Barren Mare

My cervix went on vacation and all I got was a baby

Aside from being terminally busy, I realised that parts of what follows on in Colt's birth story is not entirely...pleasant to remember, so I've been procrastinating writing it. But nettles to be grasped and all that.

So, where we were? Yes, drugged and snoring. Eventually some time later I wake up, in pain. I am still lying on my left side, clutching the gas and air nozzle, which Knox tells me afterwards I had continued to slurp upon while asleep. The midwives are changing shifts and there are two new ones who arrive to take care of me. I never really learn their names- just an impression of cool hands and a face near mine

I am not doing well. The diamorphine is wearing off, I am disoriented and not able to resume any sort of rhythm with the gas and air. Also- and I have absolutely no recollection of being checked to assess this- but they tell me I am still only at 6 centimetres dilated.

A decision has been taken that I am to be moved up to the labour ward in the main hospital. I wheeze through the gas and air that I don't want to go. I am told, gently but in no uncertain terms that we might be needing some help soon to move things along- that this is taking too long and the drip might be required after all.

 I have to get off the sofa and onto the bed- I somehow manage to stagger the few steps between the two and hoist myself up in agony. They throw a sheet over me- since I never managed to get dressed after the birthing pool and then I am being wheeled along a corridor. I keep my eyes clamped shut and mouth glued to the gas and air but the pain is now completely getting the better of me and I hear myself making some very loud moaning noises.

We are in a new, small and dingy room. No flat screen tellys here, sir. I have to shift off the bed over to the new one- I do so, slowly slowly as moving is practically unbearable. A fetal monitor is wrapped around me as I flop onto my left side again. The baby is fine. I am asked if I want more diamorphone and I say yes yes yes with the fervour of a brand new addict. The medication arrives much quicker and soon I am back into floaty space.

I start singing about ham and cheese sandwiches.

Things are garbled in my memory but I am told that the doctor will examine me again in a couple of hours and then if there is no progress, they will augment labour with a drip. If that doesn't work, I'll be given a c-section. It's like the worst kind of deja vu of my life, the nightmare of Botany's birth hanging like a spectre over my head again. I croak through the gas and air that if this is the way things are going, I want an effing epidural. There is no way I am enduring the pain of the drip labour without one. The new midwife nods and says she will get that teed up for me.

Knox is falling asleep in the chair next to me.

I close my eyes and with every contraction I think "open, open, open" to my cervix. Time folds and frays while I float over waves of pain that I can feel but somehow not quite care about anymore.

The midwife comes back and says the anaesthetist is busy in surgery but will be down in awhile. Knox goes off to find something to eat and to alarm everyone with with texts that this is all going to end in a c-section. The midwife goes ahead and puts the vent thing into my hand so that it's all ready as soon as possible for the epidural.

Then a doctor arrives to check me. He says, rather pompously, that because labour is taking so long, it may indicate a problem of some type. Or at least that is what I think he says, because the heroin-addled part of my brain is still singing about ham and cheese. He finishes up his doomsday little speech, then he commences what is possibly the roughest internal exam of my life- it feels as if he is shoving his entire fist up inside me and stirring it about choosing a bingo ball. When he is finished, he announces abruptly that my cervix "is away" and he departs immediately.

Away? My cervix is away? I don't understand. Where has it gone? Have we lost it? I suddenly have visions of my cervix hopping into a taxi with a little valise, on its way to the airport and a nice sunny Greek island.

The midwife translates-I am fully dilated. Huzzah! No drip required! There is quiet rejoicing in my furry head. But I have no urge whatsover to push.

That's OK, she tells me, sometimes that happens. She tells me we can go ahead and try anyway, giving me a quick refresher course on how to breathe. Knox comes back from his food scavenging and is somewhat surprised, to say the least, to find me kneeling against the raised back of the bed, pushing.

I push and push while drawing on the now awful gas and air into my sahara dry mouth. I feel very naked and exposed so Knox helps pull the sheet over my shoulders. I can feel something beginning to happen. On about the fourth push, I am suddenly aware of the most horrid burning sensation. Oh my giddy aunt, it huuuuuuuuurrrrts.

 That's the head, the midwife tells me. Easy does it. And then this lovely, calm voice from a woman whose name I never even learned properly, talks me through the next couple pushes- gently, just a little, little more, little more and it's burning but bearable and oowwwweee.

His head comes out. And the contractions stop completely. I lean against the bed, waiting while the minutes tick by. Knox and the midwife are muttering to each other and then Knox is helping me turn around as the midwife says something about getting a little help in here.

