Welcome to the world Cian Dermot!

Well this time around was so much different than the first time. ..

I had my show on Wednesday afternoon (5 days overdue) and started feeling some contractions a couple of hours later. We decided to bring Liam down to Oliver's mom's house in the event that I went in the middle of the night or early the next morning. We stayed in Anne's house for a couple of hours where my contractions got more frequent for a while and then eased off. We left Liam at Anne's and headed back to the house where my contractions got a bit stronger and were about 5 minutes apart. We then decided to head down to the hospital where I had an examination by one of the midwives and she said I was in early labour and gave me a sweep to 'help me along'. She suggested we go home as labouring in familiar surroundings would likely be more comfortable.

My contractions slowed to around 30 minutes apart, although they felt stronger. I didn't get any sleep with the anticipation and contractions. My waters broke around 5:30 and we headed down to the hospital around 6:30 as my contractions got closer- around 10 minutes apart. The same midwife greeted us at reception and did another examination. She said I was around 3cms dilated, but didn't recommend staying to labour in hospital as my contractions were still too far apart. So we headed back to Anne's house where I got some breakfast and Ollie took Liam to daycare. Finally around 4pm, after returning to our house when my contractions became less frequent, we headed back to the hospital. Finally around 6:30pm my contractions were at 3 minutes apart and they brought me up to a delivery suite. I didn't mess about and asked for an epidural straight away. Wow, what a difference!! Whomever came up with that is a genius. The rest of my labour was so relaxed. I was just chatting away to the midwife and a 4th year medical student who was going to participate in the delivery. My contractions slowed a bit but they gave me syntocinon to help me along. I started feeling like I wanted to push around 11pm and little Cian screamed his way into the world at 11:23- I only pushed for 13 minutes! I pushed for 1hr 35 with Liam. I won't say that wasn't painful because it was, but I think being so relaxed beforehand made it all a bit easier.

Cian arrives...
Smaller than Liam, Cian was still above average at 56cms (22 inches) and 9lbs, 0.5ozs. The first thing that I remember Ollie saying was, 'he looks just like Liam!'. And he is the image of his big brother.

I was really worried about postpartum hemorrhage- like I had with Liam, but the shorter 'established labour' and pushing plus the syntocinon helped my uterus to contract after delivering the placenta and I was fine. Also, no stitches required!Because I had the epidural, I had to keep a catheter in over night and was immobile.

Here we are after the fun... notice how exhausted I am and how bright and breezy Oliver is!
They have closed down Johnstone house, the private section of the hospital, for refurbishment. So I was stuck on a shared ward- there were 3 other women in my bay. Over here they don't have nurseries but they do 'rooming in' so you have your baby with you at all times. I didn't sleep a wink that night hearing babies crying. So I wanted out of there as soon as possible. We were able to leave at 5:30pm that evening.

Little Cian in his wee hospital bed.
More pictures in the next post...