Baby day and a birthing plan

7am. Iris has not slept. I have had a few hours, but am also feeling rather jaded. A midwife shows us to a room on the ground floor. It is larger than our bedroom at home, and has a shower and bath in the room. Best of all, it is filled with natural light - and it is a gorgeous day already - so it feels just perfect. Iris can't wait to lie down. She is experiencing strange fits of pain and it is becoming more and more intense. About 8 I nip out to grab some coffees for the attending midwife and us. The huge queue in the coffee shop is really annoying, but the coffee hits the spot and we all feel better about the day.  Meanwhile, things are heating up in the delivery room...

Before the birth many people advised us to make a birth plan.  How will this baby be born?  We'd heard some painful stories from people who had very firm ideas about how they wanted the birth to go, only for their plans to be upset on the big day. They suffered as a result, their expectations not met. We decided to take things as they came.  We prepared ourselves for different scenarios, but left our final decision down to the moment that it had to be made. Some people find it difficult to make decisions under pressure. But not Iris or I.

Our ideal birth was a natural one, with as few drugs / interventions involved as possible. However, given our high level access to the wonders of modern medicine we wouldn't rule out the use of anything!  Pragmatic. But why restrict yourself to using only a hammer when you have a full box of tools for the job? To play the devil's advocate, I will tell you why: because once you start getting the other tools out, you find you have to use more and more tools to manage the situation. Might not be true for building, but I think it is for acute medical situations... more on that later. 

In the room, Iris decided she liked the look of the bath. A baby in the bath would be nice. We could call it Flipper! Haha. About an hour later Iris was standing fully clothed, in the shower. She was groaning in agony and telling me to leave her the hell alone. "Just get this baby out of me!" she said. How was I supposed to do that?

By about 11am, Iris was 8 centimetres dilated. Doing very well. The obstetrician came to see Iris, and was impressed. But the pain was becoming too much. Dilation had been fairly fast, but the difficulty was that Iris felt like death warmed up. Her body was pumped full of hormones and adrenaline. But given she had not slept since the night before, exhaustion was taking over. What about an epidural? asked the obstetrician. At first we said no, but later Iris changed her mind, and I supported that decision. The look of pain in her eyes was too great. I felt that if she could just keep going without the epidural it would be over soon, but she basically needed a rest and the epidural would give her that...

baby is awake... have to go... more soon!