Baby 5 - A Birth Story

I have had four babies before so I know how painful labour is, but still I found myself
looking forward to it in a strange way as I approached our due date with baby no 5. I
think it is knowing what comes at the end of the pain, knowing how worthwhile it all is
(and it helps knowing my labours tend to be quite speedy). I had convinced myself that I
was going to give birth on the Tuesday before my due date this time (my last three babies
have all come a few days early) so I woke up on Saturday morning determined to use the
weekend to get everything ready.

I did three loads of washing, built the crib and took Cora out for some special time as I
knew it would be her that will be most affected by the new arrival. We had a lovely
productive day and got home just after 4pm. Around 6pm, I noticed that I was getting
quite a few Braxton Hicks, the painless tightenings but I didn't think they would lead
anywhere so I carried on as normal. At 7pm, after having them painlessly for an hour,
they started to change and I wondered whether I could possibly be in early labour.
Because my plans for a home birth had been cancelled due to staff shortages, I decided to
ring up the hospital and find out what the options were if things progressed during the
evening and was told that the midwife led unit was also not able to take any more women
due to staff shortages but the labour ward had spaces when I felt ready to come in. We
left it that I would ring back if things progressed.

I called my mum next, who was on standby to look after the other children and told her
that I thought this could be it. I have a history of short labours so I knew I needed to get
plans into place early. My body was telling my to walk so I decided to go for a walk. As
it was already dark, I walked round to the local Asda and paced the aisles. With Cora,
my contractions came fast when I walked and stopped completely when I sat down and I
felt like this one would be the same. I came home and had a quick dinner and then
carried on pacing upstairs as things started to kick in more. Cora could sense that things
were happening I think and decided she wanted to hold my hand as we walked around the
house.

I didn't time the contractions and was still able to walk and talk through them, but when
my mum arrived around 7.45pm, I decided it was best to make the 15 minute drive to the
hospital and then I could walk around the grounds if I wasn't ready to go in yet, but at
least we were in the right place. We parked up just after 8pm and I decided we would go
straight in and explain that although I hadn't rung back, I was definitely in labour now.

We were taken into day-care/triage so they could assess whether I was ready for the
labour ward yet. They did my blood pressure and other checks and asked me how my
pain was on a scale of 1-10 - I answered a 7, and then left us whilst they checked me in
on the system. A few minutes later I felt strong pressure and my waters burst all over the
floor. My first thought was to panic about my boots as I hadn't brought any spare shoes
with me so I made Ed remove them before he went to get a midwife. They came back
and could see that things were progressing very quickly, so they helped me into a
wheelchair and raced me round to the labour ward. They knew I wanted the MLU so
they took me to the room with a birthing pool. As I stood up from the wheelchair I could
feel the baby's head coming, so I had two midwives peeling off my now very wet jeans as
I stood up leaning on the side of the pool and gave birth in two pushes to the most perfect
baby boy. The midwives passed him up to me and helped me to a bed and left the cord
for over 5 minutes before cutting it.