Is tonight THE night?!

My due date for baby bug was the 16th July 2011, just over a week before this date I start to have little niggles and every night, I was having braxton hicks. Tightenings sometimes, pains sometimes, but never both tight and painful at the same time. Every night like clock work, and not long after going to bed they would ease off but I still wasn't sleeping well as I was so uncomfortable.

On 12th July, the niggles started a little earlier than usual - in the afternoon. Hubby went off to work at 4pm and not long after he went out the niggles got a bit stronger and for the first time I was having both pains and tightenings at the same time, not one or the other like before. I tried to just keep myself busy and distracted.

By about 9pm I was getting really uncomfortable so I decided to have a bath, I had been told clary sage oil can help move the contractions along so I put some of that in my bath and it seemed to work, by time I got out of the bath they were getting pretty intense, pain was still bearable but they were coming regularly, every 7 minutes, and were lasting about 30 seconds and they were stopping me in my tracks. I can remember being in the bathroom and actually bending over the sink for a few seconds using it to hold me up and then suddenly being able to stand up and move again once it passed, it was at that moment I thought to myself "OH! This might be THEE night!" I then started to text a close friend of mine who is a midwife describing what was happening to which her response was "try and get some sleep now, if you are going into labour, you need your rest" Yeah, this just didn't happen at all! By the time hubby got in from work at 11.30pm I was pacing about the place, he was absoloutely shattered from a very busy shift and took just one look at me and said "No, not tonight, PLEASE not tonight!" I then told him to get to bed and try get as much sleep as he could because there was so sign of these "braxtons hicks" going away this time. I also tried to sleep. Tried, and failed. By 2am the pains were getting so sharp I just couldn't settle at all so I called the hospital who asked me to come in so I could get checked over. So we grabbed the hospital bag that had been packed and ready to go for about 2 months "just incase" and off we went, with an extremely tired hubby still not amused that baby had decided to make his move on THIS night of all nights!

When we got to the hospital we were called into a sideroom where a midwife came and talked to us, she was going through all my details while I was pacing around the room and chirped up "Oh you live across the road from me!" Oh great, thats exactly what I want to hear from someone who is about to give me an internal! You usually expect to not have to face the prospect of bumping into these people in the street after you have left the hospital, (thankfully though, I haven't seen her so far lol) she told me that I was 2-3cm dilated and having put me on the machine to monitor my contractions she said the contractions weren't quite as strong as they should be and usually she would send me home at this point, however, due to my seizure disorder she wanted to check with the doctor first. She then comes back to say that as I had been having false alarms for over a week and was so tired the doctors had decided to admit me as tiredness can be a trigger for my seizures and if I have a seizure while in labour (even very early stages) it could deprive the baby of oxygen so they wanted to keep me in to keep an eye on me.

She then offered me some Meptid to help ease the pain a bit so I could get some rest,  I had decided when writing my birth plan that I didn't want any pain relief other than gas and air unless it was medically neccesary, but as I was so early on and I knew I really needed to get some rest I thought yeah why not and agreed to have it. So she gave me the injection and took me up to the maternity ward where they had a nice private sideroom ready for me, I got settled and tucked up in bed for some rest and happy that I was settled hubby went off home to get himself some sleep and said he would be back in a few hours.... we weren't expecting what happened next.....