This is just a short note to say thank you for all the lovely good wishes and we're all sorry (believe me) that I couldn't report back before now - particularly over the period of the labour.
I'm not going to write the warts and all her of the birth of our beloved daughter. It's too traumatising to think about everything that happened. Even the thought of writing anything has just made me burst into tears. But then that's the overtiredness of someone who has lost just about all sleep for the last 4 days, and been to a place beyond any I thought my endurance could tolerate.
I said out loud to her today that I loved her, and it felt different to anything I have ever experienced before. Attempts to ask "Was it worth it" or "Would you do it again" would be absolutely ludicrous at this or any other point. There was a pregnancy, there was a labour, there was an outcome. Luckily for me, it was the right outcome. That and to say that Mackay is a man whose determined, reasonable and tender care was the only thing that held me together. He too can't really articulate or talk about the events that took place over 42 hours of intense labour.
I think that's the end of this blog for the moment. It may transform in to a Motherhood yarn, but to be honest, at the moment there is one important person in my life. And she needs everything I have all to herself right now.
So, Tara for now.
Cait & Nora.
xxx
... received at 9 am this morning:
"In hosp overnight to check Nora's ok. She was very, very stressed by everything, unsurprisingly. Currently asleep!"
... was born at 14.08 on tenth December, after a very stressful forty-two hour labour, by ventous. We are both recovering."
(In other words, don't phone them just yet. Someone will post here when they're both comfortably awake. In the meantime, post your congratulations to Cait and Mackay below!
-- Yoz, his fingernails gnawed well past the quick)
(Hello, everyone. Yoz here. Cait's given me the keys to her blog while she's, um, busy sprogging. I'll be posting news as I get texted it by Cait or Mackay.)
SMS received at 10am: Hardcore contractions since eleven last night. Midwife reckons it might be as long as tea time. We're both shattered so far.
Update (6:30pm, Wednesday): There, er, isn't any actual news yet, I'm afraid. No, I know it's been over 40 hours since she went into labour, but I've pinged by SMS twice, no response since the message that Danny posted in the comments, I figure they're probably busy...
Started vaguely at 6. Bleeding which I'm a bit concerned about at 11. Pains every 5-10 minutes not to heavy but geting heavier.
I'll be right back. After this word from our sponsors.
Bit fed up, frankly, today.
McK not around, so haven't really been out today in case I got too kackered or whatever (you know. Pains in the middle of Streatham High Road? No ta).
Tell you what though, I'm sure that Raspberry Leaf Tea is making me in to windy city. Can't sleep at all now, I might as well just give up. 2 hours last night then wide awake from 2 onward. Piss.
Pah.
Been to the cinema twice in the last two days to help pass the time. "Kill Bill" at last, annnnnd it's good, but empty, basically. It's as if the Muses gave brilliant direction skill and a talent for witty dialogue to an eighteen year old fanboy who never grew up. "Master and Commander" meanwhile was bleedin' awful. McK of course loved it to bits, but the script was cheesy as hell. In its favour, the Cape horn scenes were almost unbearable. Anyway. Avoid.
Anyway. So more time filling activities tomorrow no doubt.
She's very active - she was trying to "Alien" her way out from midnight till 3 last night. How delightful. She really doesn't want to be in there anymore. Good, baby - come out, come out!!!
She's decided to go back out of my pelvis for a while.
Meanwhile, had a lovely view a few moments ago of one of the Jay's that live in the back garden area, sitting by the window. The picture here is abysmal, but the info is good. Jays are beautiful and the pair that live close by are very welcome visitors.
McK often asks me how I know about birds, when I've never been birdspotting or anything. My Mum used to have an 'Observers book of British Birds', which because of its various colour plates I used to look through often as a child. It still strikes me as being bizarre that sometimes we can be somewhere, I'll see a bird that I've never actually seen in the flesh before, and say, "Oh look, there's a Yellowhammer", or a Sand Martin, as happened when we went to the North East for a walking holiday with Mackay's parents once.
I don't even know if these wee reference books are still available anymore, what with the advent of the interweb. There's a tactile, physical difference in leafing through the pages of a book like that, and happening upon the information on a web page, as you're strolling through looking through a billion other things. Perhaps I'll see if I can rebuy some of these little books just so sprog can lie on the floor, turning the pages and looking at the pictures when she's bored.
I think I've said just about everything in the title!
