Ah push it

And so, the time has come. The eviction of the baby from my nieces uterus. Such a poetic notion. Can you tell how maternal I am? She’s 41 weeks and being induced. Allegedly. If that’s what they want to call it. I’ve been sat here for six hours and no bloody baby.

I’ve been trying to keep her occupied. We’ve been doing silly videos and baby quizzes.

Though I was very acutely aware that it could turn into the situation on friends where Ross adapts the game show for Rachel and she gets Bamboozled and he tells her she’s going to be a terrible mother. Luckily she got most of the questions right. I’ve also been to the toilet 17 times just to stretch my legs and listened to a very dramatic, albeit incredibly short, two pump birth, from beyond the curtains.

We are definitely far from that ideal rocket launching situation but we do have the deluxe suite.

With nothing moving in the night we tried to get a wink of sleep but it was impossible. The nurses had Smooth FM on and how is a girl meant to sleep when Invisible Touch is blasting in the background making your shoulders twitch. However, we didn’t want to be waking everyone else up so resorting to gain full conversations via text while sat next to each other. When the midwife came and put the baby monitoring back on every time Skye laughed at one of my messages the machine would make an awful, loud crackling noise like an old, untuned, analogue TV with serious static interference and the volume on full. An autistic nightmare. And it sounded like she was just laughing to herself. She tried to can it but that just made it worse. God damn this affliction of being too hilarious (2x winner 🏆 🏆 of the Sense of Humour Award for Warrington Hospital Emergency Department Staff Wellbeing and Thank You Awards 😎 and technically unbeaten 💪🏻).

You’ll notice I tend to mix tenses up in my posts. It’s because I write as I go so sometimes it’s happening live and sometimes it’s already happened. It might be a bit messy but at least you know it’s authentic and not AI. So very shortly after writing this someone on the ward let out an almighty, forced bottom burp and of course Skye and I are still texting and that has now become the topic of text. But we are both big children and can’t stop laughing and so the monitor is going bananas but the more she tries to stop the worse it gets. So I said, I’ve already written about you laughing and sent her the above paragraph and she said it was quite accurate but I then had to explain that was pre-fart and that now I had to come up with a whole new (post) fart paragraph, which I suppose is what this is and that made us laugh even more and this whole thing is starting to feel a little bit too meta 😵‍💫. Or maybe it’s the fact I’ve not slept in 48 hours and I’ve actually just crossed into full psychosis 🫠. Oooh look a pretty unicorn 🦄.

I did actually manage to get an hour and 10 mins sleep before baby daddy tagged in for the day shift and I got home to try for another snooze. I think I had three hours and could sleep no more. I tossed and turned about for a bit, tried to eat, pestered the cats but then gave up and headed back to the hospital. There was still not really any change and she was starting to get really frustrated at this point. The midwife on was super nice though and sat and explained the whole process of labour and how they would react if it didn’t progress further etc etc. She had had her final gel intervention and was waiting another six hours to see if anything happened.

We had discussed beforehand what pain relief she might want and she said just gas and air. She had started to get uncomfortable earlier in the day and so they had offered some paracetamol. I always found that quite funny. You can go to A&E with an injured shoulder and get IV morphine, ketamine, sedation yet labour is allegedly the most painful thing in the world and they hit you with ‘can I offer you some of our finest Calpol?’ Not even IV! Anyway she went off for a walk, came back, stated she nearly died on the stairs because she had a pain in her tummy. I asked was it a contraction but she wasn’t sure. Sure enough a few mins later, the same pain again. And then again. After the third one she said ‘there is absolutely no way I am doing this unmedicated.’ She was all over the bed. Crying, screaming. ‘I CAN’T DO THIS.’ Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to answer. Once you’re at that point, there ain’t no going back. I didn’t even want to tell her they apparently get much worse. About half an hour in she was begging for morphine, and to be fair it really did the trick. She became so zonked she was coping much better. For a little while. A very short while. The peace was disturbed by another quick onset log flume situation next door but she sounded like she was in agony. Which is obviously quite distressing to hear. So then my niece starts wanting things done before she gets to that point. And now. But I sort of had to say but they are with her right now so you can’t and she was getting more frustrated. Then they eventually came in and said they’d monitor and she was asking for more pain relief but wasn’t due any. She wanted an epidural, wanted to go down to delivery suite, wanted examining. I was begging for morphine. If she couldn’t have any at least give me some to end my suffering.

But she was finally ready to go down. I swapped with BD while we waited. I probably shouldn’t have sent her this, at this time.

As soon as we got down there I was quite impressed with the set up. I didn’t realise it was a one-to-one midwife with your own room and bath situation. Shame it was decorated by someone from B&M bargains.

Asking for the epidural again began and so the anaesthetist was called. She was more than happy to do it and so that was all set up. Of course it wasn’t a straight forward procedure and took ages but it eventually worked and she became pretty much dead from the x. waist down. I’d still had no sleep and so I was dead from the waist up.

Once the epidural was in and working she was much more calm, in less pain, and much more pleasant. And once the time to start pushing came she did so well. Only forty minutes of pushing, a slight cut of the vagina and one 7lb 9oz human baby arrived.

Evacuation complete!

She is perfect. I won’t post pictures on here but you can believe me when I say she is very cute. Skye was absolutely made up immediately. I was wondering how Layton would react. Initially when they had said about him cutting the cord he had mentioned about getting blood on his trackies but within about 15 seconds of her being born he changed from a teenage boy to a father. He whipped his top off for skin to skin, holding her like she was made of glass and he was talking to her in such a sweet manner. It really was very lovely to watch.

I decided to leave them in peace for a bit and head home for some much needed sleep. However, I did not fancy fast food again and I certainly wasn’t cooking so I made myself a reservation at Albert’s. I turned up, was very aware that I looked like I had not had sleep for three days, was dressed like a tramp and looked like I’d been dragged through a hedge. However, I was hungry so I was not going to let that stop me. I sat down and all of a sudden everything hit me and I became immediately overwhelmed. I was so proud of Skye. So proud of what she’d done, who she had become and what she had overcome. I was also very sad that my mum didn’t get to be a part of the last few days. I think she would have loved this little baby more than anything. Next thing I know I’m crying into the menu and the waiter comes over to take my order. As if I didn’t look unhinged already I looked at him and just said through my tears. ‘I’m really sorry, I’m just really overwhelmed.’ I don’t think he knew what to do but I got my food so quickly and within 45 mins I’d had my tear soaked beef cobbler and brownies and was paying the bill. Ready to leave to get my long awaited sleep.

Weirdly they also removed all the knives from both mine and all the adjacent tables 🤷‍♀️

🧳 Unpacked

• Induction is mostly just… waiting.
• Sleep deprivation turns everything into a sitcom, including farts, Smooth FM, and fetal monitoring static.
• “I can do gas and air” lasted about three contractions (as expected).
• Epidurals: 10/10, would recommend.
• Watching Layton flip from teenage lad to actual father in 15 seconds was genuinely emotional.
• Grief ambushes you at the weirdest times — sometimes it’s not the birth that breaks you, it’s beef cobbler in Albert’s.

Worried about your birthing plan going wrong?

∙ 📦 Pack here