Robert decided it was time!

Tempi · October 2014

So, I've mostly been a lurker for the last few months, but all of you ladies have been incredibly helpful. Hopefully my (early) birth story may help someone too!

I was diagnosed with GD, but we were thankfully able to control it with diet. I was getting checked every other week at the hospital as well as with my midwife so we had a lot of care. The ultrasounds showed a large (90+ percentile) baby with a giant head, although proportionate at least. At 37w2d my water broke spontaneously waiting in line for dinner burritos/salads... Yeah, I also had the "was that my water or did I just pee myself??" moment. I didn't start contractions until about 2am, and laboured at home (I love baths for this!) until about 6am when we called the midwife.

Just after 7am I was 7-8 cm dilated and fully effaced so we decided to head to the hospital. Thankfully traffic wasn't too bad as the back labour was not fun sitting down! I started to push just before 9am but my contractions started to space apart and get shorter after a few hours. This part was a marathon and not fun at all. I hadn't opted for an epidural so I was able to move and get in the bath, but finally we decided that nipple stimulation and homeopathics just weren't helping enough and they called for pitocin.

The pitocin took a little while to kick in, but after upping the dose a few times, we were going again. The little one's head was turned so kept bumping up against my pubic bone, but finally at 4:02pm and an episiotomy, we found out we had a little boy! We went skin to skin immediately and he started to feed happily. He was born at 7lbs 7oz and 21" long, so certainly not too little for being early!

Due to the GD, they were a little concerned with his blood sugar which was low. I hadn't really eaten much in the past 20-odd hours besides juice and arrowroots, so I guess that's normal! We had to stay overnight in the hospital and he passed the blood tests with flying colours (although the nurses had a protocol and he did get three formula feeds during that time). We went home the next afternoon as a new family and could not be more thrilled.

During the long pushing, there were times I just wanted to give up. I was tired, I was sore, I was fed up with the back pain and people all up in my business! What really helped keep me going was that during our prenatal classes we had had everything explained to us, what the muscles were doing and how the most painful part was "over" once the pushing started.

I realize this is a novel for a lurker, but I hope I can still be N14 even though Robbie was early!