Obviously I was charged with the purchase of any baby related electronics, a
while ago I bought this baby monitor, which seemed pretty good, now I'm
using it, I've realised that it is bloody brilliant.

It does all sorts of stuff, it is digital and cordless, displays the
temperature in babies room, and best of all, has a "walkie talkie" style
push to talk function, meaning Shoes (who is pretty much confined to bed at
the moment) and I can still communicate without shouting, while I'm in the
kitchen (2 floors below)...plus I can look amazingly cool by attaching it to
the outside of my pocket, and then going to the corner shop, and forgetting
to remove it.

Shoes bought me the coolest watch on earth for my birthday :)

So we're home at last, I promised the story of what happened so here it is.

Suze was term+13 on tuesday so as is our doctor's policy, we went into
hospital to be induced. The first thing that happens in the induction
process is that they monitor baby's heart to get a baseline and make sure
everything looks healthy....now up until this point, every single visit to
the midwife has been fine, we were told that everything was normal.

Baby's heart rate was a little fast, not enough for concern but enough for
the midwife to ask the pediatrician to take a look, they were concerned
enough to move us swiftly into the labour ward and intended to break Suzi's
waters in the hope that it would get things started without the need for
artificial hormones or drugs.

Before they broke the waters, the pediatrician wanted to do an exam, so he
felt Suzi's belly and looked a little perplexed, they then wheeled in an
ultrasound machine and did a scan to find that baby was breech, with one leg
up by her head, despite the midwife having done 3 weekly exams in the same
manner.

At this point the surgeon said "I'd like this baby out in 20 minutes, we
need to perform a cesarean section", they wouldn't even let Suze go to the
loo!

Now I'm a very squeamish person, and I'm terrified of hospitals, I was just
about able to sit in a ward, but the idea of being in a theatre while they
performed abdominal surgery on my wife, filled me with The Fear.

However Suzi wanted me in there with her, so I put on my bravest face, and
went with it. At this point I'd like to say how utterly outstanding our
anesthetist Tiffany was, she put me at ease, and let me hold Suzi's hand,
while giving us both a running commentary of what was happening so neither
of us had to see it, she asked us if we wanted to know the sex, and told us
it was a girl. The professionalism and skill of the entire team on the
labour ward at the LGI should be commended, they explained the situation in
enough detail to satisfy Suzi, and they did their job quickly, without fuss
and in a way that never gave me any doubt as to a successful outcome.

so essentially in the space of about an hour, we went from hoping to begin a
normal labour to having surgery and holding our child.

Our midwife Emma who looked after us after the surgery was made entirely of
awesome, and did everything she could to make mum and baby (and even dad) as
comfortable as possible.

Aside from the fact that I gained a daughter from the experience, the thing
I take away most from the last few days, is the fact that the quality of
care offered, for free, by an understaffed, underpaid and underfunded team
of dedicated proffessionals was of a quality way beyond what I expected. and
I really can thank them all enough.

Ok, ok it's a girl! no name yet, there is quite a story to the birth, which
I'll go into in more detail once I've slept. She was 9 pound 3.. mum and
baby are both well.

Baby is 13 days overdue tomorrow, which means we're booked in to be induced.
Unfortunately this means we can't have the baby at home as planned, but at
least it means the damn waiting is over.

It also means I'll be off work for a while.....which is nice.

...the day he got up intending to catch up with some reading, and ended up
on a prehistoric Earth with a man from Betelgeuse and a spaceship load of
alien telephone sanitisers.

Is always nice.