Billy at 8 weeks

Billy at one week, four weeks and eight weeks old.

One year on

Copyright Lucy Stendall Photography

A year ago today (or this week, by the time I actually got around to finishing this post), me and that handsome chap said our “I do”s in front of our nearest and dearest, had a massive party and finished the night off with my new husband passed out and me stuck in my wedding dress, eating a cold Big Mac in our hotel room.

Eleven months later, we headed back to the same registry office with our babe in arms to make him official. Not being one to miss an opportunity for a comparison shot, we attempted to recreate a couple of our wedding shots in the hope of making it an annual tradition. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder what a difference being two stone lighter, having a tan and wearing some decent make up can make.

Our wedding day (May 2012) and registering Billy (April 2013) at the Council House in Nottingham

I wrote a big long sentimental stream of consciousness about how fit my husband is, how much he makes me laugh, how much I love him and how over the moon I am about the little family we’ve made, but I read it back and even I did a little vom in my mouth. So instead, I’ll tell you that we celebrated our anniversary with our first child free night out, beer, a 30oz steak and a pretty special sticky banoffee cake at Larder. In typical new parent style, we were drunk after 2 pints, got home at 9pm and had the makings of a hangover by midnight.

Neil excelled himself in the gift department and bought a beautiful print from Bold & Noble for our bedroom wall, what with it being our paper wedding anniversary and all. I, not thinking for a million years that Neil would know it was our paper anniversary anyway, gave him a tin robot. Neil 1 – 0 Kate.

So there you have it. 12 months, a ring, a honeymoon, a house move, a baby and a 30oz steak. Here’s to the next one!

Things I wish I’d known about…maternity wards

There is a lot about this whole ‘having babies’ malarky that is covered in infinite depths by the textbooks and the trash TV I religiously watched on crap channels like ‘Discovery Babies’ or whatever it was. There are other bits that people JUST. DON’T. TALK ABOUT. Unless of course, having been through it yourself, if you mention it to other people, they suddenly go ‘OH YEAH, ISN’T THAT WEIRD/ANNOYING/TERRIBLE/ETC? THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME’. HELLO! Might have been useful to mention this to me BEFORE.

So, in a bid to save someone else hard work and frantic googling at 3am, I’ve got a few blog posts in my head that pick up where ‘One Born Every Minute’ finishes – the first of which covers the Japanese water torture that is…maternity wards.

Despite my best attempts to avoid them, following Billy’s arrival, I ended up with a 24 hour stay on the maternity ward. This bit ended up being far more stressful than the birth was, and a lot of things that happened surprised me.

TMI warning starts…..Now.

1. The heat
I’m now entirely convinced that the NHS budget deficits are due to the heating bills from our local maternity ward. It was as hot as actual hell. At one point, I remembered the thick socks and cardigan packed neatly in to my (abandoned) hospital bag and had a chuckle as I sat there, sweating cobs, wearing a nursing bra and not a lot else, desperately trying to regain enough function in my legs to reach the water jug on the table next to me.

If I had my time again, I would have taken a whole lot less clothes and a couple of 2 litre bottles of water. And a fan.

2. Other people
Remember the bloody woman in the bed next to me at the maternity assessment centre? Guess who was in the bed next to me on the maternity ward? Oh yes. What are the bloody changes? And this time, she had a baby. A baby that she cradled and shushed when it was sound asleep, and largely ignored when it screamed for 3 hours straight from 1-4am as she was far too busy on her bloody phone.

3. Post partum bleeding
Its not something that’s covered in the books, so I was genuinely surprised to find that the most eloquent solution to post-birth blood loss is for a midwife to press an NHS issue sanitary towel between your legs and plonk you on an absorbent bed pad with a sheet over you. This is largely fine when you have no use of your legs, but as soon as you need to change position, pick the baby up out of the crib, change a nappy, sit up to breastfeed etc, this solution quickly becomes problematic.

I begged anyone who came within a 10 meter radius of my bed to take my catheter out and let me have a shower, but it wasn’t until lunchtime the next day that my wish was finally granted. BEST. SHOWER. EVER.

4. The food
Now, I love my food. And I love the NHS. Largely, I think that people that complain needlessly about the NHS need to take a cold, hard look at themselves and think of the bigger picture. THAT said: You’ve got a ward full of women who are likely to have suffered with anaemia throughout their pregnancy, and a lot of women are likely to have recently given birth. Would it not be a good move to serve some greenery or veg to help with the old iron count?

