The big arrival...

2 days before birth - ready to pop!

Three weeks ago baby Cameron joined our lives - this is the story of how it happened...

After having contractions off and on for over a week and going 4 days overdue (according to my OB) I started having contractions that were regular, less than 5 minutes apart and very painful. After an hour or so we decided to go in to the hospital as they were getting to be too much for me - especially when I had one that lasted for several minutes straight (or perhaps a couple very close together). We called the labour ward, but there was no answer and I didn't want to wait around until we could get through to them, so we headed in. Thankfully it was around 8:30 at night so CJ was tucked up in bed and didn't see me in pain or see me leave.

We got there a little after 9 and there were only two midwives on staff and they had two women who were having or about to have their babies. They showed me to a room and left me for a bit, then came back and got me set up on a monitor to see what was happening. After about half an hour a nurse came in to see how I was going, but didn't do an internal exam as they had the second lady about to give birth. Finally around 10 there was a shift change and the new midwife on staff came and examined me, said I was 4cm dilated and offered me some pain relief. I got set up with the nitrous oxide and it seemed much stronger than with CJ - must have been a more generous lady! She also called in the anesthetist to set up an epidural for me. She said it would be about 45 minutes, but thankfully she got that wrong and he was there in about 10 minutes. The contractions were already getting closer together and far more painful which made getting the epi rather difficult. Once he got me set up I had to wait for the pain relief as he wanted to push some fluids through to try to avoid the reaction I had with my previous epi (drop in my blood pressure and drop in baby Calvin's heart rate - down to 60). The anesthetist started to put in the local anesthetic (prior to the actual epidural I guess) when I "went unresponsive", as they put it.

I remember hearing him asking me some questions, then the room swirling. It seemed like I was watching a movie of what was happening, then there was a bizarre fast forward of all the events and all the pain until I was suddenly there and aware of what a midwife was saying to me. She was telling me I needed to keep my arm straight for the blood pressure cuff. Apparently they weren't able to get a reading on my blood pressure during that time, but my delivery midwife claimed that it didn't drop and that I passed out (or whatever) due to the pain. Who knows?! All I know is that I was in an incredible amount of pain and was screaming my head off that the epidural wasn't working and saying "It's not faaaaaaaaair!". I remember the midwife telling me to hold on the epi should work soon and asking if I felt I needed to push. The next thing I remember is that my doctor was there and he was telling me not to panic. He said he had to break the membrane and I remember seeing this giant crochet hook coming at me and freaking out thinking it would hurt! He told me that I needed to push and that if I was screaming the energy would go into that so I needed to keep my jaw closed and put all my energy into pushing. I tried once (OMG does that hurt) and didn't get much result. Then the doctor was telling me that this baby needed to come out NOW and he was putting a vacuum cap on his head. I gave two more big pushes and wow, baby Cameron was there! (it sounds so easy now - ha!) They put him on my chest, but then whisked him away and said he needed oxygen, however as soon as they got him over to the table he started to cry - hooray. So, he was back on my chest, crying and wrinkled and blue, but he was mine and he was healthy.

I did have some stitches, the same degree of tearing as with Calvin, but they definitely do not seem as bad this time. Also, the umbilical cord was in a double knot, something my OB had not seen before and was rather amazed by!

Poor Craig was just relieved to have both his wife and baby out of danger. Baby Cameron was born at 11:18 pm on the 8 January 2011. That little guy was in a hurry to get out! Overall it was very traumatic for me and I'm still struggling with processing all that happened - I expect that's partly due to having expected to have pain relief and partly due to the intensity of the experience. I'm just glad it's over and we have a healthy, glorious baby boy in our lives.