A year ago today...

...I was a superhero for giving birth in 3 hours

...we had two perfect little girls

...we were so happy

Luckily, we are still so happy, we still have two perfect little girls and I still rock for birthing two children!

But I'm also so sad, so very very sad. Life has shifted on it's axis, ever so slightly, but a significant shift nevertheless. I wish I was back there a year ago and I wish I could just erase that one little genetic spelling mistake...


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Well, that's enough of that.

Happy Birthday Charlotte!

We had a really nice day today, Charlotte got presents in the morning and she loves her new shape sorter. I made chocolate cake, with white chocolate icing, in the shape of a 1! The photos look great (mainly because I am wearing makeup!), I spent most of the morning on the phone to my lovely family and a friend from Kenya was on a 24 hour stopover in London and dropped by for cake! What a great day!

I recently re-read my birth story about Charlotte's birth. I originally posted it on a listserv that I frequented regularly in my early parenting days. Since this blog is my repository of all things Charlotte, I think this is the perfect time to re-post it here:

On the night of my due date, I couldn’t get to sleep. I tossed and turned for ages after I went to bed. I woke up at 1.30am with a wet feeling in my pants and rushed for the bathroom. The fluid was a steady stream and I was trapped hovering over the toilet. Every time I moved, there would be another stream, there was no way I could get back to the bedroom to get a sanitary pad without getting it all over the carpet. I hung around in the bathroom for long enough that I eventually woke M up (ok, I knocked over a few things and generally made quite a bit of noise until he had no choice but to get up). Got myself a pad and fresh pants and hoped to get back to sleep. Pretty soon I had some mild crampy-ness in my lower abdomen. It was about 2.45am when this started and based on my previous labour and delivery, I was expecting that this would go on until at least the morning. I was hoping I might have a snooze in the meantime because I was a bit bummed that I had only slept for about 2 hours so far.
After about 3 mild contractions, they were getting stronger and my breathing (complaining) alerted M that something was up. He couldn’t sleep anyway and we chatted for a bit. He noticed that each contraction was a minute closer than the previous one had been so he decided to get up and do all the last minute things that he should have done the week before. He re-hung the bathroom towel rail, took some baby stuff to the cellar for storage, made himself some cereal and a coffee and took a shower. I told M I wanted to make his coffee (that’s my job in our weekend breakfast rituals) but he wouldn’t let me. He knew I just wanted to tell people that I made my husband a coffee when I was in labour! Meanwhile, I was wandering around, having more and more contractions in the bedroom, in the kitchen, on the toilet. I puked a couple of times and had a couple of really bad ones from time to time.
When the contrax were quite bad, I tried really, really hard to visualise them in a positive light: opening my cervix, bringing the baby down the birth canal. I was extremely fearful of the pain and I tensed up and closed up to try to prevent it. I also remember this vividly from my first labour. When I was visualising, it really did help to make the pain lessen. Either that or those contractions weren’t so bad. I told M he had to tell me to think “open thoughts” when he was holding me through them. He didn’t really get it and I think he felt a bit silly, but it helped me a lot so I told him so and then he was much better about doing it. So “open thoughts” was my mantra for each contraction. But sometimes I just begged “Please open!”
M wanted to text his sister to have her on standby to come over to look after Emily. I didn’t really see the point in doing that at 4am when we thought the earliest we might want her would be when Emily woke at around 6.30am. I didn’t want to be in labour with her around, wandering in and out of the toilet and moaning. At about 4.45am the contrax were really starting to get on top of me and I was thinking about getting to the hospital for whatever pain relief they might offer. My biggest regret with my labour with Emily was not going to the hospital sooner and labouring for so long at home in such pain. I asked M to get my notes out of the hospital bag to get the phone number for the labour ward and ask them if I could come in. He went off to phone and I heard him saying “my wife is in labour, she’s just puked, can she eat anything?” I’m thinking, “What the hell is he talking about???” “Tell them I want to come in for gas and air!” I yelled at him from the bedroom. By now I was sweating with each contraction and was kneeling beside the bed with my face buried in the towel I had fished out of the dirty laundry hamper when my waters broke (it happened to be a kids hand towel with pictures of ducks on it).
