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Tegan was born on 3rd January 1999.
I woke up at 5am for one of my many trips to the loo that I used to take during the early hours, sat on the loo and realised that the huge gush of water wasn't what I thought it was, and that my waters had broken. It was 2nd Jan and I was a whole 2 days overdue! Well I woke up dad to be and said 'I think my waters just broke', and all he could manage was 'what at this time? you're joking'. I phoned the hospital, and was told to go straight in, which I did after trying to make sure I had everything we needed, and after I had phoned my mum to tell her things were starting.
When I got to the hospital, I was taken to the delivery suite, where after they examined me, the midwife said yes my waters had broke, but I wasn't contracting much. So they left me and dad in the delivery room for a couple of hours, then came back, examined me again, said I was still only 2cm dilated (which I had been for about 3 weeks.) They decided to put me on a syntocin, drip, at 10am which really got things going. By 1pm the midwife kindly switched off the drip, because it was causing me so much pain, and sent for somebody to put in a epidural. (I tried gas and air and I passed out on it!) a very nice man came and put the epidural in. I waited for it to start to work and I waited and waited, and finally my leg went completly numb at the top, but I could still feel every contraction, and they were coming thick and fast. By now it was about 3pm at this point, I was told to give it a chance to work, that sometimes it takes a little time. Well I think at about 5pm they were trying to re-site the epidural, it still didnt work, they tried again a couple of hours later and decided that it just wasnt going to work and that I was going to have to manage without it! In the middle of all this I can just about remember argueing with the midwife over the fact that she wanted to switch the syntocin drip back on because although I was contracting regularly the contractions weren't strong enough! I gave up arguing with her and let put it back on, (she really was awful though she had no patience.)
They tried me with some pethadine and that was okay for a while. At about 1am I was 9cm dilated and by 1:45 I was 10cm and was told I could push. By this time I had been awake for the best part of 19 hours and was shattered. Then the lovely midwife told me I was pushing wrong and when I started feeling a bit sorry for myself saying things like 'I can't do this anymore it's to hard', she said 'well it's meant to be hard work thats why its called labour!' During all this daddy to be is in tears half the time and outside smoking the other half. I started to push, with no sucess, and I didn't ever think the baby would be born, I started to think that she would be in there forever!!.
Then at about 3:30 am with every push babys head came into view but I just couldnt managed to get her to come out, so at abot 4:20am the doctor came in to do a ventouse delivery. Whilst she was getting ready (stirrups etc) she had a quick look on the next contraction, and said babys head nearly out! So I didnt need the ventouse, it was the encouragement I needed to put in the extra effort, and with a few more pushes our baby girl was born at 4:48am weighing 8lb 6oz.
After having a quick look at her they took her away again as she hadnt started breathing and was really blue and floppy. Someone called a paediatrician, and after they had managed to start her breathing, they quickly explained that, the reason she didnt start breathing was because she had taken on some of the pethadine the midwife had ordered. (For me to have to shut me up complaining about the pain) and baby needed monitoring for a short while to make sure she was okay feeding etc, so they whisked her away in a incubator. I was stitched up while daddy went to phone everyone to tell them baby had arrived safely.
About 30 mins after she was born we were taken to the special care unit where they had taken her, to have a proper look at her. They gave us 2 lovely pics of her and explained what would happen to her now, which was basically she would be fed and monitered then as long as all went well she would be moved to the nursery. Then after a while there, she would be allowed on the ward with me. So seeing she was safe, daddy came with me to the ward, waited till I was settled then went home for some rest at 7am! (He had been up for 24hrs by then) I slept till aprox 9:30am then had to go and see baby, when I got there they were getting ready to move her to the nursery, which they did about an hour later. The next morning she had her hearing test then joined me on the ward, where after a fairly good nights sleep condsidering, we went home at 2pm to start our new lifes as a family!