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After we were buzzed in to the birth suites, I was absolutely petrified. I felt like I shouldn't be there; it was probably a false alarm; it was the middle of the night; I'd be wasting the nurses' time... and it was too early. The midwife who I had spoken to on the phone was assigned to me, which was nice. She got me comfortable & told me that after doing a trace on the baby, they'd do an internal exam and see how things were going. I'll admit, this made me nervous too - I'd never had a cervical check before, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Baby was doing just fine & the CTG showed that I was experiencing contractions - things looked like they might have been happening! The midwife performed the internal {which didn't hurt} and proclaimed that my cervix was already effaced & that I was 2-3cm dilated. Turns out I wasn't exaggerating those cramps - I was in labour!

It was at about this time when the midwives told me that my OB was actually away for the Easter holidays, so I would be having an alternate doctor deliver the baby. Surprisingly, this didn't bother me as much as I'd thought it would - I think I was too distracted by the fact that a) I was actually going to have a baby soon, and b) the contractions had started to HURT.

The doctor recommended I get some fluids into me, as I was complaining of being super hot {as I always am} and so they could be given some IV antibiotics as well - because I was only 36 weeks, I hadn't taken the strep test, so they wanted to give them as a precaution. That was fine, except for the actual needle part - I'm not squeamish of needles by any means, but I have notoriously BAD veins.

I wasn't particularly impressed with being hooked up to an IV, as I'd had plans to be up and about during the labour - but thankfully, it was just the beginning of the experience, and things weren't too stressful. Hubby decided to try and have a sleep, since it was around 3am, and I laid back and focussed on getting through contractions by breathing & not making noise. It passed the time, though got harder as they got stronger.
At 7am, the nurses switched shifts, and we were introduced to our new midwife, Louise. She told us that there was only one other lady in labour, and that the ward was fairly quiet for the most part. I really liked her; she was very no nonsense, and encouraged getting up and moving, which was great, since the IV was long gone by then & I had to pee constantly thanks to all the fluids. They kept the cannula in, but I was free to move around at will.

At some point in the morning, Louise asked if I wanted any kind of pain relief, as things were ramping up. I went into the birth without a plan. My birth plan was basically NOT to have a plan, and see how things progressed. I was interested in trying gas & air, but I didn't want to use it too early and have it not helpful later down the track. I put it off for a while, but then decided it was worth a try.
My verdict? The gas was awesome. It didn't make me nauseous at all, and I felt very 'in control' while using it... at first.

Unfortunately, that control got a little wonky further down the track. For the first few hours, I was using it just for the build-up & full hit of the contractions. It made me giggle and it also made me a little bit mental, as I found out later on, thanks to text messages I'd saved in my phone. The best one was to my brother, which said 'I think I'm going to name the baby GAS.' Oy, oy, oy.

It also made time feel like it was going by in slow motion - one contraction felt like it lasted for ages. {Not a bad thing when it didn't really hurt, but not good when you were counting down the minutes & feeling like you've been in labour forever.} I remember Mr. Jag leaving the room at one point to go and get a coffee, and it felt like he had been gone for hours - I was eating breakfast at the time, and couldn't figure out where he'd gone. I also buttered my toast with the gas and air tube instead of a knife, but that's another story altogether. When he came back, I was quite cranky with him & asked him where the hell he'd gone for that long while his wife was in labour? Yeah, he'd been gone all of five minutes. Whoops!

It was mid-morning when they did another internal check. This one hurt though, and I had to use the gas to keep calm. I was happy to learn that I'd hit 6cm, and baby was coping beautifully. Things were going well.

Picture: Booooo to needles.

I was happy to be making progress, having reached 6cm with just gas and air to help me through. Our midwife, Louise, asked if I'd like to take a bath or a shower to help with the increasing contractions, and I was thrilled to get to do this - one of my biggest goals was to be able to labour in water for a little while.

I stayed in the bath for a while, with hubby keeping me company and splashing water over my giant belly. Louise had brought in a portable gas container, so I could use that if I wanted to. I tried to get through most of them with the hot water, but they were starting to take my breath away - so the gas was, once again, my friend. It was while I was stark nekkid in the tub that I met my 'new' OB for the first time, Dr C. He was a character, and I felt really comfortable with him - even in the nude. He had stopped by to say hello and see how things were, and the visit was short and sweet.. apparently the other lady in labour was getting close to the pushing stage.

