Internets: Meet Noah Alfie Brian
Little man is here, there isn’t a more splendid looking fellow on this earth. Noah joined us at 00:57 on Sunday 17th January after a very traumatic two weeks of anxious waiting, contractions and false starts. Wondering what all that entailed? Let me explain…
It all started on the 31st December when Katie’s labour had (officially) begun. Around 8pm that evening, Katie had noticed that she had a “show”, signs that the membranes around the cervix were making way for little man to start is descent into the real world.
To prefix the rest of this story, at this time Noah was around 32 weeks gestational age.
So, on New Years Eve, we ventured to the hospital and were taken to a bed within what was known as the Central Delivery Suite. This ward was for mums looking to advance from the early stages of labour into full on delivery. Laying on the bed, Katie was strapped up to a baby monitor and we could visibly see the machines indicators picking up uterine contractions. The midwives were sure labour was about to progress so Katie and I were moved into a private room where we chatted with the consultants and pediatricians about what was about to happen to us. At the strike of midnight, we were in a ward with each other, listening to the nurses sing in the new year.
Later that night, Katie’s waters broke and contractions became more frequent and intense but nothing happened. Summarizing, Katie endured 6 full days on contractions with no delivery, limiting her ability to eat full meals, walk around and generally confining her to her bed. On the seventh day, she was allowed to return home with the express condition that she was to remain in bed as much as possible and take her antibiotics to stop mother and baby contracting an infection from the lack of waters in her womb.
A week passed.
Around the 13th, Katie contractions came back, this time more frequent and intense. We were admitted to the same ward and made ourselves comfortable. For two days Katie’s contractions remained but nothing ever materialized. Consultants would come and go, reiterating that because Katie’s waters had broken, it would be ill-advised to let the baby risk a serious infection so they would need to induce her delivery.
On the Thursday, Katie was administered with a gel to help get things moving. Nothing happened. Over the next day and a half, stronger and more aggressive induction methods were used, pills would be placed into the lining of the cervix to help induction of the baby. Again, these didn’t do the job.
The last treatment was to sweep the cervical membranes, this brought with it some success. Katie’s contractions were strong enough to be moved back into a private room and things started to progress quickly. As she had become more and more dilated a drip was added to engage the Uterus and begin very intense contractions. This did what it should have done, so much so that Katie’s pain became unbearable and she requested an epidural to ease the pain.
The epidural actually turned out to be a good move in a very panicked and surreal sequence of events. After the relief was introduced, Katie’s pain was still localised to one side of her body, in short, the epidural wasn’t at it’s full effectiveness. I requested the help of a midwife just as she was coming in to alert us to something she had noticed about the labour.
As I explained the situation, the midwife has indicated that for every contraction, the babies heartbeat was dropping dangerously low. Wanting to get a second opinion, she sought the advice of the consultant and he concurred that the baby was in quite a bit of distress.
Cue the most surreal 19 minutes of my life.
The midwife immediately set about preparing Katie for an emergency C-Section. I was instructed to keep the baby heartbeat monitor on Katie’s stomach while they unhooked her from machines, requested her signature to authorise the operation and changed into their theatre scrubs.
I changed into my scrubs and accompanied Katie as we were wheeled into the surgical room, a monitor was continually attached to Katie’s belly whilst the surgeons prepared their instruments. The epidural administered earlier had allowed the team to introduce a spinal block quickly and effectively but we could hear that the heartbeat monitor was becoming very faint and beats very few and far between. We could sense things were seriously wrong.
Suddenly the midwife shouts “Code Blue”, something we later learned meant that the babies heartbeat was dangerously low, so much so it was a race against time. To make matters worse, the surgeon wasn’t present in the room, so the consultant had to quickly scrub in and perform the procedure himself.
The procedure was started at 00:55 and Noah came into the world at 00:57. There was an eerie silence as we waited for the baby to cry……we waited and then a garbled cry came, relief and joy spread across our faces. It transpired that the umbilical cord has become wrapped around his neck three times, hence the ultimate rush to get him out.
He was placed into the early baby unit as a precaution. I was allowed to see him a few hours later but Katie was confined to her bed being so fresh from the surgery.
Fast-forward to today, Noah is in a nursery room in his own little cot. He is for all intensive purposes a normal baby, even though he was born 6 weeks early. Noah weighed exactly 6 pounds though you wouldn’t think to look at him.
He is now in the ward knocking back as many bottles of milk as he can physically handle. All he needs to do is gain the weight he initially lost (which is normal) and become used to feeding a large amount every 4 hours and he is home. It’s a frustrating time for Katie and I but we know he is in the best place and receiving an unparalleled level of care. We get to bathe him, feed him, change him and do everything you would at home, except for now it’s in a ward at Southend Hospital.
