During my antenatal classes it was strongly advised that once our contractions started we had to stay at home as long as possible, if we went to the hospital too early they would just send us home again.
The instructions for when to go in were as follows: wait until your contractions are 5 minutes apart and that they stay like this for 2 hours. Then have a shower to see if they will go away. After the 2 hours and a shower if they continue then that is the time to go to the hospital.
I got my first contraction at about 4am on the 25th, and they contiued every 25 minutes until about 11am, when they went down to every 1 1/2 hours. Then, at 3pm they started again and this time it felt like they meant it.
The contractions were now coming every 10 minutes, then every 8 minutes etc, but the pain was not bad, just something I had to concentrate on for about 60 seconds and then it went again.
At around 4pm the contractions got to 6 minutes and Adam was getting anxious to go to the hospital. I was fairly relaxed, and said we should wait for the 2 hours of 5 minutes.
At around 5pm I asked Adam to make me some pancakes and decided to have a shower. As I was about to shower my contractions went to 4 minutes one time and then when I was in the shower went straight to 3 minutes and stayed there. When I mentioned this to Adam after my shower he took control and off we went to the hospital. No pancakes!
We went down stairs and off to find a taxi, living in a busy city has its benifits, as in there are almost always taxis. Our problem was that we had to walk from the pedestrian area where our flat is to the main road. Around this time my contractions started to get quite painful, to the point that I had to stop and bend over with each one, every 3 minutes.
Having found a cab and taken it to the hospital we followed the same proceedure as the night before. The staff in the delivery area couldn't believe I was back already as the night before they had indicated it would probably be days yet. But there we were.
They did an examination and because I had not dilated very much they wanted to send me home again.
I would like to have seen them try. By this point my contractions were getting very painful. They wired me up to the baby heart beat machine and the contraction machine and then they could see how much pain each contraction was causing.
A while after they said that I could stay. Oh, why thank you.
Well, the pain got worse and worse, I wanted to cut my legs off. Because Eva was positioned low and had basically been ready to come out for a few weeks the pain was in my hips and thighs.
Adam said during each contraction my eyes were rolling into the back of my head, and even the staff were coming in and looking at the contraction machine and saying "poor thing".
At 9.30pm they said I could finally have an epidural. Thank God!
Epidurals are amazing and anyone who wants to go through child birth with out one is mad. Why suffer the pain? (of course it depends on the pain, and mine was bad). However, putting the epidural in is another matter completely.
I had to sit on the delivery table, slumped over showing my back to the anethetisit. I had a midwife holding my shoulders down and my hands lying on my knees palms up. I was told to relax and not move. Great! Remember I said I was having contractions every 3 minutes and during them my eyes were rolling and I wanted to cut my legs off, and now I had to tell them when I was having a contraction so they could stop and wait and I had to keep completely still, or they would have to stop and start again, fantastic!. The whole proceedure takes 15 minutes if they get it right first time. Wow!
I managed it but, oh my! It was really hard. They kept telling me to relax, yeah right!
But, then it was in and all sensation from my belly down had gone and with it the pain. Wonderful!
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