I can't do my positive birth story about Tegan and not do my one about Anwen. It is so true what they say that every birth is different and you should try not to think too much about other people's experience. Anwen was completely different to Tegan.
My pregnancy this time round I found a lot harder. I think this was down to being older but also because I had a toddler to look after at the same time. Also when I was 5 months pregnant, Tegan decided that she no longer needed an afternoon nap, this I found very exhausting as it was a time I could have really done with. I also never thought that at nearly full term I would be scrabbling up a soft play to rescue Tegan who had got scared. I also seemed to ache more, but you're not getting as much rest as when you're pregnant with your first. I was very conscious that I wanted to capture all the mile stones through my pregnancy like I did with Tegan as not to treat them differently.
Both my daughters were planned, although I always said I never wanted a child born in November, December or January. However, Mr Bus convinced me that as we were older we might take longer conceiving this time around and so it might come down to a December baby or no baby, so we just went with it. Wham!! Caught straight away then and so we were expecting Anwen on 5th December. She was really good and she arrived on 6th December.
This time I was able to chose to have my baby at the local midwifery centre just around the corner rather than the hospital over 30mins away. This put me much more at ease and it was a fantastic experience.
5th December came and my mum had come up to help with things just in case I was on time or a little late. I started having small contractions that day but they didn't come to anything. Luckily Mr bus came home that evening with his things from work to be able to work from home. Thank goodness he did. I had a midwife appointment the following day where I had already asked to have a sweep if things weren't progressing as I didn't want to wait the two weeks as Christmas was coming and fair play the midwifes were more than accommodating. I turned up for my appointment with my mum and Tegan, they waited in the waiting room. The midwife examined me (not my usual one as she was on holiday, I didn't mind though), she said she wasn't going to do the sweep as I was already 3cm dilated!!!
I had things I had planned to get done that day just to finish off the Christmas shopping, I was organised and had got all the presents well before this point. After my appointment we headed to Marks and Spencers cafe for some lunch, although my mum was on pins and thought we should go home. Sure enough I had just about finished my toasted sandwich when my waters started to break. I didn't want to get up at first for fear of it going all over the floor, but I managed to get to the toilets and sort myself out a bit, luckily my jeans were dark and so you couldn't see, I came back from the toilets and my mum had packed everything up and got Tegan ready, she was in more of a panic than me. I decided to drive home as my mum didn't really know the way and I thought it would be easier than trying to give her directions and my contractions hadn't started yet. On the way home they did start, I didn't tell my mum as not to stress her out even more.
I got home and phoned the hospital, it was about 2 o'clock, they said to come in at about 4, which was fine but it was just a waiting game then, in the mean time my waters kept leaking out, which was not pleasant. We got to the hospital and she examined me again and said my back waters had broken but my fore waters were still in place. I decided to have a bath to try and help with the contractions, but I was feeling more and more uncomfortable, coming out from the bath the midwife suggested trying paracetamol and co-codamol. I took this but straight afterwards the midwife thought I needed to go on gas and air and asked if I started feeling the need to push to let her know. As soon as she had said that I did, she got my onto the bed to examine me and sure enough Anwen was already starting to crown and my fore waters broke straight away. She came out really quickly, however the placenta didn't seem to want to come away. The midwife was fantastic and was trying all the tricks, I had already had the injection which is meant to break it away, then we kept trying breast feeding and eventually 20mins later the placenta came out. The midwife informed me that she couldn't have pulled on the umbilical cord as it wasn't coming out of the centre of the plancenta like it should but from the edge, and it would have broken away and left the placenta there. This is known as Marginal Insertion, this can lead to complications and if they had picked it up at the ultrasound I would have been high risk. This also meant I was high risk of miscarriage and hemorrhaging, luckily all went well and I am really thankful for the experience and professionalism of the midwife.
Anwen was born at 5:46pm weighing 7lb10oz. We decided to stay overnight in the midwifery centre to have a little rest, luckily my mum was at home with Tegan and could take her to nursery in the morning. This worked out well as we could get most of the tests done before going home and they could check that breast feeding was established. It was so different and much more home from home in the midwifery centre, I was so lucky I was able to experience that and get the support and attention of the team at Stafford County Hospital. They were fantastic.
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