Poppy’s Birth Story – Part 1 – Induction

After 16 amazing weeks with my gorgeous girl, I thought it was time to officially introduce her on the blog, and share her birth story. Just a little warning, this is pretty long, but I’m recording this for my own memories so I don’t want to miss any important details! I’ve split it over 2 posts because it was getting so long and I wasn’t even near the good bit yet!

Poppy entered the world bang on her due date, on 2nd November 2018, and in that moment our world was complete.

As you will know if you’ve read previous posts or follow me on Instagram, Poppy was conceived through IVF, and so for a long time I feared that we would never be lucky enough to have a baby of our own. Even throughout my pregnancy I still thought that something would go wrong, so I didn’t really believe this was going to happen for us, until that precious moment when she was placed in my arms.

Due to being an IVF pregnancy I was consultant led, meaning I had a bit of extra monitoring and growth scans. This seems to vary from hospital to hospital, but apparently in an IVF pregnancy there’s a very tiny shred of evidence suggesting that the placenta becomes less effective after 40 weeks, so my hospital’s policy is to induce pregnancy to ensure baby is delivered by 40 weeks.

I could of course have declined this, but to be honest the thought of going into labour spontaneously scared me (I think borne from that fear of something going wrong that I already mentioned) and so I was quite happy to go along with this plan, as long as I could push it as close to 40 weeks as possible. I know lots of people don’t want to be induced but the idea didn’t bother me, and I read lots of positive induction stories online.

So on the 19th October I met with my consultant to make an exit strategy for this tiny girl, and we got booked in for a sweep bang on 39 weeks, and then if nothing came of that, induction would start on 31st October at 39 + 5. They did offer me the 29th of October but I declined because I didn’t want to risk a Halloween baby! It’s my least favourite “holiday” and I hate the colour orange that I associate with Halloween, so I opted for Halloween induction with the assumption that it would actually be at least the next day before she arrived. Trivial, but hey it’s my choice!

When I went back the following week for my sweep, I was a bit disappointed to learn that my cervix was still very high and closed, meaning that the procedure was less likely to be effective. I was a bit worried that if it was still so high then it may be the same by my induction date, but a quick google reassured me that things could change quite rapidly, so I crossed my fingers and hoped that by the following Wednesday I would be ready for action!

Leaving the house on the day of my induction was an extremely weird and emotional experience. I knew, all going to plan, that the next time I stepped foot in my house I would have a baby with me, and that felt so surreal. This face is a mixture of excitement and nerves!

I had told Robert still to go into work that day as I wasn’t being admitted until 2pm, and I expected the first part would just be a lot of waiting around. I wanted him to save his leave for when things were actually happening or when she was here.

My mum and dad took me in to hospital for 2pm, and although I was really nervous and scared about the thought of giving birth, at this point I was more excited than anything!

During an induction, it’s crucial that baby is monitored throughout, presumably to check that the meds they give you don’t affect baby in any way, so after a bit of waiting around I was finally connected to the heart trace monitor, and then given my first examination (which revealed my cervix was still completely closed) and first pessary.

I won’t lie, having the pessary wasn’t particularly pleasant, but I obviously hoped it would be worth it. The procedure of induction basically follows a pattern of a pessary every 6 hours until dilated, then they can break your waters (if they don’t go themselves) and put you on a hormone drip to induce contractions, and then hopefully baby should come after that. Some people will need all of those steps, some people’s bodies only need the first step or two and their body will do the rest naturally.

Final bump pic whilst waiting for the pessaries to do their stuff!

After the first pessary I started to feel really crampy – not bad enough for pain killers but enough to make me think that something was happening! So you can imagine my disappointment when I got my next check at 11pm and was told that nothing was happening and there was no sign of dilation at all.

So another hour of monitoring on the heart trace machine then a further pessary, and then I tried to get some sleep. Sleep wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to achieve though, the girl across from me was snoring so loudly, then another girl started screaming for help and had to start pushing on the pre-labour ward! They got her wheeled away pretty quickly, and it made me feel so nervous but also a little bit excited!

I managed to get around 2 hours sleep I think, as when I woke up with the girl in labour, my pain had seriously ramped up, coming in strong waves. I was so excited, something was definitely happening now!!

NOPE! Around 5ish they came to do my next set of observations and monitoring, and yet again nothing was happening. I was getting extremely frustrated and didn’t know how this was possible when I was in so much pain now – surely that had to mean SOMETHING was happening. So they gave me a third pessary, and said that the doctor would visit me on the morning rounds.

Within an hour of that third pessary going in, the pain increased even more, and I was pacing the corridors, clutching a hot bean bag against my stomach or curling up in bed using the TENS machine. I was alternating between the two as I couldn’t get comfortable for long lying down, and there was zero chance of any sleep. I got some stronger painkillers from the nurses and it helped a little bit.

What was most frustrating at this point was that I was in so much pain, but it seemed that the pain didn’t necessarily mean anything was happening or going to happen. When the doctor appeared around 8ish she told me that I would have another observation due around lunch time, and basically laid out my 4 options if those observations still showed a failure to progress.

1. Go home and wait it out. (No thank you!)

2. A fourth pessary, but the likelihood of that working when the first 3 have failed was small.

3. A small balloon inserted into the cervix, they would then inflate it to open the cervix further and allow them to break my waters. For this option to be available to me, there had to be even a tiny amount of dilation. (This is known as Foley balloon and I had never heard of it before, not many other people seem to have heard of it either)

4. Book in for a c-section the following day.

At that point I wasn’t too keen on any of the options haha! However I had some time to think about it, and chat with my husband, and made a tentative decision to opt for a section.

The “contractions” throughout the morning worsened again, and I was relying heavily on the tens machine and the strong painkillers, but I didn’t get my hopes up that anything was happening, based on the last 2 observations. And I was right not to – when I was finally seen at 3pm I was told that my cervix was still completely closed! The balloon procedure was completely off the cards so my options were a fourth pessary or a section.

I felt like I was giving up too easily on a “natural” labour (as natural as it could be after a medically induced induction) but the thought of having a fourth pessary, more fake agonising contractions then still failing to progress was so disheartening.

Additionally, as we were having trouble getting going, I was worried that I might be more likely to have further trouble later in labour, since baby seemed to be pretty comfortable where she was and it might all end in an emergency section anyway. All the unknowns were making me really anxious, so without much further thought, I opted for a section the following day.

As soon as I told the doctor my decision I burst into tears! I think it was a combination of relief, excitement, nerves and tiredness, because I was completely sure I had made the right decision.

That evening in hospital I felt a lot more relaxed, knowing that we had a plan in place. I was still being monitored closely due to having had the induction meds, but thankfully because I had no more pessaries the pain was gradually wearing off. I even managed a bit more sleep that night, because the ward was a bit quieter.

After a tough 24 hours I was so excited to know that tomorrow would be the day I was going to meet my baby… and with that, I’ll leave it there!

I hope you’ve made it this far with me – I won’t blame you if you just skimmed for the juicy bits.. and most of those will be in part 2 which will be up on Sunday.

In the meantime, enjoy another photo of this gorgeous girl!