The Birth story of Jett, born 15^th September 2008.

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon and my partner Ross and I had been for a big walk along Bethels beach to try and move things along as I was a week overdue. We came home and around 4pm I was in the lounge and felt a powerful “popping” sensation which were my waters breaking. Straight away I had my first contraction and they came every 2-3 mins from then on! They were quite mild for about half an hour and then they became fierce and strong. I knew this baby boy wasn’t mucking around and he would be with us today.

I moved from sitting on the toilet to being on all fours to in the shower while Ross filled up the Electra pool. We called our awesome midwife Abbe at around 7pm as I was in quite a lot of pain and needing her support and I wanted to know how far along I was.

When she arrived I was in the pool and she examined me and I was only 2cm dilated!  Abbe gave my cervix a little stretch and I jumped from 2cm to 7cm WOW!  So we were well on our way! We found the Electra pool quite relaxing especially in between contractions, but we did run out of hot water so that was a bit of a woopsy. We were madly boiling jugs and had big pots of water on the stove as well! It also was quite shallow and I would have liked it a little deeper.

We soldiered on for another couple of hours. All I remember doing is just concentrating on breathing! At around 10.30 pm my darling boy passed meconium which can mean that your baby is in distress but it also might not as well…..so that meant a transfer to hospital just to be on the safe side….. in we went to Auckland hospital….as soon as we got there the monitors were put on my belly to monitor baby’s heart beat and he was fine, just being a Ratbag! I had a little gas at this stage as my contractions were wicked and I wanted just 10 mins time out!

At nine minutes past midnight a healthy happy little boy named Jett Maxwell XXXXXX was born after 50 minutes of pushing. He weighed in at 8.5 lbs and was 52cm long, a decent sized boy for my first!

All up it was an eight hour labour which was pretty intense from the start, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat J I had a couple of stitches, which the midwife stitched up and then had a shower and some tea and toast. We were back at home at 4 am Monday morning all tucked up in bed as a new family.

I would definitely recommend a pool; just make sure you have PLENTY of hot water! It was very relaxing and calming.