Everyone has heard birth horror stories, emergency c-sections, incredibly long labours, and the dreaded third-degree stitches. Ours wasn’t amazing, but in my opinion, it wasn’t too bad either.

It was a Sunday morning and we had suitcases and bags packed expecting to reach the hospital and get the process started by about 9-10 am. As I mentioned in the previous article Hannah had preeclampsia so needed to be induced at 37 weeks and today was induction day. We phoned the King’s maternity ward to find out when we should arrive and were told that we would be called back, fair enough. So we waited. An hour, two hours, three hours went by, so I called again. Margret, the midwife who answered the call told me they were waiting for a neonatal bed to be available after the doctors did their rounds, since our child had a health condition there would be a high chance this bed will be needed, so we waited again. Eventually, we were called back. We had the all-clear and got to the hospital around 15:20, so not the between 9 and 10 am we were originally expecting but, late is better than never.

We were shown into Hannah’s room on the fourth floor and a midwife called Olivia came in to check she had everything she needed, also see how dilated she was. 2cm, which wasn’t bad for someone who hadn’t been induced chemically yet. Also enough to have Hannah’s waters broken manually she thought, but she went to get a second opinion.

Emily, a doctor came in and suggested the cervix should be softened instead with a pessary, which is a tampon shaped device that goes behind the cervix and slowly releases chemicals. These usually have a 10-30% chance of working in the first 24 hours so we weren’t expecting our baby to be born until Tuesday. We were in for the long haul, or so we thought.

Very soon after the pessary Hannah started to feel some slight cramping pain in her stomach, we weren’t sure what they were. We thought they were the initial period-esk pains before a contraction. After getting something to eat in the hospital’s Costa we were met by Lydia. A midwife who was the sister of Eric, the man who married my mother the day before. To help speed up the pregnancy she encouraged Hannah to do as much walking as possible. We walked down the stairs for the fourth floor to the reception, to M&S to get some drinks, then back to the lobby area, then back to M&S, then back up to the fourth. Her heart was in the right place but it was difficult to see my wife hobbling around the hospital in pain. I tried my best to end it but she was very adamant.

After the painful walks, we went back to Hannah’s room and were greeted by Jeralyn, a new midwife as Hannah went to sit on a yoga ball. Some final checks were made to Hannah’s blood pressure and I was asked at around 20:30 kindly to leave the hospital. During covid times husbands were only allowed to visit between the hours of 2 and 8 pm so, I said my goodbyes and drove home. After getting something to eat and reflecting on the day I went to sleep not expecting to get up until the following morning.

At exactly 00:14 the next day I was woken up by a very brief call from Hannah who sounded like she was out of breath after throwing up. She said she is over 4cm and I needed to make my way to the hospital as soon as I could. Wow, that was quick, I thought in my barely awake mind. I got up, put the same clothes on I wore the day before, and started to pack a bag. A frozen bottle of water, a homemade ice pop, a laptop, some snacks, and a towel to wrap the cold things in. I didn’t know how long I was going to be in the hospital for. Assuming I would be there for a long, long time I proceeded to order an Uber which was more difficult than expected. For some reason, the app wasn’t letting me set my destination so I had to manually set a pointer to the King’s car park on Google maps.

When the driver arrived I asked him to double-check the location was okay just to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes and luckily, he got sent the correct location, so we set off. It’s amazing how empty the roads are super early in the morning. The journey was quick, I jumped out of the car and lightly jogged to the hospital mask in hand. Once I got to the fourth floor and buzzed in I realised I didn’t have a key piece of information, what room Hannah was in. The lady behind the desk asked for her name then said it would take a while to find her room. Just as she started going through the computer a long-haired midwife called Georgina swung the doors opened the doors and asked if I was Oliver, when I responded she rushed me into Hannah’s room as quickly as she could and I saw my wife giving birth.

In the time I woke up and got to the hospital Hannah had reached 10cm and has started pushing. I only got to the room around 00:34! She was sat up at a 45-degree angle on a hospital bed with her legs spread apart and two midwives by her side. Georgina, who ushered me in was in her right and Katherine, who was at Hannah’s base was checking everything was okay with the birth. As I walked in she pointed towards the top part of our daughter’s head poking out of Hannah, she had so much hair. I couldn’t believe all this was happening so quickly. I grabbed my wife’s free hand, the other was holding the gas and air mask. Kissed her forehead, and handed her the ice-pop I packed with me which she greatly appreciated.

