We're off to visit a friend in London tomorrow. Since we left five years ago we've been to London twice, read into that what you will.... as long as you read into 'London? Pah'.
We were at our weekly 'parentcraft' class last night and watched a two day old baby getting a bath, it was brilliant, can't believe it's taken me this long to see how amazing babies are.
I also learned a bit about Ventouse and Forceps birth..... ow. Respect to Mothers everywhere. There was a picture of a baby that had been delivered by the ventouse method, poor little thing! Basically this method involved using something that resembles a sink plunger (there's a a fancier looking one now but the principle's the same), sticking it on the unborn babies head and pulling (it might require a bit more finesse than that). Then end result of birth by this method is a healthy baby which will look like a conehead for about three days. Seriously, it's not a little bump on top it's like a pink bowler hat without the brim.
Forceps on the other hand require mum having,um, a snip in the lower regions to allow room to get the forceps and the baby out. Once again, respect to mums everywhere.
Olivia is under instructions to leap out not touching the sides.
6 comments:
Laugh out loud - excellent stuff!
Very VERY cool.
Did you get shown pictures of the placenta (spl?). I don't get how people can eat that! Tin of dog food anyday, but that!?!?!?
If you've got a good 'parentcraft' group (they tend to put you with your demographic) think about staying in touch after the births. It's great for those first few months where mum and baby (or indeed dad and baby) need to get out of the house. you then have a social support network, and another house to drop in on where people have got babies too.
We're here in Notts and we didn't really know a great deal of people (having moved up from London) so parentcraft was very handy.
No placenta pictures yet - and no plans to eat it, I'll leave that sort of thing to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Funnily enough I have eaten dog food though, when I was younger, when I thought it might turn me into a dog.
The parentcraft folk are all friendly but that's been it so far apart from one couple so we're hoping to stay in touch. Notts was great as I worked at a big shop so there was lots of people to get on with, not so in Lancaster, so far we've one met a couple of people. Fortunately our new neighbours are nice and have a girl who's willing to babysit.
Hey Paul
In theory you've got the easy part because you don't have to give birth, unfortunately for that very reason you can suffer more because no one ever tells you what's happening. (Birth horror story coming up). When Moll was born we ended up, after 26 hours, with her still only 9cm dilated at midnight on halloween. The decision was made to do a ceasarean. I was left hanging around with no idea what was going on for over an hour while they prepped her, imagining the worst due to watching to much ER. Watching four nurses play tug of war with Karen's stomach muscles and a glob of blood cut a perfect arc across the operating room and then one extract a tiny blue creature didn't exactly put my mind at ease either.
On the upside, while Karen suffered through all this and slept off the epidural I got to hold Molly first so it wasn't all bad.
Apparently the screaming is optional according to our 3rd midwife of the day. She said the screamers are usually the ones who've watched too much too many medical programmes. And yes she was a woman and had given birth to three children.
You two are in for such a cool time.
Well, my misses was a non-screamer. not a peep, and we're not scientologists. She said afterwards she didn't want to scream because she thought that screaming would only distress the baby... a fair point. She did it in 13 hrs (a good length of time) on gas and air and the regular painkillers but no epidural. She fell asleep for about an hour part way through it all and I even sat and read a book (which means its not always as frantic as tv shows make out).
We had a student nurse in the room with us who helped tremendously. I have some basic medical knowledge (my mum's a nurse and a health visitor now) but our midwife was generally very informative. But I think that may have been because there was a student in the room, you never know.
The moment he was born though is something I will never forget. My world changed at that very instant. Love split like an atom, I could see it manifested, intense love devided into two people. It was incredible.
One heck of a rush.
What I realised as the the parentcraft person apologised for ending the evening with talk of forceps and cutting was that if the story ends with a baby then there are no horror stories. Easy for me to say not giving birth but Rebecca agreed with me! It maybe be straightforward or it may take time but we're looking forward to it so much, and hearing from two very happy dads helps a lot too.
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