Cora Bethan, 4th January 2012

This one was a tease. A tortoise. I had false labour that I thought might be it on 21st December, false labour that I thought was it – so much so that I called Mary down – on 28th December and eventually a long latent phase which began at 4pm on 1st January, although it died down so much in between that I wouldn’t say things really started until 1pm on 3rd. But we’ll get to that.

I hated those last few weeks: the not knowing, the feeling so ignorant and more like a novice than I ever had when I actually was one. Although I only really discussed it with Nathaniel, Mary and my mum, and none of them was responsible for my feeling this way, I felt like everyone thought I was trying to talk myself into it, like I’d so long thought this baby would be early, and more recently hoped that it would, that I felt like I needed to hurry up and produce it, to prove myself right perhaps. (And I wasn’t even due until 9th!)

I say ‘produce it’, because we didn’t know who she was yet. I think for me that made the waiting harder. I wanted to start the long journey of getting to know this person whom I would do my best to guide through life, and the first step on that journey was knowing if she would be destined to grow into a man or a woman. And even before that, I would see her face, and how I longed to see her face.

1st January

On New Year’s Day, having both stayed in the night before, me too pregnant and Nathaniel too tired to go out and celebrate (from sleep broken by Talia, who had, with perhaps the worst timing possible, just realised that staying in bed at night was optional), we went for a celebratory brunch. We walked the two miles to Ethel’s Kitchen, the longest walk I had taken in weeks, as walking inflamed my pelvic girdle pain. But the pain had eased off as of late, I had my giant tubigrip lifting my bump and supporting my pelvis, and I was convinced that walking was the answer. (I am always convinced that walking is the answer to everything, but definitely to convincing babies out.)

My body handled the walk so well, in fact, that after a full English breakfast, I was happy to walk home too. Halfway home it started to rain, and by the time we got in we were wet through. We had picked up our pace as the rain came down; this was surely the biggest workout my body had had in a while.

At home, we peeled off our soaking wet clothes, drank hot chocolate, put Talia to bed and took ourselves there too, and fell together into a deep sleep. When I woke up at 4pm, I started having contractions. By this point I had so tired of feeling like the boy who cried wolf, I had told Nathaniel I would simply say “wolf” whenever I felt like labour might be starting. I was convinced enough that this might be the real thing, however, to say something like, “wolf, but really this time”. Then at 5pm I had a show, a real tangible sign that labour might be starting, although I knew it could still be days or even weeks. I called Mary and we decided to wait and see what happened next.

I had another show at 8pm and thought the contractions might be getting stronger. I bounced on the ball as we watched Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe 2011, timing contractions which were coming quite regularly every six minutes, lasting a good minute, but I soon realised not in fact getting any stronger. Mary and I were texting each other all evening and then spoke at 9:30pm and 10:30pm. She too had become wise to my crying wolf, and already spent two nights with us the previous week after jumping on a train at my last false alarm. We decided she should stay put and I went to bed.

2nd January

It eased off enough for me to sleep, but started again in the morning. I had had another show, then contractions all day, somewhere between six and ten minutes apart, but they never got stronger, longer or closer together. It is excellent advice that you should ignore all Braxton Hicks and latent phase contractions until you truly can’t any more, and I did manage to go about my normal business, eating and sleeping when I usually would, but to ignore them would have been impossible. I knew that second labours were usually shorter than than firsts, and so many people had told me that all this false labour suggested it might be even shorter. I couldn’t help being anxious about getting Mary here from London on time and Talia to my mum’s. I had made peace with the idea that it might not happen how I wanted, that Mary might not make it in time, but it was still up to me to try to have everyone in the right place at the right time, and that meant I had to pay attention. So I continued to ask myself constantly if the contractions were getting stronger.

It was a bank holiday so Nathaniel was not at work, but he went out to look at a job in the morning. I spoke to my mum at 9am and she came over to get Talia a little while later. We talked about how my mum would prepare Talia before bringing her back once the baby had arrived, and she told me she was planning on taking her to choose a present for the baby. I sat on the ball bouncing through our conversation, drinking raspberry leaf tea as always, contracting gently but regularly. When she kissed me goodbye she told me she loved me like a mother who thought her daughter was in labour. I still thought it was happening, if not yet.

Nathaniel came home and we tried nature’s best way of raising my oxytocin levels before taking a walk to Old Village, through to Easthill Park to see the horses. It was a beautiful day, with clear blue skies. “I should probably hug a tree or something,” I said.

