Holly's birth Story
I was very fortunate in that I had a very smooth pregnancy, and managed to avoid gestational diabetes, which I had developed in my first pregnancy. My main worry leading up to the birth was who would look after our older daughter Poppy (aged 19 months at the time). I had arranged a roster of people available to look after Poppy; however, as I had a definite date on which Holly would be born, we arranged for Johnny’s mum to come down from Birmingham to stay with Poppy while I was in hospital.
had acupuncture induction a couple of days before my induction date, and waited with bated breath for labour to start. However, it didn’t, so my husband Johnny and I went to the PRUH labour ward on Monday 14 September.
When I was examined, to my delight, I was 1cm dilated, so the midwife performed a sweep, rather than commencing an induction, as that could have broken my waters before the time was right. My husband and I walked up and down a lot of steps, and gradually the contractions increased in intensity and became closer together. I was using a TENS machine to help manage the intensity of the contractions.
At around 5pm, just as my husband was making a decision on whether he would go and pick up our daughter from nursery and take her home, the midwife reexamined me and said they wanted to break my waters to move things along. I was a bit reluctant, but they said that I would need to wait until the next morning otherwise, as the number of overnight staff was low. So I was moved to a delivery room, and my waters were broken. Once that happened, my contractions increased in intensity and frequency, so I started using gas and air, which was very effective.
I do remember there seemed to
Because I was over 40, I was booked in for an induction two days after Holly’s due date. I was very keen to avoid an induction, although I had had a successful induction the first time around. I