There are at least two sides to every story, so I wanted to write about the last few days from the mom’s perspective. My ‘due date’ was officially 4 September, but I find the whole concept of thinking your baby will arrive on a given day totally demoralizing. James was six days late, and those days were very difficult for us to manage. From the beginning of this pregnancy we have worked to ignore that date. For the record, at our appointment last Tuesday (28 August) the midwife felt it would be at least another week of waiting—she predicted 6 September in fact.
Last weekend, which feels like a million years ago by the way, our good friend Rick visited from London. Thank goodness he is such an easy guest and flexible traveler. He called several times before arriving just to make sure the baby hadn’t beat him to town. Once in Enschede he was content to just hang out, talk, and go with the flow. We spent most of the time catching up on conversation and taking long walks with the dogs. He will soon venture forth on an around the world ticket, for the most part concentrating on diving sites across the globe on his way back to the states for Christmas. It was especially nice for us to have a visitor to distract us from thinking too much about the impending arrival of baby two.
As I have written on this site, I have been feeling contractions for a number of weeks. On 19 August we even thought the baby might be making an appearance. I had steady contractions that day for hours, but they were not especially long or strong contractions. We had our good friend Kylie pick up James and we set out on a long walk with the dogs hoping to get things rolling, only to have all contractions totally fizzle out. On Monday the 27th of August I began to feel much stronger contractions, but they were not forming into any significant pattern. To be considered “in labor” here they say to look for contractions of about a minute in length coming every 4-5 minutes for one hour. On the 27th we packed James off to school and took a long walk with Rick (who was still in town) and the dogs. The contractions didn’t stop, but they didn’t change in any way either. After that we tried to just proceed through the day in a normal way—though inevitably wondering just when the baby might arrive. Tuesday was much the same. I had a midwife appointment with this year’s summer fill-in (because of the long holiday periods here, the practice hires an extra pair of hands in the summer) who we really liked. I brought along my Bradley Method book to show her what I wanted for the birth, and she was very supportive of our plans. We settled in Tuesday night and things remained the same. At about 10PM I was unable to sleep (because of my own anxiousness), and told Mike I would putter around for an hour to see if things would get moving. I felt if I went to sleep all would stop again, and I didn’t want that to happen. After about 45 minutes of puttering it was clear that labor was not happening. Poor Mike—at this point we were all so tired, and as the bed is downstairs to facilitate the birth, since I was awake it meant he was also awake. I called it a night. As our niece Sophie Gould would say—it was very fussterating.
The next day, Wednesday, began much the same. The same pattern of contractions emerged – strong contractions lasting a minute or occasionally 2 minutes (those are a doozy!), but sometimes 15 minutes apart, sometimes five minutes apart, then nothing for hours. We went about our day, even taking a walk to a nearby toy store. Until now we have been able to take James in and out of a toy store without him really understanding where we were, or that the things inside could be purchased by his parents for him. Those days are over. We parked his carriage in front of the Thomas the tank engine section and proceeded to make one stupid parenting mistake after another. Eventually we escaped the store without major tears and with only the one new toy that we intended to buy. It will be a long time before we casually enter the toy store like that again.
