After a few weeks of unexpected and frustrating gestational diabetes, it was decided that my little one and I would benefit from speeding things up before he became too large to give birth to.
The date was set for a very unexpected induction (17th August), no more waiting till the 3rd September. With 3 days notice I spent my time walking, squatting, running up and down the stairs, drinking raspberry leaf tea, eating pineapples core and all. Anything to try and go into natural labour, my fear of inductions was impossible to shift, more so after experiencing the 'quick' but very painful cervical sweep. My efforts were futile and on Sunday 17th August I arrived at Chelsea & Westminster with the resignation that, as I had been warned, birth plans hardly ever go to plan.
With an initial double dose of gel administered I was free to walk around the vicinity for 5-6 hrs in which time the gel would either have started working or a second dose could be prescribed. Everything felt fine until the very end of this timescale when I started to feel contractions, these continued to increase and multiple hours after the gel should have worn off. Apparently my cervix was hyper sensitive and I was left with extremely frequent contractions that didn't give me any recovery time in between. To make matters worse the gel was not ripening my cervix at all. I seemed to be stuck on 3cm for a excruciating number of hours.
In terms of pain relief I tried yogic breathing which worked to an extent, TENs machine again effective at the beginning but not when combined with entonnox (gas and air). Strangely having the entonnox seemed to make the TENs machine tingle extremely uncomfortable. The last resort was pethadine in the hope that this would provide a much needed nap and break from the hyper contractions. To my dismay the pethadine never provided the rest-bit it promised and my hyper contractions continued.
Luckily on the morning of the 18th August 2014 I was finally ready to push baby out and at 12:35 my bundle of joy was born and all the pain and discomfort was over.
My immediate thoughts were- amazement at my body which I will never critique again as it took over and did an outstanding job when mentally I felt incapable. It is incredible how our bodies adapt and handle such a difficult situation. I will be forever thankful for its natural instincts because I honestly had no clue how it did all it did. I will be forever in my mums and husbands debt for being with me and being so incredibly brave when things looked a bit difficult and messy. For not running out screaming. Finally, of course to the outstanding Chelsea & Westminster midwives who were so friendly, reassuring and patient. They were my cheerleaders and it's thanks to them that I found the strength needed for the final pushes.
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| Welcome to the world my sunshine. Baby boy Aydin |
