The last few days (since Friday to be specific) have been incredibly busy for Katie and myself. Rather than attempt to recount the amazing newsworthy events of this time on this blog at this late and sleepless hour, I shall just copy and paste an email I sent in to work this morning. Here it is.
Hi everyone,
It is with the greatest pleasure that we proudly announce the arrival of Annie Cecilia Walsh-Smith. At 11am on Saturday, February 13, Annie was forcibly evicted from her one bedwomb place into Operating Theatre 7 at Canberra Hospital. She took it in stride, however, and has gladly made the entire maternity wing of the hospital her home.
The basic information
At time of birth:
Length: 52.5 cm
Weight: 4.00 kg (8 pounds 13 ounces, apparently)
Head circumference: 36.5 cm
Hair: Thick, black hair
Eyes: Blue, but of course, subject to change
Verdict: Most gorgeous baby ever
The Labour (skip if squeamish… really)
The gory details of the actual labour aren’t pretty… even as labour goes. It began at 2am Friday morning, and didn’t end until 11am on Saturday… an epic 33 hour ordeal.
Katie laboured like a chain gang convict: it was hard yakka with no pain relief and no end in sight. For thirty hours (of predictable contractions) she did her best to give birth completely naturally without pain relief. She spent hours in the bath at the birth centre, but alas, a water birth was not to be.
After thirty hours (8am Saturday morning), about halfway through second-stage labour, Annie became stuck. Essentially, she was facing the wall instead of the floor, and wasn’t budging. At this stage, an unassisted birth pretty much became an impossibility. So after Katie received a spinal block, Annie was manually rotated and delivered with forceps at 11am. Katie suffered some quite serious tearing, but it is all healing very nicely now.
In the attached photo, you can see the bruise the forceps left on poor Annie’s face. That bruise has pretty much faded away by now, which is nice. She took it all in stride, however; she didn’t once seem distressed during the birth, and not so much afterwards either.
I got the first long cuddle, as Katie was being stitched up, and it was just brilliant. Just holding her and cooing in her ear was enough to stop her afterbirth screaming, which made me feel like a Godlike father for, like, five seconds (nappy changing has since brought me back down to Earth, though).
A while back, I read about this hormone that gets released when a woman gives birth. Basically what this hormone does is flood her with so many happy endorphins that they actually alter her memory of the labour experience. It doesn’t feel like 33 hours to her. And afterwards, she might say something like, “Oh, labour wasn’t so bad,” even while the surgeon is still stitching her up. Katie got a double-dose of this one, I think – don’t be surprised if/when we announce a second pregnancy toward the end of 2010.
