No Fireworks After All

We were in the ward until about half seven. Lynne dozed on the bed but I could tell she wasn't asleep because every couple of minutes she would toggle the TENS boost button. I sat by the bed trying to do the sudoku in Take A Break!, but I couldn't even do the easy one. I had Lynne's dinner, I wasn't supposed to, the food is ONLY FOR PATIENTS, but Lynne was too wasted to eat. It was canteen roast beef and tatties, anemic with salty gravy. Mmm. There is nothing quite like canteen food, a friend of mine once said that you can't make macaroni cheese like they do in a canteen. You make it too good yourself. And canteen lasagne and chips, come on, admit it. You love it.

At seven thirty the midwife came and checked her again. I went out and paced in the corridor. Then the midwife came back out and said, 'It looks like your wife's going to have a baby really soon!' I had begun to relax over the afternoon, but now things were happening again. The midwife went to get a wheelchair while I stopped Lynne from putting her jeans back on. Easier said than done, she was still under the effects of the diamorphine and was insisting on being fully dressed at all times.

The labour suite is on the third floor, small blue rooms, hot enough to send you to sleep if it wasn't for the adrenalin. The midwives work twelve hour shifts and were just changing over as we turned up, so we got a fresh one, Kirsten. We plugged in an mp3 player to listen to some music, we weren't supposed to use stuff that hadn't been checked by the hospital technician, but we decided we would just say we did plugged it in when no one was looking. They are closing the hospital in nine weeks anyway.

And then things slowed down again. Lynne was still getting regular contractions, but she still wasn't fully dilated. So there we were in the labour suite, Lynne on the gas and air, Kirsten writing up her notes and checking the baby's heartbeat, me drinking the hospital coffee, which tastes exactly like flat cola when its cold. We listened to Elbow, then Ben Harper, then Beth Orton. Out in the corridor you could smell cordite and see the fireworks bursting over Govan and Partick. It got closer and closer to midnight, and there was still no sign of the baby.

Lynne chuffed her way though an entire tank of gas and air and they had to get her a new one. Midnight came and went and it wasn't until 2 in the morning that she started getting the urge to push. By this time Lynne was absolutely exhausted, and I watched helplessly while she strained to push with each contraction. I hadn't realised this before, but apparently pushing is only useful during a contraction, and Lynne was so tired by this time that her contractions were slowing down. Even worse, the midwife suspected that the baby was the wrong way round, trying to come out chin first.

Suddenly, even though it was 4am, the place was full of people all doing stuff. The registrar came in and talked about trying to turn the baby with forceps, but if he couldn't then Lynne would have to go to the theatre for a caesarean. Lynne only wanted to know if she would feel anything, she was exhausted and had given up on any ideas of keeping control over what happened to her body. She just wanted it over with.

They couldn't get in with the forceps, so they took Lynne to the operating theatre. I wasn't allowed in until the anaesthetist had given Lynne a spinal, which would numb her bottom half completely. I changed into scrubs and sat outside in the shabby corridor, too tired to be terrified, just dully wondering what could go wrong next. A doctor came up the corridor, eyes bloodshot, and told me they would get me soon as the anaesthetist had finished. Then she yawned a massive yawn.

Finally they came and got me. Lynne lay on a table the middle of the room, her arms and legs pinned out like starfish, with a green screen across her chest so that, when I sat on the stool next to her head, I couldn't see what was going on. Lynne looked happier than she had for hours. 'You look very handsome in your scrubs,' she said. 'This is just like ER, if ER was in 1982.' After ten minutes of activity on the other side of the screen, there was a strangled, gurgling squawl. Lynne and I looked at each other. And that's how my daughter was born.

Unleashing My Inner Pedant

Pregnant women at full term are often described as being ‘hot and bothered.’ You ask an expectant father how his other half is and this is the reply, ‘Oh, she’s feeling a bit hot and bothered, she just wants it over with.’ ‘Hot and bothered’ in this case seems to be a euphemism for being a sweaty, bloated, red-faced, screaming monster. Lynne is not ‘hot and bothered’; rather she is ‘glowing.’

