Olivia's very civilised water birth...

**chocolate** · 14-07-2010, 09:20pm

3 nights before the big day DS woke about 2am and I realised I was having period like cramps and a bloodyish show. It kept me awake for a while and I also had some fairly strong pains now and again. However, by morning everything stopped. Next two nights again lots of cramps and bloody show but all stopped in the morning.

On the third morning although the cramps and show stopped my waters broke at 9:30am. Luckily DH hadn't gone to work by this point so we decided that although nothing else happening he'd stay home and we'd send DS to his childminder.

At my insistence we then sat down for toast and I read DS a few stories and explained he was going to his childminder and Granny would pick him up later. By this point it was 10am and I was having a few pains, about 10 mins apart but they were easy to deal with.

I phoned the birth centre about 11am. The midwife asked how far apart contractions were - about 3-4 mins by now and lasting 1 min which I told her but half my brain just wasn't believing it. I was coping well with the contractions and didn't know whether I wanted to head in or not at that point. Given my 5.5hr first labour the midwife just said 'well I think you should head in, don't break any speed limits but make your way in'.

We arrived at the unit just before 12noon. The contractions had slowed a little but they soon got going again. I then got into the pool which was lovely. Fairly soon I felt, not exactly that I wanted to push but that I needed to let everything go down there. Think this is also the point where I gave up on the G&A. There weren't many contractions after that, I sort of groaned through them and felt out of my own body. It was very surreal. Between the contractions I seemed to swim back into the room and was quite lucid.

Olivia Grace made her entry into the world at 12:56pm and promptly floated behind me so there was a bit of manoeuvring to do before I saw her and got skin to skin cuddle.

Dad then had a cuddle and I just sat in the pool for a few minutes with all the yucky stuff floating around me

. I then got out for the jab and to deliver the placenta. Midwife got a shock at how quickly it arrived – needle was hardly out of my leg and it was on it’s way, midwife had to rush to get what she needed! Apparently she’d never seen one arrive like that in 20 years of practice.

We then had the soup and sandwiches the midwife had ordered for us when we arrived!!

We spend the afternoon having lots of cuddles with Olivia, making a few phone calls and left the unit about 5pm, getting ourselves home for tea!