The next thing I know there is an alarm going off and about two seconds later the room is FULL of about fifteen people who have appeared from nowhere, unless they had been hiding in the bathroom that whole time. I am flung onto my back and somebody grabs my legs on either side and they press roughly up behind my ears into what I am later told is the "MacRoberts position". And all I can think is "oh my god I AM SO NAKED" as I finally have another contraction and I am pushing and someone is pulling and oh my god.

 And he's out.

They put him on my chest for about two seconds. I can't see properly, being flat on my back, so all I have an impression of something small, dark and sticky. Then he is gone, whisked away. He's gone for quite awhile and I think nothing of it, since the same thing happened with Botany. I kind of assume they are weighing him and wrapping him in a cute blanket.

I am immediately euphoric. Whoo hooooooo, I say to anyone left in the room. I did it! I did it without the goddamn drip! Knox goes off to see what is happening with the baby. The midwife gives me an injection to deliver the placenta which comes out without any problem. I want to know how badly I have torn and she tells me that I have just a very minor tear which won't require any stitches.

 Whooooooo hoooo, I practically shout ! I am SUPER WOMAN. Knox comes back and I am grinning like a loon. I did it, I did it, I say, I defeated the dreaded drip. I am awesome. Yay me.

"Um, Mare," he says gently, "the baby is not very well, you know".

 Well, no. Turns out, I don't know quite a few things about our baby's birth- specifically:-

 1. The cord was wrapped twice around his neck.

 2. In the minutes when the contractions stopped, he was slowly turning purple, then black.

3.  His shoulders were stuck, hence the need for an ER-like intervention with the cast of thousands.

4. His initial APGAR was a five, followed by a seven after being revived with some oxygen.

5. The first picture ever taken of him by Knox as the doctors worked on him is possibly one of the ghastliest images I have ever seen- a small pale fish baby looking very unwell indeed, lying splayed naked, red around the eyes, mouth gaping with the oxygen pump next to him, wearing an incongruous cheery pastel green hat.

I have no idea. While I am now slightly embarrassed at my unseemly show of self congratulatory delight, at that point I am so delirious with glee at being finished with the pregnancy and the birth that I cannot understand what on earth what poor Knox (who is completely freaked out) is talking about.

I have the messiest abattoir shower of my life and then I ask when we can leave, thinking we'd be headed off later that afternoon. It is only when they tell me that they want to keep us in for the night to observe Colt that a tiny seed of worry begins to penetrate my brain. Something? Was? Is? Wrong? What?

There is not much left to tell now. They finally bring Colt to me and I hold him. He is small and sweet, with a very squashed nose. He's still groggy from the stunned shock of his birth and maybe from the diamorphine too because I cannot get him to latch on for a feed. We are moved up to the main ward, Colt being wheeled in the little plastic bassinet as I walk beside him. Knox goes home finally to get some sleep after being up for 34 hours and says he will see us in the morning. I share a room with a sixteen year old girl whose baby is in NICU and who stays up all night talking to her boyfriend. It doesn't matter so much since Colt screams most of the night. I lie in bed next to him, trying to get him to nurse. Colt is checked every couple of hours. He seems pretty pissed off at being born but other than that nothing much seems to be wrong with him. The nurse finally comes in about four am and asks if I have had any sleep. Not in about three days, I tell her, so she takes the baby to let me have for a couple hours of rest. I wake up when she comes back with Colt.

 He's got quite a set of lungs on him, hasn't he, she remarks dryly.

 Yes. Yes, he has. And I will be grateful forever more that he has lived to use them. Thank god, we've had a happy ending.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water water everywhere

Not. Enough. Hours. in a day.

Anyway, where were we on the birth story?

Post-chipmunk check in, Knox settles in with the tv remote and I commence to what I term my "contraction circuit". It goes something like this: lie on the bed for about three minutes on my left side, turn over for a minute, stand up, lean against the bed, squat down... annnnnd contract for about 45 seconds. Then walk around the room for a couple minute, stand by the ballet barre, squat down...  annnnnd contract. Head back to the bed, repeat. Sometimes there is a longer pause before contractions but mostly this gets things ticking along until I am regularly hitting the four minute mark. However, it's not quite the goal we have been told to reach and so I am not exactly unpacking my bags just yet.

