The news is that Romilly Violet arrived safely Sunday evening after a 2.5-hour labour (Stages 1,2 and 3) with NO pain relief except gas and air… except a LOT of pushing my index finger and thumb together!
I had a massively long latent phase once more, which exhausted me utterly – but active labour itself was very quick. I have to say, Stage 2 (the pushing stage) wasn’t really bad at all – I found stage one by far the hardest to cope with. The things that really stuck in my mind were the pushing together of thumb and forefinger, the blue balloon filling up and floating away and visualising a lower number on the blackboard and the phrases “each contraction brings you one step closer to meeting your baby”, and “calm, confident and in control”.
I won’t lie, labour was hard (I think the clue is in the name), it felt much harder and longer than the first one, even though it was a good 14 hours shorter! But I have to say the utter amazement and shock that “I did this all myself” has been, once the sheer weight of it hit me, quite empowering. Losing control or “being at the point of no return” has been a persistent and horrible fear of mine forever. Having faced that fear “you’re now 10cm, no you actually can’t have pain relief at this stage now, you’ve nearly done it, you HAVE to do this now” and just getting on with it, has been a big hurdle to overcome. Perhaps I CAN actually do things, perhaps life isn’t quite so scary after all! To be honest, I’m still in complete and utter shock about how quickly it all happened and that I actually did it myself.
THANK YOU for giving me the opportunity and the tools to be able to find the reserves in myself somewhere to do it – without your help, I would not have had the guts to do that myself and you’ve allowed me to be able to sit here and say that I gave birth all by myself without help, which genuinely feels like an absolutely massive achievement. You are amazing! xxxx