My second daughter, Lucie Artiss, was born yesterday at 4:35am, 4 weeks early. Weight 5 pound 9 ounces.
The story behind what happened, well, I'll keep it short – the full version will wait until I've finished the screenplay!
First of all, let's go back to last Thursday (cue swirly cloud effects). My wife, Jennie, and her sister took a train to stay with their Dad overnight. On Friday was the wedding of their Niece, which they would travel to together.
Except Jen woke up on Friday feeling unwell and after a quick trip to a GP, she was sent to Hull Royal Infirmary, who confirmed that she was having contractions and was in labour. At lunchtime I was called and rushed to Hull.
By the evening the contractions pretty much stopped and, eventually, Jen was moved to a ward for monitoring. By Saturday afternoon they'd agreed to transfer her to the City Hospital in Nottingham, where we were "booked". An ambulance arrived for her, with a midwife going along. A good job really, because half way through the journey, labour started again and the ambulance had to turn on lights and sirens whilst hurtling down the M1. To top things off, the City Hospital called to say they'd filled all the beds, so they diverted to the Queens Medical Centre. When they arrived, the contractions stopped again.
So, after much discussion, the decision was made to induce the contractions via a drip. Unfortunately, the machine kept failing and whilst faffing about this with for hours, they hadn't noticed that Jen had gone fully into labour and was actually pushing. The problem now, though, was that the contractions weren't frequent or strong enough to help with the pushing so they ended up using suction to get the baby out.
Because Lucie is premature, they'll remain in hospital for a few days whilst she had antibiotics and various tests. Otherwise, mother and baby are doing well.