The midwife comes back later- by this point it is after midnight. We discuss my progess and she tells me that they will send me home, but that we will need to come back at 8.30 in the morning, and then they will check me- since it's still not clear what has happened with my waters breaking (or not). Sitting on the leather sofa, I sigh and say ok- but before I am done speaking, I have a particularly long and intense contraction, so much so I have to stop and grip the side of the seat. The midwife watches me and I can see her face grow speculative. She asks us how far away we live from the hospital and we tell her about half an hour to 45 minutes (or longer if Knox gets lost again).

 Right, she says decisively, I think we should just go ahead and examine you now to find out what is going on with your cervix and the possible waters breakage. She explains it will possibly set the clock ticking earlier as far as needing to put me on the drip to augment labour- but we all agree that things do seem to be moving in the right direction and it's a bit silly to send me home only to have us turn around and come back again. And I contract my way onto the bed, whereupon she checks and announces that I am 3-4 centimetres dilated and my main bag of waters has not, in fact, broken at all. It appears that I've had a hind water break, with a small hole opening near the baby's head but the flow mostly being plugged up as a result of his position.

This is considered good, apparently. It is decided that since things are clearly progressing, we are staying put and then depending on how things are going, she will break the waters in a couple of hours time to fully to ramp up the labour. As I am becoming fairly uncomfortable, she wonders if I would like to get into the birthing pool?

Would I? Oh yes. I thought she would never ask! She fills the beautiful birthing pool with warm water and I climb into the most glorious bath of my life. I bob there quite happily there for some time...and the contractions slow right down. So I eventually waddle out, reluctantly get dressed and resume my now wearisome circuit.

At 4 am, the midwife comes back again and we decide its time to break my waters. She produces the world's largest crochet hook ("don't look" she recommends, then leaves it unmissably in the sink afterward) and with a painless pop, the fluid flows. It's lovely and clear, she announces happily. I am now at about 5 centimetres. And since things are now apt to get speedy on the contraction front, would I like to talk about pain relief now?

I tell her I would prefer to start with gas and air and take it from there. She nods and suggests she hook up the equipment, so I can use it in the pool if I want. I am given a quick tutorial to remind me how it works (inhale at the start of the contraction, bearing in mind it will take some seconds to work, exhale, imitate Darth Vadar if confused.) She hands me the mask/tube/funnel thingie.

From here on in, my memory of events starts to get more than little hazy. I remember stripping off and getting back into the pool pretty much immediately while slurping gas and air with amused pleasure, telling Knox "it's like that feeling you get lurching home from the pub, when you've had exactly one drink too many".

I remember asking him to turn off the telly and to put some music on. For awhile I drift along listening to a Rachmanioff piano concerto, blissfully removed from my body. Then the contractions get stronger and longer and I start to lean more heavily on the gas. It is becoming difficult not to lose the place with my breathing, not to space out completely with each inhalation.

I urge Knox to keep talking to me. Actually, what I say is "be my ground control to Major Tom."  I think this is so completely hilarious and witty, repeating it to the midwife when she returns. She sits on the edge of the bed and says encouragingly that I am doing very well- and that she expects the baby to be born by the end of her shift; that is to say, by 9am. If possible, she suggests I deliver him in the pool. I say yes, great idea, although if she'd asked me if I wanted to give birth while dangling upside down by my heels from the rafters, I likely would have agreed right then.

She nods and leaves again. Knox pours in more hot water.

Time passes, in folds and wrinkles. I don't know how long I've been in the pool. The gas and air is now making me very thirsty and a bit nauseous. The contractions are coming every minute or two now and I am becoming very, very uncomfortable. I'm also now getting very tired- I've been awake for over 24 hours, with only four hours sleep the night before. I don't breathe properly during every contraction and the pain is becoming overwhelming. The gas and air is no longer touching the sides. I find myself leaning over the side of the pool, moaning uncontrollably. I decide, suddenly and urgently, that I need to be lying down on my left side to endure this. I ask Knox to help me get of the pool. I stagger unsteadily up the steps, whimpering. It feels like nine naked miles to walk the two steps over to the pulled out leather sofa bed.

I collapse downwards, saying weakly to Knox that I don't want to do this anymore.

The midwife appears again and there is a short discussion, somewhere above my head, about getting me some stronger pain relief in the form of diamorphine. She had mentioned this earlier during our little pain relief talk, describing it as an option of an injection which would possibly make me somewhat sleepy but "just take the edge off". What I don't realise- and Knox explains to me with amusement later on- is that diamorphine is basically medical heroin. But no matter. I am in no position to refuse anyway- I am so, so tired and rapidly coming unravelled with the pain, panicking through the wave of each contraction.

