of my labour. I leave the midwife with everything crossed (well not my legs as I really, really wanted this baby out!) and still with the ache in my tummy, I get in the car and go home to my Mr who is waiting to go to work and my lovely daughter who is waiting for her tea. I had a quick conversation with my Mr before he shot off to work and told him what the midwife had done and that I had this pain in my lower tummy but he didn't really get it and went off to work. I carried on as normal, made mine and my daughter's tea, washed up, etc. I had a phone call from my sister about 6pm as she had been ringing everyday since a week before my due date as she was desperate to meet her new niece and I explained to her what had happened and having 2 children herself, she assured me I was on my way.

By 8pm the period type pain in my tummy had gone and I was soooo disappointed as I thought I was on my way to finally having my baby so I went to bed (in a strop) as normal. My Mr worked 2pm-10pm shift at that time so by the time he had got in from work and watched telly for a bit and whatever else he does before bed it was exactly 1:30 am when he came to bed as I remember waking up and looking at the clock. He got into bed and nodded straight off but I was awake now so I sat up to go to the toilet. I suddenly felt a bit of a 'gush' and I thought my waters had gone so I shuffled along the landing to the toilet to try and see if they had but as I sat down I had my first contraction. It was short and sharp and not too bad so I tried to carry on trying to go to the toilet when the 2nd contraction came, again short and sharp so I called out for my Mr who was sound asleep and couldn't hear me the first time! I shouted him until he woke up in typical man style, 'what, what, what's going on?' and I told him what had happened. He lies there for a minute while I get off the toilet and attempt to shuffle back down the landing when another contraction comes. I get back into the bedroom and another comes. My Mr soon sits up in bed and starts to take notice when I start shouting, 'ow, ow, ow, ow'! I tell him to start timing my contractions to see how long and how fast they are coming. Well I then have a huge contraction that just came out of the blue, nothing like the short sharp ones I had been having only minutes before. I tell my Mr to ring the babysitter (who was coming to look after my eldest daughter while we were at the hospital) and he replies with, 'are you sure it's time?'. I shout at him that yes I am sure, so he gets on the phone and starts ringing when another big contraction comes and I'm shouting again in pain and he says I have to go downstairs as the last thing we needed was our eldest waking up (suppose he was right). So I waddle down the stairs and make it to the bathroom downstairs just as another big contraction comes and I remember hanging off the door frame as my Mr is running down the stairs on the phone to the babysitter whilst throwing clothes on. He comes to me in the bathroom and says he is going to get the babysitter and he would be as quick as he could, as I have another contraction. I tell him I'm running a bath because that's what they tell you to do to ease the pain and I tell him to go and be as quick as he could. So off he goes and in the bath I get with contractions coming quicker and longer with every one.

It feels like an eternity has passed and he is still not back so I ring him to see where he is and he has only just got there to pick her up!!! So I scream at him to hurry up as I'm having a contraction as I'm on the phone and I slightly over react by telling him I'm 'dying' and that he needs to hurry up. I decide in between contractions that I would ring the maternity ward at the hospital and let them know what's going on and to ask their opinion. Well a very nice midwife answered just as I'm having yet another contraction and I have to let that pass before I can speak again. The lovely midwife on the other end tells me to get to the hospital as soon as I could so they could check me over. I thank her for her help and hang up from her and get out of the bath as I feel that I need to go to the toilet. As I get up out of the bath I notice that the bath has gone green but another contraction comes and I'm starting to feel out of it from the pain so that doesn't really go in. I now know that was probably when my waters went when I was in the bath, not when I was upstairs as originally thought. I make it to the toilet and I have this overwhelming urge to push so I do a little bit and I reach down and I can feel my baby's head!!! So I phone my Mr again to see where he is and he tells me he has just pulled back onto the drive and that he's home. He rushes in to me in the bathroom and I tell him to ring an ambulance because I can feel baby's head and that I am starting to push. He again asks if I'm sure for the second time that night and I scream that I am sure and show him all the blood that is all over the bathroom floor and he goes a bit of a funny colour and grabs the phone. By this time I'm practically out of it because of the pain that I'm in from the contractions and I only vaguely remember this part.

