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December Birth Story
Tea, toast and an epidural helped Charlotte Coleman Smith through a long and painful backache labour
Frantic activity
Three days past my due date, and I spent the evening hanging pictures - a task I'd put off for months. Then I cleaned the kitchen floor.
The contractions began at bedtime. I tried to sleep, but the pains were getting steadily stronger and more frequent. Although unconvinced that 'this was it', I found myself strapping on the Tens machine and ordering my husband James to rub my lower back.
We phoned the hospital for advice around 1am. We were told to sit tight until the contractions were three minutes apart and very regular. At that stage they were lurching between 12 and eight minutes, so didn't qualify.
The trouble with water
As I was desperately keen to have a water birth, I thought having a bath would be the best way to relax. Wrong. I felt strangely stranded and out of control when the contractions came.
At 5.30am they were four minutes apart. This was close enough for me, so we decided to make a run for it. I squeezed into the back seat alongside a comical amount of kit - little of which we used - and we sped through the autumn dawn to London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Good and bad news
As we reached the car park, I realised that the contractions had stopped. I felt like a fraud who was about to take up valuable bed space. As we sat in the neon-lit underground cavern, wondering whether to go home again, on they came. We staggered into the hospital and I tried to look more in pain than I actually was.
We were shown to a delivery room and a tired-looking blonde midwife at the end of her shift examined me and proclaimed me 5cm dilated. This was excellent news, as it seemed that I had done most of the work at home.
The bad news was that the baby was back-to-back with me, so I was probably in for a painful labour.
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