The beginning: Finley's birth story, part 4

So back to the birth story...

30 November 2006, 7.30am
We phoned Liza a little bit later in the morning to keep her in the loop with the progress. Contractions were still irregular so she told us to come through to Ballito for a check-up. I remember Nadine being worried about us driving all the way out there since things can progress quite quickly. But I told her that contractions were still quite irregular and that active labour hadn't started – I was still in phase 1.

The car ride was awful. Before that, when the contractions came, I was at least mobile and could find a comfortable position, but in the car, stuck to the seat, turning, braking, bumps in the road – certainly made me feel a lot worse.

I remember getting into an argument with Brad about whether we should fill up petrol first or go and see Liza first. I was so uncomfortable with the contractions in the car, I just wanted to get to Liza for her to tell me that everything would be okay. But we ended up filling petrol first! Who knows, if we didn't fill up petrol we might not have made it to Liza in the first place. And a labouring woman on the side of the road was definitely not what we wanted.

She examined me and I was about 2cm dilated. I had kinda hoped for more! One of those scenes where you think you still have so far to go and then you find out you're actually almost there. No such luck, I'm afraid! She wanted me to see Dr McLynn (our backup gynae) to do a CTG to get a bassline reading for how Fin was dealing with the contractions. We went home first to get things ready – we hadn't even set up the pool yet! We were only expecting his arrival in 2 weeks time after all.

I don't really remember was happened in those next few hours. We went to Brad's mom's house to get some extra towels, Brad set up the pool and I think I helped get the room ready. Hester had put out some lovely fruit for me to snack on, which helped keep my energy levels up. Luckily Andy my cousin, was there as well and helped us get everything ready.

We went to McLynn's (oh no, another car ride) and I thought a CTG was a 5 minute procedure. Instead, I needed to be hooked up to the machine for 45 minutes - lying on my back dealing with what felt like intense contractions. When the doctor came in to examine the results, I remember him saying something like 'Well you aren't even in real labour yet (active labour) and you are only 3cm dilated!'. Not real labour?! So these contractions are supposed to be mild??!! Time was not on our side since my waters had broken at 1am, we had a 24 hour window before the risk of infection arose. And with the way things were progressing, I wasn't dilating quick enough and it didn't look like we would be having a natural home water birth. He said that things could still change, but that I also needed to prepare myself since the chance of having a caesarian section was quite high.

I was devastated.

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