Big brother, little brother

Wow.....what a crazy day.

Today, Benjamin is 17 months exactly!! and what better way to celebrate, but to have another baby!

That's right! at 13:00 today, we welcomed our 2nd baby into the world. Allow me to introduce you to Samuel James..

It wasn't the easiest of labour's.
Little Samuel suffered what they call shoulder dystocia. This meant that when he was being delivered, hes arm was in a bad position and caused the delivery to become difficult.


Everything was going as expected. The Mrs was doing great as before, but this time it was different.
She knew that something was wrong and as usual, a mother instinct was right!
The midwife explained that the baby was in some discomfort and they wanted to place a little monitor on his head. They did this and then The Mrs continued to push, still not happy that everything was as it should be.

After a good 30 minutes of pushing, I could see the top of his head and I thought we were on the home stretch. (No pun intended!).
Then before we knew it, the bed was flattened out, an alarm was pushed and the room filled with doctors.
Before I continue and you pounce on me for being so un-sympathetic, I am fully aware that the experience of my wife would have been much worse than my own, but I can only tell you how I felt...

That could have possibly been the worst 30 minutes of my life.

I went from experiencing the magic of childbirth to worrying that 2/3 of my world were in trouble. I tried to focus on The Mrs and tried to focus my energy on her, trying to reassure her and encourage her to push. I felt like I had to push all the fear and emotion down so that The Mrs didn't see me upset as I thought that could make her feel worse. Throughout this, I could hear people talking and at one point a nurse jumped on the bed and started giving hat looked like cpr, to mummies tummy! I later learned this is a technique used to try and push the baby out, but at the time it looked a bit brutal.

At 13:00 exactly, after a nurse basically, put her hand up my wife and pulled his arm out of the way, Samuel James entered the world with a whole lotta fuss and fanfare but was quick to make sure we knew he was there. After a few gargles and coughs, he let out a massive cry and let us both know he was just fine.

Once again, I am unbelievably proud of my wife and how amazingly well she did even in some difficult moments. For the second time, I have had to leave my babies in the hospital and come home as they are being kept for observations.

Tomorrow is another day and we have the great job of introducing Benjamin to his new baby brother...Wish us luck!

As always, thanks for reading
FTD