Advertisement
Sahai Margot Mercer
T'sehay ("Sunshine" or "Sunlight")It's been a long time coming but here it is at last!
Since my last blog on Mulatu's trip to Addis I have been made the "Unknown Blogger of the Week" on Travelblog AND achieved my ambition of getting a photograph in as one of the 'recommended' pictures under the Ethiopia section. That was almost 3 months ago and I've produced nothing since 😞
Well, that's actually a lie. We have had a beautiful baby daughter!!!
Spinning plates Today is her six week birthday and anyone who has had a baby will realise how he or she completely unbalances your life, emotions, sleep and pre-baby planning! I would like to have written this blog entry many weeks ago, but given the choice of Sahai or another 15 blog entries then there is no choice.
Sahai every time BUT I will finish what I started and we'll reach the magic 100 entries, even if I need to take time off work to finish this.
I owe it to all my fellow VSO volunteers, our supporters back home and the wonderful Ethiopians we met to complete my documentation of the VSO Ethiopia adventure. It might take a
"Hang on in there"
Mum's seen it all before few more months though...
But back to the main event.
Everything comes.... I have recorded all the events of the weekend of the 10th April in a notebook, but between my lack of sleep forgetfulness and Sara's insane tidying-up gene, the notebook is lost and you will have to rely on the aforementioned flakey memory I'm afraid.
We had completed our 6 or 8 week (I forget) NCT (National Childbirth Trust) course and felt primed and ready to go. Only one in 20 babies arrive on their due date and Sara's was the 11th April.
When lying in bed on Friday morning of the 9th April; at 5.30am; Sara wakes me up to tell me that she thinks her "waters have burst".
Er, OK.
Reality snaps into focus.
That bump that has been a co-star in the story of our life for 9 months is about to go centre-stage.
Luckily Sara's mum Dee had flown over a week earlier to stay for one month to help us through the birth and beyond; and as an ex-midwife she knew a thing or two about pregnant mums.
After some early morning discussion
Sunny Hospital Sheets
There's another naming message to the parents with mum and a phone call to the maternity ward at Cheltenham General Hospital, it was decided Sara should just monitor the situation and I'd go into work, fully prepared to be on paternity leave the following week (Assureweb, my employers, had generously given me a week of paid paternity leave, even though as an ex-VSO volunteer, I had not earned enough government or Assureweb employment time to qualify for it).
Merconium Misgivings Whilst at work, Sara called to say that she had found some merconium in her fluids. The waters had broken in more of a trickle than a flood and the latest trickle had traces of baby poo (merconium) in them.
This raises the eyebrows of the midwives at the maternity unit and they usually call the expectant mum into the hospital for tests and a planned induction.
Babies only poo in the womb when they are distressed (or late) and the problem is that poo is designed for life on the outside, not life on the inside.
Merconium can poision the unborn child (at worst) or cause a complicated birth through the baby breathing it in during delivery (at best). All in
Sara on the laughing gas
Surely my jokes are funny enough??? all, it's not a good sign.
So at 11am I ducked out of work and Sara, Dee and I walked to the maternity ward for a checkup. Clearly it was a busy day for new babies and after an hour or so waiting for tests I made my exuses and headed back to work.
The upshot was that unless Sara gave birth beforehand, she would be induced 48 hours later on Sunday morning to reduce the risk of merconium problems.
I returned home thinking we would be parents come Sunday.
How wrong we were.
Hard Labour Sara's started at around 11pm on Friday night.
Sahai was born 20 hours later.
Although hardened midwives say that labour hasn't really started until you hit hospital, if you can't sleep because every 10 minutes you suffer from a painful contraction, you can't make yourself comfortable - either lying, sitting or standing - then in my book that's labour.
By 4am on Saturday morning the pain and frequency was enough for Sara to want to go into hospital; but they put her off. Then when blood started to appear int he waters they reluctantly allowed
Sara to come in.
It's 5am and I'm driving around a set of deserted streets in Cheltenham trying to find the entrance to the maternity ward and going somewhat crazy because the only road that I know leads there is one-way! The wrong way!
In the end, with my wife having contractions in the back seat, baby (as far as I know) due any second, I take an executive decision to break the law and drive down this one way street to get to the ward.
(We had always walked there, not driven. As it happened, the correct route takes you past the hospital, right onto the main A40, three turnings along on the left and then right at the fork!)
Once in the (I think) Bibury Ward, Sara is signed in by the night shift midwife and we wait to be transferred to the actual delivery ward. But during the course of the next 5 hours - the contractions slow down to almost a stop...
