Love's Labours Won (in the end)

Our journey to the hospital was uneventful.  It was late at night and there was very little traffic.  I would like you to remember, ‘late at night’ as it will become relevant later.  I mentioned in the previous post that it was a Sunday evening.  This will also become relevant.

We arrived outside the maternity department at the hospital and rushed inside, although rushed is a relative term when you are with your pregnant wife, who is experiencing pain which, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought was being caused by Daleks.  It felt like rushing though.  Time seemed speeded up, like we were moving faster than I could think.  Without really noticing anything, except the passing resemblance of the decor to that in ‘Goodbye Lenin’ of course, we were at the counter waiting to be let in to the labour ward.  And waiting is what we did, a lot of it.  I have mentioned that it was late at night haven’t I?  Also that it was a Sunday?  Yes, good, because that’s all I can think to explain the delay.  All through the pregnancy the help and support from the midwife and other nurses that we saw had been fantastic, and during and after the birth it was wonderful, they were there for us and were informative and comforting and just superlative in every way.  But that night, at that time, when it seemed like the world was ending for my wife and my hand was getting crushed, there was noone.  Which was particularly hard to take as the waiting room lights were turned off, so we were sat in darkness whilst my wife’s contractions got quicker and fiercer.  I had rung the bell when we got there, and at various intervals during our wait but it seemed as though there was noone else in the entire hospital, or at least within hearing distance.

A Labour of Love

I was not prepared for our daughter to be born. Judged against any meaningful metric I was woefully underdone when the time came. My understanding of how a baby worked was basically founded upon knowing how I worked and just shrinking things. Just little people right? Well, not so much. My grasp of exactly how hard she would be was also limited by this. I knew that she wouldn't necessarily go to sleep when I wanted her to, but to not go to sleep at all was, I thought, a bit much.