Thankfully, the labour ward weren’t too busy and they said I could come in. My contractions were coming closer together all the time. They had gone from 10 minutes to 3 minutes in the space of about 5 contrax. M phoned a taxi for his sister, she arrived, the taxi was waiting outside for us, we ran outside, I had a couple of contrax in the street. I asked M to double check that he had re-packed my notes, he hadn’t so he ran inside to get them while I stood in the street having contractions. Eventually, I could crawl into the back seat and kneel there. I had contractions all the way in the back of the taxi (still clutching the duck towel). We arrived at the A&E entrance of the hospital and were offered a porter with a wheelchair to take us to the labour ward. This guy pulled a wheelchair out of a cupboard and said, “there you go.” No way could I sit down, so I knelt on the seat and M pushed me backwards down the endless corridors to the lift. Thankfully it was completely deserted at about 5.30am and my horror at the porter not taking us was lessened by the fact that he would never have let me sit so unsafely on the chair. There was someone else on the lift with us but I was way past caring whom I moaned and screamed in front of. We got to the 5th floor and waited an eternity to be buzzed into the ward.
There was another couple in triage area of the labour ward but she was just lying on the bed with a fetal monitor strapped to her belly. No way was she in labour. (That was me 2.5 years ago, thinking I was in labour - sorry luv, you ain't seen nothin' yet!) The midwife was ready to check me for dilation and I was hoping desperately to be at least a couple of centimetres. I was a model patient: I refused to lie down on the bed, I wouldn’t wear a monitor, I wouldn’t open my knees, I was still clutching the duck towel like it was my childhood security blanket. Luckily she was a very bossy Caribbean woman who was clearly used to dealing with unco-operative mothers-to-be. When she checked me I was... 7 CENTIMETRES!! Woo hoo! I had only been having contractions for 3 hours! My first labour took about 24 hours to get that far.
I got off the bed saying “I want gas and air, I want an epidural, I want everything”. The midwife chuckled and told me to walk to the delivery room then I would arrive ready to start pushing. I got to the delivery room and got started on the gas and air. The midwife went to find the delivery suite midwife. Before she left, I told her I wanted to push and she told me I wasn’t allowed to.
Gas and air is a wonderful thing to me. It completely takes the edge off the contractions and makes them bearable. I had 3 massive contractions and the urge to push was overwhelming, I kept saying to M, “I’m not allowed to push, I’m not allowed to push.” They were getting to the point where they were getting on top of me again and I would be asking for the epidural asap. The midwife came back(same one) and said she would check me again. She didn’t even examine me properly, she just took a glance and said flippantly, “OK, you can push if you want. Your baby has blonde hair.”
I was so excited that I was fully dilated. Clearly, those last contractions were the baby coming down the birth canal of its own accord. Then the midwife told me I had to put down the gas and air. I was so devastated by that. I told her I wouldn’t. She said, do you want the pain to be over? I told her I would keep the pain and keep the gas and air. She said it would be too distracting for me and I told her I was good at multi-tasking. She was so good with me: patient and bossy!
The pushing was really hard, it really hurt and I felt quite discouraged. In reality, it was very short (11 minutes, according to my notes), but it was a lot longer than Emily’s ventouse delivery had been. I was feeling burning for what felt like ages. At one point she went to get the mirror and I couldn’t bear to look as I couldn’t handle the thought that the head was not half out and the pain was already so bad. Eventually the head came out, the shoulders were painful too and then it really was over.
The midwife dumped her on my belly and we all said hello to each other. M called the time (06.51) and cut the cord. Then the midwife lifted my shirt and put her on my breasts, she started rooting around, found the nipple and started sucking.
I was elated at how fast it had all gone, I had suppressed my fears of another awful birth experience and expected that I would just get through somehow. I don’t feel like it was a wonderful experience and would never advocate that every woman should do it, I just feel like I got off lightly and am wholeheartedly relieved. I’m so instantly in love with her, even though I barely know her. I don’t know if it’s a better birth or the confidence of knowing what I’m doing the second time around but it is all so much easier and more enjoyable this time.