The birth story. Part 1

Saturday, 30 July, 5:30 in the morning. I woke up to go to the loo. I came back to find the wife was awake. Both of us could not sleep. The baby was wriggling a bit. The wife played games on her PDA while I tried to get back to sleep. Eventually we both dozed off.

8:30 exactly. The wife taps me on the shoulder twice. Annoyed, I thought This better be important.

My waters just broke

Oh

And, to myself, I thought damn, I was enjoying that sleep, I guess I should get up. I mean, it's not like she was having contractions – water can break at any time, but we should probably do something about it.

So, after a bit more harsh wakeup, we get up. I check the heartbeat – it's just fine, and she's definitely still moving. Now that water is going the wife's belly is all solid. Which is an interesting change from its previous fullness. She asks me to check the colour of the water. To which, in my colourblindness, I respond I am not going to be able to differentiate a subtle green tint. Use your magic colour vision to tell.

After a bit more blather, we eventually call birth centre. There's a nice person on the other end who had a calming effect on us. She redirected us to the foetal assessment unit (MFAU). They are not nearly as friendly. They start out by asking if I'm calling from within the hospital. No, I'm at home. I was transferred on the phone to you (from someone who seemed to have more of a clue, to my annoyance). They don't want to speak to me, they'll only speak to the wife. I say fine, and in a great relief, hand her the phone, saying she'll only talk to you and walk off, relieved that I don't have to deal with that call.

I go off to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I don't want to come home after a week to moulding dishes. I finish as the wife gets off the phone. They say come in for a speculum exam. Leave the bags at home and just come in, she tells me. But without any contractions to go along with it, I figure we have 92 hours max, 48 most likely. So we will see the baby soon. There's no need to rush now. I wonder if we have time to make the NCT meet at the pub later.

Our roles seem to have reversed. The wife is panicking and worried about foetal distress. I'm calm and don't see anything untextbookish or worth worrying about. The heartbeat is solid. She's moving a bit less – but there's so little room for the wee one to move around in. I suppose the foetal assessment unit put some panic in the wife by implying she was out of the midwives' hands and now only fit for the labour ward. I figure it must be the clueless person on the other end of the line confusing the matter. Water breaking is hardly a birth complication.

So at 9:30 it's not-very-rushed breakfast of smoothies for everyone. I bathe, since this could be my last time for days. The wife doesn't since she thinks she's guaranteed to get messier from here on out.

We pack an ipod, camera and the pregnancy notes. Neither of us have any cash, so no taxi for us. So we take the bus which miraculously comes soon. We transfer to the tube at Finsbury Park. It looks like it'll be an Arsenal game later, so it could be very hard to get home afterwards. I push that to the back of my mind for later.

On the tube there are plenty of seats, but the wife makes a man move out of the priority seat anyway. I giggle. I'm guessing it'll be her last chance to do this and it gives her some sense of control. This, of course, was violated by london transport inspectors accosting her and demanding to see her card on the way out of the station. Bloody twats. She's clearly very pregnant and exiting the tube at a big maternity hospital. The these two London Transport idiots surround her, stopping her from going anywhere and don't let her say more than Do we have to do this now — before cutting her off and demanding ID. Really uncalled for and certainly did not help her mood.

After that unwarranted attack from London Transport, we make our way to the UCLH MFAU. When we arrive there just after 10am, there's no one there. A nice very pregnant woman sitting in the waiting room lets us in. People with appointments start showing up, and we let them in. Eventually some staff show up just as we started regretting not making pancakes for brekky.

We're finally seen at just before 11. The midwife is very friendly and bubbly. Thankfully – our mood had been slowly darkening since that fist phone call at 9. The midwife spent most of the time chuckling. Everything is fine. The waters are clear, her blood pressure is fine. She decided there was no point checking dilation or anything since it's just a question of waiting for contractions to start. We're now at 80% chance of a spontaneous labour in the next 7-10 days. She asked us to come back Sunday morning (the next day) after the morning shift change at 9ish. They'll check the state of the baby, and if there's no strong need to induce, they'll start the wife on antibiotics (since once the waters break the risk of infection goes up) – though the midwife was rather keen on inductions. After that morning I had not intention of putting any effort into making it there on time. I figured if we did need to go back, we'd have a proper leisurely breakfast first.

So out we go, and back home on the tube. We stop on the way to pick up some cash so we can get a cab next time.

Now we are three

The baby was born at 7pm on Saturday night. Things kicked off not very long after posting that I should be on the ball and ready to jump into action. I'm really excited to have her around, though I'm really really knackered at the moment. Which is why it's taken so long to actually post about it.

She's so small and cute and adorable. She has the wife's nose (I knew it) and chin, and my ears and brow.

I took a lot of notes on the day, which I'll fill in and post later, possibly in parts as I have the time. Then I'll decide if I turn this blog into a fatherhood blog from a pregnancy blog.

Other stuff

Baby is being a bit active tonight. Not sure if that means we should expect her any moment, or she's reacting to the Vietnamese food we had for dinner, or she's just bored. I just have to be prepared to jump into action at any moment.

My mother is doing much better now and is all clear to fly, which is good. Spoke to her on Skype earlier and she's sounding rather excited about the whole thing (my father is, of course, excited too). She informed us that she was born 3 weeks late and only 7+ pounds, which isn't much more than the wee one is now. Which seems to imply already she is taking after her maternal grandmother.

