So, here’s the quick story.
At around 12:01am (midnight) on Wednesday 16th of June, Kat asked me to put the TENS machine on (as per this) and soon after I went to sleep. She stayed downstairs on the sofa “I can get comfy on there…” and I believe she slept between 2am and 4am. In retrospect this may have been the transition period.
As background, she was already a few days overdue (due date was the 11th of June 2010) – and she was due to have a sweep later in the day to hopefully move things along a bit.
Anyway, at 4am (or so I think it was), I woke up to hear her panting up the stairs (“Oh, that sounds like it might be soon”, I thought). She confirmed this by soon screaming a little in pain, and telling me to sort Rowan out and that we were going to hospital soon.
I woke Jenny up, but she was clearly in a zombie mode – and I guess it might have been towards 5am when we dropped Rowan off with her. At this point in time Kat was crouching on the back car seat screaming a little (enough to worry Rowan). I therefore left a crying toddler with Jenny, trying not to panic myself.
Next up – I phoned the delivery ward in Redditch (5:10am according to my phone) – and wasn’t particularly impressed to hear a “Sorry, we’re full, we might need to send you to Worcester… I’ll phone you back after I check”. While waiting, I drove to our office (as it’s located in the right direction) and waited to hear back. At 5:14am they rang back, and I spoke to them for 20 minutes; at the same time, Kat was out of the car on all fours screaming quite loudly, and the midwife had instructed me to get a towel out ready – hence an ambulance was ordered for us. I think Kat was slightly crowning a little at this point in time. I couldn’t tell if it was just her pushing (uncontrollably) or it if the baby was actually coming out. She was having contractions at least once every three minutes.
The ambulance seemed to take forever to reach us (in reality perhaps 10-15 minutes). It’s very demoralising to see an ambulance fail to find you… but it did eventually. We were fortunate to also be near to a local midwife, who was very good in turning up on the scene moments after the ambulance.
At 5:34 I finished talking to the midwife on the phone (and rushed off a quick tweet to maintain my geek cred on twitter). I was confined to the front of the amblance, so couldn’t see anything, and could only hear Kat screaming.
As we were about to leave the M5, I head “blah blah blah BABY” followed by a “Waaah” … at which point I realised I wasn’t going to get to see the actual birth. (tweet) Kat gave birth at 5:54am. I grabbed a quick photo or two once the ambulance had pulled up – hence this tweet and accompanying photo
In Worcester hospital itself, they quickly established breastfeeding, she was soon weighed (9lbs), and I took a few random photos and this and this (my favourite).
By 10am, Jenny and Helen visited, bringing Rowan who met his sister for the first time – he was a little unsure of what to make of it… we all then left (leaving Kat and Anya to themselves) so I could retrieve the car from Bromsgrove. When we returned at about 11, we waited for the midwives to do their paperwork, and eventually left – giving us just enough to get to RhythmTime (13:20?) in Bromsgrove. After this we went shopping (Asda) and then home. On meeting his sister the second time Rowan was much more at ease – and wanted to hug / hold / cuddle / kiss / stroke her.
Kat was quite energetic and on somewhat of a high during the day – and in our first night at home, Anya only woke once (at 2am).