It was about this time that things started getting really tough. The contractions were hard & fast, the gas & air combination wasn't taking effect quick enough to combat it and I was exhausted - it had been around 14 hours of labour at that point and I'd not slept for another 14 hours before that, the day before.

{Going into labour at night was not ideal. I wish I'd slept more.}

Our midwife, Louise, was getting concerned with how tired I was, so asked to do another check to see how things were progressing. After all those hours of labouring, I was only at 7cm. She spoke with the OB and they decided that if I didn't progress further in the next few hours, they would look at speeding things up with a syntocinon drip to get to the final stage.

I was determined to get things moving, so I stayed up and about, swaying over the baby warming table & trying to focus. Unfortunately, the contractions were coming harder and faster, and it was all I could do to stay upright, drink water & suck down on the gas. I also desperately needed to wee, but every time I would waddle back and forth to the bathroom, I'd try and go... but nothing happened. Turns out that baby's head was so far down, she was quite literally wreaking havoc on all of my pelvic floor muscles, and I couldn't pee! Not good, but I wasn't to know at the time. Two hours of clock-watching passed, and our midwife returned.

I was at 9cm if she stretched - and oy, did she stretch. The doctor appeared, and together they tried to keep me 'with it' long enough to explain what they'd like to do to help things along. It was 2pm. They wanted to get the drip going to help me fully dilate, but they were worried that I'd be too exhausted to cope with the contractions that it would bring on. Because of this, they strongly suggested that I have an epidural. I was almost delirious from the pain, but I was SO frustrated - I had planned all along to have no plan, but I really had wanted to get through without an epidural, if I could. To let me get all the way to 9cm, and then have an epidural? I felt as though my body had failed me, and in turn, I'd failed myself in some way.

I remember getting really emotional at this point, and crying to Mr. Jag about how I hadn't wanted an epidural - but at the same time, I was in absolute agony with the syntocinon drip. I also kept having ridiculous urges to push - and I was screaming through these contractions and pushing without any control what-so-ever. Knowing that it could still be hours before I got to 10cm, I agreed to have the epidural. This, my friends, terrified me more than the idea of a natural childbirth - I was absolutely petrified of being paralysed, having the epidural not work, or of consequently needing more invasive manoeuvres to get the baby out.{i.e. forceps, vacuum, c-section}

The anaesthetist arrived, and was trying to tell me the risks of the procedure - but I was too busy freaking out, crying, and pushing/screeching like a banshee to pay much attention. The gas & air nozzle was in my mouth constantly, no breaks in its use, and I was, er, a bit of a mess, to put it mildly. Mr. Jag says that this was the point where he was a little frightened on my behalf. Transition... it's no joke. Anyway, anaesthetist man was wearing a red flannel shirt & I felt the need to compliment him on it constantly. I could hear myself talking about it and felt like a moron, but I couldn't control my word vomit. And, thanks to my good friend Nitrous-Oxide, I felt like I kept repeating myself over and over again, and then giggling about it, and then crying, because OMG THINGS HURT.

I'm fairly sure that my mind has blanked out a lot of my experiences of the the transitional part of labour, probably to preserve what little dignity I had left. Somehow I ended up hunched over Mr. Jag and preparing for the epidural, just like you see in the movies. I remember the local anaesthetic hurt like a bitch, but I don't remember much after that. Once it was in, they laid me back down & put in a catheter for my poor blader {sweet relief} - I'm not kidding you, I filled that bag up in about five seconds flat. Ahhhhh. Labour: so glamorous, eh?

Where I last left off, I'd just had an epidural put in & was waiting to dilate that last stubborn centimetre so that we could get things moving. They covered me up in a blanket and left to let the epidural do its thing, advising me to rest. Er, rest? I'm nearly ready to have a baby and you want me to REST? Yeah, not happening. What I DID do was come down with a massive case of the shakes/shivers. My whole body would literally not stop shaking. Mr. Jag videotaped bits and pieces of the labour {and the birth itself} and my teeth were chattering the whole time. I kept trying to move my legs, and freaking out when I could barely control my little toe.

I know, I know, that's the whole point of an epidural, but I was positive I was paralysed. It was a really frightening feeling, maybe because I hadn't expected to use one? Scary stuff. I spent the majority of this 'waiting' part staring at the contractions monitor and marvelling at the fact that I wasn't feeling any of them.

After what felt like hours, but was only actually around 30 minutes, Louise came back to check me. Bam. 10cm. She disappeared to get the OB, and I started having flashbacks to all those episodes of 'One Born Every Minute' & 'The Midwives' that I'd watched, where women having epidurals weren't able to push effectively and ended up needing all sorts of help to birth their babies. Cue panic. Lots of panic.

