Momma`Kat
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Ok, Im cheating a little bit, My mum wrote this.. Thankfully leaving out the 5 day hospital stay afterward.. thats for another post lol
Early stages
When labour started, it was a festive atmosphere. We bundled our books, Kindles, i-pods and a lap-top in the car and set up camp in the waiting room. By tomorrow, there will be a beautiful wee girlie, we thought.
Monday: sent home at 3am. Main reason for lateness was baby so very fidgety, the monitor could not get accurate reading. Midwife confirmed early stages of labour had begun.
Tuesday – Nothing happened. This was very considerate of baby as it was my book club’s Christmas night out. Still went to bed drunk at midnight.
Wednesday: Midwife confirms baby is at 3 diameters. 5pm Lizi calls me. She is in early labour. Still in a happy mood, we go for a meal first. Unbelievably we enjoy a three-course Christmas dinner with crackers and half a bottle of wine. We then spend the next several hours at the hospital before being discharged. I got through half a novel. Ian went home and came back again. Home about 2am. Lizi went to her flat.
Thursday: Ian and I wake in panic as we cannot raise Lizi on the phone. I have visions of unsuccessful birth in flat – baby still-born and Lizi suicidal. I visit the flat. Lizi answers the door in her pyjamas; she has just been asleep following a night in labour. I have now woken her up - so I am highly popular! Ian brings her a birthing ball which is a vast beach-ball. Lizi squats on it. We revisit the hospital on the instructions of the family nurse. This time the midwife believes the child is coming. “One or two more contractions and we’ll be off,” she said breezily. So we went to the hospital canteen and had a frightful meal – canteen curry and fish and chips. Bought a bumper tube of sweets, turned on the ipods, computers and started to sit the night out. Poor Lizi! She has had solid contractions for days and suddenly they stop. At midnight we give up and go home. This time I stay over at her place.
A long day
It is Friday 10am at Lizi’s flat. We returned home at 1am. I got some sleep on a mattress hastily erected in the nursery but Lizi was kept awake all night with contractions. It is still bitterly cold outside. The social worker arrives wrapped up as warmly as Paddington Bear and looks grumpily round the flat. She has brought a motherly-looking colleague – another Lizzy. We have a rather stilted conversation about the evaluation process. Rocking on her birthing ball, Lizi throws a baleful eye at the social worker between contractions. I over-compensate for my daughter’s animosity with jokes, giggles and enthusiastic whoops of joy at everything the officials’ suggest. The frosty atmosphere is how I envisage the first meeting of the coalition cabinet after Vince Cable spilt the beans that the Lib-Con pact is fracturing. I was Nick Clegg. Luckily Pamela, the family nurse and her supervisor decided on an unannounced visit and the atmosphere changed again. Pamela was excited and admired everything – from the birthing ball, Lizi’s breathing methods, the fact I was with her. Then Pamela looked at her and recommended yet another visit to hospital. So everyone put on their coats and left with numerous farewells to call them if there was any news. Lizi and I couldn’t wait to see them go. It felt like the end of a rather unsuccessful cocktail party.
We decided to have some breakfast before we left - a cup of coffee and some fruit salad. To add to the surreal atmosphere, someone from the Rotary Club rang Lizi up. It was time to drop off the Christmas hamper for vulnerable people and Lizi was one of the lucky beneficiaries. Up he came in his flat cap with his carrier-bag of goodies - Christmas pudding, mince pies, jam and chocolate. I showed him into the living room where Lizi was wheezing her way through a major contraction. It was a touching sight and brought a tear to his eye!
The journey to the hospital was traumatic – snow drifts, road-works and Lizi in full blown contractions. It was worse when we got to the hospital. It was 11am and heaving with patients waiting. Ten people were standing because of a lack of chairs. The whole experience was beginning to pall. Lizi was in serious pain. People were looking at her with sympathy and alarm. After an hour, they – as well as me – started to complain. “There are no rooms available,” said the receptionist behind a desk decorated with tinsel and a sparkling banner wishing us all a Merry Christmas. Eventually Lizi is moved to ‘somewhere more private”. This turned out to be two chairs in a corridor. Lizi is breathing heavily to manage the pain. There is a table between the two chairs with a large traditional nativity set. Hmmm! Yes! The irony crossed my mind too! Luckily for the NHS I can’t take photos to save my life; I have left the camera in the overnight bag which is at my husband’s Christmas party, and, also think having my daughter in labour splashed over the Edinburgh Evening News is an invasion of her privacy.
