Finally...

The babe astounded us all yesterday by obligingly sleeping all through lunch and a brief excursion to the supermarket yesterday. Maybe she knew it was the first time I was leaving the house to go to a pub for lunch since getting home (that's my girl!). 

The previous two nights I've been having to feed her pretty much every other hour from about 1am to 8am and so have been pretty knocked out. But I think she's finally actually eating a bit more now and so - ahhh breaks of up to four hours when she's sleeping! Bliss!

What happened Thursday (26 Feb)

0830 Awaken to what I think is a contraction. Lie in bed another hour just to be sure. Feel another two. Typical. Now have to cancel coffee with friend to see her new baby. 

0930 Text Alex to let him know this might be it, text Jude to tell her better postpone coffee; send Izzy to nursery and take parents to the supermarket. 

1030 Reasonably certain is contractions now, tell parents they'd better not take too long choosing groceries; round off shopping at Chinese supermarket. Call hospital ward when get home to let them know.

1130 Decide Mom's advice of going to bed quite desirable after all. Sod walking around; figure don't particularly want to speed it up until I'm sure Alex is on hand to take me to hospital anyway. Eat half a bag of peanut M&Ms, two orange Kitkats and drink bottle of ginger beer in lieu of lunch. Know is not healthiest but have fear of pooping in delivery. Go to sleep. Alex texts to say he's on way home. Go to bed.

1230 or thereabouts Alex gets home; spend next few hours dipping in and out of sleep and contractions, which are about every 10-12 minutes and lasting 30-40 seconds; by about 1545 they are strong enough to wake me up if I'm dozing. Hospital earlier said to wait till they were 5-6 minutes apart and lasting 50-60 seconds.

1615 Alex goes to pick Izzy up from the nursery

1700 Returns home, saying they took so long because there were loads of parents at the nursery too and Izzy wanted to walk over to the football pitch to say hi to the women's team. Think grumpily: don't mind me, I'm only giving birth. Decide he might as well eat dinner before we go; refuse to eat anything at this point but agree that we should pack something into a tupperware to bring to hospital as I remember being absolutely ravenous after delivery.

1700-1815 Get increasingly annoyed as Alex eats dinner, contractions get more painful and frequent, and can hear him then deciding to feed Izzy dinner as well as pack mine. At 1800 get annoyed enough to actually do something about it, so sit up in bed, which increases pain and frequency of contractions, stagger to bathroom and then prepare death stare for when Alex finally comes upstairs to get me.

1820 Stagger downstairs, manage not to grimace too much when Izzy does bit of a dramatic turn 'Mummy I'll mi-iiiss you...' and hurls herself into my arms twice. But think tears from her were more in response to talk of putting on her pyjamas than my going to the hospital.

1850 Get to hospital. Then takes about 20 minutes to walk from car park to the ward as contractions now every other minute and lasting half a minute or longer. Lousy staff care woman in pink at the counter looks a bit dumbly at me when we finally pitch up at the originally empty reception desk. 

'Yes?' She says.

Am a bit dumbfounded. What does she think I'm here for? Clutching the desk for fun? Slightly more sympathetic lead midwife in blue also comes round.

'Are you in labour?'

'Yes.'

'How frequent are the contractions now?'

'Every other minute.'

'Ooh. And how long are they? Half a minute, one minute?' 

'Half a minute.' 

'Oh, well better than a minute,' she says brightly.

Am saying all this through gritted teeth. Staff care woman, hence known as Dumbo, looks unimpressed, continues to rifle through papers. 

'Well, we're very busy on the ward,' she says. 

Continue clutching counter as not quite sure what appropriate response to this is. The probably inappropriate one I'm thinking is 'So sort something out then, you moron!'

Think if there is a basic customer service course the NHS runs, she needs to go on it. There are no chairs to sit on even in the corridor but when the midwife sees me looking round she gets up and says she's just going to see if the scanning room is free. It is and she kindly leads us to it, where I gratefully sit down in one of the chairs.

Twenty minutes of pain later - during which my groaning alarms Alex enough to pop out three times to ask what is going on, only once prompted by me as well - the lead midwife finally comes in and says she is going to examine me. I'm so glad someone's shown up, I'm actually looking forward to this!  

Turns out I'm 6-7 cms dilated and the midwife says she's just going to see if there's a delivery suite available for us. She comes back a few minutes later and leads us - me very haltingly - to the delivery room.

This is where I meet Dumbo 2. 

