At 9am sharp we arrived at the hospital and were buzzed through to the delivery suite. We were met at the door by Rachel, the midwife who had called us the evening before. We were then shown through to the room which would be our home for the next few hours and the induction process was explained to us, before more bloods were taken, a cannula put in (after one failed attempt thankfully the midwife got a consultant anaesthetist to do it!) and another covid test for good measure.
The start of the induction process was frankly pretty boring. I was to have a pessary inserted every three hours and then basically wait for contractions to start. It was explained there were five tablets in total and if I still wasn’t in labour then they would let me rest overnight and put me on a drip to bring on contractions the next morning. As someone who read a lot of birth stories through both my pregnancies, I knew the drip could be quite…..intense and vowed that if that couldn’t be avoided I would have an epidural first.
The first few pessaries didn’t really do anything except give me a fever that had me shivering under a pile of blankets one minute and stripping off the next. We passed the time by reading and listening to music and making our way through the impressive amount of snacks we had brought. At one point my urine was tested and it came back with elevated sugar - I had to admit to the midwife that it was probably just all the fruit pastilles I had just eaten!
At some point the midwife asked us if we had decided on a name for our boy. We had discussed loads of names during my pregnancy, and had come up with a shortlist. Henry was the frontrunner and my favourite. We looked at each other and silently agreed that Henry it was.
As day turned into evening, I started to feel some twinges and it was clear that the pessaries were doing something. Soon it was shift change and time to say goodbye to Rachel and hello to Sue who would be looking after us on the night shift. After 11 hours of being looked after so well by Rachel I was apprehensive about the change but soon we felt just as comfortable with Sue. The twinges developed into full on contractions and soon the gas and air was brought in and I had some paracetamol. Of course there were no worries about the impact of pain relief on Henry and so it was made clear that I could have whatever relief I needed, but I decided to “see how it goes'', which may have been a slight mistake.
I had gone into labour naturally with my daughter and so this was my first experience of induced labour. After a day of waiting for contractions to start, suddenly they were coming thick and fast, with no gap in between. Sue placed her hand on my bump to time and measure the contractions and agreed I wasn’t getting much of a break. I had some diamorphine which calmed the pain down for an hour or two but it started to wear off too soon for me to have another dose. I then suddenly thought “what on earth am I trying to be brave for” and asked for an epidural.
I was pretty out of it on gas and air when the anaesthetist came to talk through the epidural but he went through the risks and I signed the consent. Then I was told I couldn’t have the epidural until some additional blood tests were run, so more blood was taken and I agonisingly waited for them to come back. The gas and air wasn’t really sufficient any more and the diamorphine had worn off. At some point we were moved to a larger room in preparation for the epidural and delivery. Shortly after I had a sensation suspiciously like I needed to push, but I told myself that it couldn’t be as I hadn’t been in labour very long. Then I heard my husband ask the midwife about how long the epidural would be, and she replied that she thought it was nearly over and it was too late for that. I realised that it was a pushing sensation I could feel and after a couple of pushes all of a sudden Henry’s head was out. It seemed like ages until the next contraction but then all of a sudden he was here.
At 3.58am our boy Henry came into the world.