“Why, have you got an itchy bump?”

“No,” I laughed, “to get in touch with mother nature.”

All the time we walked I kept asking myself with each contraction whether they were getting strong enough to call Mary again. We stopped at Tesco for supplies (sweets, soda, juice), before having a terrible lunch in the only cafe open, it being 2nd January. I had been keeping Mary updated by text or phone call throughout the day. At 1:15pm I called her from the cafe, enthused by a few strong ones. At 1:50pm I called her again, reporting that it was already easing off again.

I went home and, having read that this labour’s progress might be being hindered by some emotional blockage, wrote a letter addressed “Dear Talia, and dear baby tortoise, and dear me,” in which I laid bare and worked through some of my anxiety, not about the birth but about the coming weeks. I had a good cry as I wrote.

I didn’t call Mary again until 7:30pm, to confirm the obvious: nothing doing. So we spent another evening with me bouncing on the ball drinking raspberry leaf tea, watching Michael MacIntyre’s Christmas Comedy Roadshow this time, optimistic that laughter would either induce labour or at least cheer me up.

3rd January

Again things died down enough for me to sleep. I got up at 5:30am and contractions started again, about 10 minutes apart and irregular. I told Nathaniel he may as well go to work, once I had confirmed with him that he could be all packed up and home within half an hour if it all picked up again. At 7am I went back to bed, and as soon as I lay down they eased off again. I was starting to get very bored of this.

I suddenly realised that Talia was supposed to be back at school at 9am and called my mum to ask her to drop her off, then pop in and see me. I still felt weird, like some hormonal change was taking place, but by now I was decidedly not in labour, back to having occasional, very mild Braxton Hicks contractions. “You must be so bored”, my mum said.

I told my mum I wanted to go for another walk despite the wet and windy weather (the polar opposite of the previous day) and eventually we decided to drive down and walk along the beach, thinking we would pick Talia up on the way back. By the time we got down there it was really wet, but we persevered. If I had thought we got wet on New Year’s Day, that was nothing. We had walked straight into a storm bad enough to rip apart a beach hut right before our eyes. “If this doesn’t get you going, nothing will,” my mum said.

We got back to the car, soaked to the skin, too early to collect Talia from school, so went back home to change into tracksuit bottoms. Only I had put them all in the wash that morning, so had to send my mum home in a pair of pyjamas.

We collected Talia, then my mum went home. I gave Talia her lunch then put her down for her nap and ate my own, a bowl of spicy soup. And then, finally, it started again. And it did feel different. I don’t know if they were stronger this time, or I was more sure that they were increasing in intensity, but as I used up the last of the vegetables on a pork stew, I wondered if I would be in established labour by dinnertime.

The important thing, as ever, was to keep walking. So after calling Mary at 2:20pm, I took Talia and ran a few errands: to the bank, card shop for a birthday card for Rachel, and cash machine. I picked up some more sweets to replace those we’d already eaten since the previous day and a chocolate orange. I treated Talia to a few segments and some sweets in a bowl, telling her as I had been for weeks that the baby was coming soon, but this time meaning really soon, probably before I see you again this time.

At around 4pm Nathaniel got home and I told him that it was happening for real this time and, hearing confidence in my voice for the first time in days, he didn’t question it, he only asked if I had called Mary or my mum. I told him that Mary was on her way but I was waiting for him to get home so that he would have a chance to see Talia before my mum came over, as he’d not seen her since the previous morning. He took the story-reading over from me, then took her upstairs to play while he shaved and I called my mum, who came straight away.

Mary arrived soon afterwards and my mum decided to have a cup of tea so as not to drag Talia away from her Aunty Mary the minute she arrived. Nathaniel wanted to do something so I agreed he could inflate the pool. Of course once she saw this happening, Talia didn’t want to leave, but we bribed her with a couple of goes on the pump. At this point I was thinking that things would probably pick up and the baby be born that night or the following morning. It was a strange feeling saying goodbye to Talia for the second night in a row, knowing how much everything was about to change for her.

We all ate some stew then at 7:30pm we sat listening to Aretha Franklin and playing Scrabble (my Christmas present from Nathaniel), which I won. I bounced on the ball as we played, determined to relax and let it come, no interest in timing contractions now everything was ready, everyone in the right place. Contractions were gaining in intensity more slowly than I expected but I didn’t lose confidence again from this point that this was it, it was happening.

