Fraser and Claudia in late October 1998 (back home in Melbourne).

This is Fraser, previously known as DH I believe :-)

Claudia Rosalind Rogerson McHarg was born at precisely 3:00 am Thursday 6th August 1998. She was 3.195 kg ( 7lb 0.8 oz) and 49 cm long.

Details from my recollection of events, it is quite possible that Melissa (DW?) will correct me later. (I prefer to call it annotating)

Melissa's hindwaters broke just after noon on Tuesday whilst she was out shopping for her mum's birthday present with her brother (aka Uncle Dave). As there was not a HUGE gush she thought it probably was not the full waters going. She rang the hospital and they said the same and to come in later. Melissa and Dave finished shopping and went home. Rang the hospital again and they said to come in about 5 ish. Rang my sister Justine (who lives in Sydney) to tell her it was time to come down to Melbourne as things would be happening in the near future.

I met Melissa at the hospital (as it is only about two blocks from my work). Dr Jeanie arrived and examined Melissa and popped her forewaters which DID gush (BTW please excuse any of my terminology or spelling if it is incorrect - after all I am only a DH without much sleep recently). Baby was monitored and was fine. We waited for contractions to start. Waited some more and then a bit more. No contraction action was occurring so I was sent home for the evening about 11 pm. Justine arrived at Melbourne airport about 11:45 went to the hospital and was sent home too.

Justine and I went to the hospital early next morning and met up with Dave. By "early", Fraser means about 9am; I had been given a sleeping tablet the night before, woke around 2 for monitoring, then back to sleep & up at 7 to march the corridors of the hospital trying to get labour started... Dr Jeanie examined Melissa at about 9:00 am and put her on a syntocinon drip to encourage contractions which had still not started. The drip dosage was upped during the day and contractions started (in the afternoon I think). Melissa was using the TENS machine which she felt was less useful when the monitoring equipment was on, because she was pretty much restricted to bed when the monitoring equipment was on. Also, the drip back-up battery wasn't working, so I had to stay within range of the power cord - I could just make it into the en-suite toilet if someone held the drip pole steady for me... In general, this part of the day is best described as "boring". We were, of course, excited that the baby was on its way, but were trying to find ways to fill our time. Hooray for the daily puzzles in the paper!

Dr Jeanie was visiting approx every 4 hours. By late afternoon or early evening the contractions were becoming considerably painful and Melissa asked for an epidural on the basis that she did not want it too late, i.e. when she was already exhuasted. The anesthetist arrived about 15 or 20 minutes later and the contractions had got much more painful in the mean time.

After the epidural things actually got quite boring for all concerned. Melissa was not in pain, the baby was fine, contractions were still occurring but nothing was really happening. By 10 pm her cervix had still not dilated much past 2cm which was pretty much what it had been at 9 am. It was pretty much what it had been 9 days before at my regular check-up too! Dr Jeanie said it there was not much improvement by 2 am we would have to reassess our options. At 2 am, the cervix had almost reached 3 cm, however since this was 17 hours since the drip had been put in and 38 hours since the hindwaters broke it was decided that a good effort had been made, but it had been long enough now and this baby was not going to come out vaginally. The rest of the surgical/medical team were called in and the caesarian began. A comment here on the size of the surgical team (and the size of the operating theatre - the back-up one as it was the middle of the night). We don't think they could have fitted another person in - with me, Fraser, the anaesthetist & a nurse, midwife Rosie, a theatre nurse, Dr Carolane the pediatrician and of course Dr Jeanie and her husband Con who was assisting. The epidural dose had to be upped a bit which gave Melissa the shakes in the upper body. Fraser is too kind to mention it here but I was shaking so much I was sure that I would fall off the narrow operating table. In fact, I wouldn't let Fraser hold my hand during the operation (I held his), as I was sure that he would faint and fall & pull me off the table. They say pregnant women have delusions, I didn't find that so much but more than made up for it during this time!!! Melissa said she could feel sensations of pulling and pushing but that was about it. At exactly 3:00 am our daughter arrived.

