Your first baby, it's something that your excited and anxious about all at the same time. You spend your time picking out cute little outfits, creating a nursery, spending countless amounts of money on craving food all in the lead up to the big day.
"One thing you never expect as a first-time mum is for the big day to come early!"
From weeks 18 through to 35 we had countless hospital trips in early labour, including an ambulance trip transfer to King Edwards Memorial Hospital where the paramedics were preparing to deliver your baby on the side of the freeway. With amazing efforts by medical staff, constant medication and lots of bed rest baby managed to stay put for a little bit longer. Around the corner at 36weeks our waters broke, and we knew it was time. Getting to the hospital in the middle of the night, barely considered in active labour, on the ground screaming for an epidural. Yea I am that mum that doesn't cope well with pain.
I glared my mum up and down as she tried to take photos to capture my labour for me, just like I had asked of her. I didn't even know there was such thing as a birth photographer and if I had known, I would have hired one, I'm sure I wouldn't have stared at her so evil. There were no nice photos at all in my early stages of labour, not because they weren't achievable but because my hormones and emotions made me want to scream at every person in the room I knew. My midwives were about the only people I was nice to.
After my epidural, and 4 hours of sleep, finally a half descent image was taken. I can still pick a million things I don't like about it but it’s the only one from labour I have. I wish someone would have taken an image of my mum being 110% there for me as she was my rock through my whole pregnancy, labour and into motherhood.
Shift change over happened and my antenatal coach just happened to walk through my door. It was the most amazing feeling to know my delivering midwife would be a lady that I had spent time with prior to labour that I had built a relationship with.
We knew I was about 9cm at this point, so it wasn't far off. OH MY GOSH that burning ring of fire feeling, to announce it is burning and having your midwife standing in the corner jumping up and down going
"Yippee, somethings happening"
even had me laughing to have such a wonderful atmosphere to birth into!
Indeed, I was crowning, 2 pushes later and I had a beautiful baby girl weighing 5pound 6ounces on my chest. Very few photos taken, and most were blurry and of course I spent at least the next few days on my phone taking pictures of her but non at a quality that I could blow up onto my wall.