It all started at 10:00 pm on the 8th of October 2018. That night Anthony and I called my midwife with increasingly regular contractions, my midwife decided that it would be best for us to wait at home for a little bit longer and continue to track my progress. We stayed up most of that night him playing on the X-box and me bouncing on my swiss ball playing Mooshi Monsters (I know how random but it was a great distraction I tell ya, and no I don't usually play it!) as the contractions continued they eventually became 2 mins apart. At 3 am the next day we called my midwife again and she came over. When she arrived and checked me I was 4-5 cm dilated.
She said we can go to the Bethlehem Birthing Center, so we got ready to leave and got there at about 3:45 am. . Still contracting at 7:30 am and my midwife checked how dilated I was, I was now 7 cm. My waters had not yet broken so with consent I allowed my midwife to break them for me and NO they didn't gush out like the movies! With the help of Clary Sage my contractions continued ( I hated the damn stuff once I started contracting, because I couldn’t stop ) At 11 am I went on the gas as my contractions were coming one after the other. The next few hours were spent with me being on IV for fluids, bouncing on my swiss ball with Anthony in front fanning me cool and my parents taking turns to stand behind me and keep me on the ball. At 12.30 pm I was still only 7 cm dilated because Kaliahs head was stuck and tilted in my pelvis and she wasn't able to come any lower. My midwife suggested we use the rebozo to get Kaliah to move into the right position. We then waited another 2 hours to see if I had dilated any more, which I hadn’t.
At 2:30 pm I received the news I had been dreading, that we had to go to the hospital, I was exhausted and still hadn’t dilated therefore was going to have to get an epidural. My experience at the hospital was great, I had the wobbliest damn wheelchair, I had to wait for 2 groups of people to go up the elevator before I could go and when I got to my room they didn’t even have the freaking gas on for a good hour (so mamas make sure they check your gas because I kept telling them it wasn’t working and no one bloody believed me until Anthony tested it out and surely enough I WAS BLOODY RIGHT!)
At 3 pm we arrived and my midwife checked me to see if anything had changed during car ride and if Kaliah had re-positioned , but nothing had changed, she was still STUCK. My midwife had to have a break as she had been on for more than 12 hours. Then at 4:10 pm just as the epidural was coming through the door, I had a contraction that felt like I needed to push. The midwife checked and Kaliah must have moved into the right position becasue I was now fully dilated. Even though I was exhausted I said no to the epidural and then pushed through and had our beautiful girl at 5:59pm on the 9th of October 2018.
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