Exhibit A: Beef casserole with vegetables, mash, potato croquette and ‘fresh fruit salad’ 

Exhibit B: Chicken and vegetable curry

So, if you find yourself lucky enough to stay on the maternity ward, bribe your nearest and dearest to bring you something tasty with nutritional value to get you through. And biscuits. Don’t forget the biscuits.

5. Pooing to order
When you have some pretty serious stitches after you give birth, the midwives want to make sure you can do a number 1 and 2 without problems before they will discharge you. Sensible idea, I hear you say.

It is, until you realise the only thing between you and your own bed is a poo that doesn’t seem to be making an appearance any time soon. If you’ve gone in to labour yourself, you’ll know that the body has its own way of ‘cleansing the system’ to prepare for birth, which for a lot of people, involves sitting on the loo for much of their early labour. That, the fact that I’d not eaten for 24 hours, the stitches and the fact that I had a nurse coming to see me once every 5 minutes to ask if I’d ‘done a poo yet?’ caused me to do something I probably shouldn’t.

I lied.

I told them I’d pooped and they ordered my drugs so we could go home. Just like that. They didn’t want any proof or anything (thank heavens). Off they sent me with my stool softeners and my laxatives and I trundled off home with our squidgy little baby, with a niggling thought in the back of my mind that I might just have seriously under-estimated how bad this poo was going to be.

The next morning, I found out. You know what? It wasn’t all that bad. And it was a damn sight easier for not having someone in uniform watching my every move and avoiding a second night next to my maternity ward nemesis.

So, there you have it. Five things I wish I’d known about maternity wards. In hindsight, there’s probably a bloody good reason people don’t talk about this stuff, because sweating, bleeding and pooing is not the most glamorous of subjects, but it is very good preparation for the glamour of parenthood.

In my hospital bag…reloaded.

Back when Billy was still a bump, I did a post about all the things I was packing in my hospital bag. As predicted, I used approximately 5% of the stuff I took, then ended up getting Neil to bring me another bag full of really useful stuff I’d conveniently forgotten. So, here’s what I should have packed, and what I just shouldn’t have bothered with…

Clothes for me:

• I packed nursing tops, bras, yoga trousers, socks, slippers and an array of granny pants in various sizes. What I didn’t consider was how ridiculously tropical the maternity unit would be, rendering all the long sleeved tops completely useless. I also shouldn’t have bothered with the nursing tops – breastfeeding is so flabbergasting at first that I had one, if not two, boobs completely out at any given point, usually with a maternity support worker frantically shoving my boob into Billy’s perplexed face. If I had my time again, I would have packed pants, bras, vests and yoga trousers, and not a lot else. 

Other stuff for me:

• Toliletries bag: Was a godsend when you realise you haven’t brushed your teeth in 36 hours and your hair is still wet from being in the birth pool the day before (ewww). Just make sure it’s to hand in case  you find yourself in a situation where you have misplaced the use of your legs and you’re so desperate for lipbalm that you’d be willing to do some jail time. Not that I’m speaking from experience or owt.

• Make up bag: Maternity wards are very good at not having any mirrors in, largely because everyone looks like a bag of crap. When I finally got to the bathroom the following day, I was shocked to find a pale, corpse-like figure with dark eyes staring back at me, not the glowy, rosy cheeked thing I was expecting. Blusher and concealer may not have made a difference to how ill I looked, but it made a massive difference to how I felt. 

• Hairdryer and straighteners: Didn’t get used, although not for want of trying. It turns out if these aren’t PAT tested by the hospital, they don’t let you plug them in. They do have hairdryers on the wards, but good luck trying to get someone to bring you one. 

• Arnica capsules and ointment: I took Arnica capsules in the few days immediately following the birth, and after 48 hours, the swelling and bruising had reduced to a point that I could comfortably sit on a chair again. I felt like the bruising healed quickly, but I really have nothing to compare it to in order to verify my findings, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. The ointment on the other hand is still unused.

 

• Lanisoh nipple cream: This stuff is the bomb, as is Waleda Hypericum Calendula Ointment. Just be careful if you have any pale nursing bras, otherwise you may end up with grease stains right where your nipples are. It’s a strong look.

