Jasmine Stalker-Firth

I went into labour on Sunday morning – I didn’t realise it was labour because my pregnancy had been symptom free. It was just like crampy period-like backache with the odd twinge. I carried on as normal and then by about 8pm when we were round at a friends having dinner it seemed to get worse. Neil and I went home and phoned UCH who said come in immediately.We got the tube down there at 9pm and I was 2cm dilated and contracting every eight minutes. They wanted to schedule me for a section that evening but there was a big queue for surgery and I wasn’t that urgent as my contractions had started coming and going less regularly but more painfully. I was prepped for surgery but then at 2am they came in and said that there weren’t enough cots left in the intensive care unit for all the high risk babies and mothers, so as I was the fittest woman in the place they were transferring us to Homerton in Hackney – the only place with room.

At 4am we got an ambulance across town. There I was prepped again – canula in hand etc., whilst waiting in their queue (massive c-section queues all round London that night). At 6am the surgeon came in and said because of the kidney problems he wanted more senior staff to operate on me and also to have the whole neo-natal team there. At 10am the most senior surgeon came in and said that he wasn’t taking any chances and wanted my baby off straight to Great Ormond Street Hospital(GOSH) and I would be apart from her for three days (in recovery) so he wanted to transfer me back to UCH so I could be near her. The trip would be too far to make from Homerton on a daily basis after such a big operation. By this time we were exhausted and I wanted to get the baby out.

At 1pm I was taken down to surgery. Jasmine was born at 1.23pm Monday afternoon. It took him about six minutes to get her out. The operation was absolutely lovely (if there is such a thing), everyone was there and chatting and happy and rejoicing in our baby. They rushed Jasmine out and straight into intensive care so I got a quick look at her as she came out and as I was wheeled out. Then they put me in the recovery room and threw Neil out. I shivered uncontrollably for half an hour and then was transferred to a ward with all the other mothers and babies.

Shortly after I started leaking so they put me on a breast pump.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 10:04 pm and is filed under birth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.