Our Angel Arrives!

This is a post i began a while back and didnt get to finish it. So here it is...
It's the week before Christmas and I am SO uncomfortable! I am crossing my legs, resting as much as possible with two little ones, not in our own home, at this ridiculously hectic time of the year! I do not want this baby to come before Christmas! Or actually on Christmas day!!

BUT.... This little baby has plans of it's own! Typical, and no amount of mind power and willing it to stay inside work. I have 'the show' on Thursday 22nd December when I wake up. NO! I cry. I don't want to miss out on Christmas with my other two precious little people! Friday 23rd, still going ok, I say ok but feel like the baby could just pop right out, my legs can't go together, I can't sit down. Still Christmas presents to finish off. By 5pm, I'm at the health shop getting rescue remedy and arnica and magnesium, yup, I'm now preparing to have the baby. I try reading jacob a bedtime story, nope can't sit own, especially on the floor! Jacob in bed, now for Abby, story time, ouch, I can't lie down either. Now out to the lounge, I'm still thinking that if I just lie, packed with pillows and panadol, all will be ok, I'll last til Christmas! 8.30pm, I feel a clunk/pop kind of feeling, I expect to feel a trickle or a gush, but nothing, but more regular aches. Sam and dad are out the back drinking, I grump and snap at them, I now know they had no idea that I was in labour, though I was in denial, by now, I knew I had to come to terms with the fact that this baby was well on it's way! More tears, and then a steady determination. I was having this baby by morning, I was not going to endure a long labour, or have it spread over to Christmas day. I had tea, a shower and lied on the bed while mum and sam packed my hospital bag. Contractions were irregular, in strength and time between, and were like this throughout the night. We dozed in between, sometimes 5 mins sometimes 20 mins apart. Sam kept in touch with the midwife throughout the night. There was a couple of contractions in the early hours, where I panicked, I felt that bearing down feeling, but then the next contraction would be a gentle one. By 5am, I still didn't know if it was the right time to go to hospital, but we thought we'd get out before the kids woke, save trauma ... For me and the kids. Not one contraction on the 10 min drive to the hospital, but once we hit the car park and I stood up, i had one there and then, and walking down the corridor to the midwife, and in the room (room 11). Regular more intense contractions. I was feeling bearing down urges, I never really felt that with my other two. To the labour room we go, shower is amazing, but I have to be standing and swaying and sam had to have the water spraying on my lower back. I can't sit down, the birthing ball is horrendous (whereas with Jacobs labour it was my best friend!) I'm back on the bed, it's 7.30 and the midwives are doing a handover. Sherry reckons that I'll be done by 9, I don't get my hopes up, leonies bets are for 8.25. I breathe in the gas and out with the pain. Leonie breaks my waters, ther is meconium, it smells, sam gently rubs my arm, his touch soothes me, I know and feel his strength and support. I breathe in and I breathe out. I am so completely focussed. I am having this baby. This is NOT going to drag on. This is business time. Another nurse comes in to help, she holds my leg, she was the same nurse that was with my grandma when she was on her deathbed for our wedding. This nurse is an angel, and I sense that she is with us for a reason. I push, oh god I push, I breathe and I focus, I listen to the midwife and my body. My body is doing this all by itself it knows what to do. The babies head crowns, oh. My. Goodness it burns, it burns and the burning continues for what seems like forever! The midwife says the other nurse, 'doctors wouldn't normally let a mum crown this long', the control and inner strength it took for me not to push, I cannot now fathom how I did this, and then finally she let's me push! I slightly remember a little action from the midwife and then up on my chest my baby was placed, this precious little baby whom I have fed, slept with, protected for months, here you are on my chest, and you are blue, not pink, and you smell, oh the unpleasant smell, and you just do not move or breathe. I rub you, and talk to you, but you do not respond, the helping nurse starts to rub you, and then the midwife frantically cuts our cord and takes you to the little bed thing, leaving me with cord blood all over my chest arm and neck. She's ventilating you and I tell sam to go over to where you are, as if by being there, you will know, and will breathe for yourself. But as much as I keep telling him to go to you, he continues to gravitate back to me, he cannot watch as she pumps the air into you. Still, the doctor has not arrived. Then the midwife frantically but calmly, if that is possible instructs the helping nurses to pull on the cord and for me to deliver the placenta. Which happens very easily, it just slips away with a gentle push. Another nurse, who helped nurse Jacob with his circumcision and then his pneumonia stands beside me and distracts me, she rubs my arm and asks me questions about what I dont remember. And still you are being ventilated. 3 minutes later, you take your first own breath. A sweet sweet, high pitch squeal that brings sighs of relief and tears of joy, from the nurses, the midwife and sma and I. You go pink and you keep squealing. And THEN the doctor waltzes in! She checks you, you seem to only want to turn your head to the left. It will not turn right. You were delivered with shoulder dystosia, perhaps that was the way you were twisted and pulled to get you out? You are wrapped and brought to me, my precious little angel. I am sore, so sore, I don't remember feeling so sore after Jacob. I have a small tear, an absolute miracle that I didn't tear more or need an episieotomy after abby's 3rd degree tear, many thanks to the midwife for controlling me through the phase of the great burn! She leaves it to heal by itself and waltzes out again. I feed you, you take to it perfectly, a natural breastfeeder with beautiful little lips.
So that is the beginning of your life miss Matilda, our precious little Milly. Born 24.12.11 weighing 9pm 1oz.