My birth story.
Just want to let you know that this a rather long post and for anyone who has any fears of labour or delivery this isnt a positive birth story. For those of you that manage to get to the end then thank you for taking the time to read.
As some of you will know I had been getting pains on and off for a couple of weeks and my waters started to leak on the 2nd October. Went to hospital later on that day and was told that as I was only 34 weeks they were reluctant to induce me as baby was far too small, so they scanned me and discovered I still had two thirds of my water left so they decided to monitor me to see how things went.
On Monday 5th October I started to lose a lot more water so I was admitted overnight so they could do a trace on babys heart rate overnight to see how she was coping with the reduced water. Baby was doing fine so they took some swabs from me the following morning and sent me home.
On Wednesday 8th October I woke up at 3am and my waters had totally gone and baby had stopped moving so I rung my father in law to come and watch my children and went through to hospital again. At the hospital I was scanned to see if baby had changed position as she had been breech since 23 weeks and she was still breech. The midwife called the consultant down and it was agreed that I would try to deliver vaginally as I was a good candidate for a vaginal delivery as I had delivered a full term baby previously and as this baby was small they didnt expect I would have any problems.
The midwife examined me and hooked me up to the monitors and I was 3cms dilated but I wasnt contracting. The midwife said that they would leave me 24 hours to see if I would start contacting on my own as 50% of people go into spontaneous labour when their waters have broken and she thought this would be better than being induced as it would be less stressful for baby.
Well the 24 hours passed and I still wasnt contracting so I was put on a drip to induce contractions at 12.15pm. Straight away I started getting fairly strong contractions and this carried on for a couple of hours. At 2.30pm the midwife noticed that babys heart rate and mine werent within what is considered normal so she got a senior registrar to see me and he did an urgent CTG on me as my heart rate was far too fast. I also had a temperature and because babys heart rate was also really fast, over 200 beats per minute, they decided there and then that I needed an emergency c-section.
Within seconds I was being wheeled down to theatre and being given a spinal injection to numb me from the chest down and less than 10 minutes later my daughter was born at 15.08.
When the surgeon said my daughter was out the midwife immediately took my daughter over to the other side of the room, I asked if they would show her to me and they said they just needed to check her over first. So im laid on the operating table unable to do anything with my husband holding my hand trying to see what the midwifes were doing when we heard one of them say that they couldnt get my daughter to take a breath. The other midwife was then on the phone to the doctors shouting that someone needed to come to theatre now. By this point I was hysterical and ive never felt so useless in my whole life. It took them nearly two minutes before they could get my daughter to breathe and as soon as they had done they took her straight up to the neonatal intensive care unit. At this point I hadnt even seen my daughter and I was so scared not knowing whether she was ok or not.
After the surgeon had finished sorting me out I was taken back to the ward and was told that once the anaesthetic had worn off and I was able to stand then someone would take me up to NICU in a wheelchair to see my daughter.
It seemed to take hours and hours before I could feel my legs and after 4 hours I was finally allowed up to NICU to see my precious baby girl. She looked so tiny and helpless in the incubator. She weighed 5lb 4oz which was a fairly good weight considering she was born at 35+1 weeks but she was having problems breathing and was grunting so the NICU nurses wanted to keep and eye on her.
Over the next few days she developed jaundiced which made her really sleepy so she wouldnt feed and her weight dropped to 4lb 4oz so she had to undergo phototherapy to treat the jaundice and had a tube put up her nose and into her tummy to feed her and a drip put up to give her extra fluids and antibiotics.
At the moment she is still in hospital and having alternate tube and cup feeds and her weight is now up to 4lb 8oz. At the moment we still dont know when she will be allowed home but at least she is making some progress so we are hoping it will be sooner rather than later.
All in all the whole labour and delivery was a horrendous experience and I feel so guilty for my daughters start in life. I had planned a home birth for my daughter and instead I couldnt even carry her full term, or give birth to her naturally and now I cant even feed her. The rational part of me knows that at least she is going to be ok but I cant help feeling that ive already failed her.
My daughter is called Jessica Charlotte Wilson and is the most beautiful baby ever with a full head of dark hair. I have put some pictures up on here for anyone who wants to see them.
Katie and 16 day old Jessica.
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the cot!!! 
