My son - my precious third son - lay on the resuscitaire.

Tap, tap, tap. He wasn’t breathing but if that tap, tap, tap continued - the nurse’s signal to the paediatrician that she had a heartbeat - I knew he could be all right.

Tap, tap, tap. I was clinging to Matthew’s hand, squeezing it so hard as if it would squeeze life and breath into our son. Come on, I willed him. I don’t think I really believed that he wouldn’t gasp a great lungful of air with my own next breath. I felt like I was gasping for him, that airless room feeling more confining with each passing second. Come on.

Tap, tap, tap. Oxygen. Vigorous rubbing. More oxygen. CPR. Seconds were passing. The consultant stood at the end of the operating table seemingly unable to move. They say if you are worried whether your plane is about to crash or whether the turbulence is actually normal, you should look at the cabin crew’s eyes. That’s when I started crying. When I looked at Matthew he was already crying. The next few minutes were a blur. All I can remember is the silence (it’s never that silent in E.R. in moments of drama) and the nurse’s eyes. The ticking of the clock and the silence. And the anxiety in her eyes.

I let out the breath I had been holding and as I did so, my son clearly took a breath in, for suddenly there came a cry, a lusty I’m-ready-for-anything cry. “He’s breathing,” exclaimed the paediatrician, redundantly.

While Ben was later in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit I would find out that he had had no respirations for several minutes. But by the time Matthew left me on the postnatal ward and went to see him in the NICU Ben was having an illicit cuddle with the nurses. “You caught us,” they said. “He’s doing much better and it really looked like he was smiling at us when we held him.”

He may not have been in my arms but he still knew how to get those cuddles. My clever cuddly smiley boy.

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My newborn is now ten weeks old. I haven’t posted the birth story yet because I wanted to get a little distance from it so I could write objectively about it. So I can say completely objectively, it. was. awful.

I’m probably breaking some mothers’ code about not saying how awful childbirth can be but, really, it. was. awful. At fourteen days overdue I went in for monitoring because I wasn’t sure if I had felt the baby move as much as I was used to. I felt a bit stupid going in but my fears were justified: the midwife wasn’t overly happy about the monitoring and booked me in for induction the following day. Because I wanted a VBAC and particularly wanted to avoid induction because of the risk of increased medical intervention that can result from being induced, I wasn’t overly happy but I wasn’t about to risk the baby’s life, so at fifteen days overdue I went in.

I was dilated enough to have my waters broken and then I donned my robe and walked. And walked. And walked. I saw every floor and corridor of the hospital but nothing happened. And then nothing happened some more. So against all my better instincts I let them put me on a drip to start contractions. After a couple of hours I was thinking, hey this is great, I’m having good, regular contractions and they hurt but I can handle it, the gas and air is good, I don’t feel sick, hey I’m going to have a baby. Hooray!

About ten minutes after thinking this, I was on the bed feeling like my insides were being ripped out by a red hot poker. I have never felt pain like it. I was having five contractions every ten minutes, each one lasting two minutes. You do the math. Searing pain followed by searing pain and me yelling “THIS DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT, IT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE THIS.”

Note to self: next time get epidural before induction.

I’m not prone to dramatizing things so when I say I felt barely conscious you can assume things were bad. The epidural went in but it was more than ten minutes before I resumed any semblance of normality and by then the anaesthetist was long gone. But oh! how I kiss him in my dreams every night.

After that pain it seems churlish to complain about the shaking and the sickness but the throwing up was pretty nasty. When it got to pushing I had to throw up before I could contemplate concentrating on pushing. I was also concentrating on not pooping which is not really the way to have a baby. Anyway nothing was happening and the midwives were getting quite cross with me. I was feeling pretty poorly and completely detached. At one point I was begging for a c-section. Wimpering. Like a small puppy with sad eyes.

Eventually they called someone more senior who reported that the baby’s face was the wrong way round and she tried turning him. (No apology for being cross with me for not trying hard enough.) When they couldn’t turn the baby’s head they called the consultant. She could hardly contain her excitement; she might as well have said out loud “I’ve never done one of these before.” So they wheeled me up to theatre, topped up the epidural and she twisted and turned that baby so his face was the right way round. “I’ve never managed to do that before”, she said, jubilantly. She knew how much I wanted a VBAC and she did everything to help me. I would kiss her in my dreams every night if I weren’t already kissing that anaesthetist.

Then out came the forceps and I pushed with all my might. That’s when I pooped. I couldn’t bring myself to poop earlier in front of two (very nice) midwives and my husband but put me in a bright room with fifteen odd people standing around waiting to give me an emergency c-section and I can poop like a trooper. As I pushed again I heard the consultant say “there’s meconium, let’s get this baby out”. The surgeon moved closer with his scalpel. I pushed twice more, she pulled harder than I care to think about and out he came. They laid him on my tummy. “Is it a boy?” I kept asking, “is it a boy?”

And there was my boy, my beautiful third son, born barely alive. And not breathing.

