Well, in a home delivery involving elements of high farce and drama, George was finally born at 2.50am today, 12 days late and on my mother's birthday, delivered by DH on his own.
I was admitted to hospital yesterday afternoon directly from my mid wives appointment on account of high blood pressure with an induction booked for Thursday. After around 5 hours there (and having had a sweep) I managed to talk my way out and went home. Felt a little uncomfortable from around 1.30am onwards and then at 2.10, the waters went. At 2.20 I was in a lot of pain and told DH to call the midwife which is when the fun started. The woman who answered the phone in the labour ward wrongly told DH that home births were nothing to do with them and that he needed to page the comunity midwife (in reality the pager only operates 9 -5). By this time, I was in a lot of pain and was upstairs on my own while he was faffing about with pager messages downstairs. At around 2.30 I told him not to be so daft and get back on to the labour ward and demand they contact the community midwifeon duty immediately. The labour ward phone was then engaged for 5 mins or so. Then I felt the urge to push at which point DH fell into a blind panic and insisted we go to Hospital. By this time the head was crowning and I knew we didn't stand a chance so I lay down on the landing like a beached whale and told him I wasn't going anywhere. I remember him rather hopefully tugging at my ankle in a vain attempt to get me down the stairs and then I finally had the brainwave of shouting at him to dial 999. At this point he pulled himslef together and the operator did a brilliant job of talking him through the birth which was fantastically easy. The ambulance crew arrived around 5 minutes after he was out and horrifyingly had a full BBC camera crew in tow. I'm not sure who was more shocked when they all burst in to the room to find me and DH looking utterly stupefied and me sitting naked in what looked like gallons of blood. Fortunately they asked me straight away if they could continue filming (yeah right, I always wanted to be on telly naked and covered in blood) but they were soon put to good use when DD woke up and required some entertaining.
Anwyay, the ambulance crew were fab and then eventually the midwife appeared. I am just soooo glad to have had a home delivery, the three of us lying in bed at 5am this morning was just so special and I feel incredibly relaxed and happy. I do feel we were rather let down by the labour ward / midwife service as DH is very squeamish and was not looking forward to a home birth. Anway, all's well that ends well and George is utterly adorable!.