Reading through yesterday’s post I realise that far from sounding unconcerned I seemed to be verging on moderately-concerned-to-slightly-hysterical. My apologies, concern is not the aim of this blog. Lynne is healthy and happy, ‘glowing’ as I said, and the baby still has room to kick about. But we still want to avoid having her induced if we can help it. The free book from the hospital Ready, Steady, Baby! contains only 3 lines on inducing pregnancy. This could mean that, hey, there’s nothing to it, but it seems more likely to me that they couldn’t think of anything good to say about induction so they left it out. Your Pregnancy Bible is more forthright, mentioning vaginal tablets and gels, and also a ’25-cm (10-inch) long plastic instrument with an end like a crochet hook.’ Mmm, maybe give that a miss, thanks all the same.

So, with that in mind, today’s mission was to find a pineapple and some raspberry leaf tea. Curry for tea tonight, and possibly a bit of nipple tweaking, but Lynne says this is too silly. Old wives’ tales are the way forward, no matter that this article says they are just myths. What the hell does the Telegraph know anyway? It’s a right-wing comicbook!

The pineapple was no problem, but just try finding some raspberry leaf tea in Glasgow. Every shop and supermarket has some kind of raspberry flavoured tea, but made out of dried fruit or some silly shit. Now, I like a herbal tea as much as the next hippy, but you don’t make tea out of fruit. You make juice out of fruit. Juice not tea. (I would allow banana tea though, because as any pedant knows, a banana is a herb).

I was getting quite cross, it was raining and everything, but I kept my cool. I have a rule never to moan at people who work in shops, since I worked in shops myself for so long, and I have stuck to that rule, even that time in Iceland when the girl tried to tell me creme fraiche was just a posh name for cottage cheese. I finally tracked down the tea in Napiers on Byres road, a wee packet of spongy green leaves for the reasonable sum of Fucking Hell! I mean £4.50.

The girls in Napiers are very helpful. Aparently the curry thing is nothing to do with fenugreek, which I had a vague idea it was, but is all about the spices stimulating something and getting the bowels moving. It's important to keep the bowels open. Lovely. Pineapple is meant to help release some hormone in the cervix that brings on labour. The girl steps closer to me and lowers her voice. I'll not shout this across the shop, she says, but sperm has the same effect on the cervix.

Interesting.

'Get Your Godamn Hands Off My Membranes!'

Another appointment at the hospital. The baby is now four days past its due date and, apart from a couple of twinges in the night, the little fella seems happy kicking about in Lynne’s belly. There is still room to move in there, for now. The midwife checks Lynne’s blood pressure and we listen to the heartbeat. It sounds like a train. Healthy. Spontaneous labour could start at any time.

The midwife offers Lynne a membrane sweep to hurry things along. Lynne politely declines and the midwife agrees that she would probably leave it too. It is only effective 35-40% of the time and if Lynne is still comfortable and we are in no rush.... However, if spontaneous labour doesn’t start in the next week or so then somebody is going to have to go in and get the baby. Thank Christ that I’m a guy; my bits are simple, I don’t have to put up with all the indignities and minor infections that come with a furry front bum. Men are only required to show their tackle to medical staff in extreme cases of absolute fucking disaster. Have a look at this picture, detailing the measurement of fundal height during pregnancy:

See? Awful. I think you will agree there is something disturbingly callous about this open-palmed insertion. The words 'full bladder' also seem particularly unsympathetic. I think this diagram comes from more primitive times, when women were thrown on their backs, had their muffs shaved and their feet shoved into stirrups, while a doctor yanked the baby out with a cruelly gleaming pair of forceps. Ahhhh, the 70s. Those were the days.

Lynne has escaped such horrors so far, but the baby needs to move fast if she is going to get away unscathed.