On Friday May 22nd, my due date I started to get niggly pains about 3 minutes apart at about 10pm and thought yippee it’s happening! The pains died down once I told Richard about them and he’d started filling the pool, and by midnight they had pretty much stopped so we went to bed at 1am.
On Saturday morning I was feeling a bit uncomfortable but still nothing regular so Richard went off to work on the new house and I played the waiting game. I continued to feel uncomfy all day with the odd bout of contractions but nothing major so we went out to Nando’s for our tea. By the evening they had all stopped aside from the odd uncomfortable feeling.
All day Sunday I felt fed up but only had the odd spell of achey type pains so went to bed at 11pm after just sitting around waiting for things to happen all day! As soon as I went to bed I started getting quite painful contractions every 10 to 15 minutes so took some paracetamol. That lasted until 2am when I decided to get up as I couldn’t sleep through them and considered filling the pool…and hey presto they stopped AGAIN!!!
On Monday I continued to get the odd pain and then spells of a few pains together and spells of an hour or so with nothing at all so still nothing regular so at lunch time I went to bed for a bit. By tea time the pains were starting to get more painful but still not regular, but I felt weird so we decided to call the midwife and I really wanted some gas and air at this point. We also called Louise to come and look after Caitlin and Noah. The midwife (Helen) arrived just after 6pm and I’m sure she thought we had called too early, and kept implying that she understood why we had called early after us misjudging with Noah. She started filling in the paperwork to say she had been and asked me if I wanted her to examine me, but also said she wouldn’t normally recommend me being examined at this point as she thought it was too early but would understand if I felt I wanted her too. Part of me wanted to know how far along I was but I was also really worried she’d say things weren’t happening at all. After a bit of deliberating I decided since she was there I’d go for it and then at least if nothing much was happening she could go home again and I could just get very depressed about a false start!! I could see her getting very surprised as she checked me over and announce I was actually at least 6cm dilated, she was definitely convinced I was barely in labour until that point! My contractions however continued to be really irregular and not any closer than 5 minutes apart so I can see why she was confused!
While all this was going on Richard was busy filling my pool and Helen said I could get in if I wanted and have some gas and air so I did and within about 2 minutes my waters went. She thought this would help speed up and regulate my contractions but it didn’t seem to!! Soon afterwards the second midwife arrived – Cathy. She was one of the midwives who had come after Noah was born and from what we could gather is a lot more experienced than Helen. Even though my contractions were still really irregular and even stopping for up to 15 minutes and still no quicker than 5 minutes apart she seemed to just know that things were still progressing. Cathy also kept telling Helen to get her hands out of the pool which was good as she was interfering a bit! She seemed obsessed with monitoring my temperature and pulse and the baby’s heartbeat, I think she was just fairly new to the job and so a home birth was probably a bit new and a big responsibility for her! Cathy was really nice, very laid back and was laughing with us about how she had planned to watch Britain’s got Talent! Richard then said she’d be ok because we’d be watching BGT and joked that the baby would probably be born to DJ Talent!
Helen was still not convinced labour was properly established and as it was almost time for her shift to end she called the next midwife to come and take over. Another midwife then arrived (also called Helen!!) who was the one I had seen at my last appointment and also a few times before that which was strange as I normally never see the same people again! Soon after Helen 2 arrived I started to push and after about 20 minutes of pushing through contractions that were STILL not coming fast or regularly the third King was born!! Strangely enough Britain’s got Talent had just started and Richards prediction was right and it was DJ Talent who was performing!!
So after a very long 3 nights and 3 days of on off contractions of varying strengths and recurrence a little boy was born at home under water. Although it was hard work it was nice as I was the one to bring him up from under the water and discover he was a boy which I never got to do with Caitlin, I then got to cut the cord.
He was 9lb 2oz and his apgar score was 9 at 1 minute and 10 at 5 minutes. He was 54cm long and his head was 35.5cm in circumference. He has quite a lot of dark hair unlike both Caitlin and Noah, but his face looks a lot like Noah did. And here “he” is at 20 minutes old…poor little thing will have a name soon!
3 kids and 6 and a half minis 