• Boppy breastfeeding pillow: This was on my list of things to take, but in the rush to get in the ambulance, it got left at home. Breastfeeding is HARD to start with, and it would have been mega useful to have this with me on the ward that first night.

• Breast pads: …Were a complete waste of time. My milk didn’t come in ’til day 3, and I’m still waiting for the kind of milk supply that would warrant needing a breast pad in the first place. One of the big draws to breastfeeding was that I was promised you would be able to use your boobs as impromptu waterpistols for situations like…I dunno… your husband pissing you off a bit. You could be all like BAM! Milk squirt, right in the chops. it would have been amazing. I feel a bit robbed of this superpower, TBH.

• Maternity pads: The hospital will give you these (hell, for the first few hours, they just plonk one between your legs sans undercrackers and let you get on with it), but the ones you buy are marginally more comfortable despite being the size of a breezeblock. For the first few days, the breezeblock-ness of the pads came in handy as a bit of extra padding, but after a week or so, I switched to normal sanitary towels. 

• Eye Mask and Earplugs: I think it was very sweet that the pre-baby me didn’t see any problem with taking earplugs with me, despite the fact that this would mean I wasn’t able to hear my own baby. An eye mask, had I remembered it, would have been a blessing, especially after the woman in the bed next door kept her light on ALL NIGHT LONG.

• iPhone and charger: my ability to catch up on 48 hours worth of tweets at 4am probably saved the life of the stupid woman in the bed next to me as her BBM thing beeped for the 5,000th time that hour. 

For baby:

• Clothes: I put on my list ‘vest and babygrows in a range of sizes’. What I did not anticipate, however was that my offspring would be too large for any of the sizes I’d packed – cue a panicked call to my mum from the delivery room to ask her for some 0-3 month clothes.

• Scratchmitts: Since discovering that the extra flap on the cuff of baby grows is, in fact, a built in scratchmitt, I have no idea what separate scratch mitts are for. However, it’s worth checking your babygrows DO have this magic flap as babies (and especially overdue babies) are born with TALONS, and considering they don’t know they’ve got hands, they do a very good job at scratching their faces, making them look even more blotchy and puffy for their newborn photos.

• Hat: This was used for the drive home only and wasn’t needed on the ward due to the ward being hotter than actual hell.

• Blanket: this John Lewis blanket was a present from my friend Stef. It’s warm, cuddly and I wish they made them in grown-up sizes. We used it for the car journey home, and that was about it.

• Muslin cloths x2: These were good for using as a lightweight blanket, or just to keep you/baby from getting too sweaty through all the boob shoving (see above).

• Swaddle blanket: Some babies love it. Ours is not one of them.

• Nappies and baby wipes: They told me that I should be using cotton wool balls and water which perplexes me greatly. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of a meconium poo knows full well that cotton wool balls and water is about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to scary baby Marmite. I used the cotton wool balls they gave me until they walked out of the room, then went back to using Huggies Pure wipes. Guess what? Baby wipes didn’t melt his skin off, and they’re a damn sight more effective.

For Neil:

• Change of clothes, contact lenses, glasses, camera, Kindle, emergency Pot Noodle: None of these got used, but if I’d have had a different birth, or at a different time of day, they might.

• Chocolate muesli bars and chocolate hobnobs: got consumed (by me) in the loudest possible way at 3am. This was a little bit to piss off the woman in the next bed who, it seemed, was put on this planet to annoy me. It was also due to the fact that when my body got over giving birth, it realised it had about 24 hours worth of food to catch up on. In pregnant-lady-food-consumption terms, this probably equates to around four million calories.

What I should have packed: 

• My own pillow
• 2ltr bottle of water – 40′C maternity wards and all that gas and air makes Kate a thirsty girl
• Snacks, snacks and more snacks.

One week vs. one month

What a difference three weeks makes.

Baby Billy’s Birth Story

When I was pregnant, I read pretty much every birth story going. I poured over the details, hoping to gleam nuggets of information that would help me when I (eventually) went in to labour myself. Now I’m out the other side, it seems only right to add my story in to the mix, despite it taking me almost a month to write down.

Disclaimer – by it’s nature, this post will be WAAY WAAY TMI. Those of a sensitive nature, you’re probably best off closing this browser tab and going to make a cup of tea or something. You have been warned.