The midwife goes away to find a doctor to prescibe the drugs. She is gone for what seems like six days, then finally comes back and injects me in the backside with the diamorphine. Afterwards, I lie there, floating somewhere near the ceiling and totally disconnnected from my body and the pain of the contractions- though certainly not letting go of my grip on the gas and air. And I then fall asleep, snoring.

To be continued...

Night surf

Shhh...do you hear that? That is the sound of a baby not crying, for a change.

In the last week or so, things have improved somewhat. I'd say that we have turned a corner, except that every time I have written or said that to anyone recently, we immediately experience a day from hell. Lest the colic gods smite me yet again, I will just say that we are perhaps slowly making our way out of the labyrinth of Colt's first three months.

With the smugness of an experienced parent, I had blithely assumed that I would breastfeed Colt, just I had done with Botany and that it would prove the primary weapon in my arsenal of soothing. From day one, however, the course of nursing my second child has not run quite as smoothly. While he has a beautiful- indeed, I would describe it as textbook- latch, he doesn't always manage it right away. Frequently, he flails away at it for a few minutes before giving up and shrieking in frustration. Which is not such a big deal in the daytime, but rather disconcerting at 3am. Then of course, he struggles with my fire hydrant spray of oversupply. In particular, I have one little bleb thing I cannot seem to fully clear and it continually comes unblocked in his mouth, leading him to pull off in a frantic choking manner while a geyser of milk shoots into his face, into the pillow, across the room before I manage to grab a cloth.

Finally, once he finishes feeding, he often commences wailing anywhere from immediately to within half an hour. Or, sometimes he merely looks a bit worried, then vomits copiously all over me or Knox. Today he puked like an experienced drunk, calmly leaning over Knox's arm and spewing onto the living room carpet. He is usually much more cheerful afterwards, lying on the changing mat grinning and kicking happily.

In short, it is far from a blissful and relaxing experience. And unlike Botany, nursing him down to sleep has proved just about impossible.This flummoxed me initially until it finally dawned on my sleep deprived brain that we needed to try something different.

Instead, we finish up the last feed of the evening, keep him upright for a bit, let him do whatever regurgitation he might wish together with any general witching hour screaming. Then when he starts to yawn and glaze over, I pop him into his sleepyhead pod (a fantastic bit of Swiss invention) with his binky and I put on the sound of the surf on the white noise Ipad app. Sometimes he writhes and squeals for a bit, and I hold his hand. Then he shuts his little eyes and goes to sleep for six or seven hours. It is, frankly, amazing. I don't exactly expect it to continue but so far, either Knox or I can do it and compared to the endless nursing down of Botany, it is a revelation. And as I begin to regain some baby free time in the evening, I will eventually get around to writing the rest of the birth story, hopefully before his first birthday.

 

 

Helium

I interrupt the colic wars to bring you a further birth story chapter.

Now, there are two bits of backstory you need for this part, both relating to Botany. The first is that on my due date, her nursery shut for a two week period over the Christmas/New Year holidays. So by the time my labour pains began, we'd been in each other's company for the better part of a week already. The weather being dreadful, we hadn't been out much and it's fair to say cabin fever was setting in.

The other thing is that during this time, Botany had developed a fascination- or more accurately an obsession- with a certain set of DVDs featuring a trio of highly irritating, helium voiced animals. Chipmunks, to be precise. At first it was something of a blessing, because the film could be relied upon to entertain her for at least a solid hour while I took a zombie nap. She watched it once, occasionally even twice, each day.

Then, if she was not watching the actual movie, she began talking like a chipmunk. Constantly.

You know how some women have whale songs in the background as they labour, or the soothing noise of ocean waves? Well, the soundtrack to my extended early labour was...singing chipmunks.

By the time Botany finished the first film that morning, she was in full blown squeaky mode. Perhaps she also sensed something was occuring but she was cranked up to the nines for some reason and would not sit still for a second- or more to the point, would not give me a moment's peace, hanging on my arm or trying to climb on my non-existent lap. By midafternoon, I was in a certain amount of discomfort- bearable but wearying- and in an ideal world I would have excused myself to go out for a walk but it was raining in a kind of bleak sleaty sort of way. I managed to lie down and doze for maybe half an hour before the contractions woke me up, still coming at about seven or eight minutes apart, and not increasing in duration.

