Shellee woke at 3am to contractions, her previous birth lasted 7 hours so she assumed she had plenty of time to make it to the hospital....
"I woke at 3am and my contractions started at 3:15am, I had approximately 4 where I had actively timed then before waking up my husband. We had also had our friend on standby to look after our toddler who lived 45 mins away so I messaged him before I woke Jack and told him I think things were happening. I actually felt like he had time as my previous labour took around 7 hours to get to fully dilated. I started timing them and found they were anywhere from 30 seconds to 4 mins apart. I was also told that he (Blaise) was posterior which was the same as Beau (my other son) so I knew that I was in for ALOT of pain, which in some way helped me stay focused to just breathing through as I genuinely thought I would have a few hours at least. I woke my husband Jack and asked that he call the hospital to advise them my contractions had started, they said when she can no longer talk through them then call us back. I hopped in the shower and just lent over my exercise ball with the hot water on my back and just breathed through each contraction and tried to just stay really grounded and focused on getting through each contraction. I had the lights off and I was not making any noise, just breathing and our son Beau must have intuitively woke and came into our room, Jack was lying on the bed with him and trying to get him back to sleep but he just knew something was up. I had about two extremely painful contractions and I said to Jack "I need you in here as I am starting to struggle" but in my head I had prepared to be there for a few hours as I was basing it off my first birth and didn't think I would be anywhere near close to dilated. At that point Jack came in and started to rub my back and Beau came in and just had his hand on Jacks shoulder.
I didn't want to tell Jack that I was in so much pain as I felt that as soon as I had admitted the contractions were really bad that I would mentally clock out and then if I got to the hospital, I would have been really disappointed. I then needed to go to the toilet but I had to time it in between contractions because it was pretty intense pain, I sat on the toilet and I started rocking as a contraction was coming and then all of a sudden, my waters just broke and my body instantly went into bear down. I said "Jack you need to call the hospital I can't control my body" (at this point I got a little scared because I know when your body starts bearing down without control it can be dangerous if you aren't fully dilated and i didn't think I would already be at transitional)
At that point I knew I had to trust my body knew what it was doing and instead I just focused on my breath. Jack called the hospital and they said to call the ambulance, Jack called the ambulance and they stayed on the phone to Jack directing him.
I had another big contraction where my body again pushed and I felt that he was in transition so I fully just allowed myself to trust, Jack was also quite calm and collected and Beau just stood there beside the both of us. I placed my head in my hands and I just zoned out and focused on breathing, our friend got there just as the head started to come and took Beau out to the living room whilst the ambulance stayed on the phone and was just reassuring Jack (at this point I was just in my own world) and realised that it was just us about to deliver this baby and the ambos were on their way. Approximately 4 pushes and he came out and Jack was being directed on what to do, as soon as he started crying, I knew everything was good and the ambos weren't far. Thankfully we had our friend here to let the ambulance in as Jack would have had to put Blaise down as I was still on all fours and had the cord attached. The ambulance got there, clamped the cord and Jack cut it and then I was able to do skin to skin.
It was BY FAR the most beautiful, empowering and insane experience of my life, having hubby deliver our child and both of us just staying so calm and collected and sharing it as a team! You can tell im still in my love bubble!!!
Modibodi: What was the hardest part?
