New arrival

So this is how it happened: on Monday, four days past our due date, we had an appointment at hospital, for Rachel and the baby to be checked out and for a decision to be taken on if, and when, she should be induced. Having had cramps for most of the weekend, just after we left home on Monday morning Rachel felt her first contraction. By the time we got to hospital, they were still weak and infrequent. The baby was scanned, everything looked normal and we were told by the senographer to go home and come back when things were getting more serious. She also told us to see the midwife on our way out.

The midwife read the notes, looked through the scan, heard that there were already some contractions going on and looked at Rachel quizzically. “Are you sure,” she said, “that you don’t just want me to check you out before you go?” The senographer had used a probe to estimate that Rachel was about 2-3cm dilated, but after some prompting Rachel agreed to let the midwife have a look. She was over 5cm dilated. The midwife said we shouldn’t leave the building, and went to see if there was a room for us on the birthing unit.

Ten minutes later we were in a room. It was about 11.30am or thereabouts. Rachel, whose first labour lasted well over a day, was looking sheepish and wondering if someone was going to throw us out for wasting their time. Her mum, who happened to have been nearby, was there too, at least for a while. The contractions got stronger and more frequent. The midwives left us alone as they dealt with an unexpected outbreak of childbirth – ours, in the end, was the fourth in an hour. The previous day the ward saw two births, all day.

T had, inevitably, caused havoc the previous night, taking ages to go to sleep, waking up in the middle of the night and eventually working her way into our bed, where she slept badly and so did everybody else. I was knackered. Rachel got on with her contractions, pacing around the room. I lay on the bed and tried not to go to sleep. A few minutes before three, Rachel perched on the side of the bed. “Si,” she said, “I think you’d better sit up now.”

At 3.18pm on March 30, 2009, Joshua Zico was born, while his mum knelt against the birthing pool (which we couldn’t use because of a filter problem), and a student midwife on pretty much her first day looked on, horrified. About six and a half hours later, most of which were spent alone, just chilling out in our room, we all went home.

Now the fun starts.

~ by Simon on April 1, 2009.