So it was morning and I woke up at God knows when, contractions lessened and wondering what the day would bring. Cried in Ollie's arms remembering the screaming woman, then managed to pull myself together. With all the emergency births and chaos we were reluctant to drag away any midwives, but after a bit rang the bell just to ask if we could go for another walk outside - I sure was missing my tree!

The midwife who came said that was fine, they were waiting for a room to become free so they could induce me via drip, and to leave my phone on.

Mid walk, I guess around 11 am, I received a call - they were preparing my room so we needed to get packed up and ready to go. Nerves kicking in now, especially with the conflicting advice about the drip, which was apparently going to be very painful indeed, and the medics' opinions (I'm sure I asked at least four people) varied on whether to have an epidural straightaway or to wait and see how things went. The screaming woman had sealed the deal for me and I knew I wanted one. I told them I didn't want to start the drip until there was an anaesthetist free.

I moved to my new room and we did some more waiting. Met my wonderful, wonderful designated midwife and final year student, who was helping. They let me have some gas and air for my little contractions, which was SHITE for pain relief but AWESOME at making me high, which I deemed extremely important for relaxation purposes! Did hypnobirth breathing through contractions and had gas and air in the interim, which I understand confused people.

I got robed up and the drip was started (Ollie thought its name was Herman, but my midwife was Italian and that's how she pronounced "hormone", which gave me a good chuckle). Had to read a laminated sheet on the risks of the epidural, then the anaesthetist came along to administer it. The only scary bit was having to stay deadly still. Didn't look at the needle.

A short while later and Christ those contractions were kicking in and I was breathing and swaying through them by now. When was that epidural going to start working? They sprayed some cold spray on my legs and I could feel it - they informed me the epidural hadn't worked! Luckily the anaesthetist hadn't gone far and so came back and did another one, whilst saying, "This happened to someone else yesterday, how strange."

This time it worked on half my body, but they tipped me up and it drained into my other half; I became totally pain free, and as a bonus still had the gas and air pipe in my greedy little hand, happy days!

I lost some hours here; we were just waiting until I was dilated enough to give birth and it was evening by now. The midwife kept coming back and forth to the monitor and then there were a lot of people in the room. I didn't know at the time but Little Bear's heart rate kept plummeting below 70. They were talking about prepping for a C-section to get him out quickly. Got stressed and I think this is when I inhaled so much gas and air that I had my fish and chips reverie.

I was given a terrifying waiver/consent form to sign. They were trying to go through it with me quickly but the only words I heard were "risk of bladder damage" and "hysterectomy". Signed it anyway. Ollie went off to get into scrubs and I was wheeled to theatre. When we got there Little Bear's heart rate had stabilised and I was fully dilated, so they were going to give me a chance to push! What would happen next?

To be continued...

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