Once Upon A Time . . . I had a son

I already had two daughters.  As is common during pregnancy, once you hit the “obviously pregnant” stage, random strangers will suddenly start chatting to you about your baby-to-be.  “Is this your first?” “How are you feeling?”  When it’s your first pregnancy, people are generally inclined to offer advice.  If it’s your second, they’ll tell you all about dealing with a toddler and a newborn at the same time.  Once you’re up to three, I think they figure that you’re sufficiently crazy already, so you don’t need any further advice.  Either that or they have less than three themselves and don’t have any further advice to offer.


My third pregnancy was a surprise, but very much welcome.  It is probably best to describe it as a non-planned conception, but a very much planned and wanted pregnancy that we were happy and lucky to receive.  It was boring in its normalcy, except for the part where the baby refused to turn head down during my third trimester.  By the time I reached 36 weeks and he was still not head down, my obstetrician explained how unlikely he was to turn (less than 5% chance), and so we booked a caesarean.  I had lots of questions about this to mentally prepare myself; she was awesome in her responses to all of my questions.  While I was less that happy with the notion of surgery for the delivery of my third child (I am a boss at labour and delivery), I made my peace with it as the safest option for the delivery of a healthy baby.  For the record, anyone who says that a caesarean is the “easy way out” has clearly not considered the specifics of the process of CUTTING OPEN THE ABDOMEN of a woman who will then need to care for a newborn while she’s recovering from a significant surgery.


Anyhoo, after what was a horribly uncomfortable seven days, I went for my 37 week appointment.  During the appointment, my obstetrician did a scan, and it became completely apparent that my horribly uncomfortable week had been caused by the fact that my son had finally decided to turn himself head down. At 37 weeks.  Because he is contrary like that.

And so, after all my mental preparation of a caesarean, I wound up going into labour naturally at 38 weeks and 6 days.  Six hours labour from start to finish; the longest of my three labours.

I gave birth just after three in the afternoon, which happened to be shift change at the hospital.  This meant that I had two midwives (day shift and afternoon shift) present at the birth, as well as my obstetrician.  Both of the midwives had clearly read my medical notes, and they were aware that we had two daughters already.  


Once our son was born and we’d both held him, they took him across the room to weigh him, and they put him in a nappy.  When they bought him back, Midwife #1 looked at me and said, “When you put a nappy on a baby boy, always point his penis down.”  Midwife #2 nodded sagely and said, “Definitely.  Point it down, or he’ll spray out the top of the nappy”.  It was, quite literally, the only piece of advice I was offered by anyone for my third child.


A few days later, I was speaking to my sister, who has two sons.  I was telling her about this single piece of boy-specific advice.  She started to laugh and explained that no one had told her that when she had her first son, and she found that his clothes were always wet when she changed him.  She mentioned this to a friend (a mother of two sons) and her friend said to her, “Didn’t anyone tell you? You need to remember the rule: always point the doodle down.”  My sister and I had a giggle over this.


A little later, my husband was changing our son’s nappy, and I said to him, “You need to remember to point his doodle down.”  My husband gave me a strange look, so I explained.  “So he doesn’t spray out of the nappy when he does a wee.  That’s the rule – doodle down.”  My husband gave me a very considered look, and then he finally said one of the most entertaining statements he has ever uttered.


“In other words,” he said, “you’re telling me, ‘Don’t cock up’.”