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| Delivering Big Baby Complications |
I think I took things to read, but couldn't concentrate, and I do remember discovering that the floor was very good for tap-dancing, and trying to calm myself and take my mind off it by doing little tap routines. For some inexplicable reason that did annoy my wife even more, and possibly the midwives as well. That's all I remember - I mean, that and the immense amount of blood, and not really understanding enough to know whether all the blood should have there or not. I tried getting out of the room as much as possible ...
KARL: One of my most vivid memories is of having called a taxi, standing out on G--- Road at four o'clock in the morning in January, listening to the screams inside the front door, as Kirsty virtually gave birth on the staircase. We got her into the tax and I began to realise that things were getting a bit serious when we got to Putney Bridge and the driver goes, "Want me to jump the lights, guv'nor?" Ah yes, let's go for it. And we got to the hospital at about half past four, twenty to five, and it was horrible. The taxi driver let us out of the car and started making this Dickensian speech: "Sir, madam, I should like to wish you the best of ...' And l am going, 'Yeah, look, here's a tenner, thanks mate, great, now can we just have a wheelchair here?" And we just went up in the lift, into the maternity suite, and out he came. Jolly lucky not to be born in the back of the taxi.
JEROME: The other thing we were told was, make sure you bring in a bottle of champagne for that important moment. It actually had been quite a difficult birth and quite gory and at the end of it, when the midwife was trying to clean up, I then said, 'We ought to open that champagne.' The midwife said, 'Fine, I'll have a glass.' I opened this champagne which went PHWWWWOOFFF all over the place, so I was quite popular for that as well. They had to clear that up on top of everything else. It was all just stuff I had read. These are the things you should do to have a fantastic birth experience. It as all drivel.
KARL: Now our third boy, four years later ... again, this was slightly cross-making. Again it was in the evening that we began to realise that something was happening, so I go out, get a taxi, and off we go to the hospital. And you know, third baby, it's going to be like shelling peas, boys, no problems here. And I'm thinking, that's all right, I might get home for breakfast. And the night began to unwind. And in the end there was a snag ... there weren't enough midwives on duty. The one assigned to us kept disappearing.
And all of a sudden there was a problem with the baby: the cord had got stuck around his leg. And suddenly there are four doctors ... God knows why, but I had great confidence in the medical profession, so even then I wasn't distressed by this. Obviously half of me was deeply involved and a part of all this, and the other half was thinking, if I get home by breakfast I might be able to do some work at about midday. It all worked out in the end of course. She couldn't walk for three days afterwards. But he was a big boy. He was 91b 10oz. Monster baby. ..... To find out more, you can check out Delivering Big Baby Complications.