In the end the shifts change and someone comes to collect us. The blood & merconium in the waters is enough to think that if the baby does not
Asha
Sara's half-Mauritian midwife! arrive naturally then they'd better induce.
Brimful of Asha at 10.45 With a disturbed night on Thursday when Sara's waters broke and now a night of contractions (I did get about 4 hours sleep; Sara didn't) we three zombies are led to a delivery room at the top of the maternity ward.
We are met by a lovely midwife called Asha - who we spend the next 8 hours with as she makes teas, gives us advice, massages Sara, makes aromatherapy oils and gives us bags of confidence that everything is going to be alright.
It turns out she is half-Mauritian, just like Sara. Her father too came over to work for the NHS and she has been many times to Mauritius to see her family. She is intrigued to see what the baby looks like as hers will have the same coloring when he or she is born.
Sara's labour continues in fits and starts. By 12 noon Asha does an examination and finds Sara is dilated by 7cm! 10cm is the width needed for a baby to squeeze through the cervix so she is 70%!t(MISSING)here and has not taken any more pain
relief than a couple of asprin!
Asha resolves to check again at 4pm and see if in the meantime Sara's contractions will increase in frequency (while strong, they were not frequent enough).
By 4pm in the afternoon very little has changed. Sara is still 7cm and this labour is turning into a tease.
For Asha and Dee, this is all normal.
But I can see Sara is so tired and it worried me.
Coming. Ready or not The decision is made to induce Sara at 4pm and she is attached to a drip that is putting a chemical called oxytocin into her blood to increase the rate of contraction and hurry things along.
The problem with this is that it REALLY starts hurting now.
Things started slowly for an hour or so and eventually the oxytocin dose was raised to force the issue.
By now, Sara is dog tired.
Her eyes are rolling around in the back of her head and her face is red as Asha tells her to keep pushing and breathing.
Sara had refused all pain relief except for gas and air (laughing gas), but as
First (dressed) photo of Sahai
Less than one hour old and fresh out of the oven :) the stronger waves of pain struck she was inhaling deeply.
By 7pm, three hours after the induction started, I was getting worried.
Poor old Sara was knackered. She was even too tired and confused to take the gas and air. Covered in sweat, veins raised, red cheeked and almost delirious.
It was getting to the point that I was going to call "time out - lets do a caesarian". If watching it was killing me, what was it doing to Sara?
We had been told that the midwives always start chuckling when the wife starts cursing the man for getting her pregnant. It means the baby was about to come 😊
With Sara - and I guess it is a reflection of her generous nature - even under duress - she kept saying how much she loved me and how happy she was to be having our baby.
On top of the World Finally at 7.08pm our beautiful baby daughter was born.
I had at last agreed to look at her head as it appeared - I am squeamish and have even fainted when having blood taken.
Sara could not see
She is beautiful!
In every single way it but it was amazing. A thick mass of black hair. Just where - well - you wouldn't expect it!
With Asha and Dee coaxing Sara on, the top of the head inched out by a centimetre (as Sara pushed)....then back again (as she took a breath)...then all of a sudden...FLOP!
Out popped a shiny mass of purple - all arms and legs and cords and what not - just like an uncorked bottle of fizzy stuff.
Sahai Margot Mercer We had had many naming debates over the months.
If a boy, we were sure of either Brendan Arthur Mercer or Joe Alemyiu Mercer.
As a girl, I wanted Ripley. Sara, and all sane thinking females on the planet did not!
We did want an Ethiopian name somewhere to acknowedge that part that our VSO experience had played in the whole story. We had tried for many years for children without any luck; before giving up altogether.
In Ethiopia, as VSO Volunteers, we had changed our routine and (temporarily) quit our life in the faster lane to experience an altogether different adventure, halfway across the world.
We must have been so
Sleeping on the job
A well earned nap for mum and baby relaxed with each other that, well, nature took its course 😊
"Alemtsehay" or "The World is Full of Sunshine" was my favourite Ethiopian name; though Sara preferred the shorter version "Sahai" meaning sunshine or sunlight.
We tried the full and short versions on people (and the Ethiopian spelling of "T'sehay") but Sahai seemed the easiest and most appropriate choice. Even Asha liked it. Given Sara's hard work, how could I argue otherwise...
It was a beautiful sunny day and our wishes had come true.
Our world was indeed full of sunshine 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0265s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ali
Ali Watters
Congratulations!
Welcome to the World Sahai