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OK, it's a bit of an epic, but I needed to write it, so please bear with me. You can skip straight to the soppy bit at the end if you want.
Ned is happily sleeping, and R is taking my parents back to the airport, so this seems like a good time to sit down, and try to write Ned's birth story, before the whole thing is erased from my mind.
Things started to kick off early evening on Thursday 2 December. I'd been having painless contractions, and false alarms, for days, but they began to get a bit more insistent, and with increasing back pain, Funnily enough, I had tried taking a small dose of castor oil that lunchtime, and I'll never know whether that contributed to setting things off, because it labour started before the castor oil had had its usual effect. DH and I had some pizza and then I called Anne, my midwife to tell her about the contractions. She advised a hot bath, painkillers and a warm glass of wine (although I had to substitute with a small glass of Guinness). When I got out of the bath, the contractions got a lot worse, so I called Anne again, and she came over. Not long after she arrived, my waters started leaking, and I threw up fairly comprehensively, so we realised that this was probably not a false alarm.
Anne spent the night resting in our spare room, and popping out to check on me from time to time, whilst R and I paced around the house. I was not dilating any more than 2cm, and the baby was posterior, so Anne recommended that I try to stay on my feet as much as possible. At some point, R called my parents before they left for the airport, to tell them that they'd probably be grandparents by the time they arrived.
At about 5:30 am Anne checked me again, and there was still no progress, so she began to think that I would probably need something to help me along if nothing changed in the next few hours. I decided at that point that it was time to go to hospital whilst I could still stand. I also wanted to make sure that I got a chance to use the nice whirlpool bath in the delivery suite! Anne suggested that we park at her clinic across the road from the hospital, so that I would have a longer walk over there, and she gave me some little saline injections in the base of my spine to help with the pain. (Incidentally, the nurses at the hospital were very keen to ask me about this, because they'd heard about saline injections in labour but didn't know much about it). Anyway, it helped enough for me to walk through a snowstorm from the car park up to the birthing suite.
Once I got there, I hopped in the big whirlpool bath for about 45 minutes and R slept a bit. I lay on my side and let the jets go straight onto the most painful bit of my back; it was lovely. And when I got out, I felt “pushy”; Anne was sceptical, and checked me out, and we were amazed that I had gone to 7cm and the baby had moved forwards. Woohoo! By about 8:30 I was ready to start pushing properly, and Michelle, my second midwife had arrived to help with the delivery. I thought it wouldn't be long now; I could see them getting everything ready, and I was pushing like mad, and making the most incredible noises whilst I was at it.
But three hours later, I was still at it. We had tried every position imaginable; all fours, standing, sitting on the loo (!!), on my back, on my side, but no baby. Anne and Michelle could see his head, and they made me look in the mirror, in the hope that seeing him would help me. I was pushing like crazy, guzzling lucozade tablets but it never felt as if I would manage those last few centimetres. Anne decided that forceps or a vacuum would be needed, so she called the anaesthetist to get the epidural ready. At this point too, she had to hand over to an obstetrician as the midwives aren't allowed to deliver when there's an epidural. Anne was already way past the end of her shift, so she left, but Michelle stayed on, even though she wasn't allowed to play any active role in things, and it was very reassuring to have her around.
After that, things get very confusing, and I don't think I'll ever really know what happened. There was some mix-up over which obstetrician should be dealing with me, so one woman came in, peered at me and went away. Then they said I should rest for an hour before they attempted anything, so I did that (like I had any choice). Then another obstetrician arrived, and said that I had to have a c-section because the heart rate was dropping, and that there was no way they could get forceps to him. I could tell that Michelle disagreed but of course we had no choice in the matter. So I had a good cry and got wheeled off to the theatre where Edmund was duly extracted. The only thing that made it all bearable was R. He sat with me, and said lots of lovely things to me that make me cry buckets every time I remember it.
They brought Ned over to us very quickly, and I was allowed to have his face right against mine, so we still got some skin to skin contact, and he was put on my breast fairly soon afterwards, whilst I was in recovery. He was born at 2:20 in the afternoon, weighing 7lbs 15 and scored 8 and 9 on his Apgars. My parents' plane arrived not long afterwards, and R brought them down to the hospital that evening to meet their first grandchild.
They brought Ned over to us very quickly, and I was allowed to have his face right against mine, so we still got some skin to skin contact, and he was put on my breast fairly soon afterwards, whilst I was in recovery. He was born at 2:20 in the afternoon, weighing 7lbs 15 and scored 8 and 9 on his Apgars. My parents' plane arrived not long afterwards, and R brought them down to the hospital that evening to meet their first grandchild.
I'm still upset about the c-section; Ned was always going to be an only child, so I feel as if I failed in my one chance at giving birth, although I was happy that most of the labour was the way I wanted it, with no pain relief and most of it spent at home. Part of the problem is that the obstetrician (who was a really snotty cow) and the midwives disagreed over what exactly happened. The obstetrician said he was still posterior, and that it was only the soft part of his head that we were seeing (he was cone-headed when he came out). Michelle said she watched the operation, and there was no way that he was posterior, it was just that he had his chin stuck. Looking at the way he holds his head sometimes, the chin story is more convincing.
But of course the end result is that Ned and I are both healthy, and the c-section thing is only a minor sadness that I know I will get over. R and I are incredibly happy. Every time I look at R or Ned I fall head over heels in love with both of them all over again, and when I see them both together it's even better.