Alfie Touches Down!

The story began on Wednesday night at about 9.30pm when Johanna started to have her first contractions, they got stronger through the night and I got about an hour and a half of sleep whilst Johanna stayed up all night, the midwife was called at 5am on Thursday morning as the contractions were about 2 minutes apart but we were only 2cm dilated. We then had a very tough day as Johanna spent the whole day with painful yet sporadic contractions. At 9pm after nearly 24 hours of contractions we called the midwife and she came round, only to find we were only about 3cm dilated, Johanna was getting exhausted and we decided to head into the hospital at that point as what was supposed to be happening was not. We got a room at the delivery suite at about 1am Friday morning, Johanna got a a shot of pethidin (?) and managed to sleep for a few hours. At around 5am we found out that the reason for the long period of contractions which were not really working was the fact that Alfie was facing the wrong way he had his back to Johanna's back and therefore his head was not applying enough pressure to Johanna's cervix. Anyway Johanna did start active labour at around 5.30am and it was hoped he might turn. However, he did not and because Johanna was tiring after 36 hours of contractions and no sleep for even longer than that she was given a drip to help induce labour, Alfie during this time was doing ok. The drip worked and Johanna started having closer more intense contractions. However, he still didn't really want to come out and his heart rate started to increase. Johanna started to get feverish, they called in the doctors who immediately said we needed to go into theatre as Alfie was getting distressed and Johanna's temperature had risen quite dramatically to 39.1c. We were wheeled off to the theatre and it was explained that he was either going to come out by forceps or C-section, Johanna gave a couple of massive pushes and the doctor said he was coming out, she grabbed him with the forceps and out he came and was plonked on johanna's tummy. A little purple thing he screamed for a while before settling down. Johanna needed to be sorted out and I took Alfie off to the recovery suite. Johanna came in a little later and we all sat around as a family for the first time...tired, relieved and elated. here are a couple of pics of him in the recovery suite...the marks you see are from the forceps.