Three teens and a baby: I'm being induced and ready to meet my daughter

“Whatever you do, do NOT get an induction if you can help it. They are a nightmare!”

These words, told to me over the last few weeks by countless friends, are ringing so loudly in my ears I can hear them above the whooshing sound of the baby monitor hooked up to my abdomen, as I lie on a huge bed in the maternity hospital and prepare to have….an induction. 

I didn’t want to end up this way. I wanted to go into labour naturally, as I did with all three of my last babies. But, as with so many things in this pregnancy, everything is completely different this time. I’m just doing what is advised and what this baby – and this older body - seems to want to do. 

So here we are, waiting for the starting gun. Or, in the case of induced labour, the starting hormones. 

It’s nearly 15  years since I was last here, awaiting the birth of my third (and, until now, youngest) child and the flashbacks, memories and sensations – sensations I never thought I would feel again - are flooding through me as if it was all yesterday. 

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Those walks along white corridors, stopping to bend double in agony until the next contraction passed. Hours in the hospital café buying undrinkable cups of tea. The feel of the hospital gown on my hot, dehydrating skin. 

It’s like the most intense déjà vu ever, mixed with déjà felt, heard, and endured. 

And I’m starting to get nervous. 

I’m not a fan of detailed descriptions of labour, as in my experience they are just pure, undiluted hell from start to finish, and I’d rather not subject others to reading about it. 

But for anyone who might have a future induction and is wondering how mine went, let’s summarise it thus: nothing happened for six hours. 

We walked inside, we walked outside, and I got increasingly frustrated and tired of all the pain, but no gain. 

At lunchtime, we took a little stroll to the canteen to see what culinary delights didn’t wait us, and found a crossword puzzle in a newspaper.

Clearly, this baby didn’t like the clue for eight down at all, because in the time it took for me to read it, my body went from zero to “OH MY GOD I CAN’T MOVE OR BREATHE OR SEE OR….. HELP!”

From then on, it was five hours of the worst pain I can describe, and therefore won’t. 

With every contraction I thought I was going to die. My old, tired body just could not do this again. This was crazy. Could someone just make it all stop please?

The only thing that kept me going was thinking of my older children, of all that they still need me for, and of being able to meet our new baby, and start our life with her. 

At 5pm, I finally had an epidural. 

By 5.20pm, then pain was easing. By 5.30pm it had completely stopped. 

Everything was suddenly quiet. Everything was calm. 

And then, in one of the most peaceful, happy and conscious moments of my whole life….there she was. 

She was placed on my chest, wrapped in a blanket with a little blue hat we had bought in the maternity ward. 

They could have been stitching me up for a week after that, and I wouldn’t have cared. The whole world changed in those few magical minutes that followed. Just me, Mike, and our little baby, together as a three for the first time. 

We stared at her. So tiny. So perfect. 

All the worry of getting pregnant, of my age, the bike crash, the early bleeding, the sickness, the three months of pre-term labour, all gone. 

Replaced by pure, tear-inducing bliss. 

I kissed her over and over again, inhaling the scent of her newborn skin. 

“Hello Scout. I’m your Mummy. And this is your Daddy. We are SO happy to see you, my love. Thank you, thank you, for being.”

Next week: Three teens and a baby... reality hits