After a tuna sandwich and a couple of hours, I am beginning to dislike the midwives relaxed jolliness. I come from a generation where nurses wore a starched uniform and were as formal and disciplined as policemen. Nowadays, they all wear loose trousers, t-shirts and crocs – all in baby blue . They could be at the beach as they gossip, share chocolates and tales of their Christmas parties. If one more comes out, smiles at Lizi, who is doubled-up and speechless with pain, and says cheerfully, “Are we sore?” I am likely to kill. I am no medic but even I know this is not the gold standard of health care.
Luckily for everyone, Lizi is ushered into an assessment room an for the next 19 hours the drama unfolds to the soundtrack of galloping horses - the percussion of baby’s heart-beat that is being monitored 24 hours/7. The assessment comprises of a midwife agreeing Lizi needs a labour room, followed by a deep sigh that none are available and returning to her pals and the tin of Quality Street. By a coincidence we keep being shown the same assessment room. We have both memorised the ten waste segregation methods from a poster – and know all we need to know about the disposal of used needles, soiled pads and placenta. We move onto another poster about hand washing techniques and I amuse myself by putting their advice into practice.
Lizi is doing well between contractions and still managing feeble jokes. However, she is devastated that a pool birth is out of the question because of meconium. I can listen to my ipod and read my book. But the frequency and force of the contractions are intensifying and I can’t leave her. Worringly hubbie has the overnight bag with all the food supplies we packed and he is at his office Christmas party. The process has been so long, my phone has run out of battery and we cannot reach him. This is swiftly followed by the ipod. There is nothing to shut out her pain. With no clocks in the room, no windows and no electronic devices, we are in a timeless zone. Upon request Lizi is given gas and air as pain relief. Lizi is on a high and giggly.
“I say, I sound most frightfully English. James put away the Benedict eggs,” she barks in a horsey upper-class accent. Then she begins to sing the Harry Potter Puppet song which consists of chanting the names of all the characters and then shooting them, “Harry Potter, Dumbledore. Snape, Snape.”
While she is feeling cheerful, I rush out and buy some food and we tuck into an Enid Blyton-style midnight feast: orange-flavoured vitamin water, a packet of cheese biscuits with cheese-flavoured polyfilla inside, a huge packet of mini-digestives and – in a nod to a healthy diet – a small packet of grapes. It tasted delicious and cost a small fortune. We could have eaten in a fashionable wine bar for the price. A nurse came through smiling and told us there was now a labour room free. It was as if St Peter had authorised entry into the pearly gates of heaven.
After eight hours of waiting in reception, corridor and triage assessment room, the labour room is heaven. There is a proper hospital bed, a lockable locker, a proper chair to sit on and even a private bathroom. It is still a hospital with municipal green lino; flashing lights, tubes and beeps from monitors, but, it feels like a significant promotion.
We are introduced to a mid-wife who will be monitoring the birth 24 hour 7. She takes Lizi’s pulse, confirms medical details and then goes off shift. The new mid-wife then does the same – all over again.
Ian arrives fresh from his Christmas party with the beloved overnight bag – and – miracle of miracles – a fully charged phone. He takes a seat and the night watch begins. It is like being on a long flight – only with no in-flight entertainment, meals or alcohol. All we can do is read,, sleep and wait for it to end.
Stress levels are rising. We can hear the screams from nearby labour wards.
The baby’s heartbeat bangs like a hammer on a metal combat helmet on my head, “Tud. Tud. Tud. Tud.”, incessant and penetrating as a car alarm. And it hurts.
Lizi breathes in and out hard – making snorkel sounds. It rises to a tortuous cry and trails out into a whimper. Then peace, calm, deep breathes and a weak smile from Lizi.
“Rubbish!” she jokes faintly. “I need harder contractions.”
Lizi breathes into the gas and air mask as if she is a highly talented musician on a wind instrument. Sometimes she makes the call of the fog horn of a lone ship at sea; at others she chants the heart-breaking wail of a distressed animal – which of course she is, at others she plays a haunting mournful melodies you might hear in the early morning at a jazz club or at matins in a medieval monastery.
