After 6 days of waiting, finally the baby made an appearance on Wednesday 23rd April. This means that all of us have been born on a Wednesday which is a bit freaky!
1st Photo Of Coby (~20 minutes old)
Kelly had been having a few pains in the evenings leading up to Tuesday night, but not enough to think it was labour. However, Kelly didn’t sleep too well and by 1:10am we were both up and getting ready as her pains had turned into labour pains. Not long later, her water broke for the first time, as this didn’t happen with either Ben or Aaron, so it was a bit of a surprise! Labour pains started to increase at this point and she called Mandy, our midwife, to say to get up to our house as soon as possible!!
As the next hour unfolded, the labour pains increased and increased to the point that we didn’t think the midwives (a second one comes as well for added support) would reach us in time! I was starting to panic, especially when I came down from upstairs to find that Kelly was on her knees half way between the kitchen and the front room!! She was also starting to push as she couldn’t hold on any longer, but thank God, the midwives arrived just in the nick of time!! Within 5 minutes of them arriving, Coby was born!! So I was 5 minutes away from delivering him myself!!!! That would have been an experience indeed!
When the midwives arrived, Mandy (our main midwife) went straight away over to Kelly and said the baby’s head had breached so Kelly WAS actually giving birth before they arrived!! The force of the contractions was pushing the baby out too quickly as well, so she had to try and put pressure on the head to keep the baby from being born too quickly, else it may have caused some bad tearing.
To begin with, I didn’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl, but Mandy let me know and we now have 3 boys!! 😉
So once all was over, we were able to look at times etc. Kelly’s labour lasted only 1 hour and 21 minutes, with only 5 minutes of pushing to deliver him. Coby was born at 2:31 and weighed in at very slightly over 8lb, so a good size and weight. He was checked over and he was in perfect health apart from some talipes in his left foot which basically meant it was bent at a funny angle. This will sort itself out over time although they have referred him to a GP just to check. Ben and Aaron slept through it all, thank goodness, which is what I was mostly worried about.
Mandy, the midwife, left at about 5:30 (the other midwife that came, Amanda, had left already) after she was happy that Coby and Mummy were OK. In fact, she left Kelly in the bath and Coby with his Daddy. 😉
I have to say that she was an excellent midwife and really made us both feel comfortable and supported in our first home birth. She was always happy and smiling and full of information, if we could, we would recommend her to anyone!
As for Coby, he is a dear little fella and didn’t really cry very much at all on his arrival into the World!