It’s another birth story.

Friday 1st August 2014.
One week ago today I experienced another defining moment in my life as my awesome wife delivered to me another son. This is the story of how it played out.

If you’ve got children then you’ll likely understand how, for the last few weeks , sleep has been at an absolute premium, and I’ve been getting quite used to being woken during the night by my wife shuffling to find a comfy position, or stumbling to the loo again. I’d been on red alert for the last few days and was planning on working from home on the Friday but in the early hours, 2.46am to be precise, I woke up to find Helen leaning over at her side of the bed. “Are you alright love?” I asked. “My waters have just broken,” came the reply. Game on!

I had the timer on for the contractions and they were coming pretty quick, quicker than I expected. And they were already showing signs of becoming stronger quite quickly too. We got the TENS machine on the go, remembering that this gadget was quite a comfort with our first born, if only as a distractor from the pain. I spoke to the hospital and they were like, “yeah, don’t rush down because it’ll probably be a while before things happen and you don’t want to be just sitting around here waiting.” We called the in-laws, who came down to look after our sleeping cub, and to be there when he woke up. We pretty much set off straight away, as the contractions were getting stronger and stronger.

At the hospital Helen went to get checked over by a midwife, (who to be honest came across as less than enthusiastic at 4.30 in the morning). On completing the observation the call went out to fetch a wheelchair as we needed to head round to the delivery suite. “Is the big water birth suite available?” Helen asked. The midwife wasn’t sure but told us, “I’m not sure there’ll even be time to fill it!” ‘I’m sure there will, lets try,” Helen told her as the wheelchair was put in motion. As we got there, the taps were turned on and the gas and air delivered.

Funny moment as I was unhooking Helen from the TENS happened when I started to peel the pads from her back. She yelped out, making me think they were stuck more than I thought, and had hurt as I pulled them off. As it turned out, I’d accidentally turned the machine back on and hit the Super Burst button, sending a big shock into her back!

Helen had only been in the birthing pool a couple of minutes when the need to push came and quite literally 40 minutes later our new baby was born. Compared to when the first cub came and she was in the pool for 3.5 hours, this was a positive sprint finish.

The weigh in came and he came out at 9lb 3oz, a little smaller than his big brother, but still a decent size. The next job was to think of a name, as we’d only arrived with two definite names, and they were both girls names.

We were home by 2.30pm and settling into life back at Pride Rock.

I didn’t think life could be more complete than it already seemed but being the dad of 2 sons just fills me with pride and I can’t wait to see what’s around the corner for my pride.