It was around 1pm that I began to wonder what, in fact, was going on with the continual trickle of fluid that seemed sort of like waters but not remotely gushy as I had previously experienced. Eventually I decided it warranted a phone call up to the hospital for some advice. I rang the midwife, explained the 8 am pop and the inconclusive flow since then. She muttered something about maybe it being "hind waters" and suggested I check back about 5pm to see how things were progressing. The afternoon dragged by, my chipmunk voiced daughter sang, I contracted with depressing slowness. I finally rang the hospital again at 5, but there was no one available to speak to me. Someone took my number and said they would call me back.

Three hours passed.

Finally, after an interminable saga of trying to eat some dinner and getting Botany to bed (and reading a chapter of the Narnia books with pauses for contractions about 6 minutes apart), I phoned the hospital again at 8.30pm. Clearly no one received my earlier message so I explained it all again. The midwife said I should probably come on up to the hospital and they would take a look.

"Bring your bag," she said, "in case we keep you here".

And so we threw everything in the back of the car, leaving Botany with Knox's mother holding the fort and set off, not knowing if we would be back or not that night. Based on my prior birth experience, I fully anticipated this would be the first of several journeys back and forth.

The hospital is located on the outskirts of the far end of the other side of town, about a half hour to forty minute drive away, depending on traffic. On this occasion, it took considerably longer since Knox managed to get completely lost. Admittedly, the signage is appalling. At one point we ended up driving around what looked like a dark cornfield until I told him to pull over, for effsakes, so I could grab the sat nav out of the bag. Whereupon we realised we had forgotten it. In desperation we logged on to the chronically slow and erratic mobile internet via Knox's mobile, and Google maps with its annoying little pushpin system, following an arrow pointing us in the right direction. Or not, as the case may be when we made turns in what we thought was the right route, only to find out we were getting colder, colder, colder not hotter. Fortunately, the contractions did not choose this time to ramp up, but it was some relief when the hospital- and the maternity wing car park, came into view at about 9.30 pm.

We entered a deserted maternity triage/reception area, where an odd collection of people (none of whom looked particularly pregnant or even female) were seated. By now, I could tell Knox was a bit disconcerted because when he went to hunt down a midwife and hand over my file, he announced loudly that "Mare Maiden Name" was here.

"Knox?" I said, "I changed my name two years ago. You know, when we got married?"

"Oh," he said, "I wasn't sure".

So we sat there for another half hour or so, nothing much happening on the contraction front. Finally, a pleasant looking midwife appeared and without further ado ushered us through to the hospital's lovely new birthing facilities. As we exhanged some initial chitchat, a contraction washed over me and I had to catch my breath for a second. The midwife eyed me.

"That," she said, "is a big bump."

We plonked our stuff and ourselves down in what looked like quite a posh hotel room, albeit with a very large and beautiful birthing pool in the middle of it. It was all subtle lighting, a large flat screen TV on the wall, a pull out leather sofa bed, a delicious mushroomy beanbag chair, a ballet barre for pregnancy plies and a bed with designer looking cushions on it. In short, it was fabulous and exactly where I had been hoping to give birth.

We discussed the 8am pop and the trickling fluid in some detail. The midwife said that it sounded like maybe my waters had broken but the problem with examining me would be that it set the clock running as far as potentially introducing an infection and if things weren't moving along, we would then definitely need to augment labour with a drip within the next 12 hours or so after that. In view of my feelings on the drip, she suggested holding off on poking around for now and given that my contractions were coming about five minutes apart by then, what she proposed is that we make ourselves comfy and hang out in the lovely room for a few hours to monitor progress.

"I want to see your contractions coming every three minutes and lasting for a minute each," she said before bustling out to fetch us cups of tea and sandwiches, "and if not, we'll probably send you home again. Women tend to labour better at home anyway," she added.

Knox stopped fiddling with the tv remote while I paused in stroking the designer cushions. We looked at each other for a second.

"Have you met my daughter, the chipmunk?" I asked the midwife.

To be continued....

Bite down on this, baby

I really do want to get on with writing the next chapter of the birth story but we're slightly off the rails here just now. Colt seems to have three main operating modes:

* asleep

* awake and cooing/smiling delightfully

*  awake and screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaming.

Guess which one he does most often- and primarily all night long?  Uh huh.