This post is also LOOONG. If you’re not in it for the long haul, then here’s a quick summary, Cluedo style (only with less murders): I had a baby. A giant boy-shaped baby, in the birth pool, with the gas and air. 

Here’s the long version:

Baby R was due to make an appearance on 22 Feb. A day, which like many days after it, came and went without so much of a twinge. I spent each day trying to distract myself with dull tasks, seeing friends and family and going for some epic walks. What started off as a leisurely stroll around the park at 38 weeks turned in to jogging backwards up a hill and lunge-walking half mile stretches by the time I hit 41 weeks. Friends would message me on a daily basis to see if there were ‘any signs?’ and I quickly ran out of witty ways to reply.

The thing that annoyed me most about the whole ‘any signs?’ malarky is that I genuinely didn’t know whether I was having any signs or not. I’d had a show a few days before, I was 1.5cm dilated and 80% effaced and I had plenty of braxton hicks, sometimes I could even time them. But was this the start of labour? How would I know when it was labour? Everyone I spoke to had said ‘you just know’. At the time, I wanted to slap them and tell them that this nugget of info was ‘SO not f**king helpful’, but with hindsight, they were bloody right. I hate it when that happens.

So, my body had done a pretty awesome job at growing this baby without much involvement from me, and I trusted it to do what it was made to do, but the further past my due date I got, the more my midwife started talking about the dreaded word: Induction. I really really didn’t want to be induced. Being induced meant no home birth, no water birth, artificially induced contractions which come thick and fast, which quickly snowballed in my head to a scenario which included episiotomies, epidurals, forceps, an emergency c-section, or probably all of the above. But, I couldn’t stay pregnant forever, so I was booked in to be monitored on Wednesday 6 March (at 40+12), and based on the results, we would know whether we would be given a little more time to see if I went in to labour naturally, or whether I would have to stay and be induced.

On Monday 4 March, I woke up at 5am and knew that something was different. I wouldn’t say that they hurt, but they were far more pressured than they had been previously. And they could be timed – every 3 minutes, lasting 90 seconds.  Around 9am, we gave our community midwife a call to let her know that SOMETHING at least was happening. Around midday, one of the team arrived and did some checks, watched me for a while and gave me an exam – I was 2cm dilated and 90% effaced. She left telling us to give them a call when things had progressed.

In preparation for labour, we learnt a lot about oxytocin and adrenaline and the impact it has. I thought it was really interesting, and a lot of it made sense to me, about being comfortable and not being watched, but I didn’t think it would have a huge impact on me. I was totally wrong. My labour all but ground to a halt as soon as the midwife arrived, and only picked up again once she’d left and we were on our own again.

By 11pm, contractions were still 3 minutes apart, lasting 90 seconds, but hadn’t got any stronger. We headed to bed to try to get some sleep. I woke up at 2am and went downstairs. By this point, I was beginning to doubt myself – should I try and sleep, or should I be jumping up and down on my yoga ball to keep things moving? Was this really the start of imminent labour, or was I still looking at an induction? I ate a yoghurt (which would turn out to be the last thing I ate for 24 hours – if I’d have known this, I might have tried to eat something more substantial) and called the out of hours midwife team for advice. They told me that the body sometimes stalled labour to allow you to get some rest, and that I should go back to bed, which I dutifully did. Miraculously, I was able to grab a couple more hours sleep, which I’m sure came in handy for the sleepless night that followed.

By 6am on Tuesday morning, things had changed again, and the contractions were still not something I would describe as pain, but were definitely more intense.  I needed to be on hands and knees, bent forwards BEFORE the contraction hit, as once the contraction was at it’s peak, I wasn’t able to move my legs at all. Around 9am, we called the midwife team, and a midwife was with us by 10:30am. Once again, my contractions slowed significantly as soon as the midwife arrived (very annoying), but she quickly made us both feel very at ease. The midwife, Jackie, was no-nonsense and old school and reminded me a lot of Sister Evangelina from ‘Call the Midwife’, but she was also refreshingly ‘hands off’. She knew how my labour was progressing by listening to me  and was happy to potter in the background whilst my contractions built back up.

Around 11:30am whilst Neil set the pool up, she told me that I was 5cm dilated.

However.

