Neve Eleanor Hooper was born at 06:40 on Friday, May 8th, 2009. Flora Day, as any Cornlanders among you might know; which led to musings that we should perhaps call her Furry (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_Dance if this is making no sense to you) and that we could add to that Lola’s preferred name for her sister to make Crunchy Furry Hooper. In the end, though, we went with the slightly more elegant Neve Eleanor, leaving the other for private amusement.
We weren’t expecting Neve until the following Wednesday, so, when Isa’s waters broke at 03:30 on Friday, there was a strong temptation to ignore it and go back to sleep. And the lack of contractions for the first quarter of an hour did nothing to discourage that feeling. It was not to be ignored though and by 04:00, after Isa had relocated to the bathroom, contractions were coming at three-minute intervals. As with Lola, there was no nice slow ramping up; it went from nothing to full-on in the space of minutes.
Which is a problem when you need to get into hospital, as we did (because the breech presentation disallowed the home birth we had been hoping for). Apparently, it’s not easy to jump in the car when you’re about to give birth and, by the time our friend Pien had arrived to babysit Lola (and offer advice distilled from years of experience), Isa was not fit to travel that way and we had to call an ambulance. Getting into that was no pic-nic either, with disabling contractions coming every 90 seconds, but we made it eventually and trundled into hospital with the driver trying to find a route which wasn’t full of traffic-calming bumps.
I’d love to say that once we reached the hospital we were calmed by the welcome and reassuring confidence of the delivery team; unfortunately, this was not the case. Instead, we got nervous faces and an authoritarian registrar who came across closer to hostile than friendly. The first thing she said was that she had to tell us that the safest way to deliver this baby was by caesarean section and she pretty much led the entire operation in that direction from then on, throwing in a little condescension to add flavour along the way. It ended up with a kind of ultimatum: “either you lie on your back with your legs up (in stirrups) and push, or you have a caesarean — but that baby needs to come out now!” (The baby was exhibiting bradycardia and this was worrying the delivery team). Well, our fairly wide reading suggested a breech is best delivered standing or on all fours and that pushing should be held back until unavoidable — exactly the opposite of what was being offered here. “That’s not how we do it at this hospital,” said the registrar — but the consultant had told Isa that that mode of delivery was entirely possible at this hospital.
So, Isa opted for the c-section and was asleep when I watched them carry the newborn Neve across the delivery room. She coughed and I burst into tears. Ten minutes later, after administering heat and oxygen and removing some of the gunk from her lungs, I was allowed in and could hold her.
I continued to hold her for nearly two hours before Isa started coming round from the anaesthesia and we could go into recovery to see her. Isa was very groggy and in a lot of pain and it was another two hours before she could hold Neve and feed her. And a couple more hours at least before she could begin to see her properly, as the drugs had left her vision very blurred.
Of course, by this time, Lola had been awake for hours and was very excited about the arrival of her little sister. She waited very patiently, first at our house and then at Pien’s house, until we finally gave the go-ahead at 2pm and she came with Pien to the hospital.
She was delighted with baby sister, falling immediately for her tiny gorgeousness, but concerned about the various tubes that were connected to Isa. We explained how Mummy’s belly had been cut open to help baby get out and how the various tubes and other equipment were all there to help her get better and Lola accepted that, though she returned frequently to the issue during that day and the subsequent two days while Isa remained in hospital. The following week, Lola spent a lot of time being a doctor at home and getting Mum to lie down while she used her various (imaginary) doctor’s things on her.
Lola and Pien stayed for a couple of hours, during which I wandered off to get some food, having not eaten since the previous evening. Then, sometime after 5pm, Pien, Lola and I went home leaving Isa to spend the night in the recovery ward with a sleepless baby. Sometime the next morning, the doctors decided that Isa’ bleeding was under control and she was moved up to the post-natal ward where, thankfully, she had a little room to herself.