The morning after the night before

Well, we’ve had a whole one hour’s sleep last night and are now perfectly poised to elaborate on Monday’s adventure. And Sunday’s adventure. And Saturday’s adventure…

Saturday was the due date, and what with us both being project managers we joked that the baby would appear bang on time. Although obviously we wanted the Wales vs England football match to finish first! Our friends Phil & Lyn were in town for the first time in ages, so we joined them in a smoke-free pub to watch the game, and then joked that a curry might induce labour. We were not wrong!

  • Saturday 9pm - contractions started, half an hour after getting home, one hour after Emily’s Vegetable Madras….then they kept going until;
  • Sunday 2pm - contractions every five minutes apart, we’re allowed to go into hospital
  • Sunday 3pm - arrive at hospital, Emily 2cm dilated. Not enough to be given our own labour room. Told to go home, but we asked to stay on the grounds that we lived too far away. Midwife took pity on us and found us a bed in the ante-natal ward.
  • Sunday 7pm - after four hours of agonising contractions, Emily was measured again only to find that she was still 2cm dilated. Measurement can only be made once every four hours to reduce risk of infection.
  • Sunday 11.30pm - Emily’s contractions now excruciating. Midwife takes a measurement, with us knowing we’d be split up (me being sent home) if we were still 2cm. Sweet mercy, the measurement comes back at 3cm which means we get our own labour room, I can stay with Emily and Emily can finally have an epidural anaesthetic to ease the pain. Thank the stars.
  • Monday 2am - after three hours of mind-blowingly painful contractions, with a constant promise that the Anaesthetists were ‘just on their way’, Emily finally gets her epidural. Anaesthetists had been busy attending life-threatening surgery, which helps us put things in perspective afterwards. In the space of 5 minutes, Emily is transformed from a gibbering, quivering wreck to her old charming self. Emily tells the midwives that she loves them.
  • Monday 3am - the midwife brings me a mattress and tells me to get some sleep.
  • Monday 4.30am - Emily is measured and is now 7cm dilated. Target is 10cm. In the course of having her measurements taken, Emily’s waters break.
  • Monday 9am - Emily is measured at 10cm, which is considered fully dilated and ready to give birth. Her epidural means that she can’t feel her muscles pushing, so the midwife decides to wait an hour before pushing so the baby makes progress down the birth canal.
  • Monday 9.55am - Emily starts pushing! The crown of the baby’s head is visible straight away.
  • Monday 10.12am - Katie Whitehouse is born! the umbilical cord is clamped in two places and I’m given scissors to cut the cord in between the clamps.
  • Monday 10.25am - Third and final stage of labour is completed when the placenta comes out.

So, as you can see it was something of a marathon. But we made it home safely, managed to snatch an hour or two’s sleep last night, and baby fed well this morning.

We honestly couldn’t be happier!