I had been thinking that it was too late, cold and dark for another walk until Mary pointed out how silly this was and we all wrapped up and headed out. We climbed the mile back to the Old Village to choose between two equally unappealing pubs, and went inside, where the quiet was broken only by the occasional blast from the jukebox. We looked through the photos on Mary’s phone, many of which were of a very cute and funny small Talia, thinking that should get the oxytocin going. I was restless and paced or swayed through contractions, but not labouring obviously enough for anyone to pay us much attention.

At home, I took a couple of cocodamol and went to bed at 10:30pm. I slept fitfully until midnight when, after a loo break, I fell into a deeper sleep.

4th January

I was woken at 4am by a gush of amniotic fluid. I left Nathaniel sleeping and woke Mary. “I think my waters have broken.” We went downstairs for a cup of tea and I ate some cereal. I was excited, thinking surely now my waters had gone things would get moving. Contractions started up again but were no stronger or closer together and at 5am we went back to bed.

Nathaniel and I slept until 7am, Mary until 9am, and then at 10am we went out for a walk. It was cold and windy, the wind behind us. We walked a mile and a half along the seafront, then back into the wind. I told them about a saying I had heard that (if I remember correctly) a mother should spend the first six hours after birth in the bed, the first six days near the bed and the first six weeks near the home. (I was reminding Nathaniel, of course, that he was going to have to look after me once this was done. I felt quite calm and confident about the birth, but still had some anxiety about the weeks afterwards. We had already talked it all through, however, and I needn’t have worried really; in the event, he was amazing.)

We stopped on the way back at Marks and Spencer to get something for lunch and dinner later. Both Mary and Nathaniel would ask me occasionally if I was still contracting as they weren’t really strong enough for anyone to notice other than me. We were confused and indecisive, but eventually we chose a few ready meals and some pâté for lunch, seeing as I was almost not pregnant any more.

We got home and Mary and Nathaniel took to a computer each, Nathaniel writing an estimate and Mary working on the essay that she’d originally said she wanted to get finished before Christmas, but about which we had recently started joking that the baby was waiting for her to finish before making its arrival. I pottered about the place tidying up and packing the baby’s nappy bag. I opened a packet of newborn nappies and cooed over their tininess, going to show Nathaniel in the other room. They were so much smaller than the nappies Talia still wears at night.

Back in the kitchen, I ate some bread and pâté, stopping for contractions, which had finally reached the point that others could tell when I was having one. I started to rock or sway a little, and decided to time a few. (I hate timing contractions but I knew I’d need to phone the hospital soon and should probably have some information to give them.)

At 1:20pm the contractions were strong enough that I decided to call the hospital and ask them to send a midwife. They were coming every four minutes and getting stronger.

Juliette, a community midwife, arrived an hour later, observed me for a while and then examined me. I was 4cm dilated and the baby was three fifths engaged. I was relieved, having predicted that I would be 4cm then worried that I had set myself up for disappointment. Juliette explained that my hind waters had broken, but not the main bag, which explained why things had still been progressing so slowly. Nathaniel filled the pool and I continued to bounce on the ball and rock my way through contractions, while we chatted with Juliette (whom Mary knew from her time working at the hospital).

Juliette observed as my contractions waxed and waned. She was in two minds about whether to stay or not, as at one point things seemed to be really hotting up, but then they eased off again. She said that my cervix was very stretchy and she imagined that one big contraction could be all it took to take me from 4cm to 7cm. Eventually she decided to leave, recommending that we go and have a lie down, as I had been on my feet all day. I explained that I had been keeping moving to try and encourage things to get going, but she suggested that a lie down might actually be more effective now, as my body would get a rest then when I got up gravity pulling the baby back down onto my cervix might be enough to move it to action.

At 3pm, Juliette left. “Let’s try it then, let’s go upstairs and lie down,” I said to Nathaniel.

“What, all of us?” he asked, looking at Mary.

“No, me and you,” I laughed. So we lay on the bed and every time a contraction came I would manoeuvre onto all fours and rock. He asked me what it was like, how strong they were. I tried to describe it to him. He seemed so sympathetic, like he was really trying to imagine what it must be like to have to go through it and felt terrible for me. I tried to explain how it felt, how it was really, really horrible, but at the same time just not, because it didn’t feel wrong. It just is what it is. I knew it was right. What really hurts is inequity, mistreatment, fear; not nature.

