Just celebrated my little girls first birthday. I'm so incredibly proud of her. It's been emotional, especially reliving the fact that we were both very poorly and had a close call. I've been really lucky though and our experience has definitely made us closer.

My husband admitted though that although he wasn't depressed, it did take a while to come to terms with what happened. We don't talk enough about how men process pregnancy and birth and it's just as important as talking about our feelings. Yes, they may not physically go through pregnancy and labour, but they see everything and watching the people you love the most go through some of the most difficult times and then having to process you may have lost them is indescribable (also add in the fact my husband lost his mum when he was 10). He's fine now and we regularly talk about what happened.

A little back story: at 37+5 ish, I very unexpectedly become unwell with back pain in one side and vomiting. He thought it was early labour, but I knew it wasn't. He had to drive me to a+e in agony after projectile vomiting all over our toilet. He knew then that something was seriously wrong (they think I had a severe kidney infection and it's possible I had sepsis too). Due to COVID, he couldn't visit and it was hard enough to text updates, let alone do a video call. I can't imagine what that was like for him. He also had to become a single parent to our two year old son who was absolutely amazing throughout all of this.

Fast forward 3 days and after being absolutely fine, my daughter's heart rate kept dipping. I was told if things didn't improve I would be having a C-section. I had enough time to update my husband and go down to the labour ward when things took a sudden turn. My daughter's heart rate dipped again, but didn't recover. He got the dreaded call to get to the hospital now and I was taken to theatre and put to sleep. A minute later our beautiful daughter was born.

My husband got to the hospital and was handed his daughter whilst I was still in theatre. He was told she needed a little help to get her going (actually, she wasn't breathing when born and didn't take a breath for 3/4 minutes and needed help after that for a bit. Read this on her discharge notes a few months later). She did have a short stay in NICU for other complications and needed treatment for jaundice, but was absolutely fine after that.

Everyone asks how mum is doing and I was offered a birth reflection appointment with a midwife, but no one ever asks dad how they are doing. It's ok to talk and it's important. It's such an overwhelming time for both parents.

If you got to the end, thank you for reading.

2nd child

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