Four hours later...

The midwife team returned and stitched up the tear caused at delivery. As it was the end of their shift they started work straight after injecting the anaesthetic >.< They put me back on the gas at least, and this time I got to experience the 'high' that you get. I just focused on that blissful detachment as much as I could until the anaesthetic took hold. I asked how many stitches I had so I could compare 'war wounds', but apparently as it was a continuous thread it just counted as one. Bah, I felt that needle go in and out at least a dozen times!

Poor mum was about ready to pass out with exhaustion, and was only hindered from sleeping by the lack of available surface. Finally I got moved to the post delivery ward. Mum returned home, and I put my fingers in front of my newborn's nose in the cot cart so I could feel her breathing as I slept. I woke a couple of hours later to find the fingers of her hands tightly wrapped around mine.

The room had another occupant, so I didn't want to stir too much, but it was enough to lie there in the brightening day light and gaze at the new arrival.

So Swedish!

I was presented with this delivery certificate shortly before leaving the delivery room:

Written on the back is Saga's personal number, 10 digits that will be used to identify her throughout her life in Sweden. It was assigned within seconds of her birth, yet I had three months to register her name. Which I managed to do with only a few weeks to spare! Now to sort out her immigration and domestic paperwork...

 Here is the post delivery snack that arrived:

The presentation was nice and celebratory :)

New Blog!

Due to recent bouts of insomnia I've found the time to start writing the blog I've been wanting to keep for almost a year! Horray I guess XD

The main aim of this blog is to document the ups and downs, ins and outs, highs and lows of my child, so she can look back and see what we went through as a new family. Secondarily perhaps other parents may glean some comfort or support, even entertainment at out trials and exploits.

So, lets start with the main event!

This is me on the last day of term, Wednesday June 18th. It is 3 1/2 weeks before my due date and I'm still whizzing around the city on my bike. (I've seen at least one health warning not to do so, but after the baby's head engaged it was far more comfortable than walking!)

Thursday 19th: I recovered from the slew of grading and report writing, visited a colleague who loaned me their infant car seat, and prepared for my guest to arrive.

Friday 20th: Went to the airport to meet Tina, my best friend from collage who had flown over to stay for a few days. We make plans for her visit including looking into where the city's midsummer celebrations were taking place the next day, preparing a picnic for it and looking at videos online so we knew what to expect.

Saturday 21st: Woke up to find my waters had broken. Well, there goes the plans for the next few days!

I went to the local hospital, however I was only just starting to have contractions and wasn't very dilated. I was booked in for an appointment the following morning to check my progress and was told to expect to be induced if my labour hadn't moved along enough.

I returned home and told a friend who was organising my baby shower for the next day that it probably wouldn't be going ahead. She rushed over, and we made the 'water breaking brunch'; bacon, eggs, toast, yogurt, cereal. After eating I spent most of the afternoon in the armchair while my two friends and mother prepared the hospital bag (everything had been bought for it fortunately during a recent trip home, it just had to be amalgamated), fitted the car seat, wrote a birth plan, and just hung out chatting while my contractions unsteadily increased in length and intensity. 

By late afternoon an app was installed on my friend's phone to monitor the timings, but I never seemed to hit the 3 in 10 minutes that would indicate I was in active labour and ready to return to the hospital.

We sat down to eat lasagne around 6pm, after which I had to lie down and very soon the contractions were causing a lot of pain. I decided it was at the limit of what I could cope with and asked for calls to be made to the local hospitals. The second furthest, my preference, said they may have space in a few hours. I couldn't wait that long for serious pain relief, but luckily the nearest hospital did have space. 

We immediately headed out, but I had difficulty in walking to the car at that point, and by the time we got to the hospital my contractions were coming one after the other. One of my friends went in to get a wheel chair as I couldn't move any further, and what felt like an eon later returned also with the head midwife of my delivery team.

On arriving at the delivery room I pleaded for pain relief, but had to wait for the monitoring bands to be attached. They struggled to get the baby's readings, despite me rolling around, still with continuous contractions. The midwife then did an internal exam to see how dilated I was and to put a probe in the baby's skull. She found I was at 7cm, and I finally got the gas I'd been begging for.

I knew I was too far gone for an epidural, but that was fine - I knew I was at the plateau and I just wanted the labour over with nothing slowing it down!

I knew the theory about inhaling the gas as the contraction starts and stopping before it peaked in order to get the benefit, but without overdosing and going to the nausea phase. Given that my contractions were happening all the time it was hard to get the timing right, and it didn't have much effect. Once I was told the baby was coming that day I calmed down and could inhale it properly. At that point the gas was only taking the edge off the pain, but it helped. 

After the delivery I was told they almost sent me for a C-section as the baby's heart rate slowed with each contraction, but having it be slow continuously was dangerous for her. As I calmed though, the contractions normalised and I could go through with the natural birth I wanted.

The next few hours are a blur of memory, I remember making demands for cold towels (that had to be flat, not bunched up), and strawberry ribena (the dilution was never correct, but it was too hard to explain the specific requirement). The ribena was the only thing in the meticulously packed hospital bag that was used, the lip balm and CDs with 'energetic' music were completely forgotten! 

I had this hope that my daughter would be born on the 21st to make her a Summer solstice baby, so I asked what the time was frequently. If any potential birth partners are reading this; don't tell someone 'not to worry about it', if they have found the energy to ask a question or voice a concern then trust me, it's important to them that moment, just answer it!

Despite my aim for pushing the baby out before midnight she rebelled and held on for 12 more minutes, arriving at 00:12 on June 22nd. She was handed to me after a slight slippery drop by the midwife, and as soon as I had her to my chest I just went 'shhh' in a very soft, calm way. She stopped crying immediately and just lay on my chest. I  remember looking down at this face, turned up to mine even with eyes shut closed with thick eyelids, just taking in tiny details like seeing the tiny specs of eyelash hair beginning to emerge, and also seeing a blur of newborn features. 



I held her there for a couple of hours, the relief of it all interrupted only by the third stage of delivery and her cord being clamped. She rooted around and took her first sip of colostrum before falling asleep, waking only when the midwives returned to measure and weigh her.

And so Saga came into the world, at 48cm and 2870g, and a line was drawn across my life like no other.

I've moved countries and changed jobs several times, gotten married and divorced (three of those once happened within 10 days of each other), so I'm no stranger to a change in circumstances. However giving birth and becoming a parent is a life changing experience like no other.