I think you do need- well, I felt through my pregnancy, and all the decisions that I had to make, I felt like I needed someone at the end of the line or, to go onto say, a website and have a look at, at information, because every day you might have different questions, and you can’t keep phoning your health visitor every day. So, yeah, I thought it was quite good.

And what did you feel about the information on the website compared to the information that you got from other sources?

‘Yes, good, I’m just trying to think. It’s probably in a way, better because you’ve got more time, you’ve got your own time to sit and read it and digest it and ‘and you can do it as and when you need to. Whereas often you go to see, you have your appointment to see a health professional and you forget what you want to ask them or, you might be having a very good week and theres no problems.

‘I think it would be probably useful to have more options to speak to people and to phone midwives or to be able to see your midwife more often than you do, maybe towards the end. Or even just throughout the whole pregnancy. I did sometimes feel, you know, you have all these questions but you can’t really see anybody or talk to anybody’ until your next appointment. And by that time you’ve probably found out the answer or you’ve got past that stage, you know, so I think I’d like, almost like to have a hotline [slight laugh] that you could phone and get advice, or’

That makes sense, because I think theres a tendency also to forget, isn’t there, because it’s a burning question, but by the time you get there it’s kind of gone out of your mind?

That’s it, and nine out of ten times, when you have your midwife appointment, you’re having a good week and everything seems rosy. And it can, it can just turn the next day into the most awful pregnancy ever.

I think it was one particular conversation with a midwife that really’ cemented my thought that I was definitely going to go for natural. I think I’d probably gone in thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I might go for C-section’, and it was just a conversation I had with her, and she was an older midwife, actually. And I just thought, ‘Yeah, shes speaking a lot of sense there, I’ll stick with it.

And was that about confidence, or about reassuring you, or’?

Yeah, she just, she had’ yeah, she seemed to know, because she was slightly older, I think she had a lot more experience and had probably seen a lot more mums and she just filled me with confidence actually, a lot more. And she was quite, you know, sure about it, whereas a lot of people say, ‘Well, the decision’s up to you at the end of the day’, and I thought, ‘Yes, I know, but I want…, so she was almost telling me and it was quite nice to be actually told [slight laugh].

I started labour at roughly three oclock on the Thursday.

I went in, straight into [Hospital], because I’d obviously had a C-section before, and I wasn’t sure what stage of labour I was in. The contractions were about eight minutes apart and I thought that was quite close. Not terribly painful, but they were coming quite often. I went in, fully expecting to be sent home but when I got in and they put me on the monitor, they were sort of about four, five minutes apart, and I think because I’d had a C-section before, they wanted to keep an eye on me.

So then, I think it was probably about six, seven oclock that I was admitted in and they were, the contractions were just getting stronger by now, and still about four minutes apart’ and then I think at about ten oclock, I had an internal, but I hadn’t dilated at all, which was quite upsetting, because I’d been going since three oclock and now it was ten oclock and I was in quite a lot of pain at ten oclock, so they advised me to have a pethidine injection because I probably wouldn’t have had the energy to carry on. Because I hadn’t even started to dilate, so in their words, ‘Proper labour hadn’t even started’ [slight laugh], which was quite upsetting.

But anyway, so I had the Pethidine, and that really helped, and glad I had that. I didn’t want it to start with, but they did persuade me that it was the best thing. So, but I was glad because it gave me a chance to have a rest and the contractions didn’t seem so bad then. And then, I think I was examined at about twelve, oh no, about two oclock and I’d actually dilated to three centimetres by then, so that was excellent. They did send my husband home at midnight, which was a bit, again, upsetting, but I was’ because I’d had the Pethidine, I wasn’t really aware of what was going off, but I knew he was going home, but they called him as soon as I dilated to three centimetres. He came back about five oclock in the morning. And then at three oclock they wheeled me down to the delivery suite and gave me gas and air, which was brilliant, I got on really well with that.

‘and then at about, I think seven oclock in the morning, I actually ended up having an epidural. I think they thought I was getting a bit distressed and I think I was very tired, because obviously I’d been up all night’ with the in labour and I had the epidural at seven and that was just fantastic, that just took all the pain away’ and you know, I was really glad I had that because it gave, obviously then I slept for a couple of hours, which was, you know, what I needed to do. And the good thing with the epidural is that you could decide how much of the drug you had, they’d come back and say, ‘Do you want a top-up’, and I’d, you either say, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, and I think I had less of a top-up towards the end, so I could feel the contractions more and so I knew when to push and, and that. And then I think by twelve oclock, midday, I was fully dilated to ten centimetres and then you had to wait an hour, and then at one oclock I was told I could start pushing, and she was born at eleven minutes past one, so it was sort of’ it all seemed to go quite smoothly really.

I think I had a text book’ labour, as in I dilated every hour on the hour and it all went very well. [Daughter’s name] heartbeat, heart rate raised towards the end and that’s when they got a little bit concerned, and did the ventouse, which was again, because I’d had the epidural, was no problem, I didn’t feel anything. And within minutes of them putting on the ventouse, she was born. I think they only needed to do sort of one attempt with it, and she was born, so, absolutely fine.

Thank yo

I think the natural birth was better. ‘Because after the C-section, you have got quite a lot of pain, obviously. And I can remember the next morning after the C-section, I had excruciating pain. At one point, they had to give me morphine ‘whereas you don’t get any of that, after, after you’ve actually had the baby, that’s it. All the terrible pain has gone. And you know this is it now and you can just go forward. Okay, you’re a bit uncomfortable down below but it’s not pain as in excruciating pain at all, it’s just you’re a bit uncomfortable. And you have pain relief for that, anyway, so, you know, that’s controlled. But no’

And you hinted before we started recording about the fact that you could do more, because after a section, you’re restricted, aren’t you in terms of what you can do’?

Yeah, no, it was great to come home and actually see [son’s name], my eldest and pick him up and hug him and that was brilliant, because I knew, obviously having a C-section, I wouldn’t have been able to have done any of that, and he wouldn’t have understood why he couldn’t jump on mummy or why mummy couldn’t pick him up. So that was brilliant, because I did go through the first week, of being quite upset that suddenly I couldn’t spend so much time with [son’s name] and I found that really difficult. So it would have been worse, even worse if I couldn’t even have held him. No, it was great.