Nothing new

We had the Maternal Foetal Assessment today. Which means we got another scan to figure out why the baby is still in her mum. They waved the magic scanning wand around and ticked off lots of measurements on the screen. Everyone seemed happy. The wife was all healthy. The baby was all healthy. Nothing to be concerned about, beyond her tardiness. In the end we found:

• Her head is 11cm across. The cervix dilates to 10cm. That will be fun.
• She weighs about 6 pounds 12oz. Which is a bit small, but more than I weighed when I was born. So I'm not worried.
• She has hair. The technician pointed it out to us on the monitor See that white stuff there. That's hair. Considering both the wife and I were born with hair, this should not be a surprise.
• She has a 66% chance of being born in the next 7-10 days, on her own, without intervention. Which would be nice, since we just finished the raspberry leaf tea today.

After that, we saw the midwife. She told us the baby's 40% engaged, so at least the progress bar is moving forward. They want to induce next Thu. If the inducement is insufficiently enticing for the wee one, they'll have to put the wife on an oxytocin drip – which means labour ward only, no birthing centre. So we're going to try to hold out till at least the 8th before accepting the induction. Everything is going so smoothly, I don't want to break the pattern just so the medical team can have nice looking numbers for this quarter.

On the trip home we impulse bought a new printer and a pint of ice cream. Both were cheaper than the new PC we actually do need, since mine is slowly falling apart. Off to test the hardware now.

Now we are 6 days overdue

I'm slightly surprised to have gotten this far after the due date. I know first children are usually late – average of 8 days I hear. Most of my NCT group has already sprogged. Only the wife and one other are left. Practically every day we get an announcement and a baby photo in the inbox. I don't mind. I'm enjoying the extra rest and lack of nappy changes.

I started my paternity leave today. So I might just have enough energy to post more than once a week. Or take care of the baby once she arrives. The past few weeks at work have been mad. The past few weeks preparing for the baby have been mad. The past few weeks of construction and repairs to the house have been mad. The past few weeks helping the wife submit her PhD thesis have been mad. But that's all done now. We just have to wait for the little bundle to come out. Perhaps then we can experience true madness :)

The in-laws are visiting. It's both nice and an exercise in patience. I'm a bit of a control freak so I'm uncomfortable when things are out of my hands. Like I come home to glasses put away in the wrong cabinet. I should really just appreciate the dishes put away in the right place and that I didn't have to do it. We're also having loads of problems with mobile phones. They've been through 3 so far, each older and simpler than the one before. The latest is 6 years old and really quite simple. It was working fine until they locked it and have been unable to unlock or use it since. It's currently off (how'd they manage to turn it off without unlocking it? it was on full charge) in their flat while they're out and about. I guess if the baby comes we'll just have to let them know via more traditional means.

My parents are still in the States. My mother's been ill and is waiting for an all clear to get on the plane and see her granddaughter. Perhaps the little one is holding off waiting for both grandparents to be around. That's awfully kind of her. That and it's awfully kind of her to have given her father a few late lie ins before she shows up.

And one more thing

I just remembered the thing I left out of my post the other day about stuff that is different now about... Googling your child's potential names. After we'd settled on what we wanted to call her, we sat down to see who else had those names in that order to see if it was anyone dodgy. Turns out, we're good.

If google were there 40 years ago my parents could have avoided naming my brother and me after Julius and Ethel's children.

In other news, the due date has come and gone. No baby. Now we begin the awkward wait.

Adulthood

The wife and I had been discussing the possibility of having a kid for some time, but it's always been some far off fantasy – like what we'll do when we buy that penthouse flat in Manhattan. We kept passing various milestones – my parents were 31 and 32 when I was born, they had their first kid at 30 and 31, etc etc. It was awkward at first. Somehow I'd imagined I'd have had a kid by 35. When I hit 35 I knew I wasn't at all ready. Now that I'm 40 I keep vacillating between it being ok or silly of me to have waited til now. Having a kid can't be that hard. I mean, every single one of my ancestors has bred. And most of those at a younger age than me.

A bit of background... I went straight from undergraduate uni to do a PhD without any real job in the meantime. Looking back, that did delay "adulthood" a bit – hardcore academia is so different from the real world, and being a student in the UK, one can get by without ever dealing with real-life stuff. Sure I was an expert on immigration, living cheaply, finding rental property, etc. But I'd no real idea about how the grown up world worked. It was fun.

After I graduated and got a real job, flat, relationship, etc etc, I still didn't feel grown up. I felt no different after any of those milestones. I once asked my mother when she finally felt like an adult. She said it was only after she'd had a child. So I'm kind of wondering how things will change for me after the wee one is in my life. I am already starting to see changes on how I view things. I've spent the past 9 months in a kind of instinctive look-after-the-wife mode, and now I'm entering the look-after-the-family mode. I can see my perspective shifting, and it's weird being able to notice it. It's actually brought the wife and I closer together. Not that we'd been having issues. It's just you hear stories about people having children to save their marriage. It never occurred to me there might actually be a relationship-enhancing effect of children (or at least pregnancy). We've been very happily involved for almost a dozen years now, and I'm rather surprised to see how some of our remaining rough edges have been smoothed in the process.

With regards to my parents, I now realise that my life is so different from them that there's no point using them as a metric. I'll take their advice, but I'll tempter it with my perspective and see what happens. After all, I find that by now I have a decent sense of how the world works. I know now that few people have any real clue about what they're doing and all of civilisation is held together with ossified strings and glue. Homeownership has done far more than anything else so far in life in making me feel adulter – partly because of all the repairs. Once you see a house taken apart and put back together, there's a lot of is that it? feeling I just never got as a renter.

Anyway, I am both ready and not ready for this. I'm pretty sure I can take what the world is going to throw at me. On the other hand, I know changes are afoot and I wonder if I'd have been better off the way things are now. I guess I'll just have to wait to find out.