There are worse ways to give birth…

As traumatic as labour can be, there are much worse ways for it to happen. This is a story sent to me by a friend. You could argue that it was actually a pretty good labour….except for the matter of where the baby went

Story of a birth (part 4)

When the baby came it was very sudden. Mummy A had been struggling and had requested an epidural. The midwife spent so long faffing about with this and that, that just before they were to give the epidural a nurse came in and looked at the monitors.

“Something’s wrong” she said. She checked the positioning of the baby.

“You’re fully dilated,” she said, “the baby has to come out NOW!” She hit this red button on the wall and suddenly the room was full of doctors. It was like something out of ER!

That was at 2.50am. Six minutes later, baby Ayaan entered the world. Have to admit, it brought a tear to my eye.

Mummy A still complains about missing out on the epidural.

Story of a birth (part 3)

A bloke isn’t really the best person to talk about the labour process. Let’s face it, we can never really understand what it feels like to give birth. So I’ll talk about the little bits and pieces I can.

Mummy A was kept in hospital for the next few days, in the hope that she would start having contractions. Alas this was not to be, so on the Monday evening we were taken to the labour ward to induce labour.

I don’t want to scare people…so I’m not going to say too much! When labour is induced everything proceeds much quicker than normal, and more intensive as well. Mummy A said it was very painful. Extremely painful. Obviously I have no idea how painful, but imagine having your teeth pulled out one by one. It’s more painful than that.

… Moving swiftly on! Maybe one day Mummy A will add her own comments, but until that day we’ll leave it at that.

Labour lasted 5 hours and about half way through the midwife asked for Baby A’s clothes to get them ready. Unfortunately I’d left the clothes in the car. Hey, I wasn’t to know! All these bloody hospital shows have corrupted us – they make you think the hospital wraps the baby up and sorts things out for you! I thought my only job was to pat the wife’s hand.

So, halfway through the labour I had to dash out to the car to get the stuff. Obviously I had parked the car miles away, and I had the smart idea of running to and from the labour ward.

…20 minutes later I made it back in with the baby bag…gasping for breath and sweating bucketloads! I spent a few minutes cleaning myself up and went back in the room. Then I felt nauseous and had to go back in (no, I wasn’t feeling sick because I was tense about the birth!). I am so unfit that I was still struggling for breath and the combination of the laughing gas in the air made me queasy.

Mummy A was not best pleased that I left her for a while in pain, but would she rather I threw up over her?

Story of a birth (part 2)

I was at work on January 25th when the phone rang at about 10am:

Me: Good morning, Daddy A speaking, how may I help you? (I don’t really speak like this but it makes me sound professional)

Mummy A: It’s me. I just woke up and think I’m leaking water. Like, a LOT of water.

Me: Oookay. No need to panic. Should we go hospital?

Mummy A: Maybe. I haven’t got any pain though.

Me: Well perhaps we should go, just to be on the safe side. Just don’t panic.

Mummy A: I’m not panicking.

Me: No, seriously. Don’t panic….DON’T PANIC…DON’T PANIC!

I remember the thought I had at the time was “she can’t be going into labour, we haven’t bought the car seat yet!”

She told me afterwards that at the time she was thinking “I can’t be going into labour, we haven’t bought the car seat yet!”. Weird, eh?

So anyway, I left work at midday rushed home (completely calm of course) and we went to the hospital. To be honest we should’ve gone earlier though – we were kept waiting for 3 hours before anyone saw us!

Mummy A wasn’t having any contractions, and the hospital made the decision to keep her in overnight to prevent infection.

More coming up in part 3.

Story of a birth (part 1)

I started this blog to keep a record of Baby A’s life, so what better place to start then the very beginning: the birth.

Let’s talk quickly about the pregnancy. That’s a bit of an irony actually, after all pregnancy lasts 9 months. But, considering I didn’t go through pregnancy myself, I can’t exactly offer the most amazing insight!

Women seem to enjoy pregnancy – up to a point anyway. Mummy A loved rubbing her stomach and the feeling it gave her. From my point of view, I said “Wow, you’re really glowing!”, whilst thinking “Wow, you’re really massive!” (I’ll probaby be killed for that one).

Then a month or so before birth things changed – climbing stairs were harder, and the little one kept her awake quite a bit at night. C’mon, give her a break – he keeps us up all night nowadays, it’s just rubbing it in to keep her awake during the pregnancy as well!

I’ll talk about our trip to the hospital in part 2.