We also talked about how strange it felt to be there, on the verge of becoming a family of four. How what would soon be the new normal felt so huge and incomprehensible. I cried a bit. He always asks me why when I cry, and usually I try to articulate an answer. But with the pain and the glory and just the absolute hugeness of it, I’m not quite sure how we manage not to cry the whole way through labour. How could I explain a few tears?

It wasn’t long, 40 minutes after Juliette left in fact, before we were back downstairs and I was on the phone to the hospital again. The contractions had got more intense and I was now having three every ten minutes. I took a couple more cocodamol, noticing that it had got dark. Towards the end of this pregnancy I had tried to imagine this baby being born in daylight and I just couldn’t picture it. Talia was born after dusk, and I had a feeling this baby had been waiting to do the same.

I leant over Talia’s chair, rocking through the contractions. Mary and Nathaniel both had a go at rubbing my lower back, as I tried to explain to them what gave the most relief. It was good just to have something physical other than the pain of the contractions on which to focus. An hour passed like this, with me asking “where’s my midwife?” and making comments like “ok, I would really like a midwife here now” between contractions.

I made sure I had plenty to drink and snacked on pringles and biscuits throughout the labour. (Mary joked that she had never seen a labouring woman eat so much.) I was careful to empty my bladder often, having to go quickly between contractions now as I was reaching the point where contracting alone in a tiny room felt stressful. I needed to share this.

“Shall I get in the pool?” I wondered aloud. “I would really like to get in the pool right now… but I don’t want to get in too soon. I’d like them to examine me first… I don’t really want to get out again to be examined…”

Mary seemed to think it would be fine for me to get in, which suggested she thought I was probably in active labour by now (5cm+). Eventually I decided to wait.

At 4:40pm I called the hospital back again and a very sympathetic midwife let me know that the midwives were on their way. “Are you ok, love?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, on the verge of tears, “I just needed to hear exactly that, that someone was coming.”

“She said they,” I told Mary and Nathaniel. “She might have meant it in the gender-neutral sense, but I think it was plural.”

“Maybe she’s got a student with her,” Mary offered.

Ten minutes later, Flo and Ingrid (whom Mary also knew) arrived. Flo explained that because she was a newly-qualified midwife, Ingrid had come with her. It turned out that it was actually Flo’s very first day in her new job; Ingrid on the other hand had many years of experience. Lucky me, they turned out to be the absolute best of both worlds.

Flo examined me, and described my cervix as 5cm dilated, stretchy, with the baby “at spines”. I was surprised and a little disappointed I hadn’t dilated more over the last two-and-a-half hours, especially the last hour when contractions had become really strong. Mary explained to me in her most encouraging way that “at spines” meant fully engaged, so the baby had dropped from three fifths right down. She has since explained to me that the the layperson is always interested in dilation but the hard work of labour is just as much, if not more, about the baby making its way down the birth canal. So I was getting there. Baby was getting there.

I got in the pool, which felt wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that contractions eased off. Really eased off. After a couple of really quite gentle contractions, Flo came over and told me that she and Ingrid were thinking of leaving, because the labour had eased off so much. Having already said goodbye to one midwife only to have things really heat up again half an hour later, I really didn’t want them to leave, and told her as much. “I’m sure it’s just eased off because I’ve got in the water and it’s going to pick up again soon.”

“Ok, that’s fine, we’ll stay,” Flo replied immediately, reassuringly. She then suggested that she might examine me again soon, essentially so that she could tweak her notes to make sure I wasn’t classed as having entered the second stage too early, which might later force them to recommend I transfer to hospital if it went on too long. She taught Mary an acupressure technique to help increase the contractions, squeezing a pressure point between my thumb and forefinger. All throughout the labour I was impressed and delighted by the very natural approach that Flo and Ingrid took.

The midwives needn’t have worried. The next contraction was bigger, the one after that back to how they were before I got in the pool, and it never eased off again.

Mary sat with me while Ingrid and Nathaniel sat at the kitchen table and Flo floated between the two. I heard them talking about tea, among other things, and was somewhat tempted to ask them to shut up, at least when I was having contractions, but I focused inwards instead. Mary talked me through each contraction as I focused on a tiny toy goat on the floor across the room, until something about it felt wrong, false, contrived, and I said “the goat’s got to go.”

“The goat’s really good?”

“No, no, it’s got to go.”

