I’m nearing the end of my pregnancy.
At this stage in my first pregnancy I was starting to get pretty scared about delivering my baby. The fear of the pain, the after effects of it all and obviously anything going wrong kept me awake for weeks before my waters broke.
I had my birth plan all prepared:
*Water birth – didn’t happen
*No episiotomy – didn’t happen
*Active labour – didn’t happen
In fact labour was hard, harder than I even imagined it would be. My daughter was born at an angle and I was at the pushing stage for a lot longer than I should have been. With every push she came out a little and went back a little. It was hard. In the end I had to have an episiotomy as she was getting distressed. I think the fact that I had to labour lying down, legs in stirrups and all ( as I had been so sick) caused the labour to be longer than needed.
This time around even though I know it can be painful I’m looking forward to it. Labour for me is the finishing line of a particularly gruelling marathon. This pregnancy has sucked. I am not going into this labour with any real birth plan demands. I can’t have a water birth as I will need a cannula for the antibiotics but I am hoping to be more active and have a natural labour with just gas and air. This may not happen. And I am prepared for that.
I have my Tens machine and gym ball ready to go – I found the Tens machine such a help last time.
If I labour for 3 hours or 3 days she will be worth it.
When groups of women who have children or are pregnant get together the discussion about childbirth often crops up and we all tell our war stories/reminisce. Whilst I have heard some (OUCH) unpleasant things the one sentence you always hear is “I would do it all again tomorrow”
Whilst it sucks that as women we have to do this really hard job of carrying a baby for 9 months and then giving birth the feeing of euphoria and adrenaline you get after giving birth is incomparable. No other happiness/legal or illegal high could ever match it. I didn’t really sleep for 5 days after giving birth as we had to stay in hospital but I can’t remember a happier time in my life.
Did your labour/s go as planned? Does anyone’s? Are you nervous about giving birth?
Bump update:
If it helps, my first birth was nothing I hoped for (induction, epidural, lying down, no music, no distraction, not allowed to leave the bed), and my second birth was everything I wanted (my choice of position, no drugs, the people I wanted there). You’re having a second girl, like me, and you’re due almost a year later than my due date with C, so I’m sure it’ll be the same for you second time round 😉