As the night draws on, my baby is becoming more and more exhausted. She is half-woman and half child. Her face is puckered, red and fierce as an ancient female warrior. She is determined to have the child naturally. The black tattoos of teenage rebellion enhance this fighting spirit. Her toes, on the other hand, curling in pain and her young skin fresh and white indicate her extreme youth.
I start to smell when stressed. And I am in the same clothes since Thursday morning. So I take a shower in the en-suite bathroom.
At one in the morning, the dilation is pathetic and the mid-wife tries another approach. She recommends injecting hormones to boost contractions and an epidural to reduce pain. She wants Lizi to get some sleep. Lizi is wired up with intravenous tubes to feed hormones, liquid and pain-killers. She looks as if she is in the final stages of a coma when a doctor comes to turn the machine off.
The anaesthetist has to inject the epidural into the spine with no movement from the patent. This is not easy in full labour. Lizi then required two as the first did not work properly.
As the new estimate was four hours from now (approximately 6am) we all decided Ian should go home and rest to be with Jordan. The pain-killers started to work and we then all got some sleep – even Lizi.
A medical student comes to watch the process. He takes a book and starts to read.
The crisis
6am
Lizi jerks awake in screaming agony. The injected hormones have put her into a state of continuous contractions. The epidural has been topped up several times – to no avail. She is becoming hysterical with pain and confusion. The mid-wife’s encouraging words: “Relax”, “deep breath in” and ‘”you’re doing well” mask an escalating anxiety. There are three doctors surrounding the bed. They bark instructions to each other. The medical student has left to be sick. Machines squeak and beep; warning lights flash. The noise is intense.
“We can’t hear baby’s heart beat. Just can’t get pick up.”
“The mother has vomited. Get the anaesthetist!”
“Turn down the hormones.”
Eventually the pain-killers work again and we all grab a small nap. Just before he goes off duty, the doctor examines Lizi. “The dilation is still only 8 cms. We either give you even more hormones and you have four more hours in labour and a natural birth or it’s a c-section. Not my call. It’ll be the day doctor.”
“More hormones, please,” Lizi says bravely.
Thankfully the consultant comes in and briskly tells Lizi 24-hours labour is enough. Time for a c-section.
Unto us a child is born
December 18 @ 10.09
Alanna May Benfield is born weighing 9lbs 2oz.
[[ For those wondering about the harry potter song.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4 ]]
Early stages
When labour started, it was a festive atmosphere. We bundled our books, Kindles, i-pods and a lap-top in the car and set up camp in the waiting room. By tomorrow, there will be a beautiful wee girlie, we thought.
Monday: sent home at 3am. Main reason for lateness was baby so very fidgety, the monitor could not get accurate reading. Midwife confirmed early stages of labour had begun.
Tuesday – Nothing happened. This was very considerate of baby as it was my book club’s Christmas night out. Still went to bed drunk at midnight.
Wednesday: Midwife confirms baby is at 3 diameters. 5pm Lizi calls me. She is in early labour. Still in a happy mood, we go for a meal first. Unbelievably we enjoy a three-course Christmas dinner with crackers and half a bottle of wine. We then spend the next several hours at the hospital before being discharged. I got through half a novel. Ian went home and came back again. Home about 2am. Lizi went to her flat.
Thursday: Ian and I wake in panic as we cannot raise Lizi on the phone. I have visions of unsuccessful birth in flat – baby still-born and Lizi suicidal. I visit the flat. Lizi answers the door in her pyjamas; she has just been asleep following a night in labour. I have now woken her up - so I am highly popular! Ian brings her a birthing ball which is a vast beach-ball. Lizi squats on it. We revisit the hospital on the instructions of the family nurse. This time the midwife believes the child is coming. “One or two more contractions and we’ll be off,” she said breezily. So we went to the hospital canteen and had a frightful meal – canteen curry and fish and chips. Bought a bumper tube of sweets, turned on the ipods, computers and started to sit the night out. Poor Lizi! She has had solid contractions for days and suddenly they stop. At midnight we give up and go home. This time I stay over at her place.