That being said, I was completely and utterly determined that I would have control of my pushing stage. No, I couldn't feel contractions, but I'll be damned if I was going to go this far and not push my daughter out myself. Mr. Jag surprised me by wanting to stay down at the business end, as I'd assumed he'd want to be out of the line of fire - he was such a good help. It was just me, him, our one midwife & the doctor - nice and calm and comfortable.

They guided me through - each contraction, I pushed, new breath, re-pushed, and so on and so forth. We weren't at it for very long before people started getting excited - I shouldn't have been surprised at this, as her head had been so low and engaged for the entire labour. Hubby began filming at this point {I'll spare you the video, don't you worry!} and I got to re-watch and experience it again, which helped refresh my memory. As her head began to crown, the doctor walked me through my breathing/pushing, and guided things along to help everything stretch. She progressed quite quickly, and the head was out quite fast. The OB congratulated me on my pushing, and said that if I coughed, she'd likely fly straight out - and I laughed. The video caught her inching out a wee bit more with every laugh, and he told us to test out the cough theory: so off I went, fake coughing, to see if it worked. {It did!}

As another contraction started, we got down to business, and one push later, she was born. The doctor gave her straight to Mr. Jag, and had him hand her up to me - and as he did so, her cord snapped! Weirdly, it snapped at the exact spot where it would normally have been clamped and cut. After a quick check to make sure her cord & my placenta were still okay, Mr. Jag gave me my baby. My baby! She had the typical 'cone head' look and was very quiet, just making tiny squawks. I couldn't believe how chubby she looked for being born at 36 weeks + 5 days.

I was able to hold her and hug her for just a minute, before Louise asked if she could take her and give her a rub down to 'rough her up a bit'. This was when things got scary, and a little disappointing. I stayed on the bed post-delivery and finished off the birthing experience, with Dr. C walking me through what was happening with both me AND baby. My placenta was delivered intact, the cord was just fine {despite the odd breakage after her birth} and I avoided any external tears. I did, however, have a small rip internally, which the doctor said he'd prefer to stitch to make it heal faster - but if I wanted, I could leave it be. The quicker I healed down below the better, so he put in a few stitches and that was that.

As for the baby, she was under the warming lights. She wasn't screaming like you'd expect newborns to do, but was making softer cries, a bit like a kitten. They suctioned her mouth and throat to help remove some mucous, but she was still very shell shocked. Her initial Apgar score was a 7, I'd find out later. Another midwife had appeared, and together they told me that they would be taking her to the Special Care Nursery for a little while, probably to give her some oxygen and calm her breathing down. Mr. Jag followed along with them, while I was left on my own.

At the time, I thought that the baby would get her oxygen and then be returned to me. I was anxious, hating that I couldn't be with her {my epidural was in the process of wearing off, but I needed to stay in bed} and glad that hubby was there. As I waited, I played with my legs, wiggling my toes and hoping they'd come back to me soon. After a while, Mr. Jag came back... sans baby. It was then that I realised I wouldn't be getting her back with me straight away - though a part of me was still waiting to get reunited with her in our room later that night. He had taken plenty of photos to show me, though, and I got to visit her in my wheelchair later that evening.

I'll write more about Georgia's stay in Special Care later, but suffice it to say, while the birth itself went quite smoothly {last minute epidural aside} the post-birth happenings were NOT what I would have ever expected. I never got to breastfeed my baby after the birth and that minute of holding her was the last I'd have for a full day after that. No skin to skin, no chance to see if she'd suckle at the breast, nothing. Georgia stayed in the nursery for the first week of her life. It certainly wasn't the ideal hospital experience, but that's how it went.

During our time in hospital, I went through some stressful days - the emotion of being away from my brand new baby, of having other people caring for her more than me, of worrying that she wouldn't know me or know Mr. Jag, of worrying about whether she was breathing properly, or eating enough... well, it was a lot to go through. I have the utmost respect for parents who go through NICU or Special Care stays - ours was 8 days long, and it felt like an eternity. I can't even imagine being there long term.

The important thing is, we ended up with a beautiful, perfect baby girl. She is three weeks old today (!) and has brought us so much joy already - we still find ourselves looking at her and wondering how we got so lucky.

Picture 1: Birth
Picture 2: Baby girl in the nursery
Picture 3: First cuddles the next day

And here she is now - three weeks later!