Oscar's arrival

Any man who retains chauvinistic ideas about "weak women" should be present at a natural birth.

Following the birth of my son at hospital on 16th December, I am in complete admiration of my amazing wife – and of any woman who goes through labour. My hat is well and truly off.

It didn't go exactly to plan – which makes my admiration for Claire even deeper.

We had planned a home birth. Unfortunately, as Claire entered what is quaintly called "established labour" (why are there so many quaint words surrounding childbirth?) her blood pressure became elevated and she was transferred to hospital. After a day of contractions at home – whiled away with games of Scrabble and episodes of Black Books on DVD – Claire had to go to the one place she hates more than any other (including the Doctors').

It didn't start well. Because her blood pressure was elevated, the staff wanted to monitor her and the baby for a period, to satisfy them that all was well. The "carrot" encouraging Claire to put up with being wired up to various monitors was the promise of a nice warm bath; but the monitoring equipment kept giving false readings and what was originally scheduled to be 20 minutes of monitoring quickly turned into well over an hour of the kind of thing that populates Claire's nightmares.

Finally –after what seemed like an age of late-night-early-hours time with my wife getting through increasingly frequent and painful contractions, still hooked up to a set of beeping and sighing machines–we were allowed to break free of the shackles!

Things started moving much more quickly as soon as we got away from the machines and into a nice warm bathroom, and after an hour or so of water relief Claire had got near the end of the first stage of labour; five or so hours had passed since we'd left home. The real relief came when the (very nice) midwife offered Claire, now back in the monitoring room, gas and air. True bliss!

Until that point she'd been labouring with only TENS for assistance. And one thing they don't tell you about TENS is that two of the four conducting pads have to be placed at the base of the spine – exactly on some pain-relieving pressure points which are great for massage. But massaging through TENS pads is pretty tricky (they tend to peel off) and what's more it's more than a little dangerous, apparently...anyhow, the gas-and-air mixture was really taking the edge off the pain for Claire. Soon after the waters broke, and we were off to a delivery room for the second stage.

I can't believe just how much effort has to be exerted to push a baby out. Claire was pushing, in a variety of positions, for nearly two hours and it was like watching somebody running a marathon – after they'd already had to climb a mountain to get to the starting line. She did so well.

Unfortunately at the last minute, little Oscar's shoulder got stuck and we needed some emergency assistance. The baby's head had already been born, and the midwives (for now there were two, ready for the delivery) were conferring calmly about Claire's difficulty in pushing the rest of the way. Then, suddenly and without warning, the lead midwife pushed the "emergency" button. The room filled with people in a matter of seconds, and I was gently but firmly guided away from Claire and the bed, to a chair out of harm's way. I couldn't really see what was going on, but I could see a whole group of people pushing and pulling in various directions! After what could have only been 10 or 20 seconds, little Oscar was finally out. Thank goodness.

The staff were fantastic. They knew we were booked for a home birth, and they were very sympathetic in their attempts to give us a birth as close to our ideal as possible. They left the three of us alone together for a good 40 minutes too coo over each other, then provided tea and toast; and after Claire had been patched up and showered, talked through our birth plan with us, explaining why they'd done what they'd done, and asking us if we had any concerns about particular things. A really nice touch.

Finally, at around 7.30am, I left Claire to rest with Oscar in the hospital's post-labour ward and headed home to get some shut-eye. It had been an incredible – frustrating, upsetting, scary, tiring, but ultimately joyful – night.

Welcome, Oscar!

A Friday night in...

... has never been so sweet!

Why?

Because it was my first evening with my new son Oscar, who arrived 8 days early – at 4am on Friday 16th December.

Here's a picture. At birth he was average weight (7lb 5oz) and average height (50.5cm). But oh - ain't he cute?

More (hopefully more thought-out) thoughts to follow as my brain recovers!

Breech update

Whoops - I forgot.

The little chap turned round and settled in a nice head-down position about three weeks ago. No moxibustion required! Just a bit of shuffling around on all fours (and some encouraging talk from me, given directly to my wife's bump. I'm sure that's what did it ;-)

We've also taken delivery of a birthing pool, which has been humming away quietly in the corner of our kitchen for about two weeks now (it has a built-in heater and filter which maintains the pool water without lots of manual filling and emptying). I've had a couple of dips in it myself as a kind of after-dinner treat - and it's great! (Don't worry, I won't post pictures.)

Tenterhooks

It seems that no matter how good my intention, I can't blog here more than once a month or so. That's a terrible work rate! I suppose this puts paid to any illusions I might have had that one day I'd write a novel... it would probably take me 10 years at least.

Anyway, "on tenterhooks" is the best way to describe how I'm feeling right now. Claire says I've got all her "nesting instinct" - but what's really going on, is that I'm desperately looking for things to keep myself occupied while the countdown to zero-hour (just 10 days til due date) continues. Jobs which I've happily left undone for months (filling in cracks, touching up paintwork, hanging blinds, cleaning the oven, etc etc) are now being tackled with zeal. It's very strange - previously my idea of an ideal weekend morning was lying on the sofa with a mug of coffee and the newspaper: now I've got typically my head and/or hands stuck inside or underneath something that needs attention.

[Apparently a "tenterhook" is a hook used to hold cloth on a "tenter". And a "tenter" is a frame used for stretching and drying cloth. So now you know...]