I remember my Mr running back into the bathroom on the phone and telling me to lie down; I do so by lying on the bathmat and then I get cramp in my leg and cant open my legs so he can't see what's going on down there. I remember him telling the person on the other end of the phone I couldn't open my legs because of the cramp, God knows what they said but I remember him pulling my legs open and him saying, 'I can see the head!'. Then I remember him saying, 'is the ambulance here yet?' to the person on the phone and I'm guessing they said yes as my Mr ran out of the bathroom. I remember shouting to him as he ran off, 'make sure they have drugs for me'. The next thing I knew 4 ambulance crew were in the bathroom with me and one of them gave me some gas and air, sweet, sweet gas and air, that I had for about 20 seconds before one of the woman ambulance crew members pulled the tube off the mouthpiece and said I couldn't have anymore because I had stopped pushing and was doing better without it, what a cow! Anyway the next thing I can remember was her telling me to push then telling me to pant then one big push and then I felt the pain go as I gave the last push and then there she was, my beautiful baby girl! At this point I still felt out of it and I could just about see my Mr's face as he wiped away tears and smiled at me. I looked down and there she was, my beautiful little girl being cleaned up by the ambulance crew. Then they handed her to me and one of them said, 'there she is, your little girl born at 2:42am'.

2:42am! That's 1 hour and 12 minutes since I had woke up!! Was that all? It felt like hours to me. The ambulance crew had asked my Mr to go and get something to put the baby in to keep her warm so he had gone off upstairs to get some towels and my bags that were supposed to have come to the hospital with me and I remember sitting on the bathroom floor holding my baby with a towel round her when one of the ambulance crew asked if they wanted them to cut the cord or if my Mr wanted to do it. I said that my Mr had wanted to do it as that's what we had planned in my birth plan but he was still upstairs at this point so we waited for him to come back down and then asked him. I think the stress of the night's events had got to him and he couldn't do it so the ambulance crew did it in the end. I remember my little girl going off for a cuddle with her daddy in the living room while I was still sat, stark naked due to being in the bath earlier, on the bathroom floor, because the ambulance crew could not deliver the placenta as they were not skilled enough to check if it was all there. They informed me though that the community midwife who was on duty was on her way and she would deliver it when she got there. One of them got me my dressing gown to put round me as it was January and I was sat on a cold wet bathmat on a tiled floor and said to me that I had done brilliantly; that is and probably always will be one of the nicest and appropriately timed words anyone has ever said to me! At some point not too much longer after that the midwife arrived and came in and gave me my injection in my leg to deliver the placenta and it was delivered and all accounted for! She checked me over and said I seemed OK, I didn't need any stitches (which was a huge relief as I had had 15 with my 1st) and that I could get up and sort myself out now. I remember thanking the ambulance crew and apologising for the fact they would probably be haunted by the image of me giving birth for the rest of their lives! They said not to be silly and congratulated me and went on their way. The midwife then checked my baby over and weighed her, etc and all was well with baby. Baby weighed 9lb 5oz!!! 9lb 5oz with no drugs and more worryingly no stitches either, and delivered in 1 hour and 12 minutes! The midwife finished off her paperwork and then went on her way as well. The next thing me and my Mr were looking at each other as if to say, did all that really just happen? Then we looked around and we had our 2nd beautiful girl asleep in her moses basket and somehow our eldest one still asleep upstairs in her bed!

It was the most bizzare thing to ever happen to me in my entire life and even now when I think about it I feel in shock that it happened so fast and there I was just at home with my baby as neither of us had to go to hospital and we were just there and had to get on with it. I feel that I missed out on that bit you have when you have your baby at the hospital where the midwife gets your baby their bottle and you get your lunch brought to you and the midwife helps you with a few things and it's just like a little bit of relaxing time after giving birth before you go home. I was just at home and less than 2 hours after giving birth I'm standing in the kitchen sterilising bottles. It was just madness but I wouldn't change it for the world! The ambulance crew were fantastic and I wish I had caught their names as I can not thank them enough, my partner either because if they had been 5 more minutes getting there he would have had to deliver our baby himself! By the time morning came my Mr was at the shop buying the newspapers from the day our baby was born, the headline on the front of our local paper was 'Baby Born on the Bathroom Floor' - a similar thing had happened in our city to someone else only days before!!"

