So my due date came and passed (18.09.13) and there was still no sign of a baby! I had family and friends left, right and centre constantly texting and calling to see if I was having any contractions, where the baby was or if I had even had him. This drove me absolutely insane - did they really not think I'd tell them or get somebody to let them know if there was any labour signs? I had to turn my phone off in the end hahah. To say I was moody, snappy, short tempered and generally down in the dumps was a big understatement! Saying that though, throughout my whole pregnancy my mood was, for the most part, quite upbeat and positive. This shocked me because I thought I'd be an emotional wreck - Ole got lucky ;)
I had my 'sweep' (where the midwife internally sweeps over your cervix to help start labour off) and she told me I was already 3cm dilated and I contracted on her hand!! Obviously this got me very optimistic and excited so when me and Ole got home we went for a really long walk to try and get things going. Considering I was over 40 weeks pregnant at this point and waddling more than a duck would, walking for a long time was really uncomfortable but if it meant the baby came, I was up for anything. The end result? Nothing.
Next on the list was raspberry leaf tea, a hot curry, downing about 1/2 a bottle of lactulose (I couldn't get castor oil anywhere so this was the next best thing! Although all it did was mean I was constantly on the loo...), and yeah, even sex! The end result of these? Yep. Nothing.
It's mad how crazy reading all the different wives tales about how they started their labours' off can make you. You invest in all these different ideas and you actually believe they'll work for you. The truth is, every woman on the planet is different, and yes a hot curry may help one woman, and driving over speed bumps really fast may help another. But at the end of the day, nature is nature and you can't push it. The baby will come when the baby wants to; but as an overdue, fed up and incredibly emotional pregnant woman, accepting this is a massive thing to ask. For me also, about 2 weeks prior, I had had some really painful Braxton's Hicks which lasted about 8 hours regularly - so I thought that was gonna' be the real thing!
After about 4 days of doing anything and everything I could to try and make myself go into labour, I gave up. I finally accepted that you can't force something that doesn't want to be. You can't force love, you can't force a child to eat all their vegetables at dinner, you can't force your size 5/38 foot into a size 3/36 shoe just because you really want them, and you definitely cannot force a baby to come out when it doesn't want to.
In hindsight, completely relaxing and letting nature take it's own course was the best thing I did in the end (as 1.5 days later my contractions actually started and 2 days later I was holding my beautiful boy!) Labour post to follow...
J xxx
