Part 1. Labour. Oh Golly.

So, I begin my next blog post as a left-hander. I'm attempting to master the art of feeding our baby at the same time as getting something else done, whilst chatting nonsense to her.

On that note, we are extremely happy to announce our gorgeous little girl was born on the 18th August- two weeks tomorrow!- so it seemed time for these blog posts (part 1&2) to celebrate and share some thoughts on the first fortnight! It is totally cliché but totally true to say that our baby is literally incredible. We are completely besotted already!

Many of you have been expecting me to 'delight' you with our 'birth story' but those of you that know what happened will know I'd need to produce some form of pamphlet or short story about it...and it wasn't a delightful tale. What I will tell you all is that I began strong contractions on Saturday 15th. Those of you with maths skills will figure out that the little lady, after a lot of intervention and complications, didn't show up until Tuesday evening! It was undoubtedly the most difficult, sleep-deprived, hungry and stressful days of our lives. Pretty awful, until we met the most precious, perfect person to trump it all and turn it into the stuff of miracles.

Also on the plus side, she was about 4 hours early for her due date in the end, so we have a good time-keeper on our hands (more like her Mother on that one?!)

However, there are some things I can share with you 'from the other side,' which follows the theme of things I have learned about labour and delivery more generally, despite the fact my own (and others') experiences are quite 'individual' in lots of ways.

I can confirm, following my previous post about pregnancy, that waters breaking is not like it is in the movies! Hours into the labour process, sat in PJ s in agony on a hospital bed, I basically exploded half my body weight in warm water all over the place. And unlike TV, baby still didn't arrive for another 24 hours. What I didn't realise was that it would actually feel like a balloon bursting and it sure sounded similar to me too!

I'd seen on One Born Every Minute the amount of noise women make during late contractions. I'd always thought maybe a certain type of woman is a 'screamer' and that I'd probably be quite quiet. How naïve! I can report that the experience was beyond any pain ever imaginable and that I completely lost all control and screeched half the ward down.

One of the midwives warned me that if I carried on like that I'd end up with a sore throat- are you kidding me?!?!

On a more sentimental note, I am grateful for the NHS, but particularly for St. Mary's, as the Isle of Wight is a large community for one hospital. I know we all have our moans and complaints, but having spent nearly a week in total in the Hospital, I witnessed some stretched human beings who wanted the best for me and my baby; some who voluntarily worked over time to get 'the job' done; and midwives who were having to juggle about twenty different things at once. As a teacher and just as a fellow human being, I can sympathise. Not only that, I think I was quite an 'expensive labourer' and could see my stay as a bit of a tax return, dare I cheekily add...!

But no one could have prepared me for it. Birth plans- don't even bother for the first baby would be my advice. I didn't specifically make one with my midwife. I told her I'd be open to what needed to be done to get my baby out as healthily and naturally as possible. I would troop through as much as I could to avoid intervention. Paaaah- that seems so funny now!

I toyed with the idea of a water birth- it looked nice (remember pregnant ladies aren't supposed to go in a jacuzzi- so a water birth looked like an appealing option after 9 Spa-less months!) It became pretty obvious quickly that a bath with some gas and air was as close to comfort that I was going to experience in the early stages. A water birth was not to be.

Talking of early stages, here's another bit of new info.- there's such a thing called pre-labour which I got 'stuck' in, hence the long old process. Medically, they call it pre-labour, but let me tell you: it is flipping hard work, so if they don't count it as 'labour-enduring' then I'm offended.

'Actual' labour is counted from over 4cm dilated, which is fine when the first couple of cms just took some deep breathing techniques, but for me the feeling was strong enough after the first couple of cms that it wasn't possible to sleep so I just uncomfortably squirmed around in front on the TV for the night, clocking the timings on a post-it note. They say when your contractions become 5 minutes apart, it's the time to depart!

Sunday evening, that's what we did. It hurt, but it was all mixed in with excitement: I was thinking it seemed manageable so far, and we thought we'd have a baby by the morning. Problem was, Monday morning came and body decided to stay put at 4cm, whilst baby decided to try some back-to-back tactics, which for me resulted in it all getting complicated from there onwards really.

What I didn't realise was that if your body 'stalls' like mine did, going home is your best option. This is the bit that is supposedly quite a 'common' thing- so some of you ladies- be wary of this bit- this stalling bit is the point I want to make clear to others. We decided to try and get some sleep at my Mum's as it was the closest bed- originally we had thought Monday morning we'd be leaving with our baby; instead I was leaving with paracetamol, huge bags under my eyes, random contractions, and dosed with confusion.

We ended up yo-yoing back and forth from hospital on Monday until I was again admitted- whale noises galore- early that evening.

At one point we also left with a TENs machine to try- that was a funny experience. I'm not sure I found it helpful in terms of pain, but it was welcome entertainment turning it up to 'electrocute' myself when required. I think the best bit was making my Husband have a go and watching him giggle away at this real life Tickle Machine.

All of this happened before it really kicked in and got complicated. Several people have described labour like a marathon to me since it happened. I do think they are right in many ways. But I do also want to declare a new-found respect for women. Whether they have had children or not, I think most women have some strange endurance mechanism that kicks into place when you really need it- and childbirth, I have discovered, pushes a woman's endurance to the maximum.

This has all got a bit serious now, hasn't it?

Ultimately, I can't make this blog post part 1 'entertaining' for you because my labour was very unfunny and I'd never choose it as a form of 'entertainment.'

Hopefully though, those of you who are reading this intrigued by 'what it will be like,' can perhaps be slightly more informed than I was (I tried my best to research, but there were still things I learnt 'on the job!')

And those of you reading this who have been through it will probably empathise with the things I have achieved in the duration of writing this...

Baby has been:

-fed four times (I didn't know 'cluster feeding' was a thing until recently- sounds like farm terminology again!)

-nappy changed twice (one of which replicated some form of detonation, hence the next bullet point...)

-had a full outfit change

I have:

• intermittently eaten scrambled egg on toast (cold food is becoming the accepted norm)

• downed juice as if I'm stranded in the Sahara

• and passed her to Daddy for snuggles.

Therefore, three hours later, this blog post part 1 is complete! Part 2 coming up! Give me a week or two until the next ones...I'm hoping to get out the house and assess the Island's baby changing facilities...oh golly, the thrills!!