Introducing the baby formerly known as Bo...

I'm a little late posting this, considering the boy will be four weeks old on Monday. In my defence, I've been kind of tied up with a newborn, so I think I can be excused.

The short version is that I went into the hospital on the 3rd of February. Induction was started via pessary and two days later, shortly before 5am, weighing 8lbs 7oz (so much for my predicted 7lber, but on the plus side, I basically was back to my pre-pregnancy weight simply by delivering the baby), Laurence John Henry was born.

The long version is long. And contains way too much information about my cervix, so if you're not into that sort of thing, just enjoy this photo of my son on his birthday.

I arrived at the hospital at 2.30pm on the 3rd, got hooked up to a monitor and then around half an hour later got pessary number one. Within a few hours of this I was getting waves of period pain which I didn't realise until I was hooked up to the monitor later on were actually contractions. At my first examination my cervix was too high to feel properly.

I took some paracetamol and something with codeine which eased them off for a while but they son came back with a vengeance and my second examination revealed the cervix was lower and the midwife could feel it starting to open. By the time I was being monitored with pessary number two I was having regular contractions which were registering around 30/40 on the monitor.

These of course tapered off during the early hours of the morning and virtually stopped completely which was disheartening but my third examination allowed the midwife to touch the baby's head so they'd obviously been doing something. I was later examined by a doctor (with the largest hands in the world!) who was able to tickle the baby's head (and what felt like my tonsils as well!) sand pronounced my waters ready to break.

I had a wait of about an hour to go to the labour ward and was expecting more of a wait to get things started once I was there, but things progressed pretty quickly.

I got checked in just before 5pm and we ran through the plan. My waters were broken about an hour later and I discovered the joys of gas and air. There was meconium in the water which changed our plans for immediately after delivery slightly (no delayed cord clamping or skin to skin until he'd been checked over) but they were happy with his heartbeat and everything at the time.

I'd planned to labour upright and on all fours as much as possible and did try both but couldn't get comfortable on my feet (and the gas and air made my feet feel sort of numb which was distracting) and all fours made the contractions feel different. In the end we adjusted the bed into a chair and I perched on the edge of it in a sort of squat for a lot of the time, occasionally turning round and hanging over the edge.

I'm not sure how far into things I was but it was a few hours from the start that I started to panic that the gas and air wasn't helping with the contractions so well. Although I'd said I didn't want morphine, I took it and the relief was immense. The gas and air started helping again and I was able to snooze occasionally as well. As the contractions the night before had kept me awake, this was very much needed. Poor Mr Click had even less sleep than me that weekend!

By the early hours of the morning I was starting to get an urge to push and an examination showed I was at 7cm. I had arrested to struggle with pain relief again and tried to decide whether I wanted an epidural. I was concerned about being stuck on the bed as I was back to experimenting with different positions so I was allowed to wait a little longer and have some more morphine.

I then panicked that I'd made the wrong decision as the pain got steadily more intense. This was due to his head moving right down though and it wasn't long before I had an uncontrollable urge to push.

I must have been pushing for about three hours in total. At 2.40am the midwife asked me what time I wanted him out by and I said 3am. Well, that didn't happen and neither did my next target of 4am.

This was easily the worst part of the whole labour (and that's including the multiple times I threw up thanks to a combination of not having my ondansetron and taking the morphine). I was in agony; the gas and air wasn't touching it to the point that I mostly gave up using it because all it was doing was making me feel fuzzy without taking away the pain. We cycled through a bunch of positions but they seemed to either increase the pain too much or dull it to the point where I couldn't push effectively.

Once again I ended up sort of sit-squatting on the bed. I was getting exhausted and miserable and panicky. The midwife basically told me that I needed to get him out or we'd be looking at forceps/ventose. That was probably what I needed because I started pushing like a woman possessed.

I was led to believe I would forget the pain but it's still very fresh in my mind. Somehow I knew I was going to tear but I kept on pushing and it all happened in seconds. One moment I was trying to get his head out sand the next minute it was delivered, there was a wet slithery feeling and suddenly there was a massive baby on the bed between my legs!

He was rushed off to be checked over because of the meconium. He was brought back to me briefly but by that point I was bleeding very heavily so he went to his dad instead while they tried to get my bleeding under control.

I'd torn very badly but I was also having a post-partum haemorrhage and my uterus wasn't doing what it was supposed to. The next thing I was getting whisked off to theatre and knocked out for a repair job. Mr Click and Laurie got a lovely long cuddle though and whenever Laurence is having a big crying jag, his dad just needs to speak to him to calm him down. It's amazing and I'm so glad they got that time to bond.

I wound up with a third degree tear and lost 1.8l of blood so needed a transfusion. The swelling to my nether regions was incredible, I've never seen anything like it! I spent Laurie's first day on earth with a condom full of cold water in my (super sexy mesh) pants to help bring it down some!

Hospital proved to be a bit of an ordeal. I'll maybe blog a little about our stay later. We didn't get discharged until a full week after we'd been admitted for the induction. This was both expensive (as Mr Click and my mum had to check into a B&B and then check out each day as they waited to find out if Laurie and I were going to be discharged, then check back in when we weren't) and incredibly stressful (which is really the last thing you need when you've j just had a baby).

All the same, Laurie is a little delight. After a shaky start, we've got the hang of breastfeeding. He's been an alert little boy from day one and in the last almost month had become even more alert and engaging.

On the whole he's very happy. He cries when he's hungry, if he's dirty or if he's not happy about the amount of attention he's getting. Once we got out of hospital he started sleeping like a dream, giving us 3-4 hour stretches at a time.

He's got really big hands and feet, is incredibly strong (he's been trying to hold his head up since day one and can push himself off your lap with his legs). His hair is incredibly soft, getting blonder by the day and he has this little widow's peak thing going on at the front. His eyes are blue and have been getting lighter since he was born; I can't wait to see what shade they end up.

He also farts like no one else I know!

We've stumbled over some hurdles since he was born. First there was my recovery, then he lost 11% of his birth weight so we couldn't be discharged (though since then we've established this was largely due to me, and so also him, being pumped full of fluids for twelve hours during labour so he was born all puffed up), then there was an extended period of jaundice which needed to be looked in to.

But almost a month into this parenting thing and I feel like we're doing a good job. I've got a handle on what he wants and needs so I'm hoping I'll be able to blog a little more frequently again but in the meantime if you're being a little more of a Laurie fix (and who could blame you, he's adorable), I post rather obsessively on Instagram at the moment.