Dear wife’s contractions started at the end of the day on her due date. We were very excited and nervous. We thought that he was almost on time, that he would only be one day late.
In the end, labour was a lot harder than we expected. Initially her contractions were less than 10 minutes apart.. but they slowed down and would continue for the next 8 days!
It was 7 days before she finally entered established labour, by that time she was exhausted, as she had not been able to sleep well due to the contractions happening regularly throughout the nights.
We finally went to the hospital – the midwife checked and my wife was 6 cm dilated. There we were left to mostly to ourselves as according to our birth plan. We had regular monitoring but hoped to have as natural a birth as possible.
But after about 9 hours of active labour the contractions had started slowing again – we think that my wife was just too tired after the long labour that she had been going through.
In the end, we agreed that she would be given syntocin – an artifical form of oxytocin which would induce the contractions, also that my wife would have an epidural to help with the contractions which she’d found very painful.
Still it took several hours more, but eventually our baby son arrived. He needed some more help, with the vonteuse suction cap to pull him out. It was very emotional… most of the time, during the pregnancy, we’d been fairly happy and confident, partly because throughout all the scans and checks it seemed that he was very healthy with a good, strong heartbeat. But towards the end of the labour, his heartbeat was becoming quite fast and mum’s temperature was getting raised.
There was also an alarming moment a few hours before he was born when they were trying to listen for his heartbeat and they had trouble finding it for a couple of minutes!
We had to stay in hospital a couple of days for monitoring after the birth. But things are going very well now. Baby is very cute and healthy, and breastfeeding well. It was easier at the start, when he slept a lot and easily.
More recently he still sleeps a lot during the day, and fairly easily after he’s been fed. But in the evening, he will be wide awake after a feed and quite cranky, and usually take several more hours of feeding and consoling before he finally falls asleep from exhaustion! Anyway, we’re really happy to have him in our lives after long, hard journey we’ve had to get him.
IVF couple 