Earth Babies Blog

This is the story of the birth of my precious baby – Michael Albert Cross,
born on 29 July 2006

I found out that I was pregnant on 2 January 2006. My due date was 8 September 2006. I had a lovely (textbook-like) pregnancy and the baby was growing very nicely, although a bit big – but that I would only worry about later.

On Wednesday, 26 July, I woke up the morning with contractions. Not being sure if they were false ones or not I started timing them and sure enough they were regular, meaning it was the real thing! This concerned me as I was only 33 weeks pregnant. I went off to the hospital and was admitted with premature labour, which my gynae (tried to stop. After some drugs for the pain and others to stop the contractions I made myself at home for a bit of a hospital stay.

I remained in the hospital for 2 nights and was discharged on Friday, 28 July with some medication for in case the contractions started up again and told to take things easy (mild bedrest). All was well until 5am the next morning (29 July) when the contractions started up again. I got up and did some washing and packed a bag for myself and the baby, just incase – instinct must have taken over then – had some of the medication to stop the contractions and waited to see what would happen. By 7am I was in a lot of pain so I woke my husband up and we all (my eldest child too) made our way to the hospital again. I got to the hospital at about 8am and was told that I was indeed in labour again and that the doctor would be called. Unfortunately my gynae was not available as it was his weekend off, so I was introduced to the on duty doctor. He examined me and told me I was already 5cm dilated and therefore they would not be able to stop the labour process and that the baby would be born that day. As you can imagine, I was in a lot of shock (and pain) and had to quickly mentally prepare myself for this as it was really the last thing I had expected!

We called the parents and my mom (who happened to be in town) came over to the hospital. We also called my husband’s mom to come fetch our other child, who was still with us at that stage (terrorizing the people and the poor fish in reception, but luckily I was the only patient there that day).

After being prepped, I was moved into the labour suite. Things started to get a bit hectic then and pain-wise I was not doing too well and the baby was lying posteriorly, making labour a bit worse than anticipated. I asked for an epidural as pain relief at about 10am and the anesthetist arrived shortly before 12pm to come do the procedure. It was quite quick and painless with the only challenge being to sit perfectly still during a contraction for him to work on the spine. The epidural kicked in quite quickly and the midwife did a sweep of the membranes and my waters broke at 12h25.

Before I knew it, I was 10cm dilated and was told to hang on for the doctor before starting the next phase of labour. The gynae arrived just in time and about 10 minutes later Michael Albert Cross made his appearance at 13h35! HE screamed when he was born and wee’ed all over the nurses. He had an apgar score of 8/10 and 9/10 and I managed to hold him for a few minutes before the paediatrician took him off to the NICU. He was fine with the birth, weighing in at 2.39kg. He only needed a little bit of oxygen, which they administered by holding a tube close to his nose and mouth.

Michael spent 11 days in the NICU before coming home

Gestational age when born 34 weeks
Weight when born 2.39kg
Reason for premature birth (eg. Pre-term labour, pre-eclampisia, placenta praevia etc) Pre-term labour (I had a bladder infection)
Baby’s age & weight at time of writing 23 months (June 2008); 13kg