Well, 10 days late, but finally made it to a 'puter to report the arrival of baby Kit (Christopher) last Saturday (30th) at 11.30 in the morning, after a nice 6 hour labour at home. So much for my gut conviction of early pregnancy that he was a girl. He was 8lb 9oz at birth but he got the breastfeeding thing sorted immediately and is now well over 9lb.
After all my thrashing around on the pros and cons of homebirth it all went swimmingly: no mess, very little fuss and instant access to a decent cup of tea and apple pie immediately after. Mind you, I did have to spend the first couple of hours moving furniture and putting down a tarp and old duvet/sheeting, not mention inflating the birth pool, but it was a nice nesting thing to do and kept me pretty active. By the time I'd completed that my contractions were putting me on the floor but I was convinced I could only be 3-4 cm gone (31 hour labour the last time) so I waited for as long as I dared before diving into the pool and ringing for the midwife (and more importantly her gas and air!).
Credit to Addenbrooke's homebirth policy: midwife arrived within 20 minutes and I was very pleased to see her (and her gas and air) I can tell you. I see she wrote in my notes 'relaxed' under my state of mind - I would hate to see 'tense': by this stage I had discovered that if you want self hypnosis techniques to work you don't spend the first half of your labour shifting furniture: it ruins your focus and it's waaay too late to get it back half way through. So it was on with the foul language and bizarre shrieks and groans and within 60 minutes of her arrival I had delivered Kit after a 7 minute second stage, incorporating three pushes and what seemed an interminable wait ('don't push dear, just pant') while we waited for his head to crown gently. That was the worst bit, because it bought back the 4 hours of resisting the urge to push when I had DS1 - I knew I could do it, but it almost stalled me, because I didn't actually want to face the pain of pushing the rest of him out. Having had an epidural the first time all of this: the sensation of him turning to get his shoulders out; how long a baby's body feels as it is born; how goddamn HUGE their heads feel, was very novel, but if I'm honest I'm not sure the novelty made up for having somehow managed to forget to ask for the damn gas and air. Next time I'll have it tattooed on my forehead
Lovely, lovely to be able to spend Saturday afternoon on my own sofa and in my own bath, feeding Kit, feeding me and introducing the new family member to DS1. Definitely worth all the angst about homebirthing just to be able to do that. And since then, Kit has been a sweet, relaxed little boy who feeds well, sleeps well at night and tolerates big brother leaning on him with good grace.
Only problem is slight lack of time to access 'puter, but on the bright side my one handed typing is coming along, so I'll soon be able to call myself a fully fledged mumsnetter - I don't feel you have properly arrived in mumsnet until you've posted with sleeping baby over one shoulder