No more contractions today. Have upped my rasberry leaf tea drinking by 100% in the hope that will help things. Went to Balham to check out new TV's (in an attempt to escape the green screen horror we currently have) and found out along the way that the "Into the Void" chain has gone out of business - which is terrible! How did that happen? Perhaps it's the way they put themselves across. I mean, if they sold more knick nack crap to kids to subsidise the comics? However, "bloke", whose name I can never bloody remember, who is the manager of the eminent Streatham branch is trying to go it alone, so I gave him some post MBA business plan advice and maybe I'll have a think about what else he could do to promote the store - get him some easy 'net CRM plans together and help him out with that side of things. He's a nice bloke, even if I did have explain to him who "Drawn and Quarterly" were.
So yeah, after the epic trip to the video shop we actually saw Donnie Darko at last. Until I realised the extent of Drew Barrymore's involvement, I was very nonplussed. How couild such an obviously idiosyncratic and ostensibly "indie" type film get such good distribution and studio backing? How the hell did it end up with Drew Barymore, Noah Whiley and Patrick Swayzee for chrissakes doing semi-cameos? Ahhh. Drew Barrymore, Executive Producer. Nice one.
I can forsee a solid future of DVD and video sales to a generation of "alternative" teenagers for that film. And it really is as good as everyone said it was. Very verrry tired now given that whilst out, I managed to convince myself my wallet had been stolen and spent a good half hour making freaked out phone calls to 5 different bloody companies to halt my cards....
Which of course I found in my wallet left on the arm of one of the sofas. Sigh.
Slept pretty well, as it goes. Didn't even need too long for dozing in the morning. Mackay spent part of the afternoon deconstructing the birthing pool (ah well), but also working out how the amazing all purpose travel centre works. It really is extraordinarily fab. It even has bleedin' coffee cup holders at the front for when you take sprog out for local walks - that as well as it not being a complete pavement hogger. Alex really did us a huuuuge favour lending it to us.
Meanwhile, made the mistake of going for a walk half way up the High Road to BlockBusters. On the way back, had more contractions and general levels of pain were fairly high (McK told me I was walking slowly, and I realised that for about half a mile I'd been inching my way along barely putting one foot in front of the other), as she decided to drop right down in my pelvis. So, from a "me" point of view - bad thing to do. from a her-getting -out-of-me-sooner-rather-than-later-please point of view, it was probably a very good idea. It killed my back though. Anyway, she's back to her usual kickboxing ways right now and has come back out of my pelvis (sigh) so I don't think we're going anywhere tonight.
Another swift "quick! Come over now!" visitor in the form of the lovely Claire, tonight and Andy Riley yesterday, who I hadn't seen since the summer. Andy's bigup not very secret project appears to be foundering in a typhoid at present, which is frustrating and sad but somehow almost to be expected given who was going to make it. So we watched "Sons of the Desert" by way of cheering him up. I was reminded that my two favourite parts in this, one of the funniest films ever made are the extraordinarily brilliant wax fruit eating scene (one of those 'it's going on far too long', and goes through the funny barrier in to the ridiculous, and beyond - all without background music, done in complete silence. Magnificent), and the bit with Oliver Hardy after he's been found out, sitting like a naughty child at the table, plinking his fingers along, marking out a line, then doing a little hopeful "Pooot!" noise in to a glass, before saying the worst thing possible: "I know, Sugar. Why don't just you and me go to the mountains?".
I watch those two at work, then - at their peak, and I'm reminded entirely what real comic genius is. So many things are called it, and so few things are. "Sons of the Desert" is a just.... magnificent, subtle, unsubtle, bravura, brazen, clever, warm and ultimately, most importantly, an hilarious film. Not having seen it for a long time, I saw the subtle hints of Keaton in Stan Laurel's performance every so often and the tiniest bit of slapstick Chaplin in the odd pratfall, but you know what? Most of the falls - the extra little character forming ones, weren't necessary, didn't add to the plot, they were just beautiful little extras.
Ah, sorry. It's not often I get the chance to muse about Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel's daughter has well documented the writing habits of her father. Apparently there was a writing workshop / shed at the end of the garden. He'd go down there with a few bottles of liquor, and he, his writing mate (the great Harry Langdon) and various other writer friends would work steadily through the day and night, laughing, laughing and laughing as they worked out the intricate mix of script and physical comedy. And Oliver Hardy would of course, turn up for work from the golf course, read through the script, nod to himself, then deliver it, beautifully, almost at once. Suich a naturally gifted comic actor, his sense of timing was incredible. Again, watching last night was like watching it anew, and how refreshing to look at the technique as well as just the film, which of course, I know so well I could probably recite you the script from scratch. I'm so glad - it's a lasting legacy our Dad gave us, the deep affection we all have for these two.
