Amy started contractions at around 10pm while being monitored at the hospital. We had gone in to talk about inducing but the friendly mid-wives set about getting her ready for inducing. Had to wait an age before a less than sympathetic consultant told us off for suggesting that the hospital had got the dates wrong(they had).
Now it is 4am and we have been monitoring the contractions for 6 hours. They were coming every 3-5 minutes but have now calmed down to 6 minutes leaving us a lovely sleep in-between them. They are getting stronger now. I think the pattern will be similar to Jake, labouring through the night and then a morning birth.
It is now 21:00 and I have a beautiful baby daughter! It didn’t quite go to plan. At around 5am I called the labour ward and an hour later a community midwife arrived at the door. I set about getting the pool ready and filled. However, everything came crashing down when she said that we should go into hospital to have baby monitored. Also after a bodged internal examination she said that Amy had hardly dilated at all during the nights events.
Amy contractions were getting stronger and stronger. The midwife ‘advised’ going into the day assessment unit to be monitored. I took offence to this. Imagine a woman having strong contractions every few minutes having to wait hours before getting seen. In the end I got her to make an appointment for us. Blood from a stone anyone? This was academic though because at around 9am we decided enough was enough and we headed to the labour ward.
This was our trump card. While Amy was hobbling in our angel arrived in the form of a hospital volunteer who looked after us the whole time during labour. Our midwife was amazing too. They both stayed with us and were very gentle and patient towards Amy who was obviously having a horrible time of it.
An hour after we had arrived Amy was 5cm dilated. An hour after that her waters broke, A little later our beautiful baby daughter was born. At 11.46am weighing in at 7lb 1oz. The same as Jake. In fact she is the spitting image of Jake except she appears to have brown or green eyes!