The birth

It’s been a whole week already since my life changed forever and our little girl Tabitha Peach came into the world. It’s all been a bit of a blur ever since to be honest but it started last Saturday afternoon when I had a pessary inserted to kick start labour. Nothing much happened that day really – we watched a couple of films on the hospital’s pay TV and popped over to Carluccio’s for a ‘last supper’. Later in the evening the hospital monitor registered some regular, fairly strong contractions, but I couldn’t feel anything. I remember thinking I must be one of the lucky ones who can tolerate them – how wrong was I! After a noisy, sleepless night on the pre-labour ward, my contractions started properly in the early hours. They got progressively stronger throughout the morning and by the time it got to around midday, I was demanding gas and air. At this point I tried my TENS machine, but didn’t get on with it at all. The midwife waited until a full 24 hours was up before removing the pessary (at around 1.30pm) and said that we’d wait to see if my waters broke naturally. However, after throwing up everything that was inside me as a result of the gas and air, I was taken through to the labour ward, had my waters broken and got a shot of pethidine. I then went from 3cm dilated to fully dilated very quickly and started pushing. The pethidine had worn off by then, so I was surviving on gas and air alone, which I found rather unbearably painful and exhausting. After over an hour of pushing, the midwife called the doctors in to assess the baby’s position and they realised the baby was back-to-back and in distress. They made the decision to take me through to theatre and give me a spinal so they could get the baby out quickly using forceps. I was so close to having an emergency C-section, but thankfully it wasn’t needed. Tabitha was dragged (literally) into the world at 19:46 on Sunday 14th April weighing a healthy 7 lb 14 oz. I had to have an episiotomy and get stitched up, but at that point I was just happy to be pain free, and for it all to be over. We spent the next couple of hours in the post-theatre ward where I breast fed Tabitha for the first time, and by 3pm the following day, we were discharged and on the way home to start family life as a three. She was so placid that first day and I truly thought we’d been blessed with a calm baby, however on hindsight I think the reality is that little Tabitha had a bit of a pethidine-induced lull and has now most definitely found her voice. Since then it’s been a whirlwind of sleep deprivation, feeding, nappy changes, visits from family, visits from the midwife, and just generally getting to grips with having a tiny new person to care for. On Friday when the midwife came to visit, she checked the stitches from my episiotomy and realised that the wound was gaping and had become infected. So off to the hospital we all went, and after waiting around for hours, I was prescribed a course of antibiotics. It’s hard to move around quickly and is painful when I sit down and stand up, but with a newborn to care for, you just have to get on with it. And to think I was hoping to feel a bit more body-normal after finally giving birth! To say this week’s been easy would be a lie, but we’re slowly getting more used to it and have been rewarded with such a perfect package that it makes the bad moments more bearable. And when she is having a placid moment her cuteness just breaks my heart!