She could also feel something else which she wasn’t happy about – what she thought might be a vessel on the placenta or something like that. She explained that we needed to get this checked out by the hospital, but that if we were given the all clear, we would be able to come straight back home and carry on as planned. An ambulance was called and things were thrown in bags just in case we had to stay. At around 12pm, I waddled in to the ambulance with the midwife and Neil followed behind in the car.

Once we arrived at the hospital, we were shown to a room in the labour ward. Someone wearing green came in and put a cannula in my hand. I didn’t want it, and didn’t need it, but it was standard procedure, so that they would be able to respond quickly should they need to. Leaning on the bed with your weight resting on your hands when you have a cannula in your vein sucks. A lot. Then, someone else wearing green came in and introduced herself as Dr M, a consultant. Jackie didn’t hear what she said, so asked her to repeat herself, to which Dr. M curtly announced that she had already introduced herself to me, the patient, so wasn’t going to do it again. It was at that point I decided I probably didn’t like this Dr M lady a whole lot – a hunch that proved to be bang on the money.

A few other green people came in the room, and a portable ultrasound was wheeled in. Although lots of people have private scans throughout their pregnancies, we’d only had the 12 and 20 week scans, and I remember feeling very strange – the previous two scans we’d had were proper ‘miracle of life’ moments where you see your unborn child. This felt very different, I wasn’t able to see the screen, I didn’t WANT to see the screen.

They couldn’t see anything on the scan, so Dr M told me that she was going to give me a ‘gentle’ examination to make sure everything was OK. Now, I’ve had a sweep at 1.5cm dilated, which wasn’t what I would call comfortable. I’ve also had an exam at 5cm dilated, which by comparison, I could barely even feel. Based on the excruciating pain that I was in during the ‘gentle’ exam by Dr M, I can only assume she must have had her entire hand inside my blummin’ uterus to feel around the head/placenta/whatever they thought was in the way. I’m not afraid to say that I wailed and sobbed at this point, and I think someone might have had to scrape me off the ceiling. This was the most painful part of the entire labour – which was made all the worse by the fact that I was completely unprepared for it. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t do what she did to be mean, there were medical reasons for it, and the health and safety of me and the baby were her principal concern, I’m sure. However, describing something as ‘gentle’ when she really meant ‘way more painful than anything you’ve ever experienced in your life’ doesn’t generally go down well in my books. If she’d have told me that it was going to hurt, but that she would be as quick as she could, or even given me some bloody gas and air, I might have been better physically and mentally prepared.

During the exam, she also accidentally ruptured my membranes (although given how thorough the exam was, it was a wonder they lasted that long in my opinion), which went against our requests in the birth plan – not that I assume she had read it – and subsequently ramped my contractions up another notch. The only saving grace was that my waters were clear, which meant a water birth could still be on the cards, even if our chances of getting home and filling the pool up on time were now approximately slim to none.

Jackie, our midwife, asked Dr M how dilated I was at this point, so she could avoid giving me another examination, and Dr M told her very dismissively that she had no idea, and that she had been concentrating on other things. If I had the energy or the ability to structure coherent sentences by that point, I would have told Dr M that given that she’d had HER ENTIRE FREAKING HAND ALL UP IN MY GRILL, that I was probably fairly dilated by now. As I had neither, I manager an eye-roll and went back to concentrating on breathing through my contractions. I do love a good eye-roll.

Once Dr M had finished her examination and the green people slowly filtered out of the room, we were left on our own and I begged for the pointless cannula to be taken out. At this point, we were technically free to leave the hospital and transfer back home, but the thought of labouring in the ambulance, and waiting for the pool to be filled at home was a less than thrilling prospect given the half an hour we’d just had, the fact that my waters had now gone, and I was now contracting like  a goodun (technical term). Neil suggested staying at the hospital and using the birth pool there, I begged Jackie and the student midwife to stay with us for the birth (and even though it probably goes against a whole lot of NHS guidelines, Jackie agreed – something I’m eternally grateful to her for) and the pool was filled up.

After a few minutes, we were told the pool was ready, and I did a hilarious walk down the corridor of the labour ward with a sheet draped around me, stopping every few yards to sway through a contraction. I must have looked a complete state to the bewildered visitors at the reception desk, but at that stage, I honestly didn’t give a toss.

