I feel like I need to start this blog post with a reintroduction – Hi, I’m Margot’s mum and this is my labour story.
I became a mum for the first time 6 weeks and 4 days ago to Margot Frances Wallace. Our baby girl arrived at 14:12 on the 4th March 2021 after an induced labour 15 hours earlier. I can honestly say, bringing her into the world was the most incredible experience of my life.
You can watch some of my labour story over on my YouTube channel.
At 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant my waters broke… well to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure if they had broken or if I’d just wet myself, again. this is something you become quite use to during the later stages of pregnancy. Sneezing, coughing, laughing, they all came with a little wee on the side. Luckily I have a friend who is a midwife, so the following morning, still not totally sure if I was just being a tad keen for my labour to be starting, I sent her a message on WhatsApp and she messaged back advising me to give the midwife unit a call to get seen asap. Within an hour it was confirmed that my waters had indeed broken (hurrah!) and that if I didn’t go in to labour naturally before 8pm that night I would have to be induced.
An induction had not been part of my birth plan, in fact I’d wanted to avoid being induced all together as I had heard so many things about it taking longer and being more painful than going into labour naturally. But those feelings all faded away, it was finally happening, one way or another, within the next 24 hours I was going to meet my little girl and that’s all I cared about.
I spent the rest of the day at home, repacking my hospital bag (again!), eating all of the carbs, bouncing on my ball and relaxing in the bath in the hope that my contractions would start. They never did and at 8pm we were in our birth suite and being briefed on what was going to happen next.
They started the first stage of my induction at around 9pm and by 1am I was having mild contractions. These continued steadily until 3am when I had the second part of the induction, the drip. It wasn’t long before my contractions had ramped up, rapidly becoming more regular and more intense. I gave the gas and air a whirl at around 7:30am but it just made me really sick. By now my contractions felt relentless and as soon as one had finished I was straight into the next with no time to recover in between.
After being examined the midwife broke the news to me that I was only 2cm dilated… ‘F*CK’ – I couldn’t control my response. I had been hoping to be at least 4cm’s by this stage, I was already exhausted, the sickness was kicking my ass physically and mentally and the pain, although I can’t remember how it felt now, was clearly becoming too much. I was offered an epidural, and knowing that it would likely take at least another 6 hours for me to be fully dilated without one, I quickly said yes! I also knew the importance of having to stay still while they performed the epidural and knew this would be near impossible if I left it any longer.
20 minutes after what felt like a bolt of electricity shoot down my right leg, the epidural was in full swing, I was numb from the waist down and was able to rest while my contractions continued without me feeling a thing, amazing! After 3 and half hours with a nap in between, I had reached 9 and a half centimetres and was getting ready to push.
I pushed for just under an hour. It wasn’t how I had imagined, it was such a calm environment, just the midwife, James and I, and as strange as it might sound we spent that hour laughing and joking and enjoying the experience.
In between each contraction I was picking songs to push to. I didn’t want relaxing spa music, I wanted pumped up rock and pop to get me in the zone. Margot arrived to a playlist of the Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, George Ezra and Kings of Leon. Before what was my last push the midwife told me to get my hands ready, I pushed as hard as I physically could and pulled her out and up on to my stomach.
I didn’t feel it at the time but I had torn. A rather gnarly secondary tear which the midwife stitched up while I had skin to skin with my beautiful little girl. That was probably the worst part of my recovery – once the epidural had worn off and the pain kicked in it was a solid 10 days of uncomfortable trips to the loo and making good use of that peri bottle I had purchased a few weeks before – but luckily, in that moment, I couldn’t feel a thing and was able to absorb those first precious moments with my baby and my husband in the most wonderful love bubble.
And here we are, 6 weeks on, enjoying every moment with this bundle of love. She changes so much from week to week but I’ll update you on that, along with my post labour and new born essentials, in my next blog post.
