Josephine Susannah Belle – AKA Josie.

To record the birth of this little girl as an emergency c-section doesn’t do it justice, especially after all the stress and anxiety. My waters broke at 1am on Friday morning and were completely clear, we went to hospital where i had the most incredible, intense and empowering labour and went from totally uneffaced at 2am to 6cm by 11am. I was completely supported by Max and my midwives and totally enjoyed every minute of it. The midwife kept Max totally involved, was really expecting me to deliver normally and all in all could not have been better. I also “knew” that things had gone wrong towards the end and it came as no surprise that despite the fact that i was having huge contractions that made me want to push, i had stayed at 6cm for 3 hours. I’m not totally sure at the moment what happened but i think she either turned back to back or was a brow presentation.

Either way, a section seemed like the right choice by then as i was worn out and wanted it to stay “good” rather than end up as Fran’s labour did. She was still in a good state and so was i but somehow i “knew” that things had just stopped, the contractions were weird and not as good as they had been and i no longer felt like me and the baby were working together.

I was pretty unlucky that the section went a bit wrong and i lost 2 pints of blood, the epidural didn’t work right and my blood pressure was all over the place. I was quite poorly for a while and its not something i plan to dwell on. Still, i can see in retrospect now that i needed a good labour more than a normal delivery and if anything, the yukkiness of the section makes me feel totally vindicated in not having wanted to have an elective. If i had had that section out of nowhere, i WOULD have been traumatised. As it was, i got everything on my birthplan that mattered, including photos of her at birth (amazing!), finding the sex out myself etc etc its taking me longish to get up on my feet, but i’m doing pretty well.

As for her name – she didn’t suit any of the ones we had ready. It took us a while but in the end i finally got to use a Chalet School name!!! She was big for me too 8lbs 12oz, a whole 1lb bigger than my previous biggest and born on Bonfire Night too!!!