Birth story - Joshua
10th November & 40 weeks gestation came & went without so much as a twinge. Knowing that ‘on time’ is anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks I carried on as normal, but booked an appointment with the ‘sweep queen’ Annemarieke at my midwife practice for the 13th. After all, Daniel had been born at 40+3days following a sweep with her, so I figured it might get things moving… Annemarieke gave it her best shot, but no. Despite being 2 to 3 cm dilated by that point, Mr Joshua seemed far too comfy in there to make his appearance, and aside from a few sporadic, mild cramps & tightenings, nothing happened.
On the 14th, I headed out to Daniel’s crèche for an evening of craft activities - making a sock-puppet for Sinterklaas to give to him on the 5th (as per Dutch tradition children get their main presents on the 5th December, when they are visited by Sinterklaas & black peter). I had barely made a start when my phone rang. It was my husband Steve to tell me I needed to come home right away because Daniel wasn’t moving or using his left arm at all & seemed to be in pain.
I rang the out of hours doctor for an immediate appointment & went knocking on the neighbour’s door to ask them to take us. The ‘huisartsenpost’ is located right next to the maternity hospital in Blaricum. It felt so strange to be going there with Daniel, when I’d planned to be there delivering Joshua instead! Fortunately it wasn’t serious - Daniel’s left elbow was dislocated (Dadda was mortified to find out that his game of ‘row row row your boat’ had caused such pain) and the doctor popped it straight back in without any fuss.
The next day, I felt the odd twinge. I even got the contraction timing app loaded up & started to see if there was anything going on, but no. Frustratingly, nothing doing. Another day passed.
On the Friday, the 16th, another normal day. Around 4pm I started to notice a few more tightenings & twinges. For me, early labour is pretty much totally painless. I could cheerfully ignore it completely & carry on as normal if I wasn’t watching out. I started timing again though - they were coming irregularly, anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes apart, only lasting about 30 seconds. Steve & I had a conversation about what we should do - should we send Daniel to stay with our friend Elisabeth overnight, just in case? At that point, my feeling was it was 50/50 whether this was going anywhere or not. After a bit of soul-searching, we decided it would be a good plan for Elisabeth to collect Daniel after dinner & take him back to her house for the night. At least that way, he’d be settled, we wouldn’t run the risk of having to disturb everyone at 3 in the morning if it really was the start of labour proper, and if it wasn’t, well, we’d have had a lovely uninterrupted night’s sleep to rest & prepare for the main event sometime in the future. We had a nice family dinner of meatballs in tomato sauce with pasta twists (one of Daniel’s favourite meals) and Elisabeth arrived at around 6:30pm, just as we were finishing up.
Daniel went off happily enough, we waved goodbye & settled down to watch ‘Quantum of Solace’ which we’d recorded the week before (Rubbish film, but that’s a different story!)
Things soon started to move along a bit more. Contractions (if you can really call them that!) were still extremely mild, but were starting to come more regularly & last a bit longer. By 8pm they had got to about 3 minutes apart & approx a minute in length, so we called the midwife. It was Melanie, who had delivered Daniel. Fortunately they all know me pretty well, so she wasn’t phased by my slightly strange & extremely calm conversation. Indeed, they all are in agreement with me that if I ignored my early labour signs & carried on as normal, the most likely outcome is that I would labour gently & slowly without any trouble for a day or so, before getting to full dilation & ending up phoning the midwife as I started to push! Sounds like a dream situation & would make me the ideal candidate for a homebirth, if it wasn’t for my tendency for post-partum haemorrhage, which makes that just too dangerous to risk.
“I think this is the beginning of labour. I’m having mild contractions, lasting about a minute, coming every 3 minutes or so. They’re very light though & not causing me any discomfort really, but then again, they usually don’t, for me.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Knowing you, it sounds like it’s time to come to the hospital. Can you get a taxi & meet me there? We’ll have a look & then probably break your waters to try & get things moving a bit better”
So off we went. By about 8:45pm we were in the delivery suite, where Melanie confirmed I was nearly 7cm dilated, and broke my waters. I laboured under the shower for a couple of hours as things gradually got more intense. Melanie’s shift ended at 10pm and Judith took over.
Around 11pm, I could feel we were getting close. I moved out of the bathroom, and Judith checked me over. 9cm. Nearly there. Joshua’s head could do with moving down a bit more, so I laboured standing up / bent over the edge of the bed for a little while. By 11:25, it was time for the main event. Contractions for pushing were hard work, but well spaced enough to give me a chance to collect my thoughts & energies between each one. First the head, he was lined up perfectly to make delivery as easy as possible on both of us. Steve actually delivered his body & placed him onto my chest, with direction / assistance from Judith. It felt like a long time indeed, but it was less than 25 minutes of effort. At 11:49pm, Joshua William Connor Parkinson was born.
