At 3.07pm today, weighing in at 6lb 7ozs, our son was born by Cesarean Section. His name is Scott Edward and he came with a decent head of hair and fed almost the instant he was born.
Nine months zipped by in a flash. Reality never really set in and even this morning I did not really believe that we were at the end of an incredible journey. It was hard to believe I would return home a father.
Nothing prepared me for this moment. You could read a thousand books, see a million films, listen to a billion people - nothing prepares you for that first moment of new life, that you have created. I cannot find the words to describe the moment he was born.
The day had started early - we called the Delivery Suite at Watford General and they told us to get our backsides there fast. We were late on their requested time, but we needn't have rushed as our Consultant, Yunus Tayob was there but no midwives were. He told us that we would be on at midday and to go away and relax. We went down to the Knutsford Suite, really just to drop off our bags, but they opened our room and we sat there and relaxed until 11.00am when we went back to the Delivery Suite. We waited for over two and a half hours before we were summoned. Even then it took time. We changed and went for the prepping. A rather nervous lady anaesthetist tried to administer an epidural on my long-suffering wife and failed. Enter the Consultant anaesthetist who did in around two minutes - we were good to go then.
The procedure is brisk and after cutting, sluicing, prising and tugging, the baby's head appeared and Mr. Tayob told me to get round the front of the screen to take pictures. That view, that moment will live in my mind until I gasp my last breath. There was our son poking out of his mum's middle. Deftly, he was hauled out and held up for my camera like a fisherman displaying a prize catch.
Lots go on all around you and it's hard to take it all in. The boy blurted out a cry almost immediately then he was whisked away for cleaning by the mid-wife who also did a series of checks to confirm he was in rude health. Mum was stitched up all the while but before long she got to hold the baby first and was ecstatic. I was snapping away at whatever I could between tears and got my turn to hold our son.
Eventually we were taken to the recovery room where the baby took to the boob like a natural and fed for the best part of two hungry hours. Mum was sore but so happy while I was calling every relative and friend I could while texting loads more. I could hardly talk to my wife's mum while I choked up talking to her sister, her brothers and then my family. Everyone was so choked up we hardly actually said a word. The texted replies came cascading in from people as far as Australia and we choked up reading the warm messages and good wishes. In fact, we just choked up generally.
The NHS gets maligned for a lot of things (not least the £12 per day parking fees - how idiotic is that?) but the staff at Watford General were fantastic. The delivery team were superb, Mr. Tayob made having a C-Section like listening to your dad tell a story while he washes the dishes. The mid-wives were fantastic - professional and they lightened up the moment and helped us on all the things we had no clue about. Our assigned mid-wife for the receiving of our baby and the recovery was Nikki Glover - not only was she fantastic and attentive, she was drop dead gorgeous and great fun. She knew all that was needed to know, helped in so many ways, offered advice, and showed us what to do as if she had done this for 40 years. It was when she told us it was her mum's 50th birthday on the weekend that I realised that the NHS at least was giving great training.
We finally got back to our room in the Knutsford Suite at 7.30pm to be greeted by my wife's parents who were just delighted with their latest grandchild. Soon, my sister-in-law and her hubby arrived and we all took turns with the baby and took endless photos. I had got to put his first nappy on, dressed him in his first vest and outfit with cap, and wrapped him in his first blanket. I also got to change his first soiled nappy, clean his first dirty bum and administer his first wet wipe, and then put on his second nappy. It has been one hell of a day.
Young Scott shares a name with his Uncle who was chuffed to bits to have a nephew named after him. But it's been a day of chuffed people - my brother pointed out that there has not been a new son in the family to bear our name for 50 years - our Mum and Dad will be smiling down from heaven tonight, proud as punch for us.
It's difficult to write while trying not to cry - it's been that sort of day. Now I am back home, being greeted by two wary and put-out dogs, I realise life will never be the same again. The car seat in the car on the way back said it all. The Moses basket by the bed, the cot, the pram - our new way of life is all ahead of us.
While waiting for our new son to finish his third feed of the day before I came home, I leafed through a copy of New Scientist. It was going off about quantum communication between photons or something like it. I have a sort of scientific and questioning mind that looks at questions like creation with some degree of scepticism. I can reason to myself that life is but a random outcome of the amalgamation of a set of circumstantial events that happened to cause life - when you study it, life is just chemicals having an amazing party.
Then you watch your baby's head emerge from its mother's womb after nine months of gestation and take its first breath and instinctively fall in love with its parents and reach for a nipple.
At that moment, all logic flies out of the window - science is trivial, mathematics means nothing, quantum schmantum - at that moment you just know this cannot happen without some God, somewhere.
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