From that point I shifted my focus onto the studs on the side of the fridge door (where the handle would attach should it open the other way). After a few contractions I asked for some gas and air, which I tried and succeeded in using a little more sparingly than last time, wanting to feel more present and remember this birth better. I developed a sort of meditation, sucking on the gas and air thinking “painkiller in” then moaning on the out breath thinking “pain out”. Painkiller in, pain out; painkiller in, pain out. I instinctively, almost like I was tripping, visualised the gas entering me as blue and the pain leaving me as red. The pain is so overwhelming, dealing with it feels like an entirely mental exercise, like your job is just to keep your shit together. It feels like if you don’t, you might burst, splatter across the walls.

Mary coached me brilliantly. At one point she seemed to run out of steam a little, maybe tiring of her own voice or not sure whether I wanted her to keep talking. “Don’t stop,” I told her once the contraction ended. “I need you to talk me the whole way through them.”

I remember trying to commit to memory what the experience was like, just how badly it really hurts. I kept thinking about that old idiom “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”. I could understand forgetting this after the first time, it being a one-off, but surely going through it again, experiencing not just the pain again but the recognition of that pain, I wouldn’t forget it again. My attempt to remember was futile, however. I remember the thoughts, I remember that I promised myself I would understand it as bad and painful and not just huge and powerful, but I don’t honestly remember the pain itself, and certainly not as something bad. I remember it as huge and powerful. There’s no cheating nature.

Gradually the urge to push crept up on me. I remembered from my first labour how the midwife had told me I should, ideally, try to resist that urge for an hour before I started pushing. I tried my best to do the same, to resist the urge as long as possible, to give my body its best chance to stretch out slowly, have a gentle birth and an easy recovery. But as each contraction came, the urge became stronger and lasted longer. My low moans became higher at the height of each contraction as I resisted the urge to push. The higher noises overtook the lower. I remember being amazed that the noise I was making was coming from a human being, never mind from me. I felt removed from Flo, Ingrid, Mary and Nathaniel, as though I were tripping, alone.

When I reported this urge to push, Ingrid told me to listen to my body and push as it wanted me to. “You don’t want to examine me again?” I asked, expecting them to want to confirm I was fully dilated, but they reassured me that there was no need. I was staying in that pool until I held my baby in my arms.

At 6:45pm I was overtaken with an enormous contraction, intensely powerful with a huge pushing urge throughout. I use the words “intensely powerful” because “intensely painful” doesn’t describe it quite right, it sounds too sharp, whereas labour pains feel, to me, deeper and duller, more like a bear hug out of control, with the quality of a man’s arms and voice. The pain overwhelmed me, I lost control and screamed, carried on screaming after the contraction ended until I heard voices calling my name, telling me to calm down. Flo and Ingrid donned their plastic aprons and gloves around me, suddenly aware this baby was coming soon.

But I, for my part, had thought the baby was coming then. “I only had one contraction like that with Talia,” I explained, “when her head came out. So I thought the baby was going to be born then.”

“It’s going to be born soon,” Mary reassured me. I knew I was nearly there, and that comforted me, but equally I knew it wasn’t over yet, and nothing could really comfort me until it was. I had to accept that that pain I expected to signal the end did not in fact. It wouldn’t be over until it was over.

Until that point I had still been trying my best to resist the urge to push, only giving into it at the very height of contractions when I had no choice. I had already explained to Flo earlier that I had had a bad second degree tear with Talia and I would like her to try and coach me once this baby was crowning so it would be eased out more slowly. Ingrid had heard this and got the impression that I might be trying not to push because I was scared of tearing. “I’m not scared,” I explained. Somehow, despite the enormous pain, my self-preservation instinct remained intact, and I had been managing to put it above my desire for it all to be over. But that work was done. It was time to push this baby out.

For the next forty minutes, the contractions continued as that first intense one, but without the panic. I moved around the pool at the midwives’ suggestion, opening my legs wider, bending them more, trying a couple on my back to give my legs a rest. I had regained my composure a little bit from that contraction that frightened me, but still I was in enormous pain with each contraction, screaming, not really sure if I was alive or dead. (Mary told me later I was in the top five loudest women of all the births she has seen.) At one point I saw Nathaniel start to freak out, and Mary beckon him over to her, behind me, in the hope that I wouldn’t notice. I had noticed, but it was too late for any concern about anyone else to affect this labour. I was doing it.

Once Mary and Nathaniel were behind me, after one contraction on my back I asked them each to hold one of my arms and did a couple like that. If felt more manageable somehow being physically supported. I imagine it must be much harder out of the water, as it supports you somewhat. Labour is not just the pain of the uterus contracting, but full body pain and exhaustion, much of which takes hold of the legs and back.

