Daisy Suzanne Allen

Born Sunday 6th March 2011

Birth

Her life:  Birth ♥ Week 1 ♥ Weeks 2-3 ♥ Weeks 4-7 ♥ Weeks 8-13 ♥ Weeks 14-22 ♥ 5-7 months ♥ 7-8 months ♥ 8-10 months ♥ 1st Christmas ♥ 10-12 months ♥ 1st birthday party ♥ 12-15 months ♥ 15-18 months ♥ 18-21 months ♥ 21-24 months ♥ 2nd birthday ♥ 2-2½  years ♥ 2½-3 years ♥ 3rd birthday ♥ 3-3¼ years ♥ 3¼-3½ years ♥ 3½-3¾ years ♥ 3¾-4 years ♥ 4th birthday

In summary:  Index ♥ From birth to four years old ♥ Four years old onwards

Special features:  Daisy translator ♥ Daisy cookery ♥ Daisy phrases ♥ Golden Bear

On Saturday 19th June, Lynne discovered that she was pregnant, coming into the lounge during the morning (I was inevitably on the laptop) to tell me tearfully, joyfully, the news.  There followed a sequence of excuse making (to keep it a secret) and nausea suffering (necessitating some of the excuses) for the rest of the first semester.  On Friday 20th August, at 2.30pm, we arrived at Stepping Hill for the first scan (actually nearer to 14 weeks than 12 weeks, as it was), having battled a closed lane on the A6 to add to the general nervousness (my mildly diagonal parking reflected our sense of urgency).  But all seemed fine and we finally let everyone know the news.

On Tuesday 5th October, at 9am, we went back to Stepping Hill for the second scan, this time at twenty weeks.  It was then we found out that we were having a little baby girl.  There was early evidence that she might have a Lynne-style nose (or would she?).  She was also seemingly quite shy as her hand kept moving in front of her face.  This would prove to be a key habit at childbirth.  The quality of the scans was excellent, something that does not come across too well with these photos of print-outs.  (They still look good considering, though.)

The due date was Monday 21st February, which came and went without too much sign of her wanting to make an appearance.  The baby had sunk a little, and Lynne had some twinges, but nothing particularly telling.  Nearly two weeks after the due date, at 9am on Saturday 5th March 2011, we were booked in to Stepping Hill for the induction process (which really starts off as mere encouragement at first).  Here is Lynne that morning with her bulge in all its glory.  During the pregnancy, we referred to the baby as "Queenie", prompting routine renditions of "Queenie Allen, step in time" in a cockney accent with jiggling elbows.

Disclaimer.  Whilst it will seem that this is almost exclusively from my point of view, that is because I am in fact me.  I make no apologies for that, nor can I do anything about it.  I don't doubt that the weekend was harder for Lynne.  But, y'know, bear with me - she had access to drugs, all I had was toast.  Also, the next bit is fairly wordy.  Those seeking cutesy pictures of young Daisy should scroll down now...

Saturday morning/afternoon

It was to be perhaps the longest weekend of our lives (except, I suppose, those weekends where we put the clocks back, but I wasn't being literal).  It was all fairly peaceful in the hospital when we first arrived - we had one bed in a room of four (beds), but we were the only ones there.  The baby (annoyingly referred to by the medical staff without the definite article, i.e. as simply "baby", or perhaps "Baby") had her heart rate monitored by a machine, whilst Lynne's contractions (which at that stage were very, very mild) also being checked.  These two measurements were printed out by the machine on a long-running graph.

The first stage of the process was to apply gel to the cervix in order to encourage it to soften and contract.  This was done every few hours with more monitoring besides.  It was a slow day, filled with reading the newspaper and watching TV.  I headed home for a couple of hours during the afternoon since Lynne was spending some of the time sleeping and there didn't seem much point sitting on a chair while she did this, or watching her watch TV.  All the while, people in various stages of late pregnancy or labour came and went, with the midwife likening Lynne to Rachel in Friends because of a similar situation when that character is pregnant in an episode of that show.

Saturday evening

When I came back at teatime, it was a full house - the room was full of bed-ridden expectants and their entourages.  The midwife confirmed that Lynne was (still) 1-2cm dilated, which had more or less been the case for the entire day, I think.  Two or three hours later, Lynne said that I may as well head home.  There was going to be some more monitoring, but not until 8.30pm and I had to leave by 9pm anyway (and I'd had no tea - so I treated myself to a chippy meal on the way home).

