The doctors thought it was time to put an end to the game and had to bring the heavy machinery to get Theo out. The umbilical cord was to short and so it snapped when Theo was taken out of Georgia. In the process, the forceps unfortunately fractured his skull and it resulted in a very scary, big and visible blood ematoma in the back of his brain... So 10 min after birth, he was rushed to the new born observation unit to scan his little head and check on the damage.
There are no words to describe the distress of Georgia and me, being separated 10 minutes after birth, not knowing what was happening with Theo who was clearly in huge pain. I went with Theo, while Georgia was being taken care of by the midwives.
Theo looked very bruised by the forceps, with puffy eyes and an elongated skull typical of this type of delivery. He had a huge lump of blood in the back of his head. Still cover in blood, it was really hard to call everyone and send out the news of Theo's arrival.
By 11:30am, the doctors said that the ematoma was external to the brain and the skull and as we had recovered a little bit for the 40 hours of no sleep, we called our parents to give them the news.
By 12pm, the doctors told me that they were going to do a CT scan to make sure nothing happened inside the brain.
Meanwhile Georgia was resting. Unable to move due to the epidural, she couldn't go see Theo. So I was going back and forth to the new born unit with the camera and taking videos of Theo to show to Georgia her son so that she can be reassured and start creating a bond with Theo.
By 4pm we finally got some CT scan results and we learned that the external ematoma was related to the fracture but that there were also 2 small subdural ematomas (the membrane that envelops the brain under the skull. We didn't understand what that meant, whether Theo would be ok or not. He was in pain, still covered in blood as the doctors didn't want to touch his head and clean him to avoid any further complications.
By 5pm, Georgia has recovered a bit and was able to be wheeled to the new born unit to finally see Theo for the first time after the traumatic delivery. This was a very emotional moment for the three of us to be finally reunited like a family for the first time. But Theo couldn't be hugged or touched. Georgia was still very weak and I brought her back to her shared room.
Earlier in the day, learning the news, my mum jumped on the first train from Paris and arrived at 6pm in London. She arrived exhausted as just like us, she couldn't sleep the previous night. She was awaiting the news all night...
So when she got to the hospital, we went to say hi to Georgia and then straight to Theo and introduce him to his grandmother... What a moment!
After an adventure that started 48h ago, it was time to feed the parents and take some rest. I went home with mum, and we had an amazing diner, celebrating with the best ever glass of champagne in my whole life... The sparkling bubbles slowly going down my throat were heaven!
I thought this was it for this long 48h day.. So I decided it was time to announce the news a bit more widely. As I finished writing the announcement around 11:30pm, I received a call from the hospital to tell me that Theo was transfered to the High Dependency Unit, a place where they can monitor him much more intensively... No real explanation, just that they wanted to monitor him more closely... What was happening... Should I send the email or wait?
I decided to have faith in Theo and the doctors, sent the announcement and crashed in bed out of exhaustion.