After trying all the normal stuff- you know, over the counter remedies, expensive mail order probiotic drops, swaddling, a swing, white noise, various feeding positions, wearing him in a sling, a pacifer, goat sacrifice- I finally bowed to the inevitable and cut all dairy, soy and wheat out of my diet in an elimination experiment. That was a week ago. It's made a bit of difference, perhaps, but not much so far enough to be sure it's an allergy/intolerance problem. Given that I am starving continually from breastfeeding, it has also taken a certain amount of Herculean willpower not to break down and guzzle a entire box of chocolates daily. I miss hot buttered toast like a mournful jilted lover. I am miserably unsatisfied with fruit.

Yesterday was our 6 week baby check, with both the health visitor and the GP. Naturally, Colt was in top form at these appointments- he smiled gummily at the health visitor, waving his arms adorably and made sweet baby noises (he has the most delicious dove-like coo). However, my GP is a good listener and notwithstanding evidence to the contrary in front of her, she didn't dismiss our concerns. What she did do was prescribe infant gaviscon on the basis it may be silent reflux.

My instinct is that it is not reflux. He does have some occasional symptoms-there is a bit of back arching, for example- but he is quite happy to lie flat much of the time, he feeds well, and he doesn't spit up much at all. But then again, I could be wrong. He does get a hoarse little cry sometimes when he is full blown screaming mode, and he stiffens like a plank rather than bunches up. He does like being upright in the sling. In all cases, he releases bullet-like farts, which make him cry and then seem to ease the suffering. So we tried the infant gaviscon anyway last night in a frantic bid to calm him. I had no expressed milk left in the fridge and wasn't much up for trying to pump any at 1am, so we stupidly adminstered it with a syringe which was was a complete nightmare and left him with a distended belly full of wind with no relief whatsoever. We might try it again in a bottle, if I can bear it.

In short, it's pretty much hell and we don't know why. Initially I was quite composed about it all but after night upon night of virtually no sleep- I am just freaking exhausted. We tried at one stage to take it in shifts though the night but Knox 's sleep cycle is very easily thrown out of kilter. It reached the point where he was staying up until dawn, then needing to sleep during the day to recover- which is not exactly much help either as I still have to get up and deal with Botany most days. And I would like a nap too, if someone could please take the baby off my chest for an hour. Knox is also finding it harder than I am to remember this is probably just a stage which will eventually pass soon. I have virtually no reserves left to console him as well. And right now, relief is taking its slow and not terribly sweet time.

Relearning curves

Apologies for the cliffhanging gaps in my postings but I am busy relearning so many things I had forgotten about newborn babies. For example, I had forgetten how every single minute suddenly becomes consumed with bare essentials- feeding, changing, winding, cajoling to sleep. The way the whole day becomes compressed around the three to four hourly intervals between the baby needing to eat, the ease of losing track of time and remembering- just as his hand chewing becomes frantic.

And all the other moments run down like a stopwatch to fill the gaps in between the essentials. Laundry to be hung? Go, quick, before one of the children wakes up and wants to eat. Shower? Hurry, you have ten minutes in the small space between feeding Colt and Botany needing to get her coat on to leave for nursery. Feed yourself? Stuff face, you have exactly three minutes before the musical mobile over the cot winds down and Colt starts crying again.

I forgot how cumbersome prams can be, with annoying fiddly gears and levers to adjust the seat, the straps, the wheels sticking in the mud. I forgot the weight of the car seat and how much crap requires to be lugged around when going out- nappies, change of clothes, wipes, rattly things. I forgot the genius of the Ergo- hands free and enabling making tea, feeding the baby and playing Candyland with Botany all at the same time. I forgot the crushing exhaustion of waking up repeatedly in the night to that particular type of urgent cry. I forgot how much babies poo and wee, that strange vinegary smell. I forgot how much an overflowing breast can leak, shirts drenched regularly with milk.

I forgot the weariness of the colic scream, the endless rocking and shushing and soothing. And I forgot the sweet peace when the crying finally ceases and the baby falls asleep on my chest, his small fingers steepled together in infant prayer.

All this with the seemingly ceaseless demands of an attention seeking four year old in tow. Bless Botany, I am cutting her as much slack as possible at the moment but my god, kid. She can pester with the best of them. I counted yesterday and in the space of an hour she asked for thirty seven different things. "I want a DVD on. I want juice. I want my fairy house down from the top of the wardrobe. I want to change my dress. I need the light on in the toilet. I spilled my juice. I need a hanky. I want something else to eat. Can I play with your phone? Can we do some crafts? I want to go to the park. I want to go in the garden. I want, I need, please can I? Please, please, please? Whhhhhyyyy?"

