Beginnings

Sophia was born in a storm in more ways than one.

Her parents were first time parents and were thoroughly bewildered by the medical mayhem surrounding modern birth. I was 39, very overweight, and very, very anxious and her father was 32 and simply coped as best he could by steadfastly putting one foot in front of the other and looking nowhere else.

Labour started fairly normally, except for the 40 minutes journey into the hospital because we lived rurally. Oh and the fact that she was posterior so I couldn't lay down or sit down. After 10hrs, my labour started going away so I was transferred to another hospital - another 45 minutes away. The ambulance was so crappy, they had to bash the docking clamps of the stretcher on and off with a tire iron. They wouldn't let Ed bring my stuff in the ambulance either so he had to travel behind it, worrying how I was all the way. After a total of 24 hrs in labour and no progress, it was decided that the only way she was going to be born was by c-section.

Amidst the flurry of an emergency C-section, the rain poured down, thunder roared and the lightening flashed outside.

And then after 25hrs, she was finally here...in the world with us. We had waited a long time and it was surreal. But we weren't through the birth experience yet. Almost as soon as I was out of surgery, nearly two hours later, I was clearly in trouble. They couldn't get enough oxygen into my blood so I was on oxygen for a time. Then I went down with childbed fever. For three and half days my temperature peaked and fell, peaked and fell, hitting almost 102 on the highs. And every time it peaked, the 'rigors' would start.

My poor little girl cried and cried but I often couldn't hear her. I think the drugs and the fever changed my smell because I do remember at one stage, every time they brought her near me, she screamed. And my poor husband walked up and down the corridors with her, trying to soothe her. There was nothing to soothe him - they wouldn't even give him a pillow to sleep on. They were feeding her with my milk - even though it was laced with the metrodiazinole that saved my life and I often wonder what it was doing to her little brain. It certainly screwed with mine. I couldn't tell time at all. If someone asked me if I'd had anything to eat - I couldn't tell whether it had been five hours or five minutes. Did you know that you have a little 'timer' in your brain that gives you an indication of how much time has passed? It works even while your asleep - how remarkable. I had so many drips in both hands - I still have scars. When I came out of the fever, I couldn't believe that I had been in the hospital for five days. One day more and the 'miracle of birth' was finally over and we all went home.

I'm sad that the most important event, to happen to her father and I, had such an awful start but in the end - we all came through it. We all survived - mostly intact. And the blessings thereafter have been truly extraordinary.