First a bit of background about my pregnancy.
If you have read Madison's birth story you will know she was 8 days late and encouraged by a sweep and ended in an emergency Cesarean Section. Baby number two was to be an attempted VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean) I had arranged to transfer my care to a different hospital to the one Madison was born in and was hoping for a 'normal' birth.
During the last few weeks of pregnancy number two I was being monitored for pre-eclampsia due too high blood pressure and protein in my urine. This along with the pain I now know is gall stones resulted in trips to our local maternity unit for monitoring. I had two sets of notes that needed to be filled in one for my home area and one for the hospital I transferred my care too. Only the local notes were being filled in by my midwife and not both as was required. I had been photocopying these to add to my chosen hospital's notes.
My care near the end of my pregnancy was appalling with me not being monitored closely enough. I had been sent to the maternity unit to be monitored a second time then my midwife didn't want to see me for three weeks. I had no consultant appointment so no plans for if I went overdue. My midwife told me I had the arrange the consultant appointmet myself. When I called the hospital I was told I couldn't do it as I needed to be reffered by my midwife who was by this point unavailable (found out after she had gone on holiday & that is why she wasn't seeing me or arranging a consultant app for me!) this resulted in me becoming very emotional and resulted in my mum calling the midwife unit to complain and ask for further advice and help. I was eventually seen twice more by a lovely midwife who monitored me and arranged the much needed consultant appointment my named midwife had refused to arrange for me!!
25th January 2013 (2 days overdue)
Looked at the clock....4.46 am wide awake suddenly with bad period like pains low in bump. Breathe through a couple not really regular.
Get up check on Moo, pee, take a couple of paracetamol and back to bed to play on my phone. Having more tightening's but breathing through them. Got consultant app at Salisbury today anyway so will see what they say.
The above was what I jotted down on the 'notes' app on my phone. Little did I know that was the beginning of a very eventful day.
I managed to breathe through the very irregular pains I was having. Madison woke and came into our bed and wanted me to read her a story which I tried to do in - between contractions. Tried to wake Rob up to fill him in on what was happening but he was having none of it and stayed asleep till a bit later on. I managed to get Madison and I up and dressed and sorted breakfast. I remember having the desire to hoover the downstairs which I did. That made my contractions ramp up in intensity.
My mum was due to come and collect Madison for the day. This was so that Rob and I could go and see the consultant at Salisbury hospital to discuss eviction plans if our baby decided not to come by itself. My mum arrived and I kissed Madison goodbye as I would normally and told her we would be seeing her later. I told my mum I was having 'pains' but honestly thought nothing much of it at that point as they were so irregular. Mum suggested that we take my hospital bag just in case.
Rob and I bundled into his works van (hospital bag in hand) it is a 40 min drive to the hospital from our house ad is quite a pleasant drive. Rob and I chatted and I continued to contract irregularly on the drive there. We arrived with a few minutes to spare until my appointment but there was no parking spaces outside the Maternity unit. We did a few rounds of the car park and eventually Rob dropped me off to go and check in at reception while he parked up.
In the waiting room I continued to contract irregularly, and my phone battery was slowly getting very low. They were running very behind so Rob popped out once to get food and once to add a new ticket to the van as our original one had run out. After almost 2 hours waiting we were called through. The midwife noticed I was contracting as I had to stop on one occasion she said ' have you been quietly going into labour in the waiting room' she asked me to give a urine sample which tested positive for protein, she took my blood pressure which was also high.
The midwife asked why my notes had not been filled in so I explained and handed over my other set of notes. She aplogised for leaving us waiting so long and said if they had bee properly informed of my high blood pressure etc by my midwife they wouldn't have left me in the waiting room so long. She said that she would be making a complaint about the care I had received etc as she was not happy. She went away to tell my consultant her findings while Rob and I waited. By this point my phone battery was at 20% and dissapearing fast.
My consultant entered the room and asked me about my contractions. He said due to the fact I was overdue, had protein in my urine, high blood pressure and was contracting he wanted to do an internal examination and see what was going on. I hopped up on the bed as the consultant searched for gloves, they had medium and small in the room but he wanted large......cue panicking from me (he was doing an internal remember lol). The consultant did and internal and confirmed I was fully effaced and he then continued to do a very very effective sweep with me gripping vice like onto his nurse's hand.
I cleaned up, re-dressed and re-grouped while he made some notes in my file. I sat back down next to Rob and the consultant turned and said 'I am sending you over the the labour ward, you will not be going home now until you have had your baby' he jotted down some more in my notes, said he hoped all goes well and that he wouldn't be seeing me (i.e. I get my VBAC) and he left.
Que silence and then Rob turns to me and says 'I'm not ready' ha ha ha I looked at him and said 'and you think I am?!!!' Quick text to my mum explaining whats happening and telling her i'll call in a bit and a text to @neljones who i'd been texting throughout the morning. Nel then tweeted ''SO @Kellit1085's baby will be coming today or tomorrow! She's gone down to labour ward to get contractions started! But only has 9% batt!'
