Nicholas’s Story - Monday 28th and Tuesday 29th July 2008

Having woken up in the hospital and realizing that my waters were still leaking I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably in for the day, but although my anxiety levels where a bit high, I still had no idea whether or not the baby was going to come early. At 10h00 the consultants on duty decided that due to the fact that my temp was still up, either I or the baby had some kind of infection and it was going to be necessary to induce labour and deliver the baby sooner rather than later. At this point I admit to being terrified and feeling incredibly alone as Simon had had to stay with the children who are on summer holiday so I was handling all the news on my own and feeling increasingly apprehensive about delivering a premature baby.

Simon arrived at the hospital shortly after and I made contact with Kerry and Rob to find out if they would be able to have the children for me for the day so that Si could stay with me for the labour…once again, these new and incredibly special friends came to the fore and Kerry fetched Megan and Phil from the hospital just after 11h00 when I was wheeled into delivery for the induction to begin.

Needless to say, the time had now come to contact South Africa and start letting people know what was going on….Lin immediately set up a prayer chain for me, and just knowing that there were so many people out there pulling for us made the experience that much easier to bare. On what had to be the hottest day we have experienced in England so far, I laboured on for around 9 hours before it became apparent that the induction wasn’t working as well as it should and my cervix was still only dilated 2.5cm. Up went the drip and in went the epidural and we continued through the night with me becoming increasingly anxious about the outcome of the delivery.

By 7am I was only 4cm dilated and becoming weak due to lack of food and as my labour wasn’t progressing very fast there was some concern about my energy levels so Simon was dispatched to the petrol station across the road from the hospital to buy me some boiled sweets….needless to say, Murphy and his sick sense of humour, no sooner had Simon left but my contractions started to increase and I began feeling an increasing urge to push. At this stage the epidural had been tapped right off so that I could feel everything, and girlfriends it is nasty, but you go somewhere in your head and it really isn’t nearly as bad as they make it out to be in the movies. After a quick examination it was determined that I was now 10 cm dilated and Simon was phoned and told to get a move on so he didn’t miss the main event.

Unfortunately my contractions suddenly seemed to disappear and no matter how much I pushed, nothing was happening…about 1.5 hours later it became apparent that the baby was in distress and we were informed that the situation had turned into an emergency, my epidural was converted to a full spinal block and I was taken to theater where the consultant intended to attempt a venteuse or suction cup delivery before converting to a C-Section. From somewhere I managed to find the strength to give three final pushes, although I have to be honest by this stage I was struggling to stay awake and don’t have much memory of what was going on.

Nicholas John Robertson was born at 10h15 by venteuse delivery, weighing 2.67 kgs and scored a 1 minute apgar of 6/10 and a 5 minute score of 9/10. All I can tell you about the moment is that I felt terrified, was my baby going to be okay, or was he born too early and weak and what would I do if something happened to him…needless to say, my fears were in vain and although Nicholas was transferred to the Special Care Baby Unit and administered with antibiotics for an infection he is a very strong little boy and before the evening had been down graded from high care to normal care with in the unit.

I unfortunately wasn’t quite as strong and experienced a bit of a collapse shortly after the delivery….I think that it was due to pure exhaustion and possible a bit of a reaction to the spinal block but I was literally unable to wake up for around 4 hours after the delivery despite the best efforts of the nursing staff…again, this luckily didn’t last and I was reunited with my baby boy in the SCBU ward before the end of the day.