Our beautiful baby Maeve was born at 2.47am on Friday morning after our refresher Hypnobirthing class with you on the Wednesday.
I must say we left you feeling very motivated and empowered and I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before baby arrived!
On Thursday I had an appointment with GP and all was well and at lunch time felt a mild cramp. After going to the toilet I thought maybe there was some mucous but wasn’t really sure. I had some more mild cramps throughout the day then. Having gone 10 days over with James I was sure these cramps meant nothing, I was 39 +2 at this stage. I decided to have a relaxing bath at 10pm, I was feeling good and had just had around maybe 5 mild cramps that day.
I spoke to my sister who is a midwife after this and told her the situation! I knew she was off the next day to look after James for us should baby be on the way so wanted to give her the heads up! At 11.30 I had two more cramps closer together and decided it might be a good idea to start timing using the app I had downloaded. As my sister was an hour away I contacted her again to let her know but told her I wasn’t sure and didn’t want her to come all the way down to Kilkenny for a false alarm, after the next cramp I decided it might be better if she did come down just in case! The surges came then every 10 mins or so and didn’t last too long, 30-40 seconds or so. I decided to make the Labour aid drink then and check over my bags before going to relax in the living room. When my sister arrived at 1am I told her she should go to bed and relax as we would let her know when/if we were going to the hospital! The surges were sporadic and not all last night very long. I remember one came as I was sitting on the birthing ball at around 2am and it was quite intense and found it hard to breathe through. I decided then to lie down on my side on the couch to try rest a bit. At around 2.20 I got up to use the toilet as I had the urge to wee. I felt quite a bit of pressure after this and decided then it may be a good idea to leave for the hospital as it was getting harder to move/walk and was thinking about getting in and out of the car! When I came in to tell Noel we should go I got another intense surge and knelt down if front of the couch, as this eased off I felt my waters go and told Noel I needed to get my clothes changed! He went upstairs and told my sister the waters had gone and they came down then with a change of clothes. I knew at this stage I couldn’t get up or get dressed and my sister knew by me aswell!
My sister Celine was amazing and went into professional mode and told Noel to call an ambulance, get towels and turn on the heating, I couldn’t believe I was so close delivering the baby and with two more surges baby arrived and was passed up to me by Celine. We were all so shocked we didn’t check whether baby was a girl or boy for a few minutes I just held baby close to me and we all hugged and cried for a few moments before the ambulance arrived!
Once ambulance was warm enough they took us to St Lukes where placenta was delivered and Maeve was checked over. We spent that day and night in hospital and we’re home early on a Saturday!
A huge thank you for all your advice and guidance, between our first set of classes and refresher it all helped me so much!