Hello all! And the birth of my son...

Well, I haven't posted since June. Things have been so busy with work and the new addition to the family. I thought that a good place to start would be the story of the birth of Archie Lewis, our son. I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on a forum when I got home from hospital. I haven't edited it so I would like to ask you all to please bear in mind that at the time I had been up for around 42 hours.... so forgive any horrific grammar or spelling.

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So the story....

Lucie woke me up at 4am on Saturday morning to let me know that Pip was thinking about making an appearance. She had been up off and on since 1am but initially thought that they were Braxton Hicks contractions so didn't wake me. However, by 4am they started gaining in regularity so woke me.

I grabbed a shower whilst I could and then ran Lu a bath.

By 7.30am they were lasting around 50 seconds and were two and a half minutes apart, this was quite close, so we rang our local community hospital who told us to go in. After an examination she found that the cervix was only 1-2cm dilated (needs to be around 10cm), so suggested that the best course of action would be to go home and wait until the contractions became unbearable. She suggested relaxing for a few hours to rest and then getting active to bring the contractions on stronger. She did say that this wouldn't go backwards and the baby was definitely on its way.

Lu began to find them unbearable around 6.30pm so we went back to the hospital, only to find that she hadn't dilated any further. To make things worse, her blood pressure had shot up so the midwife told us that we would have to go to Bath RUH.

We got in the car and arrived at 8pm. The contractions now had been non-stop since 4am and it was beginning to affect Lu. We were assigned a midwife who hooked her up to a CTG monitor and said "lets have a baby". I have to say, our midwife was excellent, as was our registrar (which you'll see later).

At 8.30pm they decided that breaking Lu's waters manually could help so did this.

Contractions were getting more painful by 10pm but the cervix was still only at 4cm. Things were progressing slower than they should have been, and to make things worse the baby's heart rate kept dropping on the really strong contractions and took a while to recover. They inserted a heart rate monitor into the birth canal that clipped onto the baby's head, this made measuring the heart rate much much more accurate, but this only confirmed the heart rate dropping more than it should.

However, at this stage it was explained to us that some babies have a lower 'base rate' and this could be the case with our child. If it continued they would do some blood test from the baby's scalp, which I can't remember the exact details of, in order to find the base rate and know exactly when it would become a problem. However, in the end they noted that the heart rate always returned to normal after around ten seconds so decided that the baby was fine.

At this stage, around 11pm Lucie was in real pain and stuggling to cope with the contractions - I can hardly blame her, as she had been having heavy contractions for hours and hours at this stage. She didn't want an epidural, but this changed as she found the contractions too hard to bear. She had gas and air but found it made her dizzy and feel out of control.

I have to admit, whilst not before the birth thrilled with the idea of an epidural, I was so glad she had one. Yes, I know that SHE was the one dealing with the labour, but I was mentally and physically exhausted by this stage having followed her through every contraction since 4am, and witnessing her in so much pain just made it worse. I'm not afraid to admit that whilst she wasn't looking I cried a little, then covered it up in order to carry on supporting her.

The anaesthetist arrived at 11.15pm and the effects were immediate, and if anything miraculous. She went from being in horrendous pain and unable to breath properly or talk to relaxed and cracking jokes.

The registrar was checking on our progress around every 30 minutes at this stage, due to the slow progression despite intense contractions, the dipping heart rate and the fact that Lucie had traces of protein in her urine and her blood pressure was still high (a possible sign of pre-eclampsia)

At this stage she warned me out of earshot of Lu that at some point they MIGHT have to take matters into their own hands and perform a caesarean section. If that did happen, things would go crazy, around five people would run into the room and take her straight to theatre, and that I wasn't to panic and just follow them.

Between this stage and 2.30am things were much more relaxed and the midwife just monitored the baby and Lucie, and we talked a lot together.

At around 2.30am progress was still slow, so it was decided to use a syntocin drip to move things along. This makes contractions even stronger so Lu's epidural was topped up.

This is when it gets hairy....

They administered this, and at around 2.49am there was a huge contraction (they register on the CTG monitor, so even though Lu had the epidural they knew the intensity of them) and the baby's heart rate halved. The registrar was called back in who stared at the results for about fifteen seconds, saying "go up, come on, up... just like you have all through tonight".

They didn't and suddenly after one yell about getting Lu to theatre immediately the room was full of medical staff, someone yelled for the anaesthetist and Lu was wheeled out the door, with the midwife telling me to follow.

We went down the corridor and on the way the registrar was trying to relax Lu - she said that she was still going to try to deliver the baby naturally ASAP, but if that failed they needed to be ready in surgery. As we reached the theatre the midwife pointed at a door and told me to strip down to my pants and put on a pair of scrubs and wait to be called in.