Both midwives were encouraging Hannah to push her hardest when the contractions came, then to take a break when they went away. Hannah looked like she was in a crazy amount of pain, taking in gas and air whenever she pushed. She had taken so much she seemed out of it, saying random things in between contractions. I didn’t know what to do just standing there, I felt like a spare part. Then something went wrong. After a few hard pushes, our daughter’s heart rate began to drop, which meant she was in distress. The midwife’s needed to act fast. They enlisted the help of another person, Katherine who seemed to be a more senior midwife, and a handful of other healthcare professionals. Katherine asked Hannah to do one last big push, she tried but it wasn’t as big as they expected so they decided to give her an episiotomy. A cut into the vaginal wall to make more space for the baby to come out. The more senior Kat was instructing the junior Kat throughout the whole process. The incision was made very quickly, but I’m sure it felt like a long and painful process for Hannah. After another large push our daughter’s head came out, that was the hardest bit. Soon afterwards the rest of the body came out and I say my daughter for the first time.

Her skin was pale bluish-grey. She was covered in all sort of fluids and she had loads of hair, lots more than I expected. Also, she had long nails which is something else I didn’t expect. It was beautiful, magical, but also scary. She didn’t cry, or scream, she was completely silent and she wasn’t breathing. They placed her on Hannah’s chest as soon as she was born which she refused immediately and asked her to bee looked after by a member of staff. This request was in the birth plan but I guess they assumed all mothers want to hold their child as soon as they’re born. I didn’t know who to focus my attention on, my wife on gas and air in the most amount of pain she has ever been in her life or my daughter, who was being rubbed with a towel by a nurse who was trying to get her to breathe.

After about 5 minutes of rubbing, an incubator was wheeled in from the neo-natal unit. Our daughter’s complexion had turned less blue which meant there was blood moving around her and she did start to breathe but not properly. It was very fast as if she were in distress, and her stomach was being pushed in and out exposing her rigs, this didn’t look normal to me but I didn’t know what to expect from a newborn. The nurse looking after her told me they weren’t too happy with her breathing so a few more checks needed to be made at the neo-natal unit which we sort of expected because of her condition, good thing they had a bed prepped from the morning.

Back to Hannah who had honestly done such a great job of pushing our child out without any epidural as well as having a mini surgery down below. I couldn’t be more proud of her at that moment but the midwives weren’t quite finished yet. They gave Hannah an injection in her top left thigh to encourage contractions so that the placenta could come out, this was easier for Hannah than the birth (I think), so she calmed herself down by eating the ice pop I brought to her. The process was fairly quick and the once empty metal bowl beside me was filled with blood and the placenta that was giving Hannah preeclampsia. The student Kat accidentally dropped it over Hannah’s left leg which was a somewhat comedic moment for me watching her scurrying to pick it up and Hannah still a bit out of it asking what had suddenly made her leg feel so warm. After that tension rose as both Katerines began the process of stitching Hannah up.

The student Katherine continually asked the more experienced Katherine question on how to stitch the wound. This didn’t fill Hannah and me with confidence but there was not much we could do about it. Maybe in her next birth plan (if we have another child), Hannah could write no student midwives depending on what sort of pregnancy it is.

After a while, it was just Hannah, the student Katherine and I in the room, it felt different, much emptier and quieter for obvious reasons. Our midwife was making a few notes on the computer and I honestly can’t remember what we talked about at this stage but I do know we were waiting for the go-ahead from the neonatal team to see Nova, our daughter. When we did, Hannah was too weak to walk so I went to see her.

The room was dark, loud, and there were so many beeping sounds. I looked around lost and started reading the files outside each incubator until I saw the one for Baby Bray. Our daughter was in there with a healthy skin colour, moving around and crying. I wanted to touch her, to lift her up, but I couldn’t. A staff member came up to me, asked if I was her parent, I replied. She then asked if I consented to them using a dummy on her. I said it was okay and they quickly put a green dummy in her mouth which stopped her crying in an instant. I sat in a plastic yellow seat close-by and starred at her. She had so many cabled and wires attached to her nose, chest and fingers. I didn’t know what they were all for but I’m glad that she was breathing and moving. So many things could have gone wrong and we thank God it didn’t. I am super grateful for all those who had prayed for us, friends, family, and church members. The child that we had wanted for so many years was before my eyes.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the worst of it and we had to stay in the hospital for much longer than we expected without our child close-by.

Photo by Christian Bowen from Unsplash.