Dharma was born at the Birmingham Women's Hospital, it was all pretty much straight forward - well at least from my point of view. Labour had to be induced on Thursday morning at 06:00 am, I sent Anthony home to have some sleep as I didn't expect much to happen for hours. He was gone for half an hour and I was in full on labour - 3 contractions in 10 minutes lasting well over 2 minutes.
At 08:30 I was given the choice between a paracetamol and pethadin injection, I took the pethadin. Didn't take the pain away but made me not care about the pain. I was lying in the delivery room and saw end credits of films rolling in front of my eyes and tried to figure out which film it was - needless to say that I never got to the bottom of it.
At 10:00 they examined me and hurray I was 4cm dilated, as I was officially in labour now (pain before that point doesn't count... yay!) I was allowed gas and air, loved it I gripped so hard on the handle that my knuckles were all white!! I had no idea how long it would take to deliver so I thought I better order an epidural - thanks to my friends Micol and Gesa who told that it was fab and they were so right!!! The anathetist will be on my christmas card list for the rest of my life.
Anthony came back at 12:00, when the epidural just started working. He regrets not having been there earlier as he couldn't take a bit of the gas and air...
The afternoon was spent in a very relaxed manner, midwifes checking my progress (my midwife Molly was an absolute star), Anthony having cups of tea and me dozing. At 6pm I was fully dilated, but the midwifes needed to have dinner first. So I started pushing around 6:45, the epidural had worn off so I could actually feel the contractions (although I am sure they were still softer than they normally would be), after almost 2 hours of pushing the midwifes decided that we weren't getting anywhere and the doctors were called for a forceps delivery and my epidural was topped up.
At 9pm exactly Dharma was born... we didn't know what we were having and I was looking for the evidence and saw she was a girl - Anthony and I cried. Dharma got examined and they pediatric nurse saw the dimples. Best day of my life really.
I had to be stitched up in the operating theatre which took ages. It was very funny as the team there (8 people!?) were talking about the football championship in Germany and how Germany was a rubbish football team etc. I let them talk for a bit and then I just said "oh by the way I am German" - priceless!!!
An hour later in recovery I met my little girl again - now all cleaned up and I was the first to dress her and I got the best cup of tea and toast with marmalade ever.