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'.

Lucy's story, Midlands - quick labour, no pain relief and slow placenta

"Riley Jackson joined us in the world in a hurry on 23rd November at 6:51pm weighing 7lbs.

I’d been having contractions since late morning, but they were irregular anything from 15-25 minutes apart and not overly painful. So I just ignored them while carrying on with my day, throwing my son around and such. Trying not to get my hopes up because with Joshua I had contractions like this that then went away for 24 hours. By 4 – 4:30pm my contractions were every ten minutes apart and a lot more painful, I would have to stop what I was doing, bend over and grip something while breathing through them. Once the contraction was over I was able to carry on with what I was doing so part of me doubted that this could be the real thing. 

We sat down and ate dinner and by 5:15pm when Ant was deciding he had to go to work I was saying, "look you can’t, this is happening". He called work while I rang the hospital about 5:30pm and my contractions were five minutes apart. They advised me to come in so they could check me over. Ant called my parents to come and watch Joshua and twenty minutes later we were on our way to the hospital. The car journey was bloody agony, with my contractions coming every 2 -3 minutes. By the time I waddled across the car park, up a lift and along the worlds bloody longest corridor to the labour ward the contractions were coming thick and fast. I wasn’t having time to recover from them before the next arrived. No one was answering the bell on reception as stupidly they had no one manning the desk, people had been there longer than me waiting and I was getting a bit panicky. 

Ant followed someone through the doors when they opened and told the midwife my contractions were coming fast and would someone come. She dismissed him and sent him back out. Finally after what seemed like a life time but in reality was probably no more then 5-10 minutes someone appeared. Right as my water broke and I yelled ‘I need to push.’

The midwife told me to follow her and I honestly didn’t think I could walk, she got me in a wheel chair and rushed me to a delivery suite and told me to take my trousers off and get on the bed. I swear she wants to bloody try climbing onto a bed while your body is screaming at you to push. Somehow I managed it and by the time I had the head was half the way out, the midwife then preceded to make me stop pushing, I have no idea why but I told her after that was she mean. The head was then out, and again I had to stop pushing. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck – she didn’t tell me this till afterwards thankfully or I would have panicked. Before I had pushed his body out he was crying which is the MOST amazing sound. She scooped him up and plonked him onto my tummy and I was so relieved. 

I have no clue of times, neither does the midwife really but there was no more than ten minutes between my waters breaking and Riley being placed in my arms. Little squid didn’t hang around that’s for sure. 

I lay there feeding him thinking, 'wow, that was fast and scary' and I realised I actually panicked and thought I was going to give birth in reception in front of a room full of people. 

Unfortunately the next stage wasn’t so simple, even with the injection to help speed up the delivery of my placenta, it didn’t want to make an appearance. Crazy that I managed to deliver a baby with no pain relief but needed gas and air for the placenta. To be honest I think part of the reason they gave it to me was to calm me down. My entire body was shaking, shock I think. An hour later and lots of poking around by the midwife, (child birth really isn’t glamorous) and my placenta still hadn’t arrived. So in comes a doctor to take a look, and they are talking about trying something to help. 

Injecting whatever is in the injection into the cord. I think all that talk scared my placenta and an hour and ten minutes later it made an appearance. 

Finally it’s time to focus on Riley again, who’s been wrapped in blankets and placed in his cot. They weigh him and get him dressed, but he’s really cold. He’s given a warming mattress once I’m taken to the ward and this is left on all night. Meaning even if it was possible to sleep on a ward with crying babies and a woman moaning she was in pain there was no way I was going to be able to anyway as I was so worried he’d not warm up enough, or he’d get too warm with the mattress that I had to keep checking he was okay.

Thankfully when they took his temperature again in the morning it was fine, so they turned off the mattress and checked again an hour later and he was fine. So we were discharged at lunch time. 

Things have been going brilliantly at home, breastfeeding is going well and doesn’t seem as hard this time around. The first few days were, but once my milk came in baby became more enthusiastic and is now feeding about every two hours. 

Midwife came out today to weigh him and he’s 6lb 15oz, so he’s barely lost anything... makes me a very happy Mummy."

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'.