Lucas, the youngest of our three boys, was born on the .5th of August 2009. Two days before his birth, in the evening, I suddenly felt I was freezing, my teeth were rattling and I could not manage to warm up, no matter what.
Then a couple of hours later, I was suddenly roasting and sweating and would have nearly gone for a cold shower. I remember thinking this probably meant he was coming and that we would be going to the maternity that night. However it took another night of the same hot and cold, for contractions to come.
At 3am, I realised I was “leaking”. The waters had not broken for the birth of my first two children so I was not sure what to think. I had heard stories of water gushing out but this certainly wasn’t it. We headed off to the maternity at Limerick Hospital at 9am after dropping the older boys at a friend’s house. Upon arriving at the maternity, the contractions had nearly disappeared but the midwives decided to keep me in as “something” was definitely happening. They allocated me a bed in one of the wards, and then the wait started: we waited and waited, read, walked up and down corridors, went for a bite downstairs and walked some more.
It seemed that everything had stopped, but at 6pm a nurse came and asked me to lie down on the bed. She put a belt around my belly with a device to monitor the baby and went off. A few small contractions came, I coughed, heard a sound similar to that of a balloon popping and suddenly felt like I was lying in a pool. Now the waters had broken and I remember thinking this felt more like what I had heard from friends. The midwife came to check on me: the fluid was green with meconium, which meant the baby had to be out as soon as possible, so I was brought up to the delivery room.
Because labour was still very slow and I was put on a drip to accelerate the process. Contractions finally became stronger and came closer together. In my birth plan, I had chosen the epidural for pain relief as I had had it before and found it very helpful. At first, I was given the gas which helped but made me sick after a while. At about 10:30 pm I was given the epidural but it numbed the pain on one side only.
In retrospective, this was better than if it had worked fully as it diminished the pain while still allowing me to feel and know what was going on. At that point, we thought Lucas would be born in the early hours of the 16th. His due date was the 12th of August which is my father’s dad’s birthday, while the 15th of August is my mother’s dad’s birthday and we thought it would be nice if he was born on either of these dates.
The 12th was gone and by the looks of it, the 15th would be over before the baby had come. However, at 11:30 pm I could feel the pressure of the baby’s head and felt an overwhelming urge to push. The midwives confirmed that the time had come and after a few pushes I was able to reach and touch the top of the baby’s head and his hair with my hand before he was even out: that was an amazing and wonderful feeling which I had not experienced before! Lucas was born at 12:57pm, to the greatest joy of his parents and two brothers, on the same day his great granddad had been born 94 years before him.
Pauline, Co. Clare
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