My birth story

I haven't been particularly active on here for the last few months - in between refurbishing a flat, trying to sell said flat, packing up, moving countries, and sorting stuff out around our new house.

In any case, last Sunday, while I was faffing with stuff in the house as usual, our beautiful little baby decided she wasn't too bothered about waiting until we had everything unpacked, and that she'd join us anyway, to see if she could lend a helping hand.

Here's my birth story:

The birth of Anneli

We'd moved to our new home, in Onsala, just south of G????teborg (Gothenburg) in my native Sweden, at the end of December 2008. We were expecting a baby, of unknown gender, around the 13th of February.

Having recently moved, everything is upside down at the moment, and the shipment with all our belongings had just arrived from London on the 23rd of January, so we were in the middle of unpacking, thinking that we'd have plenty of time to get our stuff in order before becoming parents. Everyone knows that first born babies are always two weeks late, right?

Shortly after 9, on the evening of Sunday the 1st of February, I was in the basement, having just carried down an old hi fi system, to make room for the one that had just arrived from London. I heard the voice of my wife from upstairs, and although I couldn't hear what she was saying, I could tell from the tone of her voice that something was going on, and thought at first that maybe she'd banged her toe into something again, so I ran up to see what I could do to help.

???????Baby, my water just broke???????

What? Really? Are we going to be parents already? (well, I've no idea what I said, but those were some of the thoughts going through my head)

I felt excited, nervous, happy, scared, and ran up to her, giggling to myself. There wasn't really any doubt, but I still asked her if she was sure, then if the water looked clear, and if she felt anything else.

The water was all clear, so no cause for concern, and we decided she would have a quick shower, and then we'd call the hospital for guidance. We called the hospital around 21:20, and they said that if she wasn't having any contractions, then there's no hurry, but they did want us to come in the next morning for a check-up. Pretty much the second that we hung up, the contractions started, and they were regular from the first one. Not painful, but she could feel that something was going on. We started keeping track of the contractions (in a spreadsheet, obviously), and they were 4-6 minutes apart and lasted for about a minute and a half. A bit later, we called the hospital again, and they said that we could come in if we wanted to. If she wasn't actually in labour yet, then we could still spend the night there, to see how it would progress. We didn't hesitate to take them up on the offer, since the regular contractions and the speed at which things were happening suggested that it might not be long, and I really didn't want to take the risk of having to drive down to Varberg (over 50 km, or 30 miles) in the middle of the night, sleep deprived, especially if my wife was then in serious pain and with chance of the baby being delivered any second.

We started to leisurely prepare to go, thinking that we'd wait for the dishwasher to finish before leaving. After a while of running back and forward getting packed, contractions started getting stronger and more regular, so we decided to stop faffing, and just get going. As I was carrying stuff down to the car, I realised that the rear seats were still in the house, from when we were lugging around dishwashers and fridge/freezers, so we had a bit more delay while I was trying to get the seats back, in the dark, whilst feeling sorry for my poor wife who was waiting to get going.

Eventually, we got going, and after a careful drive (I don't think I've spent that long sticking to speed limits since my driving test), we arrived at the hospital a couple of minutes past midnight. During the last five or ten minutes of the drive, she was starting to get quite uncomfortable in the car seat during the contractions, as they were getting stronger and stronger. We parked in one of the three delivery suite parking bays, and navigated the labyrinths that take you from the A&E entrance and up to the delivery suite. After ringing the bell a few times, we were let in, greeted by the same midwife who took our phone call, and showed to one of the delivery rooms.

We were told that she would check the baby's position, then health, and then do an internal exam to see how the labour was progressing. The first task was to check that the baby was head down, and since she wasn't 100% sure, she did an ultrasound scan, and could see that the head was engaged, and that everything looked fine. We then had two devices strapped on to the belly, one to measure the contractions, and one to measure the baby's heart beat , both plugged in to the same monitoring station, showing graphs of the two together, so that they could see that the baby was handling the stress of the contractions. This apparently needed to be plugged in for half an hour to give a good picture of what was going on, which gave me an impression that there was more focus on playing with electronics than the task at hand - delivering a baby. Yeah, I might be an IT and technology geek, but I'm also a sceptic, and believe very strongly in keeping it simple (some would say I'm lazy, but they don't understand). I knew that the midwife was experienced and that we could trust her, but felt that the focus on the machines was stressing me a bit, so I tried to ignore the electronics. After all, it was my wife who was about to deliver a baby, and humans, as well as all other animals, have done this for squillions of years, without advanced machiner. Yes, it's good to have medical backup if it's needed, but we'd both rather avoid unnecessary interventions. Anyhow, after a bit of faffing, the midwife was happy enough with the pretty graphs, and went on to the internal exam. She informed us that my wife was indeed in active labour, and dilated 4 cm. I wasn't surprised, but very pleased. The midwife suggested that we try going into the shower, as the warm water tends to help relieve pain, and so we did. We stayed in the shower for a while, then came out, and got back onto the bed. It's all a bit of a blur, but both the nurse and the midwife stopped by a few more times, at some point I got a sandwich and a cup of coffee, we had some cakes that my wife had baked, and then the contractions started getting quite painful.

