This year to celebrate Mothers Day, I've interviewed a group of Mums that I particularly admire. They are all Mothers with different experiences, views, stories and opinions. Some are from the blogging and social media world whilst others are ones I know in real life. I'm running the series through out this week and we'll be talking about birth stories, parenting advice, sleep deprivation and much, much more!
This interview is with my friend Charlotte, we've known each other since we were nine years old. She's not a blogger or a social media fanatic, she's an actual real life person(!). Charlotte and her husband Alex had their first baby, William in November last year and are adjusting to being new parents.
If you've ever Googled "can you die of sleep deprivation?" at 4 am, you want to read this interview.
Can you tell us about your birth experience?
Well to be honest it was rather horrendous. I naively went into it thinking I would have a water birth and try hypno-birthing for pain relief. after all I thought, I had a high pain threshold and how bad could it really be if the human race is still thriving with most women happily having had more than one child? Don't get me wrong I thought it would hurt but I wasn't really prepared for just how badly it would hurt or how crap I would feel afterwards.
To start, I went overdue which was rather depressing but apparently quite normal. For your information - curry and pineapple juice to induce labour do not work but feel free to try them if you're overdue and it makes you feel better! My contractions started on a Wednesday night at ten o'clock, they were coming every 5-10 minutes at first and didn't end until my baby boy arrived sixty-two hours later. Yes I did say, 62 hours. It was NOT like mild period pain either, it was sixty-two hours of agonizing contractions.
Despite going to hospital on Friday morning I was sent home as I was only 3cm dilated! I think this was possibly one of the most depressing moments of my life. By the early hours of Saturday morning, the contractions were coming every three minutes, so we went back to the hospital. I was examined (quite roughly) by a midwife who proclaimed in a surprised voice "Oh your 8cm dilated! Well done, so do you want some pain relief now?" By this stage I hadn't had so much as a Paracetamol so yes please I did want some pain relief! I was also informed that all the birthing pools were occupied. I didn't get the chance to try to hypnobirthing because by this point it was well out of the window along with my dignity!
