After the many heartaches with my cervical cancer and miscarriage, the SO and I are so very happy to announce the safe arrival of the newest addition to our little family – our little Bubby.
Born on Tuesday 14 April 2015, 14:46 hours
Weighing in at 3.056 kg and 50 cm long.
We’re so incredibly grateful to the many family and friends who have sent their love and well-wishes, and while we are excited for everyone to meet the little man, we have been loving our quiet family time getting to know each other. So in the meantime, please excuse the lack of updates. We’ll be back in blogging order as soon as Bubby’s routine is more settled.
Below is our baby’s birth story.
Our baby’s birth story
My OB booked me in for an induction on Tuesday 14th April, but got me to come into his office on Monday to check my cervix to determine how the induction should proceed. It had softened, shortened to about 1cm and dilated to about half a cm, so I wouldn’t need gel. Perhaps drinking those cups of raspberry leaf tea everyday helped?
We arrived at the hospital the next day at 6am, where we were led to a birth suite, introduced to my midwife, and settled into a hospital gown before my OB arrived at 6:30am. He put in my IV and together with my midwife, broke my membrane & waters – a process that took a lot longer than I thought. He gave the midwife instructions for the drip and to call him with any progress before he headed to his conference, promising he’d be back at lunch.
I started feeling contractions from 8am, but could still have a conversation while bouncing on a fit ball. By 11:15am, my contractions were coming in strong and regular – 4 every 10 minutes. Although the midwife was supposed to check my cervix at 12pm, I asked her to check early and I had only dilated to 2cm, but my cervix was paper thin.
I didn’t know how long I could tolerate the contractions (my mum went through 24hrs labour with me) and didn’t want to look forward to possibly 5 more hours of contractions (turns out I’m a moaner when I’m in severe pain), so asked for an epidural and changed positions to standing and started sucking on gas. Combined with the pain, the gas made me throw up what little was left of my breakfast.
My OB turned up during his conference lunch break as promised and checked to make sure everything was going well. He joked that he would like for the baby to be born at lunch, so he really wanted to attend the conference session with Q&A’s Tony Jones at 3:45pm before heading back to his conference.
The anesthetist arrived in 15mins and had me hooked up in 20mins. The relief was so sweet and worked a charm. The midwife warned that the epidural might relax the muscles and progress things quickly, so checked me again to find I had dilated to 7cm. She started rushing to get everything ready before checking at 1pm to find baby’s head was starting to appear. She called my OB to get back as she didn’t think it would be very long.
My OB made it back and with the midwife, instructed me to start pushing. In between, my OB asked if I’d like to feel the baby and I felt the softest squishy head covered with hair. 10 minutes of pushing later, I had our little baby on my chest for skin-to-skin. The SO cut the cord, while my OB stitched several first degree tears (thankfully not perineal).
On reflection, I hadn’t expected the process to be so quick. We got some amazing care from the staff at Mater Mothers (their baby care assistants are a godsend!) before being discharged on Saturday.