Many eons ago, the comic Kevin Day (is he still on the cicrcuit or has he given up the ghost now?) did an Edinburgh show about Stan Laurel, and I wantec to pitch a big retrospective to one of the then existant comedy magazines. We spent a good long half hour on the phone reminiscing about favourite films, and also slightly tentatively admitting to each other that we felt such affection for them personally, that we felt like they were part of the family. Both of us had been "forced" in to watching the shorts when they were shown on BBC2 in the early seventies, and that childhood love had continued through adulthood.
Anyway. It is a cause of deep sadness to me that American humour has become so unsubtle and banal that the reasonably European style humour of Stan Laurel has very few fans over there. Fucking idiots seem to all cite Abbott and Costello as funny - not only that, but as one of the greatest comedy duo's of all time. Not even stopping there, they also have a tendency to prefer the Three Stooges over the Marx Brothers. I mean... jeeeez. What kind of world are we living in.
Needless to say, come 2005, young sprog will be introduced to the gentle anarchy and violence of L&H, and will not be viewing the bloody 3 Stooges.
La la la. Anyway. Moving on...
Just the usual extreme heartburn and no sleep.
Woke up with my tonsils flared at 5.30 when Mackay, who - bless him, is sleeping on a pull out bed in the front room now, stubbed his toe on a radiator in the dark. Managed to eventually get a bit of tossing and turning dozing at about 8 o'clock. the tonsils thing is a niggly worry. It's not a cold, I would hazard a guess. It's my internal warning system that I'm wearing myself out. Not helped by herself jumping and jiving till about 1am.
Sleep tonight. Will try harder.
McK remembered to take it out of his bag at last.
it's in the Zoonies gallery.
She looks alot like a grumpy old bugger if you ask me. But then I would be by this stage stuck inside a tight red tent.
No home birth.
I promised myself that whatever Liz thought best, I'd go with. If she was unhappy about home for whatever reason then I'd trust a woman with 20 years midwifery experience and a non-interventionist "keep it real" philosophy.
After the scan, beloved 'ere was not in breech, but of course was again within hours, then wasn't, then decided she liked being completely horizontal, then that my right hand side was far prefereable to the left... basically she's jumping and jiving all over the place.
That's what made Liz feel uncomfortable. If she's jumping around that means she's not settling in engagement mode - which means we've got quite a few days to go ie: quite some birth weight growth to go too. Apparently the scan weight issue is that there can be a half kilo difference *either way*. Either way!!! Oh! My! God!
Ok, so realistically it's much more likely to be less, given the evidence of... frankly every single person I know. But, my dodgy right leg really isn't working to any extent now. I'm struggling round the house, sitting down on all occasions (hmm, cleaning the kitchen yesterday morning after the lovely Sunday lunch with James & Paul took a loooong time). I just made the mistake of lying on the sofa on the wrong side most of the morning, and it took me about 20 minutes to get up in to an upright position!
The plan Liz came up with is a good one. Makes me feel better. We give Liz a ring from home when I'm at contractions every ten minutes, then Liz comes over and we stay at home until she says "right, let's go", then we go straight for the pool and the nice big room at the end of the corridor away from everyone else, and she'll take me through everything there. So I still get a woman I can happily swear in front of and who's going to raise her eyebrows ironically, rather than some complete stranger. A LOT happier about that than any other alternative. Ohhhh yes.
Rather sweetly, apparently my friends have been worried about me because they haven't heard from me in about a day. So this is the trouble with having email as a primary contact mode and a regular live diary. I have responsibilities beyond myself! Well, guys, I'm here. Alive, well, foetus intactus or should I say non-externalus. I'll check in once a day to let you know how it's going. We're a B minus 5 days but god knows, I'm eating pineapple like there's no tomorrow and drinking my grotty tea daily. not to mention walking sideways down the stairs, rolling my pelvis on my exercise ball... you bloody name it.
No practice contractions during the night - not a bad kip, only woke three times!
Now I will change sofas in the hope that the other one is more get-outable of. And eat some lunch I guess. Hmph. I really do feel like an invalid today. Grump.