The story - part one

Started composing this post about a week ago and still haven't got it finished, so thought I'd publish this as "the story so far"...

Three (nearly four now!) weeks ago...

Mrs T's Mum was here for the weekend, helping us with the big spring clean in preparation for Flicker's "forthcoming" arrival. She arrived on the Thursday, and we spent all day Friday and Saturday sorting and tidying, scrubbing and polishing. Mrs T's brother was also here, working on some of his songs (and getting out of his flat while his girlfriend entertained some of her friends). Mrs T went to bed at about ten, tired and getting ready for one more day's solid cleaning on the Sunday. Her Mum was tucked up in the guest room, her brother in the sitting room. I was still up, wasting time as always on the internet. About midnight I heard Mrs T get up and go to the loo; fairly routine stuff in late pregnancy. Then, twenty minutes later, she called through. "T! T! Come here".

She was seated on the bed, looking a little bemused. And very calm, it must be said. "I think somethings happened." And sure enough, she was sitting in a puddle; her waters had well and truly broken. (Thank goodness we'd already put a waterproof mattress protector on!) That was the first we knew something was going on. She'd felt no contractions, no other signs that labour was imminent. We decided to call V, our independent midwife friend. She suggested we phone the hospital, and thought the hospital would ask us to pop down in the morning to be checked out. The hospital said we might as well come in straight away...

We were expecting to come straight back home, but packed our bits into the car just in case, and had to let Mrs T's Mum and brother know we were off so they didn't wake to find us missing.

At the hospital they checked Mrs T's blood pressure, urine, and fluid, with no sign of any infection, and Flicker's heartbeat, which was steady at 150. Sure enough they sent us home as expected, but the policy is that once your waters have broken they'll induce labour after 72 hours if things haven't started by themselves. We now knew were were having this baby this week. In the car on the way home, Mrs T began to feel something. They'd started.

We got home (to find Mrs T's mum and brother had been up doing the dishes!) and went back to bed. V had said that if possible we should try to get some sleep "between contractions". Yeah, right. Not a chance. She couldn't stay laying done, let alone asleep. Up onto all fours every ten or fifteen minutes or so. I started timing them, making notes - getting excited. By half past five we couldn't hang on any longer, and phoned V again. (She's a very good friend!) Contractions were 45-50 seconds long, about seven minutes apart - if I recall correctly. She said we should get back down to the hospital, and warned me that she might not make it in time to help Mrs T deliver as she was teaching all day.

Back to the hospital...

(To be continued...)