Joseph's birth story.

Today Joseph is a week old and I thought it was about time to share his birth story.

All day Saturday, I was contracting. They were mild contractions but regular so I started thinking this is the start and that something would happen Saturday night or Sunday morning.

I took it pretty easy most of the day and we went to Saturday night mass just in case we couldn't make it Sunday.

Saturday night, I found it hard to get into a real deep sleep and still had contractions for most of the night. Just after 6.30 I woke up and had a stronger contraction and felt something a bit different. I thought what was that and got up out of bed. My waters then broke. I told Steve to get up and that we would need to go to the hospital.

We got to the hospital and they monitored me for a while. I was still contracting but the contractions were not strong still but I thought with broken waters it wouldn't be long and I would start getting them.

Lunch time came and went. Still the contractions were mild. I was thinking, what the heck is going on since usually once my waters are broken labour gets going. Steve went home for a while to see what the children were up too and came back at 2.00.

We spent most of the day just waiting around for labour to start. Just after 3.30 my ob decided it was time to start some syntocin and see if that would get labour going. We then headed from the ward over to labour ward. The ob examines me and tells me that my waters in front are still intacked. I thought she meant that they hadn't broken but what had happened was they had broken behind Joseph. That was why I wasn't going into labour. The ob broke the waters in front and they started the syntocin drip slowly.

By 6pm I was in labour. The contractions were stronger than they had been most of the day but still manageable. I didn't feel as if I needed any pain relief yet.

At 7.30 the midwife examined me and I was at 9cm. Pain was pretty strong now but it was too late for any pain relief except the gas so that was what I had. I thought that because I was about 9cm that the labour would be over pretty soon anyway.

At this point, contractions dropped back a bit so the syntocin had to be increased. I don't really remember when but soon after this, they discovered that my cervix was caught on Joseph's head and that was why I wasn't moving from 9cm.

After a couple of hours at 9cm, I decided it was time to try and get into a new position. I moved around onto my knees and then soon after this got a strong urge to push. I started pushing and pretty quickly Joseph was born. I wished I had changed positions earlier.

He was born at 9.35 pm. His weight was 3620 (8 pound exactly) and his length was 50 cm (19 inches).

All our other children have had pretty small head circumferences (between 28 and 32 cm). Joseph's was 35. When the midwife said, 35cm I was pretty glad I had been on my knees and had the gravity helping me deliver.

From my competition, both Jean and Kym guessed the right date for Joseph's birth. 4 people were pretty close to the weight too guessing 3685 (8 lb 2 oz). Therese, Kym, Yofed and Mary.

Congratulations especially to Kym for guessing the right date and being so close for weight.