A New Arrival…

Surprise Bump lived up to his name…

He was due on 30th January (aka today!) but decided in his impatience to be out and about in the world, that he’d come early.

I’d already decided (along with the consultant and the midwife) that an induction on the due date would be happening. The idea behind that was to minimise the anxiety that I’d been feeling about the birth. My mum had agreed to be my Birth Partner because TOH didn’t think his back would let him do it.

Anyway, with seven days to go and Mum already in situ in the house, SB decided that it was the perfect time to make an appearance.

We’ve since worked out that I was in the Early Labour stages all day, but I only noticed it when the contractions began to get really painful. TOH decided that he wanted to go with me after all, so Mum looked after the children and off we went to the hospital… and because a) my waters had broken as I got out of the car and b) the distance around the building I had to walk to get to the Maternity Delivery Suite, a helpful pair of Paramedics rescued us!

I’ve never been so glad to get a Gas and Air breather handed to me. The contractions were the most painful I can remember having in my life, so the Paramedics bundled us into an ambulance and drove us round to the Delivery Suite entrance, I was wheeled in and we got down to the serious business of having a baby.

According to the usual documentation I got later, SB was born an hour and a half or so later at 12.15 am.

The older kids have taken the change to the family well – NOS seems to be happy to see him; PT thinks he’s cute, but she doesn’t like it when SB cries (something that she’s always had problems with.)
PW is showing a fair amount of understandable jealousy. After all, she was the youngest and now she isn’t. She got all the attention and now it’s SB who gets the majority of it. So we’ve had a sort of fluctuation between her acting younger (temper tantrums, crying, refusing food, being clingy and so forth) and acting like her older sister (raising her voice, stamping up the stairs, slamming doors etc) which is hard to keep a straight face around!

TOH still hasn’t recovered from the experience – he’d taken his pain killers but had spent most of the night on adrenaline and his body is still rebelling against it.

And Me?
Physically I’m recovering. It was such a fast labour that I didn’t have any more pain relief than Gas and Air. So I’m bruised and aching. Mentally, I’m still up and down. One minute I’m happy that SB is here, the next I’m sad that he’s the last child I’ll have. I’m tired and snappy most of the time.
Mum goes home on Saturday. I’ve enjoyed her being here and am really grateful that she came – it made the last couple of weeks wait for SB easier and the kids have loved having her around, despite her being stricter than I am!

So a new chapter starts in our family’s story…

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