(*Ahem. That is, of the second half of the month. Sorry for the delay, and thanks to my lovely husband for noticing that I had totally forgotten to post a birth story on New Year’s Day.)

I suppose a big part of Romilly’s birth story revolves around her *not* coming. That is, not at all when we expected her to. We had had a few friends of mine from college visiting us in Scotland and staying with us until about a week before my due date of January 28th. They knew they were taking a chance, and were even prepared to watch Pippa for us if I went into labor while they were there.  Still, it wouldn’t have been ideal.

I guess all that willing her to stay put until the due date worked a little too well, since January 28th (indeed all of January along with the first week of February) came and went and no baby. I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable, just bored of being on high alert for contractions and treating every day as if it might be my last with just Pippa. I occupied my mind by coming up with reasons why each date on the calendar would be the perfect one for her arrival. My favorite that she was *not* born on was Groundhog Day, which would have been the perfect answer to Pippa’s Labor Day arrival, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Instead, early on the morning of Wednesday, February 8th, I began to feel the twinges that I knew meant things were getting started. I had an appointment with my midwife that morning anyway, which I made it to, though I didn’t walk there as I might have otherwise. Trevor went to work, since we didn’t know how long a process we might be in for and wanted to save as much paternity leave as possible for after baby’s arrival.  At my appointment, my midwife offered to “strip my membranes” (if you don’t know what that means, then you probably don’t need to), and I took her up on it. Officially, if I were to go one more day past my due date, I would be recommended to be induced, or at least to go in for monitoring to make sure baby was still happy in there. That was scheduled for the following morning.

Romilly with Ian and Sarah

I got home and spent most of the day happily timing manageable contractions and getting ready to meet my new little one. That evening, we had invited dear friends over for dinner. Since things were still seeming pretty manageable when Trevor got home from work, and since these were the sort of friends you could be in labor with (and really, how many friends can one say that about? We are truly blessed!), we told them to come anyway to help pass the time. Sarah helped cook dinner, and Ian tried his best to act normal as I winced through each contraction at the dinner table, bless him.

By the time dinner was over, it was becoming clear that we would need to set the Pippa-babysitter-rota into action for that night, so Trevor drove her to a little friend’s house to spend the night (Kiri and Maya, if you’re reading, thank you and we miss you!).  By the time he got back at about 9 o’clock, I was digging my nails into the sofa pretty hard with each contraction, and Ian and Sarah headed home shortly after.

Once they left, I took a bath, and Trevor decided to go to bed at about 10:30, anticipating an early start the next morning. So far the labor had had similar timings to my labor with Pippa. Both started early in the morning and were feeling pretty intense by that night. With Pippa we had gone to the hospital at 2 AM, and she didn’t arrive until late the following afternoon, so both of us were trying to be more sensible this time and not jump the gun.

At around 1 or 1:30 AM, I ran another bath to help with the contractions. The bath definitely helped, but while I was in there, I felt the familiar (if slightly scary, when at home in the bathtub) urge to push. I woke Trevor up, and with a bit of persuading, talked him into getting me to the hospital. Legend has it that I said very calmly, “It’s time”, which has since become a bit of a catch phrase for us where labors are concerned.

The car ride was not as bad as I had worried it would be (i.e. I didn’t give birth during it), and the contractions didn’t feel quite as “push-y” as they had at home. We arrived at the hospital (St. John’s in Livingston again) at a little before 2 AM – almost exactly the same time we had arrived there for Pippa’s birth. Naturally, we both thought, in spite of the more urgent circumstances, that we may still have a long road ahead.

The nurses strapped me to a monitor to check baby’s vitals and my contraction patterns before checking me for dilation, which, in hindsight, was probably not the best plan. Then they left Trevor and me alone in the room for twenty minutes with the monitors strapped on with the intructions to push the buzzer if we needed anything. By the time the twenty minutes were up and they were *not* back in the room yet, I said to Trevor, “You need to push the buzzer. This baby is coming.”   He took some persuading again, but eventually complied, and in the midwife and nurses rushed.

I said to the midwife, “I feel like I need to push,” to which she replied, “You *look* like you need to push!” Off came my sweatpants for the first and only glimpse anyone had of how dilated I was. Immediately, my water broke and baby was coming out. Then I had this dialog with the nurse, definitely the most memorable exchange of the delivery:

Me: I need something for the pain.
Her: Sorry. It’s too late.
Me: (And I was being completely earnest) Then I don’t want to do this right now.

They gave me nitrous oxide (a.k.a. gas and air) to breathe (like at the dentist. I wish they had this for giving birth in America!), which calmed me down some but also made me a little dizzy and faint. It was possibly the most terrifying minute or two of my life. The pain was like nothing I could even describe, and worse because it was my own body pushing me into it, and yet I had absolutely no control. And then, in an instant, it was over, and I was holding a baby. It was incredible all over again.

Trevor and I just stared at each other in disbelief.  Just about a half an hour earlier we had arrived at the hospital uncertain of whether we might be sent home or have a whole day of laboring ahead of us, and instead we had blinked and we were holding our new daughter. There was much laughter and “Did you see the looks on their faces?” and “I wonder if we have to cancel my induction appointment…”, but there was also plenty of studying this new girl (whom we had both thought would probably be a boy) to find out who she might be.

Her name was more or less chosen beforehand. I asked Trevor, “Is she Romilly?” and I remember he answered, “I don’t know.” Apparently he had never known a Romilly (neither had I), so was a little more reluctant to commit than he had been to Pippa’s name. Once I figured out he wasn’t really having second thoughts about it, I was happy to be the one to seal the deal.

If the great surprise of Pippa was that she looked nothing like me as a baby, then the great surprise of Romilly was that she looked nothing like Pippa. Trevor says to this day that I didn’t like her at first. In truth, it did take me a little bit longer to bond with her. She was 9lb 2.5 oz at birth, so it was unsettling to be holding what felt to me like a 6-week-old baby. Her face was slightly swollen and bruised at first, but mostly, she just wasn’t the little Pippa-clone that I had expected, and I was a little thrown. God, in His grace, was to give me some intense bonding time with Romilly in her early weeks, but you can go back read about that here.  Needless to say, I was very quickly head-over-heels in love with her.

Thanks to my “easy delivery” and in spite of needing stitches for some tearing again, the midwife felt I was a good candidate for the “six-hour discharge”.  Though it ended up being more like 8 hours after her birth by the time we were  discharged, it still felt crazy to us to arrive home just 9 hours after setting out for the hospital.  As Trevor put it, “Just like going to work for the day.”

Romilly with Lindsay

Hard to believe Pippa is a month younger than Beatrix in this picture!

We arrived home with our new bundle at about 11 AM on her birthday February 9th, and Pippa arrived home from Lindsay’s (not the same friend she’d spent the night with, but the second shift of the babysitting rota) a little after lunch.  And thus began our happy little life as a family of four.

If you missed Pippa’s birth story last month, you can go back and read it here.  If you have a birth story to share, I’d love to read it (why do pregnant women love birth stories so much?  It’s a little sick.)  Share it on your blog or in the comments!