The average speed for a first time mother is to dilate approximately 1 centimetre per hour, and it's not uncommon for labour to last for 24 hours before being fully dilated and starting to push. I remember at some point thinking that if this was to go on for 24 hours, it really would be one hell of an ordeal, because it was so intense. I was also expecting the famous ???????transition???????, which is around 7-8 centimetres, which is when the woman tends to want to give up. ???????Screw this, I don't want a baby, I'm going home??????? or ???????I don't want a baby, we'll have puppy instead???????.

At around 3 am (not that I had the presence of mind to look at any of the clocks in the room until a few moments later), the midwife came back into the room and said she would do another internal exam to see how things were progressing. I remember mentioning that my wife had thrown up earlier, which typically happens at transition, and asking if she thought it was possible that she had progressed this far already. The midwife said that it's not uncommon to throw up from the pain, and that that was probably what had happened. I was totally in disbelief when the midwife proclaimed that my wife was fully dilated, 10 cm - when she said that ???????you can just follow your body now???????, it didn't even register that what she was saying was that she could start pushing. Ten centimetres? Already? But it's only been half an hour since it was four? It's been two hours? Really? What time is it? Yes, between 1am and 3am she'd gone from four cm to ten cm, so things were really moving along quite fast.

I can't remember what position my wife was in, but she got on all fours, which is a good position for pushing, since gravity can help. The midwife and I saw on the screen that the baby's heart beat went down slightly, and the midwife asked her to change positions, and the pulse went up again. She said that since it was the first time, pushing would normally take one to two hours. The nurse came into the room, and they started preparing all the stuff that they needed for the delivery, while I tried to do what I could to be there for my wife. The weekend before, we'd been to a Profylax (pain management / breathing exercise) course, and I was trying to support my wife by breathing with her, listening to the advice from the midwife, and making sure that she was breathing deep and slowly enough. In a way, I felt like I wasn't of much use, but at the same time, I could see that my wife was handling it all very well, and probably only needed to know that I was there by her side. After a while of pushing, the midwife said that she could see the head, and I looked down to see what was going on. I could see something small, pale yellowish white, that didn't look like I what I had expected from brand new life. Part of me worried, but at the same time, I knew that if anything was wrong, the midwife would have acted on it. More and more head started protruding, but I was still mostly looking at my wife's face, since I wanted to share the moment with her. When the head fully emerged, and she started pushing out the rest of the body, I decided that I'd wait until my wife could see the baby, before I looked, since I didn't want to cheat by looking first. The midwife then placed the baby on my wife's chest, and I lifter her feet up and we could see that we had a little red, shaking, slimy baby daughter. The feeling was unreal, and again, the time immediately after delivery is a bit of a blur. I was so relieved that it had all gone so smoothly, without undue pain or difficulties, and so proud of my wife, who coped so well and stuck with her wishes to not be induced, and to not use any pain relief other than nitrous oxide (AKA laughing gas, or gas & air).

Like many other people, my ???????understanding??????? of childbirth was largely based on movies and TV - the water breaking during a shopping trip or in a taxi, everyone panicking, the father, who was somewhere else when it all started, is either getting stuck in traffic, caught for speeding on the way to the hospital, having an accident, turning up at the wrong hospital, or all of the above. The woman generally tends to be screaming at everyone, in particular the husband. As pregnancy progressed though, I realised that all this doesn't have to be the case, that you generally get a fair bit of advance warning before the baby is suddenly born, and that it's not generally a great big panic. We've been discussing what we wanted the birth to be like, and as my wife is a generally very relaxed and calm person, who doesn't get herself worked up over things, it seemed likely that she'd probably stay calm during delivery, and not have a complete personality transplant. I was also fairly confident, and determined, that I myself, would also keep my cool, and be there for my wife, giving her someone to depend on. As the due date was getting closer, I was more and more confident that we'd have the type of birth that we wanted, and that everything would go well - I just couldn't really have imagined that it would go so quickly - as a father, I really don't believe it could have been any easier. I believe that my wife's attitude, and her preparations, went a long way to ensure that the birth was such a pleasant experience for all of us.

A few days later (I'm writing this on Friday the 6th of February), I'm still overwhelmed by feelings, and the fact that I am a father still hasn't sunk in. It's just completely unbelievable that we've got such a perfect, beautiful little baby girl, and that my wife delivered her, just that way that she (and both of us) wanted. I am so lucky, and feel so thankful to life that it has all gone so well, I've really got everything I could ever wish for. Well, there's a few cars, bikes, boats and other crap that would be neat to have, but compared to having a baby with my wonderful wife, I'm really not bothered about anything else.

I know perfectly well that we're far from the first couple in the world to ever have a baby, but nevertheless feel uniquely privileged. I don't think that anyone can understand how happy I am, and I just want to run out and tell the entire world. Every time I look at her, my heart just melts.