At 2.54am I was still anxiously waiting when a man in scrubs enter the room. He introduced himself as one of the surgeons and explained that as soon as they had entered theatre there made been some major complications. The baby was in distress and they had to put Lucie under general anaesthetic (i.e. knocked out) and because of that I couldn't go in. They were delivering the baby by emergency caesarean as we spoke and Lu would then be stitched up and taken to recovery. The baby might have had to go to intensive care, but he couldn't say for sure as he had left the room as it was being delivered when they realised that someone needed to update me on progress - they had had to move extremely quickly in theatre to save the baby so I was, in effect, an afterthought (which on this occasion I didn't mind).

The surgeon was great and really put my mind at ease when what he said should have knocked me for six. It turned out later that he also spoke calmly to Lucie as they were about to put her under general anaesthetic without having the time to explain fully why and helped her relax.

At 2.56am the midwife came into the room and said "congratulations, it's a boy!" and hugged me. She said that he was doing brilliant and they were just cleaning him up and dressing him to bring him through to me (as Lucie was still unconscious and being sewn up).

The next six minutes were a nightmare for me as I only wanted to ensure that both of my family where OK. It was overwhelming as only fifteen minutes before we had been going through an extremely slow labour, and suddenly my wife was under general anaesthetic having major surgery and my baby having to have its life saved through quick action.

At 3.02am the midwife finally bought my son into the room. As I cuddled him she pointed out that he had marks on his face where the registrar had to use forceps to deliver him, and that he had a birthmark right on his nose. I couldn't care less, he was absolutely beautiful to me.

She explained that Lucie would take some time to recover before she would be well enough to see the baby, so we returned to our delivery room where I spend fifty minutes on my own with my son, with the odd midwife dropping in to say congratulations. One said that I must be starving and offered me a hot drink and sandwiches. I suddenly discovered that it is almost impossible to open vacuum-packed sandwiches with one hand.

I had made a point of talking to the baby a lot during the pregnancy, as they say it helps them bond with you when they are born, and I will never forget the moment I took a crying Archie into my hands, I spoke to him and he stopped to look at me. He then spent the next 50 minutes just staring at me.

During this time the registrar came in to check on me, apologise for what had happened and explain. The baby's heart rate had dropped and she had every intention of trying a natural birth in the theatre as the baby was only "two or three pushes" from being born. However, the heart rate had continued to drop so she made the snap decision to perform a caesarean. To perform a 'normal' one with local anaesthetic takes around 20 minutes to set up (so that the anaesthetic has time to kick on). We didn't have that luxury so Lucie had to have a general anaesthetic ASAP.

During the surgery they found that the baby had it's umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, so she had to work quickly and pull him out with forceps. Luckily the baby was still happily breathing and the heart was beating, though if it had gone on it wouldn't have been that way.

She explained that on each heavy contraction the baby was probably being pushed into the birth canal and the twisted umbilical cord tightened causing the heart rate to drop. However, the baby would be able to move back upwards so the pressure eased.

However, after the syntocin drip the huge contraction caused the cervix to fully dilate and the baby to shoot most of the way down the birth canal. This obviously caused the serious problems.

Finally at 4am they said that we could go and see Lucie in the recovery room. I have to admit that she looked terrible and it wasn't fun to see her shaking (a side effect of such a heavy anaesthetic dose) or the various machines hooked up to her beeping away. I introduced her to our son and slowly watched her get better with time, and the colour returning to her face and the shaking stop.

At this stage we were moved to one of the mixed rooms with other pregnant or new mothers and various staff came in to regularly check blood pressure etc. Lucie was able to try to breastfeed at this point, and was successful. I took the opportunity to step outside and call our parents, as I was aware that it was now around two and a half hours since the baby was born.

Luckily I was told that I could stay the night with Lucie and our newborn, this was significant as at some labour wards if the baby is born out of visiting hours they make him leave soon after the birth.

I returned to the room and sat in a "comfy" chair provided for me. I desperately wanted to sleep having been up since 4am the previous day, but discovered in the next ten minutes or so that I would be constantly interrupted by nurses and midwives discussing things, and the automatic blood pressure monitor making a loud noise every time it started a new calculation. And the chair wasn't that comfy anyway, and whenever I dropped off my head would tilt forward and wake me up.

So at 7am I was still awake and spent all of today doing various tasks and changing tar-like nappies with no further feelings. To say I am knackered is an understatement. I'm now at home by myself as Lucie has to stay in (but will be back in at 8am in the morning and stay with them until 9pm tomorrow evening). I'm really missing my son already, though at least I know that he's next to his mum at the moment.

It was a hell of a ride!