Meanwhile, Colt is screeeeeeeammmmming in my ear and I feel like lobotomising myself with a piece of Lego.

Anyway...where were we on the birth story? Oh yes, overdue. So, I waddled myself in to my next midwife appointment, at noon on Wednesday, five days past my due date. We went through all the usual palaver of checks, blood pressure, pee in a cup, etc etc etc- and then we talked about induction. The consultant I had seen (due to my advance geriatic maternity) had advised that I should really be induced about twelve days over, and despite my considerable reluctance, I couldn't see any reason to disagree with that course of action. After much fumbling with the calendar and nineteen phone calls up to the hospital, the date was set for the following week.

Oh god, induction, I thought, remembering.

And then the midwife asked if I wanted a membrane sweep to hopefully get things going. I practically leapt on to the examining table, twirling my knickers around my head in my haste to agree.

The sweep itself wasn't painful at all, just very odd. I felt like a clock with someone reaching in and adjusting my pendulum. She rootled around a bit and then declared afterwards that I was 1-2 cm dilated and all other signs were favourable. Huzzah. We toddled home, to commence waiting. All day I was poised for...something, anything to happen. And nothing did, apart from a few minor twinges and feeling kind of oddly expectant, as if I was on the verge. Another nine hundred or so text messages arrived from various friends to ask what was going on. I went to bed, anticipating that both everything and nothing would happen.

At four in the morning, I woke up. Ooh. I think that was a contraction. Eight minutes later, another. And another. Not hugely painful but definitely...there. I lay there for while playing with my iphone contraction app until about eight o'clock, when I began listening for the usual sounds of Botany waking up. Then there was a strange, small but distinct POPPING feeling, followed by a small gush. I dashed to the bathroom thinking perhaps my waters had broken, but the result wasn't quite what I was expecting. A small definite trickle, not the flood of last time. Huh. At that point Botany did finally get up, and the contractions had ramped up to every six or seven minutes. I went to our room and kicked Knox out of bed. Go take a shower, I said, it's started- and I think at this rate we'll need to head to the hospital pretty soon.

I made breakfast for everyone, had a cup of tea and.....the contractions slowed down. Right down to every seven or eight minutes again, regular nd noticeable but not really increasing intensity or duration. I thought a series of frustrated expletives before settling down to wait and watch the clock.

To be continued...

Against the wind

Having had a blissful several days after bringing Colt home, we now seem to be firmly entrenched in that horrible zone of mixed up days and nights, combined with bad trapped wind after every evening/night feed. I wouldn't call it colic, exactly, as the duration of the screeeeeaaaaaming is relatively brief (anywhere from ten minutes to an hour at worst) and he is, for the most part, consolable. He releases huge man belches ("impressive," said the midwife) and farts like a...horse. Unlike Botany, he will quite happily take solace in a pacifer. But it's not enough to ease his poor tummy completely.

And it is wearing. He won't endure being put in his cot for more than half an hour at a time, and then only with white noise thrumming next to him. Last night he was awake every hour, with attendant noisemaking on the spectrum of grizzling to full-on earshattering operatics. Despite taking it in shifts as much as possible, Knox and I are started to look a bit deranged around the eyes. Having been through even worse with Botany, I have complete confidence in the mantra of "it will pass, it will pass"- but with the resigned weariness that it's likely to take some weeks.

Anyway- to start the birth story, albeit in snack size chunks- rewind back to Christmas. I know, it feels like ten million years ago already. My due date and Christmas Eve came and went with nary a twinge. Christmas morning Botany woke up at a entirely civilized nine o'clock. She and I went in to the living room to gaze at the Santa gifts together in awe, sitting together as she tore into a massive carry case of over a dozen My Little Ponies that I had picked up in the charity shop for pennies. I recognised it as a nice moment- just the two of us, on Christmas morning, probably for the last time. When the ponies were brushed, we went to check out whether Santa had eaten his biscuit and drunk his milk (he had) and then everyone else was up, with breakfast on the go. And the rest of the day followed the usual format- presents, vast amounts of chocolate, Christmas telly, turkey. All very pleasing. It became apparent I was not going to go into labour that day, and I was relieved, since it was the one day in the calendar I really preferred not to be at the hospital.

Knox took some pictures with his new camera. I have my eyes closed in every shot, as usual, apart from several where I look intensely weary. The bump, as documented, was massive. "I look horrible and old and unhappy," I commented to Knox when he showed me. "That's what you've looked like pretty much for the last nine months," he said. Oh.