He lay skin-to-skin on my chest for about 10 minutes before the cord was clamped & Steve cut it. A synto-shot triggered release of my placenta (with my history of bleeding post birth, a natural 3rd stage would be a bad idea). It was intact, but there was a tense half hour or so to monitor the amount of blood I was losing. Weighing the pads gave an estimate of 1.5 liters blood loss, borderline OK. Fortunately it did slow down by itself.
Joshua weighed in at a hefty 4.8 kilos, that’s 10lb 9oz in ‘old’ money. Nobody was concerned over his size, however. My glucose tolerance test had been textbook, he was showing no signs of distress or being a ‘sugar baby’ and his brother had also been big but healthy (4.6kg) so obviously I just build them that way. In view of the blood-loss and the lateness of the hour, it was deemed a good idea to stay put in hospital overnight for observation though, just in case. By that time of night, all the private rooms were full. They found me a space in a 2-person ward which was just fine, but Steve wouldn’t be able to stay with us this time.
Judith performed some particularly fine embroidery on those parts that don’t normally see the light of day - 4 stitches, which I was pleasantly surprised by. After Daniel I’d needed 7, and I have no idea about Katie but it was a lot more than that.
I fed Joshua there in the delivery suite - he seemed to know exactly what to do, and of course I’ve had plenty of practice the last 19 months with feeding Daniel. Indeed, as far as breastfeeding goes, there was only 1 comment placed on my hospital notes, to wit - ‘Mv is zeer ervaren’ (This lady is very experienced) - in other words ‘you don’t need to interfere here unless she asks for assistance, everything is under control’. I then handed him over to Steve whilst I got showered & changed. Judith & the nurses were a little surprised when they came back into the room to help me get clean, only to find me sat up in the chair, clean & dressed, feeding Joshua again. (to be fair, I made the calculation that, as they’d just given me a local anaesthetic for my stitches, it’d be better to go & get myself washed properly BEFORE it wore off, rather than sit around & wait any longer!) They brought me a clean overnight bed, tucked me up in it & wheeled us off to the maternity ward for the night.
The following morning, I had breakfast, showered, got changed & even managed to put my own socks on, which I felt was a sterling effort, a mere 9 hours after giving birth! Steve arrived about 10:30am with our friend Jim who kindly gave us all a lift home. We’d been sat in our house less than half an hour when our lovely Kraamzorg lady showed up.
It’s now 3 & a half weeks in, and we’re gradually finding a new rhythm to our days, with 2 small sons to care for. Daniel had a hard time adjusting at the start, but is at last starting to realise the world *didn’t* end completely when his brother arrived, and there is plenty of love to go around for all of us! There’s still some ‘fine-tuning’ needed, especially when it comes to putting Daniel down for his nap at lunchtime, but we’ll figure it out as we go along.
It seems like no time has passed at all, and at the same time, it feels like Joshua has always been here.
Love C. xxx
On the 14th, I headed out to Daniel’s crèche for an evening of craft activities - making a sock-puppet for Sinterklaas to give to him on the 5th (as per Dutch tradition children get their main presents on the 5th December, when they are visited by Sinterklaas & black peter). I had barely made a start when my phone rang. It was my husband Steve to tell me I needed to come home right away because Daniel wasn’t moving or using his left arm at all & seemed to be in pain.
I rang the out of hours doctor for an immediate appointment & went knocking on the neighbour’s door to ask them to take us. The ‘huisartsenpost’ is located right next to the maternity hospital in Blaricum. It felt so strange to be going there with Daniel, when I’d planned to be there delivering Joshua instead! Fortunately it wasn’t serious - Daniel’s left elbow was dislocated (Dadda was mortified to find out that his game of ‘row row row your boat’ had caused such pain) and the doctor popped it straight back in without any fuss.
The next day, I felt the odd twinge. I even got the contraction timing app loaded up & started to see if there was anything going on, but no. Frustratingly, nothing doing. Another day passed.
On the Friday, the 16th, another normal day. Around 4pm I started to notice a few more tightenings & twinges. For me, early labour is pretty much totally painless. I could cheerfully ignore it completely & carry on as normal if I wasn’t watching out. I started timing again though - they were coming irregularly, anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes apart, only lasting about 30 seconds. Steve & I had a conversation about what we should do - should we send Daniel to stay with our friend Elisabeth overnight, just in case? At that point, my feeling was it was 50/50 whether this was going anywhere or not. After a bit of soul-searching, we decided it would be a good plan for Elisabeth to collect Daniel after dinner & take him back to her house for the night. At least that way, he’d be settled, we wouldn’t run the risk of having to disturb everyone at 3 in the morning if it really was the start of labour proper, and if it wasn’t, well, we’d have had a lovely uninterrupted night’s sleep to rest & prepare for the main event sometime in the future. We had a nice family dinner of meatballs in tomato sauce with pasta twists (one of Daniel’s favourite meals) and Elisabeth arrived at around 6:30pm, just as we were finishing up.
Daniel went off happily enough, we waved goodbye & settled down to watch ‘Quantum of Solace’ which we’d recorded the week before (Rubbish film, but that’s a different story!)
