My Birth Story- Part One

I was already 40 weeks pregnant and about ready to shove my hand up there and yank my baby out because I was so tired of being pregnant.

Hi Britzie’s so I’ve been a new mom for just over a week now to the most beautiful little girl(Surprise, Surprise) so writing this blog has turned out to be harder than I expected. This is now my third attempt three days later *sigh*. You know what they say third times a charm ha-ha.

This post has been divided into three separate parts as it was rather long. I feel like any birth story that exceeds 24 hours or a single post should be categorized as a thriller ha-ha. You are more than welcome to read all three parts or just skip right to the end. Happy reading my loves.

The Beginning:

My story starts on Monday the 12th of February 2018 I was already 40 weeks pregnant and about ready to shove my hand up there and yank my baby out because I was so tired of being pregnant. At this point, I had tried just about everything you can find on the internet to induce labor but it’s true your baby will come when your baby is ready. My contractions had started the day before, although I was not too sure if they were actually contractions since they would go away for an hour and then come back again stronger than ever by the Monday there were no one-hour intervals anymore so I decided to make my way to the clinic.

When they did my checkup, I was only 1/2 a centimeter dilated so I asked the nurse if I could go home and come back at a later stage as I was not too keen on spending all that time at the clinic by myself. The nurse agreed and said that I should return when my contractions were 1 minute apart. When I got home, I finally packed my hospital bag and tried to get some sleep. This was impossible though since I was so uncomfortable and in so much pain that sleep was not an option for me. By midnight I was pacing back and forth around the room because my contractions started to feel like something out of a horror movie. My husband refused to let me stay home a second longer and took me right back to the clinic.

When I got to the clinic the nurses did another checkup and I was still just 1/2 a centimeter dilated so they decided to sedate me as this speeds up the labor process. I was hoping it would help me sleep but that did not happen. I was starting to feel a little stressed out as I did not understand why it was all dragging out like this or why I was in so much of pain and not being able to sleep did not help at all. After about 3 hours the nurses checked me again and still no improvement, 3 hours later and it was still the same. The nurses then decided that I would have to go to the government hospital for a further checkup as my situation was becoming a serious concern to them.

This was not the best news for me. Once I had made the decision to make use of government facilities I had prayed that I would not have to go to the hospital as I had heard so many terrible stories of mothers losing their babies but surprisingly enough at that point an indescribable calm had taken over me and I realized that I had no control over this situation and I just had to have faith that everything would be fine. Once we got to the hospital, they did another checkup but I was now 3 centimeters dilated which was an improvement. They strapped me to one of those contraction machines, at this point I reached a bit of a low as I was all alone and in so much of pain, they also don’t allow you to move so I had nurses that were constantly annoyed with me as I could not keep still during my contractions.

When I finally saw the doctor, she advised that once I reached 4 cm, I would be taken to the labor ward. I told her about the pain I was in and how I had not eaten because the pain made me nauseous, I also told her that I had not slept in days she advised that I could take an epidural as this would ease the pain and let me get some rest as I needed my strength for my labor. I had read so much about the epidural and I so much wanted a drug free birth so even though I reached a point where I could not take the pain anymore, I still tried to be strong and go ahead without any medication. At around 11 pm I was now 4 cm dilated and they moved me to the labor ward.