On Boxing Day, more of the same. A nine am start (thank you, my darling Botany), mooching around the house. And nothing on the baby front. The following day, we  decided to get out of the house and ventured up to the town. The weather was relatively mild and the streets weren't as crowded as I'd feared. We wandered around the funfair and sent Botany on a few gentle rides, while I hung on the sidelines like a giant staypuff marshmallow man. People eyed my bump with equal measures of amusement and worry, as if I might give birth any second. Oh, wait.

Before waddling home, I bought Botany an enormous helium balloon in the shape of a giant pink pony. It seemed like a good omen, floating above our heads in the waning December light.

And still no baby. 40 weeks plus 4 days overdue, I went to bed that night, looking forward to the midwife appointment the next day- where a plan would be made and things were to be done to get matters moving along at last.

To be continued...

 

 

 

Arrival

Hello! Happy New Year!

So, I finally went and had a baby on Friday, exactly a week overdue. Caveat was born after a marathon 36 hour labour by a natural delivery that left him a little bit blue around the gills at the final push but happily ok. As for me, I am utterly exhausted but relatively unscathed and untorn, which is somewhat remarkable, not in the least because this kid weighs in at a sturdy 9lbs 2.5 oz and I'm not exactly a big girl myself.

 I owe you yet another long birth story (is there any other kind around here?) but first, we all need some rest, sleep and settling in back home. And since I can't really keep calling him Caveat, so henceforth I think he shall be known here as "Colt". He is squishy, smells delicious and so far is content to spend most of his time sleeping on top of Knox or me, dreaming his new baby dreams.

We are all very happy, very relieved and quietly overjoyed.

 

 

Stick a fork in me

...I'm done. Caveat is fully baked at full term as of tomorrow. 40 weeks. And so far...showing no signs of leaving his current warm and cosy accommodation. Night time brings a few random crampings, which amount to nothing other than waking me up briefly.

My last appointment with a GP indicated he is still 3/5 engaged and after groping around my abdomen ("ooh, I think there is an ear"), suggested he is in a "good position", whatever that means.

I also had the flu jab, a bit late in the day but it hadn't been offered before then and I hadn't thought to ask. Perhaps in combination with a nagging, lingering and hacking cold, I found myself feeling utterly wiped out for a few days afterwards, so tired that I might as well as have been rolling boulders up a hill.

 Meanwhile Botany is highly overexcited by Christmas, grasping the concept of the advent calender for the first time and generally careening off the walls with anticipation. Charming to behold but sort of exhausting to encounter. My Christmas present to Knox, meant to be shipped and arrive next day delivery, turned into a week long saga of phone calls to the courier and the company sending it and then to my bank to dispute the transaction followed by more calls to another company to re-order it and today a trip up to town on the bus to collect it from a shop. Walking anywhere feels like I have an anvil in my pelvis.

Ideally, assuming he's not going to put in an appearance before then, I'd like to get through Christmas Day- and then move things along pretty sharpish thereafter. I'm not facing the possibility of an induction until after New Year, which seems impossibly far away as it is. But you know- tick tock, Caveat. Tick tock.

 

38 weeks and...

Counting.

Nothing much is happening, to be honest, on the Caveat front. At my last midwife appointment, he was apparently not completely back to back (good) and the head is 3/5 engaged. I could kind of tell s to the latter, given the persistant ache in my lower back and the sense of a cannonball pressing against my nether regions. But maybe he's popped back up again, since the bump doesn't look much lower to me, the need to waddle has lessened slightly and the scalding volcano of heartburn every night remains just as active. Occasionally I have something which I think may be Braxton Hicks action- or then again, not so much.

For added amusement, I've also developed a hacking cough/cold, which I am fighting to keep at bay with steam and vast quantities of oranges but really could do without at this stage.

I am, all things considered, extremely uncomfortable.

So the days go by, filled quite comprehensively by Christmas shopping and wrapping, sorting out a long overdue service of the boiler, Botany's nursery Christmas parties, my office Christmas lunch. Did I mention we seem to be in the run up to Christmas? Hmm, yes. It's proving hard to pull the shutters down and retreat into the hibernation of prebirth with all this going on- but on the upside it makes the days go a bit faster. And I am finding it a relief to have reached December at last. Every day there is a new window to open on the advent calendar and we are one day closer to the wretched discomfort of the third trimester ending. Everyone is suddenly counting down and alight with anticipation- albeit with a slightly different aim.