Introducing Alfie.

24th July 2017.

Alfie Stuart Dera was born, at 7.10am. 

.. and I had no idea I was even in labour. We rang our local hospital as I was getting what I thought were just constipation pains?! Mad looking back at it now, but they didn't feel like contractions - my waters hadn't broke, the 'plug' hadn't come away, and I had no back pain at all, so what I assumed contractions and labour to be like, it really wasn't at all.

We went in at 12.00am, thinking they would check me over and give me tablets for the pain and send me on my way; turns out I was actually 2cm dilated! the next few hours were a bit odd as we were advised to go back home but then told to stay as they just wanted to confirm something with the doctor - didn't actually see the bloke in the end though because I went into active labour so quick. We spent this time chilling in the 'relaxation room' which, wasn't all that relaxing. 

I was around 3cms dilated at 4am, so opted to jump in the bath and wait the next cm out as you have to be 4cms to even have gas and air. This did basically nothing as I was in so much pain, so I hopped straight out and asked for pain relief. My midwife gave me something, honestly couldn't tell you what it was, but again it did nothing. It made the space in-between contractions really peaceful but by the time they did come around, I was so tired and it made things 10x harder. Not ideal really. 

It was then that I was basically screaming my head off demanding an epidural. So my midwife popped the tube thing (soz, I don't supply the sciencey words here, clueless) into my hand ready for the epidural. However, no one (including myself) realised that it was far, far too late for this as id managed to go from being 3cms dilated, to 10cms in just an hour, my midwife says this could usually take people up to 10 hours, and it took me just one!? This absolutely terrified as I suddenly realised Id have to push this baby out on gas and air alone. But that's exactly what I did.

A few pushes later, awful, bloody painful pushes later, our little baby was here. The first thing I said was "I did it, without an epidural!" I was so proud of myself.

The pain was honestly like nothing id ever experienced. I don't want to put people off of having babies haha, but it was horrific. Im so glad it was a quick labour as Im not sure I could've coped had it been any longer. 

3 hours later at 10.10am, we made our way back home. Never in my life did I think I would be heading home just 3 hours after having a baby, that seemed mental to me, but everything was fine despite a tiny tear down below, and actually it was so much nicer being back home. 

Finally, before I head off for more baby cuddles, I wanted to say a huge thank you to the lovely people at Very Vez for sending Alfie his very first printed quote (pictured above) to hang on his bedroom wall, we absolutely love it. They've also very kindly given you guys a 10% off code should you fall in love with any of their prints like I did; you just have to use the code SOPH10. 

We are so so in love with our little boy and couldn't feel more proud to call him ours. Its so surreal that he's actually here now, that's taking a while to get our head around haha, but he's just so lovely.

Soph & Matt x

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*this post contains a gifted item, however all comments and opinions are my own and 100% honest because telling lies isn't cool*