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Diary Of A New Mum - Introduction

The Birth

Jessica-Ann was born on 30^th March at 10.07am. She weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds 8 ounces and is absolutely perfect in every way. But then, I’m bound to say that. As soon as she was born the midwife put her straight on to my tummy, gore and all, for a cuddle and a first attempt at feeding. No words can describe how it felt – especially after what was actually a pretty horrendous birth!

Now, I don’t want to put you off if you’re reading this and are expecting your own baby soon. I have it on good authority (two close friends) that it is possible to give birth in a fairly straight-forward and easy way. Painless, no. (How could something so big coming out of somewhere so small ever be painless?) But not everyone goes through what I went through.

I say ‘I’, but really it was ‘we’. My wonderful husband, Paul, suffered almost as much as I did. Come on ladies – it can’t be easy watching the person you love go through something like that!

My own personal horror story started at 2.00am on Saturday morning when the pains I’d been having for a few days suddenly got much, much worse. I had no idea it was labor, though (despite being 10 days overdue). I thought I was constipated! So much for the pains being like period pains, and all those midwives telling me, ‘you’ll just know’.

At 6.00am I woke Paul. I’d had a bit of a ‘show’ and was getting worried – not to mention lonely. Misery likes company, they say. So he got up and worried with me for another few hours. We timed the contractions with such care and accuracy – Paul even had a stopwatch! (When I came home from hospital, Jessica-Ann a little bundle in my arms, the sight of those sheets of paper reduced me instantly to tears. We’d been so innocent, thinking it could all be managed by writing down the numbers.)

At 11.00am we scooted over to the hospital with the contractions coming every 5 minutes and very painful (or so I thought – I would redefine my idea of pain over the coming hours!) The midwife promptly told us that I was only one centimeter dilated and sent us home! ‘Take Paracetamol’, she said. More pain, lots of baths, and plenty of panting and crying followed, before we headed back to the hospital around 5.30pm. This time they let us stay – I was in ‘established labor’ and everything was about to go mental…

You don’t want to read about my labor. No, you don’t. Suffice it to say, most things that could go wrong did go wrong (cervix not dilating properly; epidural delayed, then didn’t work even after seven attempts to get needle in; baby kept moving; forceps delivery). What you do want to know is, despite all this, mother and baby – and hubby – were fine. We survived. And so will you, no matter what happens.

Whether you’ll survive what’s to come after is another question! I thought the birth was the hard part. Then we brought her home. My beautiful, amazing little bundle of joy was about to discover a set of lungs with no volume control!

Diary of A New Mum - Week 1

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