"Great birth experience, even if nothing went to "plan""

I gave birth to my daughter in early September and would like to compliment the staff who looked after me! When I arrived at the hospital at about 10am, I was assigned a midwife Joanne, and we also had a student there Annabel. They were absolutely fantastic. I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted my birth to go. I'd previously "fought" my corner to have a water birth even though obstetrictians wanted me in the labor ward due to fibroids, and they were very accommodating to this.   But fairly quickly changed my mind to be moved and have an epidural instead. Joanne was brilliant in the way that she explained my options, choices, and what was happening when it was happening. The antethetist who did the epidural also deserves a compliment as it took perfectly the first time. He was also very nice when explaining it to me and I appreciated that he regularly popped in throughout the day to check in on how I was doing. I truly felt in control of the situation, even if it wasn't the one I'd envisioned.  

Labor was long but I never felt distressed about it, as I knew what was going on and how it was progressing. Unfortunately it was so long that the original team wasn't able to be there for the birth, but the handover to the night team was really well done. I probably admittedly queried the new team a little bit more than was necessary (sorry) (they were nice, but I hadn't built the trust up with them that I had with Joanne). So compliments to them and their patience, they too were clear and informative, and kept me up to date about what was happening and what my choices were and what their recommendations were. My baby was born eventually in a ventoise delivery quite late that evening.   Unfortunately my episiotomy stitches did get infected a few days later, but I must compliment the team that looked at this in triage too. it was a VERY busy day there I could tell, but they still managed to make sure that I got a prescription for antibiotics super quickly!