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Shall I post the birth story? You may decide it’s best I don’t when I tell you that I reviewed my maternity notes a few hours after Ben was born and I saw the words “patient suffered second degree tear in the clitoral hood”.

Not good. Really not good.

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My body (and by body I mean boobies but somehow it just seemed wrong to start a post with the word boobies) is working overtime producing sustenance for my son. As a result I have industrial size knockers (lovely English term) full of milk. All the time.

I also have the world’s strongest let down reflex that seems to occur whenever I think about my baby or hear him cry or whenever I think about any baby or hear any baby cry, resulting in the floodgates opening (I bet you’re glad you read this post, aren’t you?). But most of all it occurs when I think about my boobies and how full they are of milk waiting for my baby. All well and good right? because a baby needs milk and my industrial size son requires so. much. milk. Last week he put on a pound instead of the traditional half-pound. It’s like feeding two babies!

The trouble with this is that approximately five minutes after my baby has fed, I am locked and loaded again, awaiting the next feed and I am acutely aware of how full they are all the time. Thinking about this triggers the let-down reflex. Then my top is soaked. No problem except this seems to be occuring with alarming frequency when the grocery-delivery man comes to the door. Here’s the scenario: He’s looking at my giant-sized boobs. My boobs are full of milk. Oh no, here comes the milk. Or when my son’s pre-school teacher greets us at school: She’s looking at my giant-sized boobs. My boobs are full of milk. Oh no, here comes the milk.

So you get through the sickness of pregnancy, the embarrassment and indignity of childbirth, the hassle of all that bleeding, the pain of the haemorroids and then, as the icing on the cake, dripping boobs. Anybody that does this whole thing more than once must be completely crazy (that’ll be me then).

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My new son is surely the happiest baby ever. He smiled when he was only two weeks old and has been smiling ever since. He smiles at me, sometimes at his father and older brothers and sometimes even at inanimate objects like the washing machine. But he positively leers when he is lying on my lap and sees me unhook the bra. Woohoo! Booby!

But what makes me happiest is the way he can stare at my face for hours (because let’s face it, this mothering lark is all about me, me, me) his eyes scanning every pore and imperfection, my eyes taking in every inch of his perfect baby skin. He only coos when he is looking at me! He sure knows how to keep the most important person in his life happy, even if it is just because I provide the booby. Woohoo! Booby!

Can you tell I adore my baby? Can you tell he adores booby?

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I can’t believe that after such a long wait I finally get to announce the arrival last week of our beautiful baby son Ben weighing 9lbs 11oz.

He needed resuscitating when he arrived and then had to go to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for a short spell which was frightening and upsetting to be separated from him right after he was born but we are all safely home now and I am enjoying spending every minute with him, perhaps more conscious of the fact that life is very fragile and very, very precious.

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I know. I haven’t posted in a week. Even I thought I’d had the baby.

But no, I am still sitting here with this baby piling on weight by the hour, especially after all the Christmas and New Year festivities, and if a girl can’t drink she is sure gonna make up for it by eating everything on offer.

Although I am now DESPERATE to have this baby I am more than a little relieved that it wasn’t born over the holidays, although we now risk it being born on the same day as my eldest who is just about to turn four but there could be worse things than sharing a birthday with your big brother. But I really am desperate now to have this baby out, not least because I know that for every day that passes now I am looking at another couple of ounces over ten pounds and the thought of that hurts, not as much as the practicality of pushing a ten pound plus baby out, but it hurts all the same. I’m so desperate that the husband will probably get to have his wicked way with me and - really - I am so looking forward to the thought of that, with all the discomfort I am in and given the size of me. Raspberry leaf tea, long walks, pineapple, homeopathic remedies - none of these have helped, so hanky panky it will have to be.

New Year’s Eve was a blast. I spent the whole night having contractions! But I went to bed late and woke up on Sunday morning, checked the bed and no, no baby had appeared overnight as I was expecting. I felt cheated. Going overdue is one thing but false labour when you are overdue just gets you all excited and scared unnecessarily.

Foolproof remedies for bringing on labour needed NOW, so please do the honours in the comments section. Words of encouragement about how pushing out a very large baby won’t hurt AT ALL in the comments please. Horror stories: well please wait until after the baby is born, in the meantime lie about how easy you had it, tell me the truth later.

Oh, and of course a very Happy New Year to you all.

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I’m still here, I’m fat and I’m due tomorrow. Last night I dreamt I gave birth to a 15lb 10oz baby. I’m scared.

For the last two weeks I’ve been having mild contractions on and off. I feel like I’m never going to have this baby. I’m so huge that all the clothes I wore in my last pregnancy don’t fit at all so I had to go out and buy suitable Christmas season attire which I will probably only wear once.

However we have managed to get through Christmas without the baby arriving early and we also managed to have a great family Christmas with all the extended family here and without me having to do too much work. I even got to have a nap on Christmas afternoon while everyone else prepared the meal. Now I just need to make sure the baby doesn’t arrive on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day: these are not great days for a kid to celebrate a birthday - everyone is either wanting to be somewhere else or nursing a hangover.

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