Lockdown Baby

After almost seven years of being parents to three kids, we didn’t think there was enough chaos in our house so we went for number four. In all seriousness, there was always a part of me that felt like I wasn’t fully ‘done’ with having babies; being a mom of three was fantastic, and rewarding, and I regularly thought that if this was it for us, we were the luckiest parents alive. BUT. That strange, confusing yearning of adding one more to the mix had never completely gone away, I would find myself becoming envious of anyone else’s pregnancy news and knew that it was more than just missing my older kids as babies (although that feeling also never really goes away; maybe I’m just a constant sea of emotion?!).

We found out that we were expecting at a time when the world had, quite literally, gone mad. Coronavirus, bubbles and social distancing were words in every conversation and the whole of the UK had been in and out of Lockdowns. I had left my job as a TA to join a supply teaching agency literally three days before the announcement of the first lockdown where all children would stay at home and be homeschooled, lots of work would now be done from home and there were daily news updates about the current state of affairs. Rob was furloughed (another buzz word from 2020) and life as we knew if was turned on its head. We made the decision for me to once again be a Stay at Home Mom, so that whatever was happening, our kids had the stability at home and I was always available for them. One more child wouldn’t add too much disruption to all that, would it?

The whole pregnancy and labour experience with our fourth baby was completely different to our others. For a start, the older kids were now eleven, nine and seven, so they were aware of the baby and excited compared to only having a couple of years between them and just maybe seeing this new baby as a cute real life doll OR a threat to their attention. To help them prepare for the new addition we decided to find out the sex, which was something we had never done before, and I had mixed feelings about it. For one, I had to go to the scan alone, so being told the news that they were having a lovely baby sister was tainted for me by the anxiety of finding out by myself and then worrying if that was the right answer, most people who knew us had said that they hoped it was a boy so that we ‘evened things up’ and that Bud wasn’t outnumbered any more etc. This is silly, but all sorts of things flash through your head during pregnancy and I didn’t know if I, myself was a little disappointed to find out that we were having another girl, or if I was worried about others’ opinions. This made me feel intense guilt, because my baby was healthy and that should have been the only thing I was concentrating on! Either way, I cried in the car on the way home. Then I pulled up, filled a balloon with pink confetti and we did a cute reveal. Everyone cried happy tears, the kids were ecstatic and it made it all the more real that a baby was going to join our family. It was fun having name suggestions thrown around (some were ridiculous but the kids felt a part of the process, nonetheless), and bit by bit we bought a few sweet girly things for our new bundle as well as sorting through the older kids’ special baby things that we had kept that we could hand down.

Being pregnant during this time was a solitary, distressing experience; it made absolutely no sense to me that government guidelines would have allowed me to go and sit in a pub at this point, but my husband was forbidden entry to any of the midwife checks, hospital appointments or scans. Having been through pregnancy three times (and miscarriage too) and having Rob by my side throughout everything beforehand, this hit me hard and I felt very isolated from the beginning. We were so excited to be having another baby, but the reality of bringing a child in to this world was scary, and the threat of going in to labour and having to go through the whole process alone was depressing to say the least.

Also, to add insult to injury, I was thirty seven which is affectionately viewed as ‘geriatric’ in pregnancy terms. I felt like I was treated differently to when I was pregnant in my late twenties, and I was told that I needed to take aspirin for the length of the pregnancy as I had always had a blood clotting issue (although this was news to me). I was also advised not to go over my due date and therefore be induced as soon as possible, which ended up being when I was three days overdue and something I regretted following advice for. Each to their own and all that, but personally I felt like it was a bit of an attack on the natural state of my body and only made things harder then push (literally) came to shove.

Rob and the kids dropped off in the car park and I spent a distraught three days in hospital, alone, worried, missing my other kids like crazy, frustrated at three failed induction attempts. I felt terrible not being with my kids and put on a brave face when speaking to them but all we wanted was for the baby to be born and for us to get home. On the second day of being in hospital it would have been my Granddad’s birthday; he had passed away seven years before. Being alone in hospital on what was already an emotional day just added to the shit show of that time. It would have been poetic if my baby had been born on the same day (and I actually have a cousin whose baby was born the year before on that day too), but that didn’t happen. She made us wait one more day.

I finally felt things moving in the early hours of the morning, and after examination I was told that I was indeed in labour and could call my husband and be moved on a labour ward. He arrived in good time (the big kids had stayed at my Mom’s so that he could jump straight in the car as soon as possible) so going it alone was no longer a concern. We waited and waited, with gas and air and my trusty TENS machine. At one point we had a call from Boo’s class teacher (the teachers from their school checked in on all parents every other week or so at that point), and when Rob explained that we were in hospital currently in labour she suggested calling Boo’s Nan to see how her learning was going there. That made us laugh - as if our kids doing school work at that moment was important; knowing that their Mom was about to have their new baby sister, awaiting Dad’s call and being filled with worry and excitement. This was subsequently one of the many reasons why we later decided to take all of our children out of school to be home educated. More on that in other posts!

I was examined around four hundred times, by the midwife and student midwife. I was tired, sore and frustrated that once again, my labour was going slowly - one similarity with my other labours; my kids do not like to rush. Once again (like with my first baby) I had been told not to eat anything past a piece of toast at around 6am. It was now thirteen hours on and my body and mind were ruined. A consultant came in and after more painful prodding and poking, I was 5-6cm dilated. I had said to Rob that I was having what I called ‘10cm pains’ - the contractions I was experiencing at this point were so painful that I likened them to my previous labours when the babies were almost out. Knowing that I was still nowhere near that point was beyond devastating and I felt that the whole being induced thing was just a huge waste of time and effort. The consultant suggested we check again in another hour or so, but at this point I knew I had nothing left to give, so I was honest and said that in that time there wouldn't be enough progress. I felt that caesarean was now my only option, and the midwife agreed that the labour was progressing too slowly and it would likely end up in an emergency situation anyway.

The consultant agreed too and got the ball rolling with plans for c-section. After a short while I was taken to theatre, Rob was told to ‘scrub up’ and I endure yet more prodding and poking as I was forced upright, sat on the side of the bed, pulled in all directions and then told to ‘relax’ so the anaesthetist could poke a giant needle in to my back. Obviously, they were all just doing their job, but to be told that I needed to relax in just stressful circumstances was laughable.

The actual birth part of a c-section was ridiculously quick. One minute I was lying there, welling up at the prospect of her finally being here and not really knowing what was going on behind the curtain (but knowing that there were lots of people who could see my insides as well as my outsides right then). The next minute (9:08pm to be precise), the sound of our baby girl’s cry echoed around the room and the joy of knowing she was here, and ok, filled every part of me. Rob got to hold her and some pictures were taken, and then we had her checked over and weighed: a whopping 8lb 15oz! She was a chunky bundle of perfection, and the relief to have her born and in our arms was magical. The aftermath was long, and then we got to FaceTime our big kids to show them their gorgeous baby sister. They were so happy and couldn’t wait to meet her…but they had to wait for two more days while we stayed in for more checks on her and for a little recovery time for me. That feeling of bringing home our baby was beyond amazing, especially sharing it with our older ones and seeing the pride and emotion in them too. Life as a six had begun- our family was complete.