What do you do with your eldest whilst in labour????

[redjam]

Sillywoman and Mellors, your stories are brilliant. My own experience went something like this:

1. Make careful plans for a homebirth and for my parents to come and look after my older daughter when it all kicks off.

2. Experience vague labour pains. Parents drop everything and drive like demons for an hour to see me.

3. Parents stay all day. Everyone is watching me expectantly. Absolutely nothing happens. Parents go home.

4. Wake up in night. More labour pains. Too embarrassed to tell anyone after yesterday's fiasco.

5. 7 a.m. Actually, bloody hell, I really am in labour! Midwife arrives. Husband phone parents who say, yeah right, we'll be there 'soon'.

6. 7.30 a.m. Baby born. Older daughter has by this time woken up and is watching CBeebies downstairs, blissfully unaware of mother screaming in agony in room above. God bless Mr Tumble.

7. 9 a.m. Parents turn up. Sigh.

[Pickle]

Congratulations (officially!) Ruth!

I had exactly the same worries when I found out I was pregnant with #2, based on my due date my son was going to be 17 months, couldn't walk, and was very much still my baby - so I was stressing from day 1 about what I was going to do.

I asked a couple of local Mummy friends if they would be happy to be on standby, which of course they were fine with, so I felt happy.

Of course then I got ill, and needed to be induced at 37 weeks. Sod's law that both my friends were away on holiday at that time! I ended up putting all my ill feelings aside and my in-laws came from Scotland to look after C (at which point they'd only seen him about 3 times in his life, had no idea what he liked/disliked - I ended up leaving an instruction manual the size of a novel!). Thankfully my induction was quick, so I went into hospital at 9am one day and was home just a few hours after M was born, was in hospital for less than 24 hours in total. And the agreement was that as soon as I arrived home the in-laws would leave... which thankfully my lovely hubby stuck to, and sure enough they were gone before I had to start catering for them and resorting to hard spirits to calm my nerves (never good with a few hour old newborn to feed!).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it will all work out. Whether your plans work out or not, things will fall into place. I'd be more than happy to be on standby for you :)

Pippa (still enjoying the sunshine here in NZ, sorry to have missed the snow... not!) xx

[Fuschia]

I had a vague plan in place for the twins to be whisked away overnight in the hope our planned homebirth would happen then... births one and two being 3 3/4h and 6h respectively...

And then I ended up with 3 separate hospitalisations before the birth, the final one involving an ambulance dash through the snow with wickedly high blood pressure, an induction that took from Tuesday/Saturday. and even after I got home on Sunday, Monday's viist from the comunity MW saw me sent back and readmitted for two days!

So best laid plans and all that.

Had to beg steal and borrow favours from loads of people (including the mum of one of DS1's schoolfriends who came over for a few hours on Fri evening to fill a gap despite having her own child sick in bed/off school)

People are only to happy to help if they can, I've found.

[Sunflower76]

Hi Ruth!

I just saw this post. Congratulations!!!! When are you due?

That's so exciting.

I haven't been to Goose Green in ages, are you still going?

x

Mel

[prdarling]

Congratulations Ruth.

Mine are 18 months apart - it's a lovely gap, if somewhat crazy to begin with :)

I did a spreadsheet for Mr Darling so he knew which of my friends were avalable when. Very anal I realise, but it's not the time to be flying by the seat of your pants!

I am lucky in that I have many friends whom I've known forever who are close by so it wasn't an imposition to ask any of them.

As it was, I went into labour at about 4.30am five days before my due date. I waited till about 6am to be sure, called the relevant name on my list (who was 6 months pregnant and had a 2 year old, so I knew she'd be up anyway!)dropped the boy off on the way to Kings. Had son no.2 at 11.30am, came home at 2pm. Picked up son no.1 at 4.30pm after having an afternoon chilling with the new boy.

Perfection! Good friends are definitely the way forward :)

PS Hearting sillywoman's post!

[ryedalema]

Hi Ruth - sorry I've only just gotten to posting (Christmas is mad!) and congratulations also! I had the same panic as littlest was born on 23 December and none of my usual friend/family options were available to us AT ALL! Everyone was Christmassing (and/or p1ssed!) and she was 10 days early too which didn't help.

We weren't too bothered though as we'd planned a home birth and it looked like it was going to happen while eldest was asleep - perfect.

But we ended up dashing to Kings for a very short sojourn so our neighbour ended up looking after her. Someone we hadn't even asked to be part of things. So if things fall apart someone will always help - thank goodness!

Hope this helps - it might even mend some bridges with your 'kitchen-hater'.

All the infinite best xxx

[helibell]

My no. 2 arrived 10am on Christmas morning.

No. 1 slept soundly all through the night while I mooed in the birth pool next door. We were fortunate to have grandparents on standby, staying with uncle 5 mins away. After no. 1 woke up, he sat like an angel reading in bed until grandparents conducted a dawn raid, pickign up no. 1, his presents, as well as turkey & christmas pud from the fridge...

All very amusing in retrospect but I think it's worth considering (as well as the fact that seeign you in pain could be traumatic for your child) what effect it might have on your labour if you are worried about your no. 1. After it looked like no. 2 was ready to pop out by 6 in the morning, I had a massive slowdown & I think my anxiety about him waking up may have contributed to that. I would have sent him to stay that night at uncle's if it hadn't been Christmas eve.

[Helen GV]

my husband looked after bubba #1 while I went off to kings expecting that he would join me, but the few people we had thought would take him were either a- not here yet(nz), b- away or c- too drunk to drive the distance, so ended up by myself at kings!

luckily it was quick with no complications, had plenty of gas/air and sang the theme tune to everything's rosie to distract myself (lucky ladies in the beds next to mine..(tu))

my advice would be to make sure that (being summer) people you are counting on are going to be around the few weeks before and after the due date, and not poppng off for weekends...