well, what a long day it was yesterday.
april 3rd 2006
00:00 after six or so hours of contraction-like non-contractions peta begins labour.
02:30 cole somehow manages to sleep through the pain until about half-two in the morning, by which time the contractions were quite heavy, quite regular and quite close together (about five minutes apart).
05:30 peta soldiers on but after a few hours the contractions were proving quite hard to manage, we away to the hospital in livingston where peta could get some nice pain relief.
08:30 after a spot on the trace machine to measure the babies heartbeat and mother’s contractions, peta was admitted to a delivery room where she stayed for several hours.
16:00 after some morphine and much panting of breath, peta was fully dilated and ready for the big push, so to speak.
17:00 after an hour or so of pushing the baby was still not with us. it was well on it’s way but labour was proving too labourious for poor peta.
17:30 the midwife decides that she should consult with the doctors as there was no way this baby was going to come out of its own accord. they elected that the best option would be to get peta into theatre where they could try to deliver with forceps, but if that was not possible they could go for a caesarian.
peta was taken into theatre for a spinal anaesthetic whilst cole got scrubbed up in a fetching blue paper ensemble. it was fifteen minutes before i could go in and join peta and suffice to say those were the longest fifteen minutes of my life. much pacing and over-active imagination later, cole and peta were in theatre getting ready for the delivery of the wee yin.
18:04 after the intervention of what seemed, for all intensive purposes, to be a large pair of barbecue tongs, bairn was delivered and helf aloft for cole to check out the bits for himself and inform peta of whether she had had a girl or boy, and as you all well know by now it was a beautiful boy.
bairn was passed to cole who succeeded in not fumbling him long enough to get some quality time, although being in scrubs skin to skin was not on the cards.
it was immediately apparent that this was not a wee fella, and why peta had had such difficulty in labour. at 9lb 11½ oz (that half will be all important later in life!) Gethin (as we had almost instantaneously decided to call him) was a whopper. through the gunk we could see that he had lovely fair hair.
the anaesthetist (by jove there were a lot of people in that theatre, i reckon at least ten. wierdly, i had always imagined that operation theatres were dark places with big bright lights. in fact it was altogether very bright indeed! i digress) started playing with young Gethin’s hand. this is where cole got very scared. you see Gethin came out quite purple, as apparently most babies are when born. something to do with the circulation getting going (bearing in mind they have been dependent on the mother’s heart since that wee sperm first broke on through to the other side). i remember seeing his wee fist and thinking how purple, almost lilac, his fingers were. anyway, the anaesthetist came over to do the googley, googley stuff with our fella and said something about the breathing of the boy. Gethin was rushed out of the room and we were left wondering what was going on? where is our son? why has almost everyone else run out of the room with him? it is amazing how quickly these kinds of questions come to the mind in such circumstances. it seemed like an age before we heard the sound of a crying baby come from the next door but come it did. such a relief!
cole got to handle young gethin a while longer whilst the surgeons tidied up the mess he had made on the way out, before going outside for a much needed cigarette and to inform the exepectant parents, siblings and god-parents. rather bizarrely, after what had been a quite lovely day, upon cole popping outside to make his calls the heavens clouded over and a short, sudden hail storm appeared. most surreal!
19:00 some brief phone calls later and peta was in the recovery room and we all got to spend some quality time together. gethin was delighted to receive his first visitors as ryan and shelley, who had patiently waited and waited since lunchtime, got to see their god-son for the first time. let’s hope it is not long before he gets to meet his other godparents, meli and jo.
21:00 cole takes ryan and shelley to the train station. peta and gethin catch up on some much needed and well-earned shut eye.
23:00 after a quite long day, peta and gethin get to finally go up to the maternity ward and get a good nights rest.
april 4th 2006
00:00 cole gets home very tired, quite hungry and over the moon. sleep……
This here blog is in honour of the esteemed Gethin William Albert Henley Esq, 5162 days old, who was born on 3rd April 2006 at 18:04 weighing a healthy 9lb 11½oz.
Daddy Cole is enjoying a career as a web developer whilst mummy Peta is juggling working part-time with being an all-round top mum