Who Needs Sleep?

Here we are again back to sleepless nights and neverending nappies.

Yes, that's right MC's parents are visiting once more.

I was back at work on Friday and had to go through the mind numbing task of working my way through the hundred odd emails I had been sent while I had been away, as well as the hundred odd other emails that had been sent to tell me my account was over its size limit. Yes, perhaps if you hadn't sent me all of those I wouldn't be quite as over my email limit as I was. At least it felt good to delete them all.

But, enough about work- Thank you for all of the congratulations.
We spent Tuesday ringing up the hospital to see when a bed was going to be free for MC to go in to be induced. Eventually we went in at about 4pm and settled ourselves in to our little corner of the room where you have to wait before you go on to the birthing suite.
There were four beds in total in the room and the only thing that seperates you all is a rather tasteful orange curtain so if you're not carefull everybody can hear what you're saying.
There was a lady in the bed on the other side of the room who was telling the nurse about the first time she had given birth when the baby had broken her pelvis and left her in traction. Ouch. Not what you want to hear. Her partner had some sort of quiz book or something with him (at least I assume so. Otherwise it means he kept suddenly asking random questions out loud which is just be odd). One of the questions he came out with was something along the lines of 'Which prog-rock group took their name from Tolkiens "Silmarillion"?' to which he answered himself 'It must be Genesis.'
You see, what you've done there is confused epic fantasy with the bible. Easy mistake to make, but I think you'll find the actual answer is, more obviously, Marillion. At least that's what I wanted to say but I just giggled and hid behind my orange curtain. And this was before the nitrous oxide had been brought out.

From what we could hear the woman in the bed next to us had already been in once to try and induce the baby and today was her second day without any luck. To help deal with the obvious stress this must be causing her and her partner kept nipping out every two minutes for a cigarrette. Not sure that was the best plan but each to there own. Every time they walked by you got a nice whiff of ash that not even a curtain could protect you from.

There was also the comedy moment when one woman (clearly enjoying the happy gas) was heard to shout out 'It was you trying to get my knickers off that got me in to this mess in the first place!'
I wonder how embarrased that poor guy was (not much actually, I had the curtain to keep my anonymity. Maybe that is what the curtains are actually for).

MC had been having contractions off and on for a few days and once they started to induce these started to become stronger and more frequent. We still had to wait a good few hours for the next stage, so it wasn't until about 11.45pm that they decided MC was ready. Once this had been done they wanted to hook her up to the machine again that they use to measure the babies heartbeat and the rate of the contractions to make sure everything was okay. It turned out that the baby had decided this slightly crucial moment was the ideal time for a nap so MC had to move around a bit to try and wake him. MC managed to convince the midwife that the baby was definately ready to arrive so the midwife decided to take us down to the delivery suite, bringing the machine with her as she intended to hook MC up to the monitor again once we were there. MC (possibly because she was determined not to go on the uncomfortable monitor again) has to stop in the corridor because the baby decides that finally, after two weeks of waiting, the game is up and he might as well surrender and come out. We managed to get MC in to the delivery room and up on to the bed then out pops NF at 12.30am Wednesday with the midwife only just managing to get ready in time.
And if you think I made that sound ridiculously easy- believe me, that was the way MC made it look.

MC and NF were eventually able to come home later that evening. My mum collected us from the hospital and then my whole family came over with our 2 year old daughter to meet her new brother. NF was sat in his little car seat with a teddy next to him to give to his sister as a present. GF came in, made an exclamation of surprise, grabbed the teddy and then in a moment of exceptional cuteness started to tuck the teddy in with her baby brother, under his little blanket.