My Labour Story

Apologies for the extremely unflattering photo, but it's one of the first we have of Oliver, and the first as the three of us as a family so I wanted to share it, no matter how bad I look! I wanted to share with you my labour story. I researched quite a few of these whilst I was pregnant, purely out of curiosity as I know every labour is different, but I had quite a positive experience, much better than I was expecting, so I thought it would be good to share for those of you reading pre-baby.


I had been booked in for an induction on Wednesday 15th March. As I had gestational diabetes during my pregnancy, they were keen for me not to go to 40 weeks, and this would've taken me to 39. On the Thursday before I had an appointment with my midwife, where she performed a sweep (possibly one of the most horrendous things I've ever experienced, at least in labour you get pain relief!), in the hope that this would start things up naturally, or at least make the induction process a little quicker. She told me I was already 1cm dilated so it looked promising.

Once we got to the end of the weekend with nothing happening, I'd resigned myself to that fact that I was going to have the induction. However, at approximately 6.45am on Monday 13th March, I was awoken by something warm & wet trickling down my leg. My initial thoughts were that I had wet myself, and I was absolutely mortified. But it just kept coming & coming, and no matter what I did it just would not stop. I'd been sleeping on a towel every night since my sweep just in case. I reached down & felt that it was absolutely soaked through, completely pointless it being there really - this was more than just be wetting myself! I called my husband, who was downstairs getting ready for work, and asked him to come up and help me to the toilet, all the way there the waters continued to trickle down my legs - gross!

Once back in bed, with a clean pair of knickers & fresh maternity pad, we rang the labour ward to ask what we should do. They asked us to come in just so that they could check if my waters had actually broken, and see how things were progressing. As my husband does not drive, my dad had always offered to take me into hospital whenever needed, so we gave him a ring and managed to catch him before he left for work. We arrived at hospital approximately 8.30am, without our bags as we were fully expecting to be sent back home after being checked over. When the midwife checked my maternity pad, she didn't believe my waters had broken and went on to explain how it's very common to lose control of our bladder towards the end of pregnancy. By this point I was convinced my waters had broken, though that didn't stop me from feeling stupid by her comment. They examined me anyway just to be totally sure, and after a couple of seconds the midwife exclaimed "oh I'm very sorry, your waters have actually broken!" I knew it!

As expected, we were sent back home again. I was experiencing a few contractions but they were neither painful nor regular. It was about 10.30am by the time we got home, and I just went back to bed waiting for things to progress. Things ramped up pretty quickly, and by lunchtime my contractions were 5-7 minutes apart and becoming very painful. I decided to get in the shower (I was scared that if I had a bath I'd never get back out!) which was actually really soothing. All the time I was in there my husband was timing the contractions for me, and it wasn't long until they were 3 minutes apart. It was clear by this point we had to get back to hospital.

We phoned the hospital to warn them we were coming back, and phoned my dad for the lift. It would be another hour from this point before I'd be on my way - the pain was so intense that it took me that long to get dressed again, walk downstairs, then out to the car! It the took me a further 10 minutes to get across the hospital car park, at which point I collapsed against the wall outside - I couldn't walk anymore! My poor dad had parked in the 15 minute drop off area not thinking it would take me this long to get in! Luckily a lovely nurse rushed out of A&E with a wheelchair and I was wheeled up to the labour ward.

This is when the only "bad" part of my labour experience happened. We arrived at the labour ward at around 2.30pm and, despite us phoning ahead, none of the midwives were expecting us. I was left in the corridor in the middle of reception for the best part of fifteen minutes in excruciating pain whilst they found a room for me - not good. Whilst in the middle of one of my contractions I heard a familiar voice behind me say "I wasn't expecting to see you again today". It was the midwife who had examined me earlier on in the morning, still on her shift. With that, I was wheeled into my delivery room.

Once settled in my nightie, and strapped up to the monitors, my blood sugar level was checked for the first time that day. I should've been doing this regularly throughout the day - oops - but it was only checked once again before I gave birth! I guess things moved faster than anticipated, so it was the last thing on anyones mind, plus I wasn't struggling in any way. I was examined to see how many centimetres dilated I was. To be honest, I can't remember what the answer was, but I remember thinking I was in for a long slog.

Contractions got intense and the TENS machine I'd attached to my back after I got out of the shower at home was no longer enough (to be honest, I think I put it on too late for it to work properly anyway), so the midwife offered me some gas & air, which was amazing! I went as high as a kite! After only a few puffs though, I started to feel intense pressure down below - I can only describe it like you need to do the biggest poo of your life! The midwife decided to examine me again, but said she couldn't feel anything, so she got her colleague to check. Her reply was "you can't feel anything because she's fully dilated", and I was given the all clear to push, which I started at just after 4.30pm.

The pushing stage took so long. I tried so many different positions, none of which I felt comfortable with or were very effective, until I settled on lying on my left side with my right leg in the air! They like to give a limit of two hours for pushing before they intervene to avoid baby getting distressed. They told me this at 6.15, so I knew my time was running out and they were considering the options. They went to get a doctor to come and have a look and give his opinion. Whilst the one midwife was out of the room, I pushed with all of my might - there was no way anyone was going near me with forceps if I could help it. With the next few pushes I made great progress, and when the doctor entered the room he took a look and could see we were nearly done, so he let us carry on - thank god for that! With the next push his head was delivered. I cannot describe the huge feeling of relief you get when that moment happens. The next push was a bit of a blur, I honestly think the midwives did most of the work, but then he was here! At 6.31pm my gorgeous little boy Oliver James was born, weighing a very healthy 7lb 5oz.

That moment when your baby is placed on your chest for the first time is so surreal. We spent the first five minutes of his life just staring into each others eyes, though I'm not quite sure how much he could actually see of me! The pair of us were checked over and given a clean bill of health. I was so pleased to know that me having gestational diabetes had not caused him any problems. Once the placenta was delivered I then had to have stitches on a small tear (which my husband thought would be a great time to Facetime our families - brilliant!). I then had the opportunity to have a shower before we were moved to the maternity ward for the night, and had time to reflect on just what had happened. Our crazy little adventure had just begun...