A long day
It is Friday 10am at Lizi’s flat. We returned home at 1am. I got some sleep on a mattress hastily erected in the nursery but Lizi was kept awake all night with contractions. It is still bitterly cold outside. The social worker arrives wrapped up as warmly as Paddington Bear and looks grumpily round the flat. She has brought a motherly-looking colleague – another Lizzy. We have a rather stilted conversation about the evaluation process. Rocking on her birthing ball, Lizi throws a baleful eye at the social worker between contractions. I over-compensate for my daughter’s animosity with jokes, giggles and enthusiastic whoops of joy at everything the officials’ suggest. The frosty atmosphere is how I envisage the first meeting of the coalition cabinet after Vince Cable spilt the beans that the Lib-Con pact is fracturing. I was Nick Clegg. Luckily Pamela, the family nurse and her supervisor decided on an unannounced visit and the atmosphere changed again. Pamela was excited and admired everything – from the birthing ball, Lizi’s breathing methods, the fact I was with her. Then Pamela looked at her and recommended yet another visit to hospital. So everyone put on their coats and left with numerous farewells to call them if there was any news. Lizi and I couldn’t wait to see them go. It felt like the end of a rather unsuccessful cocktail party.
We decided to have some breakfast before we left - a cup of coffee and some fruit salad. To add to the surreal atmosphere, someone from the Rotary Club rang Lizi up. It was time to drop off the Christmas hamper for vulnerable people and Lizi was one of the lucky beneficiaries. Up he came in his flat cap with his carrier-bag of goodies - Christmas pudding, mince pies, jam and chocolate. I showed him into the living room where Lizi was wheezing her way through a major contraction. It was a touching sight and brought a tear to his eye!
The journey to the hospital was traumatic – snow drifts, road-works and Lizi in full blown contractions. It was worse when we got to the hospital. It was 11am and heaving with patients waiting. Ten people were standing because of a lack of chairs. The whole experience was beginning to pall. Lizi was in serious pain. People were looking at her with sympathy and alarm. After an hour, they – as well as me – started to complain. “There are no rooms available,” said the receptionist behind a desk decorated with tinsel and a sparkling banner wishing us all a Merry Christmas. Eventually Lizi is moved to ‘somewhere more private”. This turned out to be two chairs in a corridor. Lizi is breathing heavily to manage the pain. There is a table between the two chairs with a large traditional nativity set. Hmmm! Yes! The irony crossed my mind too! Luckily for the NHS I can’t take photos to save my life; I have left the camera in the overnight bag which is at my husband’s Christmas party, and, also think having my daughter in labour splashed over the Edinburgh Evening News is an invasion of her privacy.
After a tuna sandwich and a couple of hours, I am beginning to dislike the midwives relaxed jolliness. I come from a generation where nurses wore a starched uniform and were as formal and disciplined as policemen. Nowadays, they all wear loose trousers, t-shirts and crocs – all in baby blue . They could be at the beach as they gossip, share chocolates and tales of their Christmas parties. If one more comes out, smiles at Lizi, who is doubled-up and speechless with pain, and says cheerfully, “Are we sore?” I am likely to kill. I am no medic but even I know this is not the gold standard of health care.
Luckily for everyone, Lizi is ushered into an assessment room an for the next 19 hours the drama unfolds to the soundtrack of galloping horses - the percussion of baby’s heart-beat that is being monitored 24 hours/7. The assessment comprises of a midwife agreeing Lizi needs a labour room, followed by a deep sigh that none are available and returning to her pals and the tin of Quality Street. By a coincidence we keep being shown the same assessment room. We have both memorised the ten waste segregation methods from a poster – and know all we need to know about the disposal of used needles, soiled pads and placenta. We move onto another poster about hand washing techniques and I amuse myself by putting their advice into practice.
Lizi is doing well between contractions and still managing feeble jokes. However, she is devastated that a pool birth is out of the question because of meconium. I can listen to my ipod and read my book. But the frequency and force of the contractions are intensifying and I can’t leave her. Worringly hubbie has the overnight bag with all the food supplies we packed and he is at his office Christmas party. The process has been so long, my phone has run out of battery and we cannot reach him. This is swiftly followed by the ipod. There is nothing to shut out her pain. With no clocks in the room, no windows and no electronic devices, we are in a timeless zone. Upon request Lizi is given gas and air as pain relief. Lizi is on a high and giggly.
“I say, I sound most frightfully English. James put away the Benedict eggs,” she barks in a horsey upper-class accent. Then she begins to sing the Harry Potter Puppet song which consists of chanting the names of all the characters and then shooting them, “Harry Potter, Dumbledore. Snape, Snape.”
