Happy birthday to our Christmas baby! Expecting to have a quiet Christmas before the birth of her first baby in January, this mum-to-be’s daughter had different ideas!

At first, I wasn’t ready to be pregnant

I was devastated to see the blue line on the pregnancy test. How could I be pregnant? I was just going into my third year of my nurse training and, at 21 years, I certainly wasn’t ready for this.

A week later I began to bleed. As I was on placement in the hospital at the time, I took myself straight down to A&E, only to be told they couldn’t do an ultrasound scan until three days later! So began an awful few days of constant worrying, no sleep and checking myself every hour or so, petrified I was losing my baby.

Thankfully, the ultrasound showed a haematoma (blood clot) and I was told this would just come away of its own accord and that it was not life-threatening to my baby.

After this, I wanted my baby more than anything.

My pregnancy started feeling real

The bleeding stopped a few weeks later and the sickness started. I got ‘ten-to-seven sickness’ every morning and couldn’t even bear the smell of milk, never mind drink it!

By sixteen weeks, everything settled down and pregnancy became a nice experience. I was getting a bump and I was starting to feel my baby move. I sailed through the remainder of my pregnancy.

As my due date was January 16, I thought I could enjoy Christmas and New Year and then, in the usual post-holiday period, I would still be left with something to look forward to. My baby, however, had other ideas!

The birth was all a bit of a dream

At 2.30am on Christmas morning, I turned over in bed and felt a gush of fluid. I knew instantly what had happened and so dashed to the loo. I began to panic a little when I noticed that my waters were blood-stained so I went straight to hospital. I had begun having irregular contractions but when I was examined I was told that I hadn’t started dilating yet so I was transferred to the labour ward where I was left to get on with it.

By 9.30am, the pain was getting intense so I rang for the midwife as I was ready for pain relief. After being transferred to delivery I was given entonox (gas and air) which was fantastic! I was told I was 6cm dilated. It wasn’t long before the entonox wasn’t enough and I opted for diamorphine about an hour later. That stuff really is fantastic! It didn’t take away the pain but made me feel I was dreaming it. It also made me lose my perception of time.

Christmas baby was born!

My mum told me I had been pushing for three hours and I hadn’t realised even though I was exhausted. The midwife had said that the baby was facing sideways and so I was just pushing against my pelvic bones. I needed forceps.

Within what seemed like seconds my legs were up in stirrups and there was a doctor injecting local anaesthetic for my episiotomy. I was told to push again and, while the doctor pulled, my Christmas baby Niave was born at 3.15pm, Christmas Day!

She was gorgeous (even though she looked like her dad!). My first words were “Never again!”.