I got in to the pool, which was a massive relief, and started using gas and air. I’m now convinced that the reason they give it out so freely is that it’s most effective if you’re quiet and NOT mooing like a cow. I quickly worked out that I couldn’t breathe in and moan at the same time, probably much to the relief of the midwife station just outside the door. It also gives you a mouth as dry as the Sahara desert, and between each and every contraction, I necked a glass of ice water. I’d also heard that the old Entenox can make some people a bit sweary. I love a good F-bomb at the best of times, so assumed I would naturally fall in to this foul-mouthed category, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. When I wasn’t frantically huffing on the mouthpiece or gulping water like my life depended on it, I was telling Neil just how much I loved him. Like, really really loved him. Eww, gross.

I found the comfiest position to be on my side, with my head on a rubber ring, holding Neil’s hand, and in easy reach of a glass of water and the gas mouthpiece. I remember having a sore hand from where my fingers had been bent back on the bottom of the pool – when each contraction hit, I ended up trying to lift myself out of the pool with my hands and feet. FYI, this didn’t make the blindest bit of difference, but still, made me feel better. Looking back, I still don’t remember the contractions being painful. I remember them taking over my whole body from my scalp to my toes, but the feeling I experienced wasn’t pain. I’ve since asked Neil whether I said to him that I was in pain at the time, and apparently I didn’t. It was pressure. All-encompassing, uncontrollable pressure. Whether this had anything to do with the relaxation and hypnotherapy CD that suggested contractions feeling like pressure, a wave or a tightening that I dutifully did every day* (*twice a month), I have no idea.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Every woman is terrified they’re going to poo themselves in labour, right? Until you get there and you realise you quite literally don’t give a shit (‘SCUSE THE PUN) because you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Well, I’m here to tell you that I did some tiny poos in the bath. I don’t remember doing it, but at one point, I spotted them and asked Neil all surprised ‘Oh, did I do that?’ – like it could have feasibly been anyone else. To his credit, Neil did tell me that it was actually him that had done it. Still, I think if you’re going to poo in front of your husband for the first time, then doing it moments before birthing his first born child is a pretty good time to do it.

I probably have one too many episodes of ‘One Born Every Minute’ to blame for this, but I had an image in my head of how labour went. You went to the hospital when your contractions were 5 minutes apart, lasting for a minute, a midwife monitored you until you got to 10cm dilated, then you pushed for a couple of hours and did the whole chin to chest thing and the grunting, and eventually a baby popped out. Whereas my experience of labour so far was 36 hours of contractions 3 minutes apart lasting a minute and a half, one examination putting me at 5cm and an unexpected trip to the labour ward. Once I was in the pool, I was mercifully left to my own devices. The only checks Jackie was doing was using the doppler, taking my temperature and checking my pulse every 15 minutes. I only know how long I had been in the pool (45 mins) by the fact that I’d only had 3 checks whilst I was in there.

Shortly after the third check, I had a contraction which was different to the others. At the end of the contraction, I made a real grunting noise and I felt a tonne more pressure pushing down on my belly. The student midwife told me not to push, as Jackie had just stepped out of the room for her lunch. Midwives have lunch breaks, who knew?I told her I couldn’t control it at all, and she went to get Jackie back in the room. Jackie took a quick look and told me the head was right there ready to be born. She told me to feel the head, which I did, and it was nothing like I expected, it was pointy with a ridge down the middle. I told her it couldn’t possibly be the head because it was so pointy, but with the next contraction, the head was out – thus proving my theory wrong, shortly followed at 1:57pm (less than 2 hours after we arrived at the hospital) by the body. I didn’t push – it was like my body did it with little input from me. I think that’s what Ina May Gaskin calls ‘letting your monkey do it’.

Then we had the moment that I’ve seen a million times on maternity programmes – the bit where the purpe-ish squished baby is placed on the mother’s chest for the first time. The bit that I cry at without fail. But…I didn’t cry. In fact, I was a bit surprised to have a baby put on my chest in the first place. I had been concentrating so hard on getting through each contraction, that I had almost forgotten why I was doing it. But I looked down on this calm baby boy that didn’t cry, with it’s big alert eyes and wispy blonde hair and instantly fell in love, and wondered how on earth he could have possibly been in my tummy seconds before.

