Karl Born
Time: 3:03am
Weight: 8lb 11oz
Complication: Large Head
It was around 9pm when I started to feel contractions, I was walking down the hall and felt my waters break and told Brett, so we got packed up in the car and made for the hospital. He was heading for QA when I reminded him we needed St Mary's so after that little diversion we made it to the maternity ward for around 11pm.
I sat down in the reception after checking in and shortly after they came and took us to a room with 4 other ladies. By 11:30pm I was in a lot of pain so I was given the gas & air but it wasn't helping much. I was practically crawling up the back of the bed by 11:45pm and I asked for pethadine but they said I was ready to start pushing and there would be no point having it so I was taken into a delivery room where the fun began.
I'd been pushing for about 2 hours and getting very tired (and Brett's hand was going blue from my squeezing it) so they put me on a drip to increase the contractions which had slowed down. This did help a little but after another hour and still no baby, the midwives were considering caeserian. They decided to first try ventuose (which is a vacuum cap on the baby's head with a cord to pull). First they had to slice and dice me (which bloody hurt) to get the cap on and then pulling commenced, followed by a second midwife also playing tug of war and finally, at the last minute before I was going to have to have a c-section, out he popped covered in meconium (baby's first poo which is kinda tar-like!) His head measured 58cm circumference which explains the difficulty I had.
I was utterly spent at this point and while Karl was being cleaned up and checked over the midwife sponged me down and offered me some food. I had packed some hot cross buns and when she got them for me we found they had gone stale (I packed them too long ago) so she kindly made me some toast. Once I had recovered a little, they wheeled me into the ward and then stitched me back up (a long internal and external stitch). They decided I didn't need to be given blood (I lost over a pint during the birth) and I was then able to get some sleep.