More about the birth

We are very thankful that Jo did not have to have a caesarian section, unlike over 95% of twin deliveries at this particular hospital. Jo was induced, and had to have an epidural because they were twins. Less than 7 hours later they were both out - a bit longer than with Owen (around 5 hours), but probably slowed a bit by the epidural. If you want more gory details, you'll need to ask Jo in person.

Although the birth itself was straight forward, there were a few dramas in other areas:

1) The weather in Sydney was VERY hot that day - pushing towards 40C in some areas. The air conditioning wasn't working that well, and Jo really felt it. To make things worse, there was a fire alarm right when Jo was fully dilated, and just about ready to push! She had visions of having to give birth while being evacuated!! The nurses and midwives were very calm, and ignored the alarm, which they rightly assumed was a false alarm caused by the high temperatures.

2) Unfortunately, the day of the birth was one of the busiest the birthing unit had had for a long time. All the suites were being used, and the midwives were run off their feet. This was no problem during labour; but once the babies were born, we dropped in priority. We had to cool our heels for a while before Jo could get cleaned up and moved to her room. This was a bit frustrating, because it seemed like all the work had been done, but we couldn't settle down and rest.

3) Perhaps to balance out the hot labour, the room Jo, Abby and Sean stayed in on the first night was very cold - like being in a fridge. The nurses told us that the air conditioning control panel (which could be used to control each room individually) had been locked up by maintenance people; in the past, too much fiddling of the settings had caused the system to break down! The nurses became concerned when Sean's (the lighter one) temperature dropped, so they all got moved to a more temperate room.

Despite all this, Jo was very positive about her experience. The difficulties were not the fault of the staff, who were lovely, and were really quite minor. It was all alot easier than when Owen was born in Germany (newer readers might want to check out our 2005 posts) - due to language (having to concentrate on translation leaves less energy for other things), as well as cultural differences.