20/03/09 23.00 We finish dinner and decide to pop into the birth clinic to go on the contractions monitor – I am having very strong and regular (painless) Braxton hicks contractions. We decide to go home as labour has not yet begun.
20/03/09 23.45 We manage to get our excited toddler to sleep and I sneak off into the living room sofabed where I have been banished in the last few weeks of pregnancy due to my loud snoring!
21/03/09 01.30 Lying in bed awake it feels as though the baby suddenly reaches out and punches me in the stomach and I can almost hear a pop. As I get out of bed I realize that was the sensation of my waters breaking – something I didn’t experience with my first labour. I wake Darren and tell him that I think it really is it this time and about 10 minutes later I experience the first real (and extremely painful) contraction.
21/03/09 03.30 We arrive at the clinic and the midwives on duty laugh to see us again. An internal examination shows that I have just begun to dilate. We are taken to our own room and Darren helps me through the pain of the contractions that are coming on stronger and faster all the time. On a couple of occasions the midwives come into the room to tell me to be quiet!
21/03/09 05.00 I am given another examination and the nurse is surprised that I am already over 5cm dilated. There is a rush to call in my doctor and prepare the delivery room.
21/03/09 05.30 I am vaguely aware of my doctor arriving and all of a sudden being told to push. I don’t feel ready at all and scream for Darren who is being made to wait outside the door. I am taken into the delivery room and with absolute horror I see them attaching my legs to stirrups with leather straps. Again I am being told to push despite not feeling the natural urge to do this. Darren is finally allowed to be with me again. There were so many people in the room at this point, I guess we were on the changeover of night and day shift. I was aware of the light of the dawn outside the shuttered windows. Suddenly my body seemed ready to get the baby out.
21/03/09 06.10 Rudy Antonio Howat is born weighing 4kg and measuring 56cm in length. He was put into an incubator despite being completely healthy. We were told that it was clinic policy to put babies in the incubator for 2 hours after birth. Why hadn’t I checked out their policy before?! I asked Darren to go and take a photo of him so I could at least have a look at my new baby!
21/03/09 08.30 I hobble out of my bed to find out where my baby is. I wait by the incubator and look in wonder at my new, perfect boy. I ask a nurse when I can take him out and hold him and she says I will have to wait as they have other things to do. Then another woman comes along and asks for my codici fiscale (like a national insurance number) and I tell her she can have it as soon as I could have my baby. I am behaving a bit like a mad female animal who has just given birth (in fact this is what I am!)
21/03/09 09.00 Baby Rudy is in my arms and suckling at my breast. It is one of the most precious moments of my life.
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2 comments:
Venice, what a story! I kow how if feels to have your baby taken away, it makes you feel like a mad person. So glad he is all perfect, and so cute!
Here we are waiting any day really...., though due date is a week away....
Love Tine
I came across your blog and was happy to hear about life in Puglia. My husband and I were married in Brindisi in 1983, and lived in San Vito. We were in the usaf. I was 36 weeks pregnant when we left Italy. We have such wonderful memories of our time spent in San Vito. We hope to visit there in the future.Somthing tells me that things have not changed much since 1985. Congratulations on the new addition to your family.
Cindy/Dayton ,Ohio USA
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