After two days of stop-start labour, as contractions got stronger and closer together, we headed for hospital on Saturday morning at about 6.30am. On arrival the foetal heart monitor was showing that the baby was in distress and his heart rate dipped significantly during contractions. Becky's waters were broken and meconium was discovered, which is a sign of foetal distress. The obstetrician estimated Becky would be another 6 or 7 hours in labour and therefore strongly advised, for the baby's safety, he be delivered by c-section as quickly as possible before he injested/inhaled any of the meconium. About half an hour later, baby Joshua Daniel Clemison was delivered and all meconium was suctioned and washed out. He was kept under monitoring for about 1.5 hours to check everything was fine, and then mum and baby were re-united for the first feed. We are all home now, resting and being looked after by Pete's mum, Diane, who is doing a wonderful job of taking extra care of us (even spending hours at night with Joshua, so we can get some sleep!). She has also lent us the 750 needed to cover the c-section surgery bill (half of which should be covered by our medical insurance) which has been extremely helpful at this time.
We are grateful that we had Ruth, our Doula, at the birth, even though the birth didn't go as we originally planned. Peter had to leave at critical times to fill in paperwork, accompany Joshua to the neo-natal room for monitoring etc and it was very comforting and re-assuring for Becky to have Ruth there with her at this difficult and stressful time.
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