"I think I’m gonna faint"

Content shared with permission from Majeline Dalsgaard. Originally published on Majeline's blog.

Last Monday, eight days ago, I was 40+6 weeks pregnant. I had been booked in for induction the next day and since my body showed no signs of getting into labour anytime soon I had started to prepare mentally for the induction to go ahead.

The day went by as usual. The girls were in preschool and I went shopping for four hours with my parents. Because what else to do when pregnant, right? At night we had as normal a dinner as a dinner can be around here. Pasta-bolo was on the menu followed by a singing, dancing & silly show by the girls. Standard.

8 pm.

Josh put the girls to bed and I sat in the lounge and watched some TV with my parents. Then, as I was sitting there, I started to feel something that felt a bit more like real contractions than all of those damn (quite painfull) Braxton Hicks I have had during the last couple of months. I still couldn’t really figure out if it was the real thing.

8.30 pm.

Josh’s bedtime mission was complete and I took a shower. Because I needed to shave my legs and wash my hair, obviously. Thought it was a great time to do that. And…I was still not 100% sure it was real contractions I felt. A hot shower usually gets the Braxton Hicks to calm down. They didn’t calm down during this shower, though. They got a lot more intense and regular. Not extremely painfull yet, so I still had energy to dry my hair, put lotion on and brush my teeth. Then…I thought we better get that hospital bag packed afterall.

9.20 pm.

At this point I was still a bit in doubt if it would pass or if this was really it. But, since I have a history of very fast births, we left home to drive to the hospital as I would like to avoid going there by ambulance or having a baby in a carpark somewhere.

9.30 pm.

As we reached the hospital ten minutes later there was no doubt anymore. I had contractions every 3-4 minutes and as we reached the birth unit I did not find it particularly fun to be told to go to the waiting area and wait for a midwife. There were three other couples sitting there, watching me as I had more and more contractions. Contractions that made me feel like pushing out a baby. Now!

9.40 pm.

As Josh told the reception ladies how I felt the reality came clear to them and a midwife came and took us to the birth suite straight away.

9.50 pm.

After the midwifes had put what seemed like my entire life story into their computers, I was finally able to go onto the bed and get examined. Josh was by my side, the midwife was nice and I felt safe and content. As content as you can be when you have contractions every other minute and feel like pushing a human out of your body, but get told to take a chill-pill aka inhale gas as there was no tomorrow instead.

At this point there was no blood. No needles. No fluids. No drama. Just me, on a bed with a clean sheat covering my legs. Why is this random info important, you think? Well, the midwife examined me and told me that there was still a tiny bit of cervix left, but that it “would tear soon” – those last three words were simply too much for Josh to handle.

He was standing on my left side and I looked up at him as he whispered “I think I’m gonna faint”. He didn’t look very good. I turned to the midwife, who was standing on my right side, and told her “he needs a chair!”. Of course it was too late for a chair.

He fell. I tried to hold him up. So did the midwife as she threw herself on top of me and tried to grab Josh as he fell backwards onto the floor and hit his head against a metal thingy in the room. For a minute I actually felt a bit worried for him as he was lying there with half open eyes, crooked glasses and pale as a Dane in February.

The poor midwife panicked and pushed the emergency button. 10 seconds later the room was filled with doctors, nurses and midwifes. Who were all attending to my dear partner on the floor…

10.04 pm.

At this point I had serious contractions all the time. The midwife finally told me that if I felt like pushing I should just go with it. And so I did. A bit worried that I would push the baby out onto the floor as no-one was really paying much attention to me at this point.

However, it wasn’t long until they realised that when I say that I think the baby is coming now – it means that the baby is coming. Now!

10.11 pm.

So, three pushes later I had our perfect, little baby in my arms. And luckily she didn’t fall out onto the floor – from where her dad was watching the show.

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