Welcome Riley Jackson

Riley Jackson joined us in the world in a hurry on 23rd November at 6:51pm weighing 7lbs.

I’d been having contractions since late morning, but they were irregular anything from 15-25 minutes apart and not overly painful. So I just ignored them while carrying on with my day, throwing my son around and such. Trying not to get my hopes up because with Joshua I had contractions like this that then went away for 24 hours. By 4 – 4:30pm my contractions were every ten minutes apart and a lot more painful, I would have to stop what I was doing bend over and grip something while breathing through them. Once the contraction was over I was able to carry on with what I was doing so part of me doubted that this could be the real thing.

We sat down and ate dinner and by 5:15pm when Ant was deciding he had to go to work I was saying look you can’t this is happening. He called work while I rang the hospital about 5:30 and my contractions were five minutes apart. They advised me to come in so they could check me over. Ant called my parents to come and watch Joshua and twenty minutes later we were on our way to the hospital. The car journey was bloody agony, with my contractions coming every 2 -3 minutes. By the time I waddled across the car park, up a lift and along the worlds bloody longest corridor to the labour ward the contractions were coming thick and fast. I wasn’t having time to recover from them before the next arrived. No one was answering the bell on reception as stupidly they had no one manning the desk, people had been there longer than me waiting and I was getting a bit panicky.

Ant followed someone through the doors when they opened and told the midwife my contractions were coming fast and would someone come. She dismissed him and sent him back out. Finally after what seemed like a life time but in reality was probably no more then 5-10 minutes someone appeared. Right as my water broke and I yelled ‘I need to push.’

The midwife told me to follow her and I honestly didn’t think I could walk, she got me in a wheel chair and rushed me to a delivery suite and told me to take my trousers off and get on the bed. I swear she wants to bloody try climbing onto a bed while your body is screaming at you to push. Somehow I managed it and by the time I had the head was half the way out, the midwife then preceded to make me stop pushing, I have no idea why but I told her after that was she mean. The head was then out, and again I had to stop pushing. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck – she didn’t tell me this till afterwards thankfully or I would have panicked. Before I had pushed his body out he was crying which is the MOST amazing sound. She scooped him up and plonked him onto my tummy and I was so relieved.

I have no clue of times, neither does the midwife really but there was no more than ten minutes between my waters breaking and Riley being placed in my arms. Little squid didn’t hang around that’s for sure.

I lay there feeding him thinking, wow that was fast and scary and I realised I actually panicked and thought I was going to give birth in reception in front of a room full of people.

Unfortunately the next stage wasn’t so simple, even with the injection to help speed up the delivery of my placenta didn’t want to make an appearance. Crazy that I managed to deliver a baby with no pain relief but needed gas and air for the placenta. To be honest I think part of the reason they gave it to me was to calm me down. My entire body was shaking, shock I think. An hour later and lots of poking around by the midwife, (child birth really isn’t glamorous) and my placenta still hadn’t arrived. So in comes a doctor to take a look, and they are talking about trying something to help.
Injecting whatever is in the injection into the cord. I think all that talk scared my placenta and an hour and ten minutes later it made an appearance.

Finally it’s time to focus on Riley again, who’s been wrapped in blankets and placed in his cot. They weigh him and get him dressed, but he’s really cold. He’s given a warming mattress once I’m taking to the ward and this is left on all night. Meaning even if it was possible to sleep on a ward with crying babies, and a woman moaning she was in pain there was no way I was going to be able to anyway as I was so worried he’d not warm up enough, or he’d get to warm with the mattress that I had to keep checking he was okay.

Thankfully when they took his temperature again in the morning it was fine, so they turned off the mattress and checked again an hour later and he was fine. So we were discharged at lunch time.

Things have been going brilliantly at home, breastfeeding is going well and doesn’t seem as hard this time around. The first few days were, but once my milk came in baby became more enthusiastic and is now feeding about every two hours.

Midwife came out today to weigh him and he’s 6lb 15oz, so he’s barely lost anything... makes me a very happy Mummy.