May has been an exciting month in the Postpartum household, as we welcomed baby boy number 3! (#outnumbered) He came very swiftly one evening and is the first baby I’ve had that hasn’t been served an eviction notice.
Not being terribly au fait with the whole natural labour thing, I have some regrets from the day. The first being buying the kids an apres school icecream, there is nothing more frustrating than having quite painful uterus cramps in a pub car park whilst emploring your 3 year old, (and worlds slowest ice cream eater), to eat his icecream at a faster pace than a sloth.
The second thing I regret is the manner in which I spoke to my husband when I realised these cramps were 1) getting worse and 2) closer together. As I was 6 days overdue everytime his phone rang he half expected to be told it was time. In my head, having been robbed of the opportunity of breaking this news to him previously, I imagined something along the lines of ‘Darling, it’s happening, we’re going to meet our baby soon!’ What he actually got was a terse and rather tetchy phonecall from a woman who was in pain and still traumatised from the length of time she’d stood in a carpark, in agony waiting for a 3 year old to eat a Mr Whippy, and it went something like this:
‘I’ m having pains. They’re getting worse.’
‘Should I come home, do you think this is it?’
‘How the f*#k should I know?’
Yup. What beautiful words.
The third thing I regret is that one of the first things I said to my newborn son, in a room full of medical professionals was ‘We’ve got a banging holiday in Weymouth booked.’ No profound first words from Mummy I’m afraid, kiddo.
I had prepared for a long labour, I’d ran a bath which was no mean feat as I was dealing with contractions and incessant questions from the 3 and 5 year old. (What are you doing? Is it for you or us? Can we get in? Shall we get some toys? Do babies need to be born in water?)
By the time I was in the water I had started to panic. I was in pain and not sure how long I could deal with it. The panic was making the pains worse. So I gave myself a mental talking to, and started to breathe.
In and out. Nice and slow. Innnnnm and ouuuuuuuut. The boys, who had been doing a sterling job of pouring water on my bump had grown bored and asked if they could watch telly. Permission was granted. I had vague recollections of NCT classes harping on about aromatherapy during childbirth, and me smelling various scents, remembering geranium being one of those scents. I happend to have a fancy geranium scented shower gel in my bathroom so started sniffing the bottle like a half crazed drug detection dog everytime I felt a contraction. (Any port in a storm.)
Sooner than expected, hubs arrived. Probably expecting to find his wife replaced by the green faced girl from The Exorcist, and began flapping.
Those who don’t know my husband would not agree with this. It’s not like he started running round shoving towels and nappies into a plastic bag, to the untrained eye he would have looked calm and collected. But I know my husband and he was at Flap Central. Packing things and checking and growing quiet. My mum arrived, as a retired midwife and my mum she was just what we needed to keep grounded. She put her hand on my tum and started to time the contractions. I will never forget all three of us in the bathroom, hubs next to me mum at the door and me trying to breathe through a particularly ferocious contraction when the 3 year old ran past the bathroom yelling ‘HULK SMASH!’ waving his arm around in a chopping motion. I found myself laughing. And I still can’t think about it without giggling.
Anyway, contractions were timed, the hospital was called and we were asked to go in. If you look closely you can see the claw marks on the dashboard as I gripped on wondering why the hell this journey was taking so long? *
*it took the normal amount of time.
When we arrived at the hospital, the walk to labour ward took some time. I kept needing to stop, grip the handrail and grunt for a bit. If the poor child being wheeled back to the Children’s ward ever comes across this, I am so sorry you had to see that.
The rest, dear reader, is rather hazy. I begged for pain relief and was given glorious gas and air! We had arrived at the hospital at 5 to 7 in the evening. Our son was born at 19 minutes past. I think I pushed maybe 3 times and not really consciously. My body seemed to say ‘Ahhh, this again, we’ll take it from here.’ It’s a very good job our Midwife was on the ball. Hubs cut the (exceptionally long) cord, as he has for all our children and we were parents thrice over!
Whilst I regret my first words to my son, he doesn’t appear to regret pooing all over me mere moments after being born. The midwife was quite dismayed by the state of me, and called for back up to get the bed changed and the meconium wiped off. Our baby had demonstrated the power of his lungs then settled. Things that needed stitching were stitched. Tea was drank, toast was consumed and family called. It was the best Thursday I’d had in bladdy ages.
The Postpartum Years 