six weeks, six days…

late!  what’s the difference?!

tally was born six days “late”, or after his predicted due date, and i’m getting around to writing the story of it six weeks later.

anyways, it was a fabulous birth (that we’ll not be repeating!) and perhaps six weeks of contemplation on it has been a good thing.

tuesday evening six weeks ago i was feeling sort of ill.  not able to put a finger on it properly i just said to paul i feel yucky and i’m going to bed.  i woke again at 10:30pm and was in no doubt i was experiencing contractions.  as i lay there smiling to myself, leaving paul to rest more, i did think that i also awoke at 10:30pm with contractions with percy.  48 hours after that event she was born.  so was i in for another two days of overwhelming emotion, pain, confusion and elation?  as it turned out- no!

i woke paul at midnite to ask him to time the contractions.  they ranged about a small variation between 5 and 15 minutes apart and 30 seconds to 60 seconds long.  he dozed off again.  at 2am i woke him again for more timing.  more around 6-7 minutes and 40 seconds to 90 seconds.  at 3am i said i wanted to call our doula as it would take her up to an hour to get to our house.  as it was it took her less than half an hour- good run at that time in the morning from lane cove to erko.  i had primed her with an sms message before going to bed that this might be the nite.  paul also rang his parents as they were coming to look after percy.

i recall kneeling on our bed with paul and our doula chatting, even laughing, and commenting “i’m quite enjoying this” prior to paul’s parents arriving and us heading off to the birth centre.  ‘course my tune changed pretty quickly.

all three of us had forgotten to call the birth centre to say we were on our way.  oops- got met with a bit of a negative attitude and the complaint that a room had not been made ready.  what exactly needed to be got ready failed to impress itself on me.  the room was built a few years ago, it was unoccupied and clean.  was something else to be done?  never mind.  we waited a few minutes in the lounge and then were shown into the same room we had been shown during the orientation visit.  which was nice as i felt i knew my way around already.  paul was also a hero as he left me there to park the car in absolute record time.  i was quite happy for him to be a while as i knew getting to the car park and back was a bit of a distance.  but nope, he was back in the space of three contractions.  this being how i measured time by now!

we had arrived at about 5am.  the contractions were strong and consistent.  being oblivious to modesty i was stripped and in the shower within 10 minutes.  i was getting really anxious about the pain now.  i was convinced that i simply could not do another 10 or more hours of what was very plainly nearly unbearable pain.  you see, i was convinced that this labour would have a good similiarity to the one i had with percy- two bloody days of it!  when the birth centre midwife told me that the baby was nearly here i looked her square in the eye and said ” i don’t believe you.”  it just couldn’t possibly be- who’d ever heard of a seven hour labour?!!  ridiculous!

as it was i clambered ungainly into the bath, loved the hot water, screamed repeatedly that i couldn’t do it any more, could someone please help me, no, no, no, i don’t want to, fuck, it hurts, i can’t, no more and then, there he was.  oh.  wow. 7:10am.

talvin was born into water to the waist in i recall, two pushes.  on the next contraction, after he floated so serenely under the water, with what everyone commented was a very serious look in his face, he came out entirely.  it was astonishing and wonderful.  i think both paul and i were crying.  he came immediately to my chest while still in the water.  the midwife wanted to cut the cord right away but we waited a few minutes.  so i didn’t get my lotus birth but i was too tired and flumoxed to insist.

we did get our beautiful, perfect little boy, and our family complete.  we took him home the very next day.

things

so many amazing, weird, frustrating, comic, wonderful, agonising, hair-raising, loving and different things have been going on around here.  mostly just the minutiae of our family life… but intensely interesting to me of course.  and sadly because those things take up all my time, my erudite wit has not been applied to any of it here in my blog!  shame.

i’ll try to squeeze a few more minutes out of the days…  for instance percy has fallen asleep on the lounge and tally is happy in the vibrating bouncer just now.  i could be mopping up the layer of red dust that coats our house from this mornings dust storm (wow!), but i’ve decided to open the windows and let the strong wind blow it away instead (will that work?), starting at least on the ironing, packing a few more boxes, investigating the cost of trucking a caravan from my parents home in rural nsw to oyster bay, the dishes, sanding the plaster patches back for painting over, catching up with family or friends or a hand full of other tasks, but i’ve decided to write instead.

being mindful of my engorged left breast and the likelihood that talvin will suck it out soon tho, i’ll let the “pictures tell a thousand words” tale fill in a little for me.  see below….