The Shortest Night

Talk about perfect symmetry...

If you look way on down this blog you'll find several entries called "The Longest Day" detailing Michele's labour and Harry's birth. In a complete turnaround, my second child was born under very different circumstances...

For the past few weeks, whenever Michele rang me at work I'd always get the reassuring "Hi love, everything's alright, I just..." whatever the message was. In other words, things weren't happening and there was no need to panic.

Come Monday morning and I get a phone call from Kamila, a colleague. She's poorly and can't come in today, would I let the boss know? All fine, except Kamila had previously offered to drive me home if I got "the call" while at work.

I get to work to find other people are off sick or off site, leaving only myself, my friend Vince and John, the boss. Just prior to lunchtime Vince went home with a bad headache - and then there was two. Then John announces that he's off into town to do some shopping - then there was one.

And then I received "the call" - Michele's waters have broken, but she's in no pain.

Oh. Bloody. Hell.

So, alone and in a mild state of panic, I fired off a few quick emails, shut everything down then prepared to leave. The plan was that I'd get a taxi to the train station and then a train from Brighton to Burgess Hill.

As luck would have it, I got a phone call from Paul, my friend and sister-in-law's finace - "You waiting to catch me?" he asked. Paul drives buses and today, he just happened to be driving the 2pm bus from the Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) to the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) - the bus route that I travel all the time. Paul said he'd hold on a few moments, so I made my way to the bus stop, bumping into my boss John, returning from town with armfuls of shopping on the way. Giving him a breathless run-down of what I had done, work-wise, I caught the bus and was on my way.
I got home at 3pm and met my wife with a warm hug. It was happening!

On the advice of staff at the PRH, we went in to hospital and arrived about 5.30pm, when Michele's contractions came on. About this time she looked like she did in the picture to the left.

After being examined by a lovely midwife called Marianne, things started to move - in a big way!

Contractions became more frequent and longer, sometimes while the midwife was still in the room.

Michele went into proper labour at about 6pm, and was tucking in to the gas and air again. :-)

At this time, I called home to speak to Paul who, together with fiancee Teresa and Michele's Mum, were looking after Harry for us. I explained that we would be there for the duration.

At this point, Michele started to let out a Banshee-like wail and I let out a strangled "Gottago!!". Paul's since told me that the mental picture he conjured up at that point will stay with him to the grave.

So let's recap here - we had barely had time to unpack the enormous kit-bag that Michele had prepared over the past few months with military precision, and we were already into labour. Contrast that to what happened with Harry and you'll begin to see what I mean about symmetry.

Back to the story and what happened next is almost unbelievable (to me, at least). While at her side sponging cold water on her forhead and gripping her hand, she made a push and the baby's head appeared! Michele was adamant that she wanted to feel the head at this stage and did so - even if, to her, it didn't feel like a head!

Another push and the baby's head was out, followed immediately by the rest of the body! I mean one moment nothing, the next moment there's a baby! Whooosh! Michele had given birth to our second baby - at 7.10pm, after just one hour's labour.

She had done it again - she'd given birth to another beautiful baby boy...










And all before Coronation Street had started!

The labour had been short compared to Harry's, the birth was a week early compared to Harry being a week late, this was a "traditional" panic-run birth while Harry was induced.

Like I said - perfect symmetry..!