Here he is...

...my little man.

We got there!

Howie arrived at 8.38am on Saturday 24th February, weighing in at 7lb 4oz. He is our precious little man and we love him so much!

Here’s a quick rundown of his birth story, from what I can remember in between the pain and the drugs!

Thursday morning: I wake up with intermittent what feels like period cramps, happening perhaps every 15 or 20 minutes. They get gradually stronger during the day, though not painful enough to worry about too much. We go to bed as normal but by about 2.30am they are coming quite close together – every three or four minutes. They are now painful enough that I have to stop and breathe through them. The pain is concentrated mainly in my lower back.

We call the birth centre, and the midwife on duty asks if I can stay at home a little longer, and come in when I think I’ll start to need pain relief. By 4am things are definitely getting pretty uncomfortable (Just as well I had no idea how much worse things would get!) so we phoned back and were told it was fine to go in.

When we got there we were assigned a room in the birth centre, and the midwife on call came in to do an internal examination. But she found that my cervix was still way back and hadn’t really started to dilate at all. So after giving me some paracetamol she advised that there was still a long way to go, and recommended that we go back home and wait there “until the pain is twice as bad as it is now”. She was not massively sympathetic and warned, a bit unhelpfully, “You could still be going through this in two days’ time.” I was disappointed but we followed her advice and headed back home, where I had a warm bath then strapped on the TENS machine. Contractions were still hurting but slowed down a bit to every 7 or so minutes.

We got through the morning, but by about midday I was starting to suffer serious back pain, not just during but in between contractions. And the contractions themselves were really hotting up. By this time they were every 5-6 minutes. We rang back to the birth centre and they agreed that we could come back in. We were put in the same room as before and welcomed by two really nice midwives, much friendlier than the on-call midwife from the night before. I had another examination and was told, much to my relief, that my cervix had come forward and I was now 2-3cm dilated. It was a huge relief to know that all the day’s pain hadn’t been for nothing.

We settled down in the room and, with the TENS machine on, I tried to relax for a while. Spent quite a bit of time bouncing on a birthing ball, which seemed to help my back pain. But at some point (timings get really hazy from now on) the back pain got really bad, and I asked for a pethidine shot. This completely knocked me out – in a very enjoyable, floaty way – and I was able to get some sleep while the contractions carried on. At some point it wore off and I had a second shot, which helped some but not as much as the first one had.

At about 7pm Friday evening the midwives decided to get me into a warm bath with lavender, and get me started on the gas and air. I must have found this helpful ‘cause according to S I was in for ages. By this time, moving anywhere was excruciating because of my back pain, which the midwives said was because the baby was in a posterior position (ie his back was against my back). After this we were back in the room, but I can’t remember anything clearly until about 2am when they tried to get me in another bath. The gas and air really wasn’t helping, and I was making quite a lot of noise about the pain I was in, especially when I tried to move. That second bath, I found it all but impossible to get in or out, as it was quite a high-sided tub with no steps or anything. The midwives and S were trying to keep me moving but by this time I was in so much pain, I was being totally uncooperative. When one of the midwives (Julia, who was very lovely) gently suggested it might be time for me to consider having an epidural, I don’t think I hesitated. I knew I couldn’t carry on without more pain relief.

We were transferred to a delivery room in the labour ward at about 3.30am, and the anaesthetist turned up very quickly to put in the epidural. I didn’t even feel this go in, but very quickly felt relief as the excruciating back pain vanished. Then a midwife and doctor turned up to get me connected to a drip and to a foetal heart monitor, and do an internal exam which revealed I was 6cm dilated. The midwife was a bit gung-ho ramping up the bed before I’d had the epidural, and S had to ask her (quite forcefully) to slow down – she got a bit miffy about this but it seemed to blow over and, actually, she turned out to be very nice. The doctor broke my waters which he said should help speed things up.

Then everything seemed to slow down for a few hours. The doc said that he would expect me to be fully dilated by about 6am, so they dimmed the lights and left S and me in the room, popping in every so often to check the baby’s heart rate and my blood pressure. I managed to drift off a bit during this time – poor old S was stuck on a pretty uncomfortable-looking chair, resting his head against first a sink, secondly a stool to try to get some kip. I had a top-up of the epidural at some point, as my back pain started to kick in again.

At some point it became evident that the baby’s heart rate was dipping with every contraction – at first mildly, then quite dramatically (down to about 80bpm at one point). Then the doc reappeared, examined me and found I was fully dilated, and the room sprang into action. Because of the baby’s heart rate dipping, it was decided that a ventouse would be needed to get him out – basically they needed to get the baby out as quickly as possible. All of a sudden the room filled with doctors, midwives and a paediatrician. A midwife attached stirrups to the bed and strapped me into one of them – the other one had a broken strap, so she told S he’d have to hold my leg down (!). But in a flash of inspirational improvisation, he whipped off his belt and used it to tie my leg down.

I don’t think I actually pushed for very long – the pushing seemed quite straightforward and seemed to be doing the job, but suddenly I stopped contracting. After six minutes of no contractions, the ventouse was whipped out and they used it to get the baby’s head out. Then the rest of him slipped out pretty easily and they put him onto my stomach quickly. I remember seeing a lot of blood, a blueish face and a willy and saying, “Hello Howie!” But he wasn’t crying, and they took him straight over to the resuscitation station where the paediatrician hooked him up to oxygen. I was petrified that there was something wrong with him, but couldn’t see anything as I was being stitched up (I’d had an episiotomy) – S went over to watch and I kept asking if he was OK. S was a bit tearful and I felt very emotional, though I was a bit too drugged up to cry myself. (Though I have gone a bit weepy writing this!) But they kept saying “He’s fine”, and soon they brought our beautiful baby boy over to me, all wrapped up in a towel. His head was a bit squashed and scratched from the ventouse, and his hands and feet were all grey and wrinkly (due to him being 10 days overdue, apparently) but he was the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.

So that’s the story of how Howie came into the world… at the moment I’m not sure if I’ll continue this blog (for one thing, how will I ever have the time?) as it was the diary of a pregnancy which is now over, as a whole new phase begins. We’ll see..