Between contractions, I said “I just don’t feel like I can do it much longer if it’s not going to make the baby come.” Mary and Flo reassured me that not only could I do it but it was making the baby come. It felt like it was going on forever, contraction after contraction, and I still didn’t understand why none of them was the last one, and yet couldn’t imagine that one of them ever would be.

Everyone kept telling me how brilliantly I was doing. “You’re doing it,” Mary said, “you’re really breathing this baby out.” They reminded me how to do it: head on my chest, into my bottom. Still I was making a lot of noise. Eventually Ingrid suggested that I try being quiet and focusing that energy down. I did, and at the end of one very long contraction, I birthed the head, much to the surprise of everyone in the room except me. Flo had not had the chance to coach me, I had pushed long and hard with all my might. But I was there. One more push and my baby would be out.

At 19:26, with that last push, my baby was born in the exact same spot as her sister. I was squatting, leaning forward, and she emerged into the water behind me. It was the biggest relief I had ever felt in my life. Now when I watch One Born Every Minute I notice the familiar grunt that follows the birth, the enormous physical relief of that moment. I was so exhausted, so relieved, had been in so much pain, Mary had to tell me to pick the baby up. I reached down, pulled the baby up between my legs and, seeing her for the first time, exclaimed “I was not expecting that!” The pain and exhaustion were so intense, the sensation of not knowing if I was alive or dead so overwhelming, I had completely lost sight of the fact that I was birthing a baby.

But there she was. A person. A person I had never met before. It was the biggest shock of my life. She was huge, and she looked nothing like Talia. She was coated in a thick layer of vernix (the thickest Mary had ever seen, despite her being only five days shy of her due date), and had short hair. Combined, these two features gave me the impression of her being much fairer than her sister. I knew throughout my pregnancy that she wasn’t Talia, but I still expected her to look like her. She didn’t, she looked like me! Not like her father, like me! I was amazed. I sort of imagined when Talia was born that Nathaniel’s genes were somehow dominant, and any further children would look just like him too.

So we looked at her, and we looked at each other, and Nathaniel kissed me, and it was over. And then I heard Mary say, “are you going to see what it is then?” For even as I write about her as “she”, at this point we still didn’t know, and I had, genuinely, for those few minutes, forgotten that this person I was not expecting had a defining feature between its legs. (I thought Nathaniel had forgotten too but he later told me that he was thinking about it but just happily enjoying the moment of regarding this new person.) So I moved the cord out of the way and “a girl!” we both exclaimed, only realising then through our surprise that we were both, deep down, expecting a boy (this despite my spending at least 37 weeks of my pregnancy expecting a girl).

I lay back in the pool and stared at her. Mary knew how my only real regret from Talia’s birth was that I felt the first minutes of her life were rushed, that she was taken away from me too quickly, and I didn’t remember it all as clearly as I would have liked. This time it was going to be different, and so it was. I laid back in the pool and stared at my baby, a sister for Talia. I felt totally exhilarated. Ingrid helped me remove my bra, so I could hold her skin to skin, and put a towel over her to keep her warm.

I had another contraction there in the pool, and tried to put her to my breast. “What’s her name?” Mary asked. I hesitated to answer, saying “she doesn’t look like I thought she would.”

We got out of the pool and onto the sofa, where I had another go at feeding her, which helped me deliver the placenta about twenty minutes after she was born. I called my mum almost immediately, knowing she had been waiting a long time for news and might well be getting worried. “Talia has a sister,” I told her. I asked her to put Talia to bed and ask my step-dad to come home and stay with her so that she could come over.

I confirmed with Nathaniel that he was happy with the choice of name before finally telling Mary, “her name is Cora”. Mary let out a little laugh, or shed a tear, or both, prompting me to ask, “don’t you like it?” but it wasn’t that, it was just that she was a person now: Cora Bethan.

Ingrid examined me. I had a second degree tear but it was much smaller than last time and much quicker and less painful to suture. Meanwhile Cora was getting checked and weighed. None of us could believe it when they put her on the scales to discover she was 7lb 9oz, a full 12oz bigger than Talia had been, especially considering I had gained 6lb less. (I gained 32lb when pregnant with Talia, 26lb with Cora.) We looked at the to-do list on the fridge where we had recorded our guesses earlier: Mary: 6lb 8oz; Nathaniel: 6lb 9oz; Catherine 6lb 11oz. It seemed I was on a winning a streak. It certainly felt like it.

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