And suddenly, there she was... (by Graeme)

Well, all of a sudden its all over and we have a daughter!! Since we thought we'd have another 6 weeks to debate the matter, she doesn't have a name yet, but she was born just after noon on Tuesday and weighed in at 2.19kg.

Nicole's waters broke just after 7pm on Monday evening and there was some bleeding, so the hospital told us to come straight in. She was contracting every other minute for about a minute when I got there after dropping her off and parking, and they moved her to the labour ward to keep an eye on her and baby. She was about 1cm dilated at that time. The contractions calmed down after a while and I left her there to come home and drop off the car and fetch some extra panties - there was a lot of water coming out of the woman!! She was almost exactly 34 weeks, so they thought that everything would be fine, but they gave her a steroid injection which will help the development of the baby's lungs.

We spent Monday night in the labour ward, and by mid-morning Nicole was having painful but irregular contractions - her blood test had revealed an infection of some kind and so they decided to induce in case it has passed to the baby. They put her on the drip at 10am and I decided to go home and have a shower and get changed as the doctor reckoned that she would take 10-12 hours to deliver, and that they would re-assess in 4 hours. Nicole called at about 11:30 to say that I needed to come back at once as labour proper had started (she'd gone from 1.5 cm to fully dilated in less than 90 min!!!!). Unfortunately, baby was born while I was stuck on a tube outside Kennington - bum luck!! There was a bit of a scare when her heartbeat couldn't be located, so she was delivered by ventouse to get her out ASAP. Her chord was wrapped around her neck and she was apparantly VERY purple, but she started breathing on her own and seems to be happy and healthy. She'll be kept in for at least 48hrs while various tests are done and antibiotics administered. Nicole tore a blood vessel and needed several stitches, but her perineum is fine. I was there for the stitching and that was bloody and painful enough - perhaps being stuck in the tube was a mixed blessing :-)

That's enough for now - more details about the first few days to follow later.

Graeme