We had a few minutes together and then he was passed to Neil to have some skin-to-skin with whilst I got out of the pool and delivered the placenta. Jackie told me to stand up and get out of the pool so I could push out the placenta – I think I just looked at her gone out. I was meant to use my LEGS? I was meant to be able to WALK? Did you not just SEE what came out of me?!

…Apparently this rationale doesn’t get you out of the task at hand, so I dutifully stood up and attempted to get out of the pool. It was at that point I assessed the situation around me and realised how glad I was to be in a pool with a plug at the bottom, and not to be in an inflatable pool that needed to be emptied by the bucketload. I’ve seen water birth videos where the water is perfectly clear like a hot tub with a beautiful baby floating to the surface. What I saw before me was more like a murder scene. A murder scene with added poop.

Walking about with an umbilical cord hanging out of you is a pretty gross experience, so before getting out of the pool, I gave a little test push to see what happened. It was at that point, what I can only describe as THE ENTIRE WORLD splashed in to the pool below. This was the first and only point I swore throughout the entire labour. I bent down in to the water, scooped up the placenta, and as I passed it to the midwife, asked her ‘WHAT THE F**K IS THAT?!’ – to which she replied ‘Blimey! That’s a big one!’. apparently big baby = big placenta. Gross.

As my work was officially done, I got out of the pool and on to the bed. We named him William, had our first feed and some skin-to-skin and took guesses at his weight. I guessed 9lb 6oz, Neil guessed 9lbs 10oz. Jackie looked at us both and laughed. 10lb 8oz. TEN POUNDS EIGHT OUNCES OF PURE CHUNKY BABY.

So, after doing what I set out to do (have a baby with as few drugs and interventions as possible), I then ended up getting another cannula in my hand, a spinal block and being taken to theatre to be stitched back together – thanks to Billy’s enormousness and speed of arrival. As luck would have it, if we had been at home, we would have had to be transferred in to hospital after the birth, which I imagine would have been a whole lot more stressful than waddling to the ambulance at 5cm dilated. Before going to theatre, I was assessed by the consultant, Dr. M (who gave me the excruciating exam earlier), and was told ‘that’s what you get when you attempt a home birth’ – a comment she later came to apologise for after coming to look for me in the maternity ward because she felt guilty. See – what did I say? Cowbag.

I wasn’t able to sit up for them to put the spinal in when I was taken to theatre, so it had to be put in with me lying down. I’m assuming it was a combination of the shock, the drugs I’d been given and the spinal affecting my blood pressure, but I did some excellent heaves into those little cardboard bowls and tried to persuade anyone that would listen that I thought it would be an excellent idea to give me a couple of units of blood. Apparently, these aren’t available on request, which is a real pity. The surgery itself was fine – it was like I didn’t exist from the waist down, so it really didn’t matter what they were doing to me. I was more concerned with my face, which was the itchiest its ever been (a side effect of one of the drugs, apparently) and I spent the whole time giving it a good scratch. Once I was done, I was taken to recovery, had two glasses of the best lemon squash ever and was taken back to my room where I suddenly remembered I had a husband I was madly in love with, and a baby I’d just given birth to AND my mum had bought me some prawn cocktail sandwiches. I had a little (a big) cry.

After several sarnies and a big cuddle with Billy, Neil and my parents, me and Billy were taken to the maternity ward for the night – despite repeatedly asking if I could go home. Apparently they don’t let you home if you have a catheter in and can’t feel your legs? Who knew. So me and Baby Billy settled in for his first night in existence together, and Neil went home to deflate the abandoned birth pool and have a much deserved beer.

Now the important bit! Photos: 

Proud grandpa

A couple of hours old

On the maternity ward, showcasing his chub to the best of his ability

The men in my life – Neil and Billy

Bonus shot – 41 weeks pregnant vs 1 week post-partum

41 weeks vs 1 week post-partum

I have a million and one things I want to write down about the last 10 days. Mostly about how bafflingly incredible and bloody hard they’ve been all at the same time. Every day I say I’m going to fire up the laptop and write down the story of Billy’s arrival before it gets lost in a cloud of baby brain, and every day, I have been prioritizing napping and staring at our adorable newborn over blogging. Quite rightly so.

So, whilst I get in to the swing of things, I’ll leave you with my very last bump photo. 41 weeks on the left, and on the right, one week on with the adorable fruits of my labour.