The Beatrice birth story

Flo woke me at 3 am on Wednesday 6th August, having already spent an hour enduring the start of her contractions. We knew that baby Beatrice was on her way.

At around 6 am the contractions were lasting about one minute with three to four between each one; it was time to call the hospital! They instructed us to come to the maternity ward where they'd be waiting for us, but we took our time as we both had a shower and sat and had breakfast together before loading the car with the bags that Flo had packed weeks in advance.

We arrived at the hospital just after 8 am and got settled into our delivery room. After being introduced to the midwife and nurse, it was time for Flo to get examined; we were a little disappointed that she was only 3.5 cm dilated, but otherwise everything looked fine. We were given a choice of either returning home or staying at the hospital, but neither of us contemplated returning home for a second...

It was a tough morning for Flo. The contractions gradually became stronger and by 10 am I'd hooked her up to the TENS machine. I think we were both a little sceptical of this device, but it proved to certainly take the edge off the contractions. However, they were still obviously painful and the lack of sleep was not helping Flo's pain tolerance. So when we discovered around midday that dilation was still at only 5 cm and that the rate of dilation was currently only 0.5 cm/hour and at this rate Flo would only be fully dilated by evening, we elected to have an epidural in hope that it would enable Flo to rest a couple of hours before the final push.

By 4 pm Flo was fully dilated and the registrar broke her waters. However, her contractions slowed right down and by 5 pm she was administered some oxytocin to encourage the contractions that are necessary for delivery. Her epidural rate was also halved, since Flo needed to be able to feel when the contractions were coming.

Just before 6 pm Flo was ready to push. There had been a shift change in the gynaecology ward and the new registrar was excellent! She took her time to explain and show to Flo what was required and Flo did extremely well listening and responding to the directions from the registrar and the nurse. The delivery was really quick, especially for a first born, taking only twenty minutes.

I felt really privileged seeing our daughter enter into the world. It's not a pretty sight, but it is nonetheless remarkable and I admit to a a few tears rolling down my cheek once I saw her little face. It's an experience that I hope to never forget and one that I'll always cherish.

One of things that we'd requested from the midwife is that the baby be placed on Flo's chest and left to "baby crawl". The nurse later told Flo that they were very touched by our delivery and that it somehow felt special and perhaps this is why they felt confident and relaxed enough to let little baby Beatrice lie on Flo's chest for more than hour before they took her to be weighed and measured. During that time, we watched our little daughter develop her feeding instinct and trying to move towards Flo's breast. We both think that this experience has helped Beatrice tremendously in her feeding as she has since had no troubles latching on and breast feeding.

At 6:15 pm on Wednesday 6th August 2008, we became the proud parents of Beatrice Dorothy Corcutt, weighing in at 3.57 kg and 53 cm in length. She is a beautiful, healthy girl and we're both very much in love with her!