delivery

15 minutes old

I warned you that this would be a page of TMI. This is your last chance, back away from the blog.

That said, I’m not going to go into the gory details about the delivery. Enough of you have asked that I’ll give an account that covers your questions.

After carrying him for 42 weeks, I went in to be induced at 21:00 on Wednesday night the 16th. They inserted one tablet on my cervix to cause it to soften. Contractions started at about 01:00 on Thursday. Extreme pain by 04:30. I was alone in hospital with only a TENS machine and paracetamol: no bath, no comfort. Pethidine helped but only for about an hour. Because I was in a room alone, they let me call Paul at home and he came. The minute he arrived, I started to deal with the pain better. 3cm dilated by 06:00, so I didn't have to have a drip. Admitted to delivery and given an epidural and I became a human being again, praise modern medicine, at 7:30. Dr. Robert A. Hingson, Dr. Waldo B. Edwards, and Dr. James L. Southworth are credited with developing the technique, and if I had known their names then, I would have tried to persuade Paul to change his name from Timothy James to Robert Waldo James. Began hard labour at 17:00 and delivered at 18:16. No episiotomy. What a rush of relief when his head finally came through.