The arrival of Baby Benjamin (part 2)

Now where was I?

Ah yes, arriving at the hospital.

So it’s now around 6am and hardly a soul is to be seen at the hospital, apart from the reception desk monitor, who frankly seemed a little unsure what she was doing.

By now, Claire was finding walking a little challenging shall we say, mainly due to the pain of the contractions now being at their height.  One good thing that I randomly noticed was that even at this hour, ward security was still high with electronically locked doors only being opened upon a visual confirmation from a nurse/midwife on duty.  Amazing the stuff you remember when your brain is running a million miles an hour!

It had now been three hours since labour began, which made the midwifes announcement that Claire was already fully dialated somewhat of a shock. Good, but still a shock. Unfortunately, this is where the smooth delivery gig decided to end.

Usual timescales give about two hours from full dilation to giving birth. So when it got to 9am and still no sign of baby coming out anytime soon, concerns began to grow. Till now, I’d amazed myself by how calm I’d remained, but when I could tell the midwife could not see an easy way out of this, the worry started.

Before I knew it, the delivery team were beginning to talk about forceps, and worst of all, possible C-section; the one thing both Claire and I had agreed we did not want at all if the situation could be avoided. Before that however, the on-call Doctor had to carry out an exam to make sure baby was facing the right way.

That exam was probably the worst thing of the whole labour and birth I had to witness as it caused Claire so much pain.

Claire’s pain relief had come only in the form of a Tens machine so far, but she was now experiencing severe back pain from the pushing she had done up (about three hours worth!). Now it was definitely time for something else, namely gas and air.  I ended up pleading with her to use it as it hurt me to see her in such pain,although I would imagine that kind of pain overrides virtually every other sense you have.

More in a couple of days, as I really need to get some sleep now. Assuming Ben lets us of course!

The arrival of Baby Benjamin

It’s actually two weeks tomorrow since Ben came into the world and it’s been the most amazing and scary two weeks of my life.   Let me take you back on a little journey, starting with Ben’s arrival.  Imagine a Wayne’s World-esque back in time sequence.

Sunday 28th October, roughly 3am, I get a slight nudge from the lady with the words that I’d been trying to get ready to hear, ‘I think my waters have broken’.  In my usual calm reaction to such news,  my first thought was ‘Where the hell do I start getting ready?’.

Half an hour later and labour was definitely kicking in and it was time to call the hospital to get their advice.  Somehow Claire had gone from virtually nothing, to contractions happening between 1 and 3 minutes apart.  In case you don’t know what that means, usually it indicates that baby isn’t going to be too many hours behind.

We decide to ride things out for the time being just to be sure that it wasn’t a false alarm but the contractions increased along with the pain. 5.15am and it’s only getting more intense as time goes by.  Call the hospital again and they tell us to come in if we’re worried.  Ten minutes later and we’re off.

And herein lies the reality of a new baby.  Ben now wants attention and cuddles, and typing this with my left hand is bloody difficult as I’m right handed.  As soon as I can I’ll post some more.