She, Claudia, didn't look too happy about it at the time - only her left eye was open and she was pulling a sort of leery face a quite indignant look I thought, which is what I figure she had to say about her eviction :-)
They held her up as soon as she was born & lowered the drapes for me to see - I had convinced myself that she was going to be a boy, so at first I was looking thinking "something is missing"! A split second later I realised we had our girl (the enormous purple girly bits being pointed at me kind of gave it away!) and told Fraser just in case he hadn't noticed ;-)
The pediatrician Dr Carolane took her over to the new baby spot, asking (at less than a minute old) what her name was. Fortunately we had discussed this before and after months of debate over a girl's name we liked we realised that Claudia Rosalind was the perfect name.

She was suctioned, tested and wrapped up and given to Melissa. Again, I was shaking so much I made Fraser hold onto her as well, I was sure that I would drop her... After a little while the pediatrician and one of the nurses took Claudia and I to the nursery where she was weighed and measured and then given to me to hold. Justine came over to the nursery a little while later (only spouses are allowed into the operating theatre with the mum to be) and also had a hold. After a while the nurse took me back to get out of theatre garb and to be with Melissa (they had finished sewing her up by this stage). Melissa was then taken to the recovery room and Claudia delivered to the room with Justine. We then rang the grandparents, Dave (who had been sent home since he had to work that night and the next day and would not have been allowed to attend the caesarean anyway) and some close friends. This was done somewhere around 4:30 am - hopefully none of them get us back in the near future:-) They are all still speaking to us which is a Good Thing - the Not So Good Thing is that one of the couples we rang are expecting their second baby in March 1999, so we may be in for a late night call!!!

Melissa's parents came straight in to the hospital with presents mind you - how's that for organised?!, my father lives in Sydney and was on cat minding duty for Justine so he didn't. After everyone was settled I popped up to my work to send out an email notification to friends and our respective work colleagues. Since noone was in at work at 5am, I could get all the mailing done without interruption and was quickly back at the hospital. We left Melissa to have a sleep a little before 6 am. We got home and rang my aunt in NZ since local time there was about 8 am. Then went to bed. Got a phone call from Melissa about 1.5 - 2 hours later, she was awake already! Justine and I went back into the hospital. Melissa was in a shared recovery room until about lunch time before she was transferred to a private room. We phoned in the birth announcement to The Age that afternoon Looking back, I can't believe we were so organised - we had basically written the birth announcement already so that we could phone it in straight away so it appeared in the newspaper the day after Claudia was born.

By day 2 the drip, catheter and drainage tube had all been removed and Melissa had gingerly got around a little bit. Drip out - no problem. Catheter out - not so bad, it was the threats that they'd put it back in that were hard to bear! Drainage tube out - ow ow owwwwww.

I will let Melissa fill in all the details later, but main events were Claudia was jaundiced and spent day 24 hours under photo therapy. This helped cause feeding problems, because she was very tired, she would be put on the breast take 3 or so sucks and then fall asleep. VERY frustrating for Melissa. Feeding is improving (it is now near the end of day 4). The current routing is to put Claudia on the breast, bottle feed her expressed milk from the previous feed, bottle feed her formula to make up 50 ml if the expressed milk was less than 50 ml, and then express milk for the next feed. The last expressing at about 8 pm tonight produced 25 ml. Melissa is due home on day 7 so we are hoping Claudia is feeding properly by then. Update some months later - despite all these problems, compounded by nipple thrush (which is as painful as it sounds) for most of the first 5 weeks, two bouts of mastitis in the first month, cracked & bleeding nipples, Claudia continued to be breastfed. Although the first 4-6 weeks were exhausting, painful and generally wearing, we think they were well worth it. At 6 months, she is thriving, in the 90th percentile for height (this means that 90% of babies her age are shorter than she is, and that she is the average height for a 10-11 month old baby - she's 69.5 cms) and around the 98th for weight (9.115 kg - average for 12 months). This is considered a Good Thing and does not suggest that she will be obese in later life.

My apologies for the delay in sending this, but I have not been home very much at all since Claudia was born and have been very tired. It has been enough of an effort most days to feed Puff, put on some washing for Melissa and try and get some sleep. Other DH beware, you may expect the sleepless time to start when DW and DB come home - oh no! It starts before the baby is born!

P.S. Claudia is pronounced Claw-dee-a (i.e. not the germanic pronunciation Clow-dee-a) and Rosalind is Roz-a-lind, as opposed to Rose-a-lind.

Claudia has a reasonable amount of dark hair, like her father. Has her mother's nose and her paternal grandmother's toes.