Eventually it was time to get into the car and go for the scan. I had told Ben I thought it might be better if he didn’t go to work because I wasn’t sure I could drive to the appointment myself. By the time we were in the waiting room for the ultrasound it was clear that this was a pretty good call. I couldn’t sit down by that stage, and was breathing my way through the contractions. I didn’t really stop to think if having this scan was a good idea, or even necessary. After all, the obstetrician said to go ahead.

I felt extremely sorry for the women in that ultrasound waiting room who were there for their 6 or 12 week scan. I was walking, breathing and bending over and was clearly very uncomfortable. They must have been terrified that I was going to give birth there and then. If only they knew…

After a 10 minute wait we went in and the technician started the ultrasound. The baby looked fine and heart rate etc is fine. Honestly I have no idea what the outcome of that scan was or what it said about fluid. She said she needed to do an internal scan to check the fluid which made me feel slightly nauseas but I figured that when I started really dilating it was going to be much worse so I should probably suck it up. I asked if she could see whether I was dilating and she said she couldn’t see any cervix. I figured that meant that there was a problem with the scan or something was in the way. Oh well I thought, the midwife will tell me.

As we left I made Ben pay as I couldn’t stand still and I really needed to go to the toilet. Bloody cocoa pops I thought.

Every few minutes I was feeling extremely uncomfortable and as we walked into the obstetricians office about 30 mins early (it was in the same building as the scan thankfully) the midwife saw me and told me to come straight in. She later told me she thought seeing me that I was probably about 5cm dilated.

I managed to get shoes and pants off and get up on the table somehow and she started to examine me. Hmmm she said, let me just get the obstetrician, I can only feel head and membrane. Righto then. Dr Rob came in and looked and me and told me that he had given me some bad advice earlier and that we now had to make a decision. We were either having the baby there, or we could try and drive to the hospital. He decided that our car was too far away but that if we all went straight to his car that we could make it.

I got in the back seat of his very nice car (on some blankets as I was now dripping as my waters had broken during the examination) and closed my eyes and breathed my way to the hospital. Dr Rob was on the phone to the hospital as we drove and they had a labour room ready and a wheelchair downstairs for me. At this stage the baby was in my birth canal and lets just say it was very unpleasant to be sitting in a car when all I wanted to do was walk. Ben says that Dr Rob was taking some liberties with red lights and stop signs, but we had the delivery kit next to me in the car so we could have had the baby kerbside if we had to.

We got to the hospital and the lovely midwives came and helped me off the pole that I had clung to when I got out of the car. At this point I started the ‘I can’t do this, give me drugs, make it stop, I want to go home’ thing. Everyone laughed at me in a generally caring way and kept me moving. Did I mention that I didn’t have time to put shoes on when we left the obstetricians office? What a sight… dripping, shoeless, panting lady. Classy 🙂

We got to the labour ward and they were asking me if I was feeling the urge to push. Not really I said, but by golly I needed to do a poo! Turns out that is the urge to push. Sweet – off I went. At some point someone asked me if I wanted to feel the head. Bugger off. I think I was slightly more polite than that but I was pretty clear. The baby’s heart rate dropped a bit and I got the hard word from everyone telling me to push really hard. I am nothing if not approval seeking so I pushed really hard and she was born within 2 further pushes and was crying before she came all the way out. That was 15 minutes after our arrival at the hospital.

The next bit was sublime. My baby on my chest (I was not in particularly labour friendly clothing so I had a sports bra pulled up to my neck) and relent from that god awful labour business. There was stitching to be done and the Dr suggested some gas. I took his advice and I maintain that it didn’t make much difference, but Ben tells me I was off my face for a few minutes. Sweet. About time I got some good drugs out of this childbirth gig.

All in all it turns out that my ability to delude myself (this isn’t labour!) was awesome in the context of childbirth. I’d probably rather not do it that way again, as I don’t really want to give birth in a 7-11 or on the side of the road, but it was really quite appropriate given how impatient our lovely Leila is 🙂