A week in words (Anna)

Today, Emma is one week old. And it's been quite the week.

Here's the short version.

On Thursday last week, we went for an ultrasound. While there, our baby's heart beat dropped and we were told to go to Women's Hospital immediately. After monitoring, our baby's heart turned out to be fine, but the midwives were concerned about some other complications to do with "shoulder dystocia" - the potential for the baby to get stuck in the birth canal. Effects range from mild (needing help getting out) to infant death.

After long discussions with our midwives, the doctors and each other, weighing the risks and talking through the implications, we decided that the risks were too great and we decided to have our baby through a Casearean birth. Quite the departure from our hoped for home birth, but we had always agreed that our plan was to go with the flow and respond to whatever Caroline's body and our baby needed. And this, we decided, was it. Decision made, we were sent home from the hospital as we awaited scheduling for the birth.

Meanwhile, Caroline was going into early labour! What are the chances! A day of "Braxton Hicks" (practice contractions) turned into actual contractions and got closer and closer together. C and I went out to dinner (after all, we could be becoming parents the next day) and I found myself timing her contractions while she sucked on her knuckles. My job was to keep the waiters away. She even bumped into a colleague of hers who commented "Not long now, hey?" If only she knew.

We were both a bit disbelieving that this was actual labour, but the signs were pretty unambiguous. Eventually, we ended up back at the hospital, where our midwives asked us whether we wanted to reconsider our decision to have a Casearean. After all, Caroline's body was actually in labour and she was progressing well. That was hard! It had already been a difficult decision and now we had to revisit it (in between contractions). We decided that the risk factors hadn't fundamentally changed and decided - again - to have a Casearean. It then took the hosptital over 6 hours to pull together an OR and a team. So Caroline went through around 10-12 hours of labour and was well and truly in active labour by the time her "turn" came up. I'm grateful for the opportunity to go through that with her, even under less than ideal circumstances. She was amazing.

"Baby girl Rueckert" came into the world at 7.10 on Friday morning. I helped the nurses to do their checks (and fumbled my way through putting on her first nappy, all thumbs, despite having put on quite a few nappies in my time - speaks to my state of mind!) and then Caroline and I held our baby to her cheek while the doctors did their magic on her belly. We named her Emma Catherine Rueckert Lidstone and gazed at her in awe. She is very healthy Her apgars were excellent and she is flourishing.

Caseareans are not exactly minor procedures. The last week has involved a lot of nursing Caroline through some hard pain, our share of frustrations with hospitals and medical procedures, some scares with Emma's health (now resolved), a lot of pumping breast milk while Emma figures out her "latching" challenges, settling in at home after our discharge from the hospital, and, yes, staring adoringly at our beautiful, amazing, fantastic, little one.

And today, she is one week old.