We returned home for our walk, and had our normal evening routine: feed dogs, feed adults, get James ready for bed, bath and then put him down. I was frustrated, and starting to feel again that this day was going to end without a lot of action. I watched some tv, and went to bed at about 8:30 because I was tired from my “puttering” episode the night before. Mike came to bed at about 9:30. I continued to feel strong contractions, which started to wake me up from sleep each time. From 10:00- 11:00 I checked out the clock as each contraction came, and they were spaced exactly 15 minutes apart. They felt stronger, but I was pretty unsure about what to expect. I woke Mike up at 11:00. I told him I did not want to force another sleep deprived night on us all, but that I just didn’t want to watch the clock by myself anymore. He very kindly and graciously woke up, turned on the light, got out of the comfortable bed, and sat down with pen, paper, and clock to record what was happening. Then it began. The contractions remained strong, and were at least one minute long (with the very occasional 2-minute contraction). After about 20 minutes they were regularly appearing at five minute intervals, and Mike made the executive decision that if this continued until 12 midnight we would call the midwife. They did; we called, and found the midwife on call was the summer sub Judith who we’d just seen a few days before. She arrived a bit later and touched my belly as I was having a contraction, then said “I think this will go quickly”. She checked me upon arrival and found I was 5cm dilated, then set up the room for the birth. She was a great help, so supportive and wonderful during the contractions. She could touch my belly and tell when the contraction was lessening—and would tell me it was decreasing. This was WONDERFUL, because of course as the contraction is happening all you can think is “this will never end; this will never end; this will never end”. I was trying hard throughout this whole time to relax my body as prescribed by the Bradley Method. Of course it feels more difficult as the contractions build—even though you are trying to relax in the extreme, your body still feels more and more out of control. But I think considering the circumstances I was able to do the best I could to relax, and help my body do the work it was trying to accomplish. After a few more contractions she checked again and said it was time to push. I just looked at the birth report (because I was not tuned in to things like time during labor). I started the pushing stage at 1:15, and little William was born at 1:31 AM. Whoa! That seems insane when I look at it. I would definitely describe this as a fast and hard labor, but to say it lasted from 9 or 10PM to 1:30AM is I think only part of the story. I truly believe my body was working on and off for at least the 2 days before, if not much longer. The midwife Judith was really supportive of my desire to not lie down during the birth and it worked perfectly—she caught little William and handed him directly to me. I was the one who announced “it’s a boy”, and of course we were all laughing and thanking the midwife and the delivery nurse at that moment. Then I had to lie down to be checked, etc, and William also was given a thorough going-over, Apgar, etc.
All passed with flying colors. I told the midwife I wanted the baby to latch on within the first hour and with William’s assistance we were able to make that happen. We’d had such trouble with James latching on and feeding that this was really important to us, and we were thrilled to have him take to nursing immediately.
The midwife finished up and cleared out by around 3AM and we tried to settle down, crash out, and prepare ourselves for waking up with little Mames at his usual time of 6AM-6:30. Mike went up to get him when he woke, and told him about the baby. I could hear a lot of talking and James repeating “baby- baby- baby” over and over again. Then he came down to meet his little brother. He was enchanted – just thrilled with the idea of a baby, and very eager to hold the baby, kiss the baby, everything. A nice start to what we know will be a lifelong friendship.
In the days since we have been LOVING the kraamvrouw, the caregiver who comes to help clean, troubleshoot baby problems, and help run the household. We signed up for the maximum of 8 days at 5 hours per day, but have been using about 4 hours per day since Saturday. Our house is so small and our schedules so flexible that more than that is not necessary. Our kraamvrouw Wilma is really perfect. Nice and knowledgeable, helpful and so great with both James and William. She and James are such good friends now. William (who we still don’t know exactly what to call—we are trying out all versions of his name right now)—William is so like James physically, but also so different already. Though he is a little smaller than James he has big paws for hands, and his feet seem bigger than James were at this time. We predict now that little Bill will NOT be little for long. He has been eating around the clock from day one. He lost a little the first day, but held steady the second, and gained 120 grams the third. Wilma told us that they typically expect a baby to gain between 100-150 grams by the end of the first ten days. He has been eating so much and so often that both Friday and Saturday nights we were completely sideswiped—we are out of practice, and it was only last night that we hit the rhythm of wake up/feed/change/feed/put back down. Last night William slept in increments of two or three hours, and so we all slept relatively well. It shows. We were all a little wiped out by Sunday, and Wilma very thoughtfully offered to take James into town while mom, dad, and baby slept. What a brilliant idea and just the right thing. Officially here are the weight stats, which make us very proud of our little guy:
Thursday: 3040 grams
Friday: 2720
Saturday: 2720
Sunday: 2840
Monday: 2900
