‘Horrific labour? I just lay back eating Pringles’
EMILY MADELY, 24, is about to start a teaching degree. She is single and lives in Oldham, Greater manchester, with her son alfie, four, right. She says:
PEOPLE tell you horror stories of how painful birth can be so when I discovered I was pregnant, I was scared.
I went two weeks overdue and the night before I was due to be induced I got pins and needles in my stomach. My dad was with me and when I kept talking about pins and needles he started timing them. We realised they were regular and probably contractions so I rang the hospital.
The midwife said I clearly wasn’t in pain so I should stay at home and come in the next morning for my induction. Next day I went to the maternity ward, still in no pain. They hooked me up to monitors and examined me and I was 8cm dilated. The midwife said: ‘Can’t you feel that?’ The machine was going crazy, indicating that I was having lots of contractions but I couldn’t feel a thing.
I sat there eating Pringles watching Coronation Street. The word was getting around the nurses that there was a woman in labour in no pain because they kept coming into my room to see what was going on.
At one point I became scared. Clearly I was supposed to be feeling some kind of discomfort and pain, but there was nothing so was something wrong with the baby? I’d been told that the baby was back-to-back so the birth might not be easy.
At one point the midwife left and Alfie’s father was with me. I felt as if something was falling out of me and said to him: ‘I need to push’. The midwife came back in and said: ‘We can see the head!’ With one more push, Alfie was out. I felt no pain and Alfie, a healthy 7lb 12oz, was born.
He’d come out with his elbows out but when I was examined, I had no tears or rips. Within three hours I was on my way home with my baby.
The doctors couldn’t explain my lack of pain but my whole family have noticed that since having Alfie, my pain threshold is worryingly high.
Not long ago I got third degree burns from a hot metal container and didn’t feel a thing.
I’ve no idea if I’ve got this gene that means I don’t feel pain because when I was younger I certainly felt it.
I’m actually scared to have another child in case I was just lucky this time and next time it will really hurt!