Happy New Year! New Baby!

I have always believed that New Years Eve is highly overrated. I think that was actually one of the first things me and Matthew agreed on the first time we had a real conversation. Me having memories of sitting at home making photo albums on New Years Eve in lack of something better to do, and Matthew on his side, had his stories.

So here I am New Years Eve 2009/2010, sitting alone in a hospital bed in France.  I just finished my festive dinner, some kind of weird looking fish served over rice and broccoli.  My expectations were not too high, having eaten this hospital food for two days now – but when plain yoghurt “yoghurt naturell” (that I added two packs of sugar to) turns out to be the high point of the meal – you know you’ve been in for a real treat!  At least they added a napkin with a picture of an open champagne bottle, just to make us feel a little more festive.

But then again, the reason why I’m here couldn’t have given me more reason to celebrate: A beautiful little girl that right now is begging to be feed too.  So it all started two days ago, or should I say it finally seemed to go towards the end of a long waiting game of lots of contractions that I had had for weeks.

The boys were in bed, the contractions actually started to feel like they hit a new level of pain – so I decided to clean the house.  I have always believed that there is no better way to start a birth than doing a little good old fashioned house wife cleaning.  Vacuuming, Washing the floors with “green soap”, removing all the Christmas decorations – making sure that everything looked white and nice for the New Year.    In the middle of this, we were checking the bus schedule, when would we have to leave if we were going to make the last bus to the hospital?  I wasn’t sure it was the real thing yet, so the last bus left without us, and an hour later, still not quite sure, I thought we might just call a taxi, get to the hospital so I could get checked just in case.  I didn’t really feel comfortable going into the night without that.  So we called our American neighbor to come over and be with the kids, the taxi came and we arrived at the hospital at 11:00 PM.

At first I felt a little silly.  The contractions weren’t exactly killing me – and when the midwife checked for an opening, it was only 2-3 cm.  They hooked me up to one of the contraction-measuring machines and the contractions started to increase in frequency and pain over the next hour.  When the midwife checked again after a little more than an hour the opening was 4cm.

I was thinking that 1 cm an hour would make for a very long night – but that was not to be the case!

01:00: We got a yoga ball, and were shown to the room where I would be staying after the birth.  “Call me if your water breaks or if the pain gets too much worse” the midwife said, and left us there.  It didn’t take that long before the yoga ball, standing and walking made me dizzy – so I laid down on the bed, held on to the sides and tried to remember to breathe when the pain was too bad.  Poor Matthew sat behind me, trying to press on my lower back when the contractions were killing me.  “I can’t feel you” I would say to him, and he would go He tried a time or two to say “Don’t you think we should call the midwife now – it is much worse…” I had already gone to a whole other place where the pain had taken over my mind – but when my water broke during one of the contractions I was able to admit: WE NEED HELP NOW!

Those next few minutes seemed like they took forever…before the midwives finally came.  On of them was smart enough to understand the situation, they grabbed the bed, ran down the hallway with me, in to a delivery room.  4 or 5 people were suddenly in there trying to get me over into the delivery bed, but I was in the middle of a contraction and locked to the bed.  I heard one of them saying with surprise in her voice “she’s pushing” another one ripped off my clothes – I was clear for about the 5 seconds that it took me to crawl over to the other bed, where I just landed on my stomach as the push-feeling was there again, accompanied by my screaming.  Suddenly Matthew was there, he had been held up trying to get a hospital shirt on – “Do what they say now, she is coming” he had seen the head on his way in the door, and then, a few seconds later, she was out (02:03).

I was shaky, and being on my stomach, I couldn’t see anything.  They took the baby out to check her, scared that the quick passage through the birth canal could have given her quite a shock, but she was fine.  The next hour, before I got to see her or Matthew again was filled with shacking, needles, stitches – things nobody wants to hear or know about.  But then you know, all that is over.  It is 03.01 in the morning almost an hour after the birth when Matthew comes smiling in to me with the baby following in a little glass incubator to keep her warm.  After a little bit I got to hold her, and she sucked onto me like she knew all along that she belonged to me – and I knew that this was little Mia – that was her name.  I looked at Matthew and he just smiled and nodded – “Mia it is!”

So here I am, in a French hospital, New Year’s Eve, not alone, but with a wonderful little creature along with me that you all someday will get to meet: my little Mia.

Mia Ådland Monger

Born 30. December 2009 02.03 AM in Longjumeau, France

3350 grams (7.4 pounds) 50.5 cm (19.88 inches)

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