Part 1 of 2: Labour and Birth (sorry for the length!)

Last Friday was relatively unremarkable, apart from the thunder, lightning and the accompanying deluge of rain that engulfed the southern suburbs in the morning.  Once the clouds lifted, the January sun appeared with its familiar intensity, pushing the mercury past a-hundred-in-the-old. To escape the late afternoon heat, Robs, Oscar and I packed up a picnic and spent a lovely evening at South Beach, culminating in one of those classic Indian Ocean sunsets that West Australians are spoilt with on an all too regular basis. The three of us didn't last too long when we arrived home sun kissed, exhausted, happy. Os promptly hit the hay and was out like a light and he was followed closely by Mum and Dad.

Robs was the first up however, rising at 4am with the 'usual pregnancy type cramps and pains' that accompany one who is 24 weeks pregnant. She popped out of the room in what seemed to me to be moderate discomfort (she’s one tough cookie), however when she re-entered a few minutes later it was clear that not all was OK.

'We've got to get to the hospital right now', she succinctly enunciated, equal parts terror and urgency in her voice.

Sh-t. The next few moments were a mad scramble: clothes on, wake up sleeping child, find keys and phone and wallet, unlock car, lock house, go back for child's blanket, lock house, and then out the driveway. Bibra Lake to Fremantle is normally a 15 minute trip; I think we screeched to a halt in the Emergency entry in half that time.

Robs was whisked through to ED, whilst I went through identification formalities with the registrar. Once complete, Os was left with the nurses and I was ushered through to a scene straight out of one of those network television shows which uses a public hospital for its setting – 10 or so people in a what looked like organised chaos to the untrained eye, but in reality was a cohesive team in the midst of an amazing job.

A couple of things were made clear to me by the ED registrar: Firstly, we were lucky to arrive when we did. Secondly, although they’d dosed my wife with drugs designed to suppress labour, there was a chance that baby might be born right now. Thirdly, if baby did come along, the chances of survival were not good. As you can imagine, it was a little emotional in the room.

Thankfully, the meds did their job and Robs’ contractions came under control. At that point, somewhere near 6am, the decision was made to transfer Robs to King Edward, one of the premier maternity hospitals in the country. The on-call obstetrician and midwife from Kaleeya Private were kind enough to travel in the ambulance up Stirling Highway, lest baby decide that outside would indeed be preferable to inside during the trip. A paediatric mobility vehicle followed along too, so all the required equipment needed to deliver and maintain a 24 week bub were close at hand. And through all this we were fortunate that one of our very good friends was able to answer the early morning SOS to pick Oscar up just as the ambo pulled out of Freo. Eva, you’re a legend!

Robs was taken straight through to the birthing suites at King Eddy, and once she was hooked to an epidural, IV lines, and monitoring equipment we were again explained the updated situation: It was good that we’d made it in time (again); Babies born at 24 weeks in Perth have a 50% survival rate; If we could hold on for 48 hours, we’d get a full course of steroids into baby which would enable her tiny lungs to better cope with the stress of the outside world, thus lifting her chance of survival to 75%; An extra 2 days in-utero would also be 2 days of vital nourishment that can’t be replicated out of the body.

Basically the message to Robs was lay still and think positive thoughts. More on that in Part 2 tomorrow.