Things soon started to move along a bit more. Contractions (if you can really call them that!) were still extremely mild, but were starting to come more regularly & last a bit longer. By 8pm they had got to about 3 minutes apart & approx a minute in length, so we called the midwife. It was Melanie, who had delivered Daniel. Fortunately they all know me pretty well, so she wasn’t phased by my slightly strange & extremely calm conversation. Indeed, they all are in agreement with me that if I ignored my early labour signs & carried on as normal, the most likely outcome is that I would labour gently & slowly without any trouble for a day or so, before getting to full dilation & ending up phoning the midwife as I started to push! Sounds like a dream situation & would make me the ideal candidate for a homebirth, if it wasn’t for my tendency for post-partum haemorrhage, which makes that just too dangerous to risk.
“I think this is the beginning of labour. I’m having mild contractions, lasting about a minute, coming every 3 minutes or so. They’re very light though & not causing me any discomfort really, but then again, they usually don’t, for me.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Knowing you, it sounds like it’s time to come to the hospital. Can you get a taxi & meet me there? We’ll have a look & then probably break your waters to try & get things moving a bit better”
So off we went. By about 8:45pm we were in the delivery suite, where Melanie confirmed I was nearly 7cm dilated, and broke my waters. I laboured under the shower for a couple of hours as things gradually got more intense. Melanie’s shift ended at 10pm and Judith took over.
Around 11pm, I could feel we were getting close. I moved out of the bathroom, and Judith checked me over. 9cm. Nearly there. Joshua’s head could do with moving down a bit more, so I laboured standing up / bent over the edge of the bed for a little while. By 11:25, it was time for the main event. Contractions for pushing were hard work, but well spaced enough to give me a chance to collect my thoughts & energies between each one. First the head, he was lined up perfectly to make delivery as easy as possible on both of us. Steve actually delivered his body & placed him onto my chest, with direction / assistance from Judith. It felt like a long time indeed, but it was less than 25 minutes of effort. At 11:49pm, Joshua William Connor Parkinson was born.
He lay skin-to-skin on my chest for about 10 minutes before the cord was clamped & Steve cut it. A synto-shot triggered release of my placenta (with my history of bleeding post birth, a natural 3rd stage would be a bad idea). It was intact, but there was a tense half hour or so to monitor the amount of blood I was losing. Weighing the pads gave an estimate of 1.5 liters blood loss, borderline OK. Fortunately it did slow down by itself.
Joshua weighed in at a hefty 4.8 kilos, that’s 10lb 9oz in ‘old’ money. Nobody was concerned over his size, however. My glucose tolerance test had been textbook, he was showing no signs of distress or being a ‘sugar baby’ and his brother had also been big but healthy (4.6kg) so obviously I just build them that way. In view of the blood-loss and the lateness of the hour, it was deemed a good idea to stay put in hospital overnight for observation though, just in case. By that time of night, all the private rooms were full. They found me a space in a 2-person ward which was just fine, but Steve wouldn’t be able to stay with us this time.
Judith performed some particularly fine embroidery on those parts that don’t normally see the light of day - 4 stitches, which I was pleasantly surprised by. After Daniel I’d needed 7, and I have no idea about Katie but it was a lot more than that.
I fed Joshua there in the delivery suite - he seemed to know exactly what to do, and of course I’ve had plenty of practice the last 19 months with feeding Daniel. Indeed, as far as breastfeeding goes, there was only 1 comment placed on my hospital notes, to wit - ‘Mv is zeer ervaren’ (This lady is very experienced) - in other words ‘you don’t need to interfere here unless she asks for assistance, everything is under control’. I then handed him over to Steve whilst I got showered & changed. Judith & the nurses were a little surprised when they came back into the room to help me get clean, only to find me sat up in the chair, clean & dressed, feeding Joshua again. (to be fair, I made the calculation that, as they’d just given me a local anaesthetic for my stitches, it’d be better to go & get myself washed properly BEFORE it wore off, rather than sit around & wait any longer!) They brought me a clean overnight bed, tucked me up in it & wheeled us off to the maternity ward for the night.
The following morning, I had breakfast, showered, got changed & even managed to put my own socks on, which I felt was a sterling effort, a mere 9 hours after giving birth! Steve arrived about 10:30am with our friend Jim who kindly gave us all a lift home. We’d been sat in our house less than half an hour when our lovely Kraamzorg lady showed up.
It’s now 3 & a half weeks in, and we’re gradually finding a new rhythm to our days, with 2 small sons to care for. Daniel had a hard time adjusting at the start, but is at last starting to realise the world *didn’t* end completely when his brother arrived, and there is plenty of love to go around for all of us! There’s still some ‘fine-tuning’ needed, especially when it comes to putting Daniel down for his nap at lunchtime, but we’ll figure it out as we go along.
It seems like no time has passed at all, and at the same time, it feels like Joshua has always been here.
Love C. xxx