Chontelle's story - Vincent

VINCENT

With an uneventful pregnancy, apart from Braxton Hicks since 30 weeks, and pre-labour for two weeks, we thought our baby would never arrive. As it turns out, he was born a day before the two-week mark of having pre-labour. Here's what happened to us.

I had my show on Tuesday morning and was having really painful cramps but they had not gotten long enough or strong enough to do anything about. I went to bed about 10 that night and woke at midnight in a lot more pain. I didn't manage to get back to sleep and by 2.30am, the pains were strong and regular so we started timing them. My contractions were lasting from 50 to 90 seconds and were averaging 7 minutes apart, then went down to 3-4 minutes apart after a couple of hours.

Our plan all along was to stay home as long as I could bear the pain and as long as I could handle things. I had a bath at 4am and even this did not ease the pains. Of course, by now I knew there was no way Andrew would be going to work that day. As Melissa told us, you certainly know it's the real thing when it happens!

By 5.45am, I couldn't handle doing it on my own any more and felt ready to go to the hospital. I woke Andy and told him I was about to ring the midwife. I rang her and had two contractions while talking to her. She knew I was definitely ready for the hospital, so she got off the phone to have a shower and breakfast. She rang us a little while later, saying to head into the hospital when we were ready, as they were expecting us. We got there at about 7.10am.

Upon examination about 7.30/8am, I was 4cm dilated and hopped in the shower to see if it would help with the pain. The shower was wonderful! I could keep standing and moving my legs, and I also had the heat on my lower back.

Andrew and I did a few walks around the waiting area, I circled chairs and stools in our room, and about 10.30/11am I hopped in the spa bath -- something I would definitely recommend. I was able to totally relax, and even almost fell asleep between contractions.

I got out to be checked and was 6cm dilated. It was now 12.15pm and the midwife broke my waters. Boy, was that a weird feeling. There was a little bit of meconium in the water, so they monitored baby for a while to check whether the meconium was due to maturity or distress. He was fine, so I was allowed off the monitor.

Come 1.30pm, I had not progressed any further but the contractions were so strong I couldn't handle it any longer, so we opted for the dreaded epidural. That thing is a godsend, I tell you! It took almost an hour for that to arrive and we think that in that time, I had actually fully dilated but the midwife hadn't checked as I was in so much pain.

The gas was really good, too, apart from the fact that I hated feeling like I couldn't control my body. Once I had the epidural, things eased a lot. I still had really bad cramps, but they weren't the strong contractions that I had been having so the midwife put me on the syntocinon drip. I already was having IV liquids.

I started pushing about 3.20pm and Vincent arrived at 4.06pm. He weighed in at 8lb 4oz. So after having a reasonably easy and controlled labour, although a decent length, the second stage was a record 46 minutes! Hooray for some things!