The Babycake Tales: ...One week later

To continue the story from where I left off.

Our poor medical student, Will, has got to be the most amusing part of the whole experience. Will is a second year student at So’ton Uni, and so is probably no more than 20 years old (he didn’t look it), as part of his course he has to watch a birth – lucky guy! Having come back to reality post epidural I set to giving him the Spanish inquisition about where he lived, what type of doc he fancied being and student life in general. It is worth mentioning that those on medic courses are notorious at SUSU for being BIG drinkers and bizarrely Thursday evening was Toga night – one of their biggest nights out – all of Pips bar staff hate working it, including the duty managers and from a managers point of view once worked = never again, so Pip and I had great fun ribbing him about this!

So, back to the labour/giving birth part! Once the epidural had kicked in I was given another examination and discovered that I was fully dilated and all set to push. Another Huzzah! Soon we would be meeting our baby.

First problem with this?

Pushing, I had to “push into my bottom”. Now this is all very well and good when you can feel where your bottom is. However when your bottom could be anywhere between your chest and your knees as far as sensations go this proved a touch tricky.

Add to this that I couldn’t feel the contractions...

In the end Pip, Will and Carly the (lovely) midwife ended up watching the machine to tell me when to push and I did what I could to locate the necessary area to push to! All the while the belt monitoring my contractions is having a funny 5 so all in all, on reflection, the process was a little amusing.

After an hour and a half, a few changes of position and a few “oo I think I can feel something, is that one (contraction)?” baby D was making slow progress into the world so the word “plan” was mentioned again.

The decision was to give me 15 mins more unassisted pushing to do before interventions would be needed. While baby D was happy as larry and the heartbeat had remained at a constant all the way through my body was tired and my contractions were starting to slow down (apparently). So ventouse delivery was discussed and agreed on if we had no joy within the next 15 mins.

15 mins later and no baby and also no Dr. after another 15 mins the Dr. appeared and started on the procedure. I should add that at this time Will was still lingering around and was having things explained to him by Carly and the Dr. but he was also turning a slight shade whiter as the process moved on and he kept putting on a lot of hand gel. Not sure why but it amused Pip and I when we spoke about it later!

Finally, at 12.15 on the dot James Harland Doherty arrived in our world. Oh happy (bang on due) day!