While she is feeling cheerful, I rush out and buy some food and we tuck into an Enid Blyton-style midnight feast: orange-flavoured vitamin water, a packet of cheese biscuits with cheese-flavoured polyfilla inside, a huge packet of mini-digestives and – in a nod to a healthy diet – a small packet of grapes. It tasted delicious and cost a small fortune. We could have eaten in a fashionable wine bar for the price. A nurse came through smiling and told us there was now a labour room free. It was as if St Peter had authorised entry into the pearly gates of heaven.
After eight hours of waiting in reception, corridor and triage assessment room, the labour room is heaven. There is a proper hospital bed, a lockable locker, a proper chair to sit on and even a private bathroom. It is still a hospital with municipal green lino; flashing lights, tubes and beeps from monitors, but, it feels like a significant promotion.
We are introduced to a mid-wife who will be monitoring the birth 24 hour 7. She takes Lizi’s pulse, confirms medical details and then goes off shift. The new mid-wife then does the same – all over again.
Ian arrives fresh from his Christmas party with the beloved overnight bag – and – miracle of miracles – a fully charged phone. He takes a seat and the night watch begins. It is like being on a long flight – only with no in-flight entertainment, meals or alcohol. All we can do is read,, sleep and wait for it to end.
Stress levels are rising. We can hear the screams from nearby labour wards.
The baby’s heartbeat bangs like a hammer on a metal combat helmet on my head, “Tud. Tud. Tud. Tud.”, incessant and penetrating as a car alarm. And it hurts.
Lizi breathes in and out hard – making snorkel sounds. It rises to a tortuous cry and trails out into a whimper. Then peace, calm, deep breathes and a weak smile from Lizi.
“Rubbish!” she jokes faintly. “I need harder contractions.”
Lizi breathes into the gas and air mask as if she is a highly talented musician on a wind instrument. Sometimes she makes the call of the fog horn of a lone ship at sea; at others she chants the heart-breaking wail of a distressed animal – which of course she is, at others she plays a haunting mournful melodies you might hear in the early morning at a jazz club or at matins in a medieval monastery.
As the night draws on, my baby is becoming more and more exhausted. She is half-woman and half child. Her face is puckered, red and fierce as an ancient female warrior. She is determined to have the child naturally. The black tattoos of teenage rebellion enhance this fighting spirit. Her toes, on the other hand, curling in pain and her young skin fresh and white indicate her extreme youth.
I start to smell when stressed. And I am in the same clothes since Thursday morning. So I take a shower in the en-suite bathroom.
At one in the morning, the dilation is pathetic and the mid-wife tries another approach. She recommends injecting hormones to boost contractions and an epidural to reduce pain. She wants Lizi to get some sleep. Lizi is wired up with intravenous tubes to feed hormones, liquid and pain-killers. She looks as if she is in the final stages of a coma when a doctor comes to turn the machine off.
The anaesthetist has to inject the epidural into the spine with no movement from the patent. This is not easy in full labour. Lizi then required two as the first did not work properly.
As the new estimate was four hours from now (approximately 6am) we all decided Ian should go home and rest to be with Jordan. The pain-killers started to work and we then all got some sleep – even Lizi.
A medical student comes to watch the process. He takes a book and starts to read.
The crisis
6am
Lizi jerks awake in screaming agony. The injected hormones have put her into a state of continuous contractions. The epidural has been topped up several times – to no avail. She is becoming hysterical with pain and confusion. The mid-wife’s encouraging words: “Relax”, “deep breath in” and ‘”you’re doing well” mask an escalating anxiety. There are three doctors surrounding the bed. They bark instructions to each other. The medical student has left to be sick. Machines squeak and beep; warning lights flash. The noise is intense.
“We can’t hear baby’s heart beat. Just can’t get pick up.”
“The mother has vomited. Get the anaesthetist!”
“Turn down the hormones.”
Eventually the pain-killers work again and we all grab a small nap. Just before he goes off duty, the doctor examines Lizi. “The dilation is still only 8 cms. We either give you even more hormones and you have four more hours in labour and a natural birth or it’s a c-section. Not my call. It’ll be the day doctor.”
“More hormones, please,” Lizi says bravely.
Thankfully the consultant comes in and briskly tells Lizi 24-hours labour is enough. Time for a c-section.
Unto us a child is born
December 18 @ 10.09
Alanna May Benfield is born weighing 9lbs 2oz.
[[ For those wondering about the harry potter song.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4 ]]
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