The story of Tiggersbabe and Rebecca Isla

My husband was going away on a trip to London on 7th February, unavoidable on this occasion and my due date was 4th February. Anyway I’ve never completed the last 2 weeks of a pregnancy so we thought he’d have at least a couple of weeks at home with baby before he had to go away. Nothing was happening, so I was in foreign territory as I got to 39 weeks and beyond.

I asked the midwife if she would do a stretch and sweep for me at 39 weeks so they tried this, very understanding of the situation we were in. The midwife couldn’t perform it because the baby wasn’t far enough down in the pelvis, so 1 disappointed mummy!

Midwife spoke to the consultant on the Wednesday 31st Jan and my consultant agreed to induce me on Friday 2nd at 9am.

So we arrived promptly at 9am in the hospital and I wasn’t really expecting to be seen straight away but I was, I was checked in, and stuck on the monitor for a while so they could check the baby. At 10am Shiela, my midwife for the shift did an internal examination, she said I was 2-3cm dilated and she could break my waters or use the gel, the choice was mine. I chose to have the gel because I normally go really quickly after my waters are broken and I felt mentally I needed some time to build up to labour, maybe that sounds silly but that’s how I felt at that particular time. The consultant that was on duty that day also said he would prefer me to have the gel first so I feel I made the right choice there.

6 hours later at 4pm, the staff had changed and I had another lovely midwife called Lisa come and look after me. She performed another internal and I was 4-5cm so she said she would break my waters, this was at 4.35pm. This was done and she put me back on the monitor, my contractions picked up a little bit. Lisa asked me what my labours were like normally after my waters had gone and I told her that I usually go quickly. So she rushed off to get labour ward ready.

I was moved through to labour ward and the contractions stepped up again, they were about every 4 minutes at this stage but I didn’t feel they were lasting long. I felt I needed a bit of pain relief but was reluctant to have the pethadine injection as I felt I hadn’t needed it during my last labour but had got it anyway and it was too late. Lisa persuaded me to try the gas and air, previously I’ve refused it because in my first labour it made me sick but I took a few breaths of it and it wasn’t as bad as I remembered and I didn’t have time to think about it because another contraction came on the back of the first one. I could actually feel the baby moving down the birth canal, it was the weirdest sensation, then I felt the head coming, I wasn’t really pushing, but the breathing was doing the pushing for me, within 4 contractions the baby was born. My husband looked 3 times to see if it was a boy or a girl, I had convinced myself that she was going to be a boy, then that way I would be completely surprised if it was a girl. There haven’t been any boys born on my husband’s side of the family for 4 generations so you can understand my thoughts that this would be a boy!

Well he burst into tears, I confirmed to him that she was indeed a girl and then I burst into tears, it was a great feeling, even the midwife was crying!

She had come out with her hand up at her face so I only suffered minor grazes, nothing that needed stitching or anything. She was weighed, I had a guess of 7lbs 3oz as she was definitely heavier than my last, well that wasn’t difficult, he was only 6lbs 2 ½ oz! But imagine my surprise when she weighed in at 8lbs 3 ½ oz! I was well pleased with myself.

We came home on the Saturday and the rest of the kids are delighted with their new sister, Rebecca Isla.