SAMANTHA'S BIRTH STORY

Sunday came and still nothing had happened. At lunchtime, while I was doing some housework, I felt a trickle in my pants and said to Steve, my husband, that I thought my waters had broken. He said, what do you mean, you think they have broken. I replied that it was different to the previous pregnancy when they had broken with a gush, this time it was just a trickle, and it could be that my hind waters had broken. I rang the hospital and spoke to a midwife who suggested I come in for assessment, they would test to see if it was amniotic fluid.

I arrived at the hospital at 2pm and they tested and said that it was definitely amniotic fluid and that the fluid was meconium stained which meant that the baby at some stage had been stressed. They put a foetal monitor on me and said it could be better, that I was having contractions 3 minutes apart and that I wouldn't be going home that day.

I was excited that the baby would be born later that day, I was so tired of being pregnant and couldn't wait to meet our baby.

My obstetrician was contacted and because my amniotic fluid was meconium stained, he decided that he needed to get the labour progressing as quickly as possible and not wait for my body to do it by itself. A drip of syntocinin was put into my arm to get the contractions happening more quickly. They went from every 3 minutes to 2.5 minutes very quickly, but an examination an hour later revealed I was still only 3cm dilated. It was difficult for the midwife to assess my labour without the monitor as I felt no pains with my contractions and didn't even know I was having contractions.

My contractions were coming more quickly, now 2 minutes apart with little rest in between (but I still couldn't feel them). I knew from my previous labour that I wouldn't feel any pain from the contractions until it was too late for pain relief so I decided to have an epidural inserted. The anaethetist duly arrived and did his bit, all the while I was having intense contractions (according to the monitor) but still could not feel them. The epidural was a cocktail, which meant that I could still walk around if I wanted to and could still feel all the pressure and sensations that go along with labour but not feel any pain.

The next examination revealed I was 6cm dilated, so getting there! I could tell when I was having a contraction but was still blissfullly unaware of any pain.

Shortly after, I told the midwife that I needed to go to the toilet and do a pooh, she looked at me and shook her head and said there was no way I was going to do that, she quickly examined me and found I was 9.5cm dilated. She quickly phoned my Doctor to get there as soon as possible. Meanwhile I was getting the urge to push. With the first push the forewaters (amniotic fluid) broke and it gushed out everywhere. The two midwives and my husband leapt a foot into the air and backwards in order to escape the gush and quickly tried to clean up before the next push. The next push and the head was crowning. The midwife said, pant, I said, I don't want to pant, I want to push, which I did. The head came out followed with another push by the body and another wave of amniotic fluid. I got a second degree tear which required stitching, but I would not have even known I had stitches, I had no pain whatsoever. My Doctor arrived shortly after Samantha was born. I looked down at my baby and said, it's a girl, and she came to me for a cuddle. She was the most beautiful baby and I loved her the minute I laid my eyes on her. Her apgars were 9 and 10. We spent a couple of hours in the delivery room, breastfeeding, having Samantha weighed and bathed, having a shower myself, before transferring to my room.

The labour was 5 hours and 50 minutes, and I didn't feel a scrap of pain the entire time, I had a mirror to see what was happening and felt more in control with this third birth than I had with my previous two and was really happy about how the whole process went.