Saturday, October 19, 2013

baby Olivia's birth story - Part One!

Wow. It's been a while since I wanted to sit and write this post but we're still settling into our new way of life over here and writing a blog post tends to be a little further down the "what to do while baby is sleeping" list and generally doesn't get reached! But at the moment I have a sleeping babe on my chest (the only time she has managed to fall asleep today thanks to some horrible wind!) and I thought I'd take the time to get started on our story...

As I've mentioned previously, we had some concerns that little miss was going to make her entrance quite early - at 36 weeks we had some contractions and the hospital advised me to finish up work as she was ready to come at any time (of course, we didn't know she was a "she" then!)

While lots of rest and couch time prevented her from coming that early, we did experience a lot of pre-labour work in the following weeks and it's here our story starts. On the Friday prior to Livie's birthday, I actually had consistent, working contractions from the early hours of the morning until about 5 pm - we were convinced we were going to meet our little bean that day! I was feeling really good about how everything was going and dealing with the pain well, but then all at once, I got this complete wave of exhaustion and need to lie down...and I listened to my body. Sadly, everything pretty much stopped at that point and we came to the realization that it was just more intense pre-labour work and it wasn't going to progress further.

40 weeks according to our scans - 2 days after our false start & 3 days before labour started
On the day labour actually started (Wednesday, 25th of September), we had a check up with our midwife at 8am, then my mum (who had stayed at our place for a few nights after the Friday false start...she couldn't help herself, she felt she was going to miss out if she went home! Hehe) and I went shopping in the morning for a few hours. It had been a while since I had been out and about for that amount of time and it was nice to go shopping for a while! However, it meant that later that evening, when the hubs and I decided to go grocery shopping and I started to feel a bit achy and have a bit of pressure, I just put it down to my unusual amount of standing/walking that day...and soldiered on! (I remember getting out of the car and saying to the hubs - "I might be a bit slow tonight because I'm a bit sore, so please be patient" :) )

As we went about our shopping (around 6pm), it became apparent that the pain I was getting was coming every ten minutes or so...and was getting to a point where I would physically have to stop walking and wait for it to pass. I had been reluctant to say anything to the hubs, since we had had so many days of pain that led to nothing, but at that point I turned to him and said, "Hmmm, maybe we should hurry this up a little..." He suggested just leaving then and there, but I convinced him that we should finish - we were expecting family over for dinner that night and if it turned out to be nothing, we needed to have food ready!

By the time we got home (the shopping centre is literally a 2 min car ride from our house!) the pain was coming every 5 mins and I had told the hubs that I thought he should call his sister and dad and tell them not to come. By the time we (and by that I mean he!) unpacked the car, the pain was 3 mins apart. It escalated pretty quickly and I rang my mum (who had decided to spend the night at home that night... of course!) to let her know that I thought that night, of all nights, was the night she should probably come back!

I should note here that one of the reasons I had not thought I was really in labour was because of how different my pain was - I felt absolutely nothing in my stomach and only had intense pain in my pelvis/hips/back. I should have known something was up then... but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

By the time my mum arrived, we had spoken with the on call caseload midwife (ours was of course off for the night as she was working the weekend!) and advised her what was going on and had planned to stay home as long as possible... however not long after Mum arrived we made the decision to head to the hospital because the pain had gotten so bad I felt I wouldn't be able to get in a car if we left it too much longer!

So, we did one last trek around the house, trying to think of anything we had missed that we would need, locked up and headed to hospital...

Part 2 coming soon!

39 weeks, 6 days according to our hospital due date. last shot before heading to hospital!
 

2 comments:

  1. Love your story so far! Can't wait to hear the rest :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awe, brings back memories :) Cant wait to hear the rest!
    Btw, LOVE the name Olivia - that's what Jaxon's name was going to be if he ended up being a girl lol

    ReplyDelete

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