Saturday night

Suspecting a long day the next day, I got my head down at about 11pm.  After seemingly hearing fireworks (it was hard to tell since I had my iPod on), I definitely heard my mobile ring, just as I was drifting off to sleep.  It was Lynne, a little bit upset.  The latest monitoring had shown that the baby's heart rate was higher than it had been all day, which was of mild concern.  Given this, they wanted to move Lynne to the "delivery suite" (how to make a hospital room sound glamorous, eh).  Lynne asked me to come back to the hospital ("what, now?"), so I dragged myself out of bed and drove down the A6, in somewhat of a trance.  This state of mind was not helped when I shuffled blearily into the darkened delivery suite corridors to be told that Lynne was not on that floor.  However, it turned out to be down to speed of communication, as she had only just been moved downstairs.  More confusingly, on the lower floor there were parallel corridors and I had to get to the other one, which I did through a staff room out of desperation.  I wasn't stopped.

The midwife explained the situation and may or may not have been surprised by my lack of reaction.  In truth, my face was still half-asleep and was thus incapable of any meaningful twitches.  Lynne was becalmed by my presence, which in turn calmed the baby.  Given that nothing had happened for so long, we agreed for Lynne to be put on the syntocinon drip, which contains a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin, stimulating the muscle of the uterus.  This was at about 2am.

Sunday morning (early hours)

It was then a waiting game.  We put the soothing Sigur Rós on the iPod docking station and settled back, trying to get comfortable.  It was like trying to sleep on a flight.  By perhaps around 4am, things were starting to happen, as Lynne could feel noticeable contractions.  These got increasingly painful and Lynne soon asked for the gas and air, which immediately made her a bit trippy.  It reminded me of what Lynne used to be like coming in from a boozy night out when I was sober.  Funny for a (short) while.

The pain levels steadily increased and Lynne struggled to support herself (partly from the pain, partly from the drugs).  We tried the birthing ball - Lynne didn't like this and rolled around somewhat uncontrollably, but it was intended to speed up the whole process.  I held on tight to her.  Meanwhile, my left arm maintained a constant massaging motion on Lynne's back, for the best part of three hours non-stop (woe is me).  Lynne forbade me to remove my hand as it helped to ease some of the pain.  With my spare hand, I munched on some toast that the midwife had kindly brought me.  (The toast had expended all its heat in trying to melt the frozen butter, but I didn't care - I needed fuel.  In any case, I quite like cold toast.)

Another tricky position was Lynne standing up on and leaning on me.  As Lynne is shorter than me, it necessitated cricking my back in order for it to work, and holding that position for a length of time.  It was agony, especially since my back was already half-gone from holding Lynne up on the birthing ball, but I didn't have any painkillers available.  (Boo hoo, eh.)  Gas and air please!

Sunday morning (normal hours)

Lynne was making good process at that stage, moving from about 4cm dilated to 7-8cm in a few hours.  However, when little progress had been made in the subsequent hour or two, and with Lynne being subjected to increasingly heavy waves of pain, it was time to try something else.  It was a difficult situation for me (oh! the pity) - I was bit of an emotional wreck, short of any sleep and in a completely unknown situation, with Lynne clearly in a lot of pain, her head lolling to the side from the effects of the gas and air, her lips dry from lack of water.  There were (apparently) five women in labour on the floor, so midwives were in relatively short supply.

The next step was an injection of Pethedine, the aim being to numb the pain.  Unfortunately, its effect on Lynne was akin to that of a shot of whisky on an alcoholic.  She mustered on through with this for a while, but it was clear that there was a lot of pain for not much gain.  So we all agreed to go with an epidural (which Lynne had already asked for a couple of times).  This necessitated a couple of us holding Lynne very steady and an anaesthetist putting a catheter into her spine.  All the while, the monitor was still beeping away, by this time having printed out literally (literally) yards of graphs.

Sunday lunchtime

And the epidural had the desired effect, numbing any pain in Lynne's bottom half.  Well, almost.  A muscular twinge in her side was still causing problems, but eventually she found a position where the epidural could service that area too.  The removal of pain clearly relaxed her, so much so that she promptly fell asleep for half an hour of well-earned rest.  I felt a little guilty munching on my lunch while this happened, but there was not a lot I could do.  After her rest, she was sat up and talking almost as if nothing had happened, or was happening.  She recounted the conversations that she had heard, whilst under the influence of the gas and air, but did not have the inclination to respond to.  It was amusing that I couldn't remember much about the morning's conversations, it having been somewhat of a blur, but Lynne could more or less map them all out.

Sunday afternoon

Before long, Lynne was the magic 10cm dilated and it was time to push, which she did admirably.  Unfortunately, the baby was being somewhat stubborn in coming out and, after a number of pushes with no noticeable sign of the baby, it was decided that forceps were required.  It turned out that this was a good option since young Daisy had decided to venture into uncharted territory with a comforting hand by the side of her face.  This was seemingly causing each successful push to be followed by Daisy, well, going back up again.  A case of two steps forward, two steps back.  The forceps worked instantly (once the laborious prep work had been done, as the room suddenly filled with people, a veritable hive of activity) and Daisy was born, at (I think) a little before 2.50pm.  (In fact, I think it was recorded at 2.45pm, which I'm pretty sure is the same sort of time I was born.)

