Action Stations

I was woken up by painful contractions a wee bit before 3, surprisingly enough it took me a wee while to work out that the contractions were fairly regular and worthy of timing. I was a bit discombobulated I suppose. Half an hour of timing later and I was on the phone to the delivery suite as I've hit the magic 5 minutes apart.

As you can probably guess if you are up at this unflyingspaghettimonster hour that I'm not in hospital. I'm to tough it out at home, with the help of a couple paracetamol and hot water bottle/warm bath until either it becomes unbearable, the baby arrives cos I'm that hard and miscalculate how long I've got before the baby arrives, or it's time to go in anyways because the plan was to induce me if I hadn't started labour.

Early morning TV is just as rubbish as when I was a student, the only difference is that there are now more channels showing rubbish and Hitman and Her is no longer running. Thank goodness for laptops and the internets, that's all I can say as I can't get back to sleep.

A few hours later

I've been having regular contractions since about 10 am, they've gone from being about 25 to 30 minutes apart to about 15 to 20 minutes apart and still quite bearable. But rather than be a martyr I've taken a couple of paracetamol which have taken the edge off them. I had my last midwife's appointment today, I was supposed to get my membranes swept it in order to get things going but, obviously there is no real need.

Depending on how long it takes for the contractions to get being 5 minutes apart I will either be going in to hospital at some point tonight (when the magic five minutes has been hit) or sometime tomorrow morning to be checked over and if necessary be given something like syntocinon to speed up the dilation. I'm hoping that nature is speedy enough because being on a drip will reduce the number of options for staying active, however the main thing is that we have a baby at the minimum of risk to the both of us so if that means a drip and stuck on a bed then so be it.

Right now I'm a bit bored, we had a mad couple of hours this morning, changing bedding, cleaning things, doing more clothes washing to empty out the basket and the like, all that is left to do now is wait until things get a bit more painful.

The Inevitable Happens

V quick post as it's 1:33 am and I'm a bit knackered.

My waters broke sometime today but as it wasn't even a proper trickle I was very good at rationalising it away until about 11:30 pm yesterday. I ran up the Delivery Suite they said come in so we did.

I was checked over, an internal examination was done to confirm the membrane had ruptured and to see if I was at all dilated.

If I am dilated it's not very much at all so I am home again. If labour doesn't get established by Thursday morning I have to go in to be induced, so it is possibly all go. I will definitely have a baby by the weekend. Which is nice.

May Day

With a nod to Betty - 10 years ago I was on a course in Bristol, it was residential and all the attendees were accommodated in an expensivish hotel near UWE, We were a motley group of Civil Servants most of us fairly young. The majority of the group were fairly disinterested in politics but 3 of us were prepared to say that we wanted Labour to win, loudly and proudly. I had had enough prior knowledge of the course dates and together enough to organise a postal vote and had already put my X against the Labour candidate a pointless action as I lived in a constituency where you could put an idiot up as Conservative and he would still get in but it made me feel better.

Anyways that Thursday was the last evening of the course and we were in a fairly celebratory mood, the booze was flowing freely as someone had a contact who worked behind the bar and he told us that we could convert the money that work had given to the hotel to feed us into money we could drink. We labour 3 commandeered the telly in the hotel bar and turned on the Election Special, I remember Norman Lamont failing to get Harrogate and me dancing round like a mad thing much to the disgust of the gitzoid businessmen who were dotted around, not that I gave a shit, but to my eternal shame although I was up and cheering for Portillo I don't actually remember this and had to be reminded the next day.

On Friday, after the course I had to get to London to meet up with my then boyfriend, I had to wait for him at Paddington Railway Station everyone round me was smiling, friends were greeting each other by waving copies of the Evening Standard, Indie, Guardian, Mirror, then laughing with the pure pleasure of it all, I've never seen a place look happier, ever.