Dumbo 2 is the trainee midwife who annoys the hell out of me over the course of the next hour or so. I honestly can't remember her name now, the only impression I have of her is of a biggish woman, who keeps manhandling the bump in her efforts to find the baby's heartbeat and who says incredibly annoyingly stupid things to me. 

First she keeps prodding my stomach with the listening device to locate the baby's heartbeat - something she has to do after each contraction, except she's not very good at waiting for each contraction to go and she isn't particularly gentle either so amid the next contraction she is frequently sticking the damn listening thing into various parts of the bump and not infrequently moving the bump around with her hands to try and locate the baby's heartbeat. 

Now I know she's a trainee and I'm all for allowing mistakes and learning and crap like that but for god's sake I don't need you prodding and pushing in the middle of a contraction!

At some point as well I remember her laughing and asking if I have a hairband or something as my hair falling all over my face would apparently drive her mad. At this point it was quite nice visualising hitting her over the head with something very large and heavy.

The proverbial straw though was when I'd finally had enough and asked for an epidural.

'Hmmm...' she opined. Then in schoolmarm tones:  'And do you know all the drawbacks of an epidural?'

Yes, I say, I know it'll slow things down but I'd rather like the pain to stop.

'Well giving birth is a painful process.' 

Yes, I say. Well I would like the pain to stop.

'It will stop when the baby comes out.'

At which point I also spent several more seconds pleasantly visualising hitting her over the head with something hard and heavy again. At this point though I give up trying to talk to her and turn instead to dramatically wailing in pain - though more in response to her stupid remarks than what looks like a denial of a freaking epidural to me.

My amateur dramatics are enough to at least send her out of the room muttering she's not saying no, just that there might be a delay because the anaesthetist might be busy.

I know from the tone of her voice it ain't going to happen. I really have no idea how long it was between our coming in and my asking for the epidural but I did guess I might have been far gone enough for them to really not want to give me one given the extra hours and staffing that would involve. 

Sure enough she comes back saying there will be a delay because the anaesthetist is busy. However she then shortly announces a new midwife will be coming because the shifts are changing. This cheers me up so much I decide I can ignore the epidural thing for a while. Not very hard as by this time I am too tired to even groan over the contractions, it's all I can do to try to breathe my way through each one. 

The next trainee comes with a lead midwife. It's really funny - they're both saying the same things to me, like 'You're doing really well!' But for some reason the lead midwife sounds like she means it so much more. Don't ask me why. Also for some reason her manner immediately reminds me of a friend of ours, Nia, and so I take to her quite quickly.

This second trainee could be gentler as well but she does not have the same know-it-all manner as Dumbo 2. Also she does not manhandle the bump in the middle of contractions and by no means says anything as stupid as Dumbo 2. So I like her. 

Even if I find it quite funny when, after a couple of attempts at pushing, my contractions start getting shorter, and at one point she asks: 'Are you afraid of pain, Lee?'

Mutter I am not particularly fond of it, if that's what she means. But see, with Dumbo, this would have pissed me off totally. With Bridget, I almost smiled. 

Anyway the remaining pain is a blur. All I remember thinking when the baby finally started moving is: 'Oh yes, I'd forgotten IT HURT THIS MUCH.'

Turns out baby was back-to-back and Sharon, the lead midwife channelling Nia, consolingly said 'Ahh no wonder it was so much harder for you to push.'

Anyway could tell things were a bit ugly at the last because though I was conscious of trying to do the panting bit my lower body wasn't listening anyway but the RELIEF when baby finally came out. Ah. And started crying. And they put her on me, and we realised she had all ten fingers and toes etc and was normal. 

She came out at 1124 and weighed 3.28 kg. Apgar of 9 at birth and 10 after 15 minutes so all well. 

Had some stitches. After that Sharon asked if we'd like to go home. The ward was almost full, she said, and so they were asking second-time moms if they would like to go. So, about three hours later, following a quick clean-up, the baby being checked over by another midwife (who turned out to be from Malaysia), we signed ourselves out and toddled to the car park and exhaustedly home.

We were back by 0245. Gave mom and dad a brief description of what took place while scoffing even more snacks. I got through half a bag of almonds and raisins, a third of a box of cheese biscuits and several blocks of chocolate as well as a helping of fried meehoon between delivery and bed. 

The nice thing about coming home so quick was that Izzy woke up in the middle of the night, having heard our voices and excitedly bounced over to see her baby sister.

I spent the whole of that first night rather uncomfortably soothing either Izzy or the baby asleep amid the strange new sounds each made to the other, but it was nice that we were all together.