After a brief examination and then wrapping by the midwife, Daisy was handed over to her happy and contented mother.  You can just see on Daisy's right eye a mark made by the forceps.  Thankfully this cleared up quickly.  I think Daisy's first thoughts were: blummin' eck, turn these lights down a bit, will you!  (Y'know, if she thinks in a northern accent, like Karl Pilkington.)

The next step was to weigh her.  This move was not well received by Daisy, who promptly emitted a protest poo.  You can't blame her - she's gone from somewhere very warm and snug to somewhere fairly cold and uncompromising in not long at all.  You can just about make out her weight as 3.49kg, which I work out to be 7lb 11oz.

Next in line was me, looking somewhat shell-shocked, which is fair enough, because I was.  It was such a drastically unfamiliar situation, and it had been such a long day (don't go on), that I genuinely had to think to myself "what should I do next?".  Lynne had to encourage me to speak to Daisy since it was all I could do to stare.

Having been through all that, Lynne was feeling distinctly queasy, and so I had the role of holding the baby for the next couple of hours.  Eager to multi-task, I held Daisy in one arm and both fired out texts (only to family, though, so don't be offended if you didn't get one) and took photos (such as the one below) with the other.

She sweetly looked straight back at me for ages on end, perhaps silently wondering why I had neglected to straighten her hat (this was something that was impossible to do with just one hand - it would only move up and down whilst staying resolutely at an angle) and almost inevitably questioning just who the hell I was.  In addition, she was probably thankful that there was someone in the room (although it was just the three of us by now) who wasn't bandying her around naked - she was wrapped up and sharing my body heat, and that she seemed to enjoy.  The above photo was taken at 4pm, just over an hour after Daisy was born.

We were then moved to the second floor, to one of the maternity wards, and back in one of the four-beds-to-a-room, er, rooms.  I nipped out to get some tea, phoning hospital directions to excited family members, but before I could satiate myself I was recalled by Lynne, who was feeling faint and struggling to look after Daisy as a result.  My baby holding skills were once more put to the test.

Visiting time was 7pm to 8pm but, partly through excitement and partly through fear of getting lost in the Stockport maze (really, it's just down the A6 from Heaton Chapel, but anything could go wrong, I suppose - it's happened before), my mum and sister arrived at 6.30pm, and Lynne's mum and dad were not long after (having travelled down from Scotland on the Sunday morning in expectation of something happening).  Soon enough then, we had four more people crowded round Lynne's bed, shuffling around all the paraphernalia whilst staying within the restrictive curtain.  I initially vetoed a handing round of young Daisy given the delivery suite ordeal she had been through, but I soon softened (i.e. was told in no uncertain terms that it was going to happen one way or another), and Nana Sue (aka Nan) was first (or possibly second - I don't have a photo of Grandma Avis at this point) to hold.  Disturbingly, she seems to find Daisy's upset hilarious, but, er, you had to be there.

Next up was Auntie Katie, fashioning a turban during her brief time with Daisy.

Grandad Graham was initially confused by the concept of posing for a photo.  Over here!

But he soon got the hang of it.

And so endeth a long, long (long) day.  I met up with Avis & Graham at Donatello's near our house to finally get some scran.  The two members of staff (possibly owners) were very congratulatory, and I quickly sunk a couple of beers.  I struggled to get my head round the fact that it was Sunday evening, as the last time I had been to bed properly was Saturday morning.  Where had Saturday evening and Sunday morning gone?  It all blurred into one.

Monday

I excitedly headed into the hospital the next morning, now a proud father, to discover that the morning after was to largely comprise a who's who of hospital staff, as a number of different people came into the "room" to do this, that and mostly the other.  Lynne's heart rate was a little fast, and her iron levels a little low, so they were keeping an eye on her with a number of tests, plus Daisy had to be checked out by at least two people.  But before long, Lynne was given the all-clear and we couldn't get out of there quick enough, assisted by Avis & Graham, who popped in for the afternoon visiting session.  Grandad Graham, aka GG or G2, was tasked with looking after Daisy...

...who was later sorted out by Grandma Avis, or Gravis, or GA.  This photo gives an indication of the size of the area we had, and how crowded it was (the curtain has been pulled back now).

Daisy did not particularly like going in the car initially, but was soon pacified by the moving of the vehicle, so I tried to keep in motion as much as possible, not easy given the plethora of traffic lights on the A6.

That will do for now.

Later that day, we introduced Daisy to her Moses basket, in which she will spend A LOT of her time.

Here's a close-up.  She's SO tiny!  But she does look comfortable and contented.  Ah those halcyon days.

And for the next lot of photos, click here.

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