A Night in the Life .... Giving Birth in Yemen!

Our American friend, Ann, who lives in the capital working as a midwife had telephoned a few days earlier to say that she'd be happy to fly down to Aden for a few days to help in delivering our baby. The only trouble is trying to guess when the baby might arrive and trying to make this coincide with a visit. Ann had previously delivered babies of 2 other foreigners and both times they had taken castor oil tablets to try to kick start labour. So Ann phoned when she was getting on the flight at 7pm and I took some castor oil tablets.

Ann- the midwife

I'm not getting enough pain!

By the time Ann arrived at 9pm nothing was happening, so we waited! Then around 10pm I started having regular contractions every 5 mins but these weren't painful. Paul told me not to complain as the contractions would get painful enough eventually! How right he was!

Midnight came and indeed the contractions began to be a bit painful so I paced up and down the lounge whilst Paul and Ann tried to get a bit of sleep. I had a bit of a shock seeing a large clot of blood but Ann reassured me that this was just from the cervix stretching and by 2:30am she said it was 4cm dilated.

Health & Safety precautions

Our friend had kindly lent me a TENS machine to help with pain relief so I started using that, reminding myself that I must turn the machine off before taking the electrical pads off – as I'd managed to give Paul an electric shock when I was in labour with Kira!

By the time we heard the early morning call to prayer at 5am, the contractions were rather painful and coming every few minutes. Ann had checked me and said that the cervix was 7cm dilated so I thought I had a few hours more of labour to go, however the baby had other ideas.

15 minutes hard labour

At 5:30am I suddenly felt that I needed to push so there was a bit of a scramble as Paul got a plastic sheet to cover our bed and towels ready, whilst Ann got her sterlised equipment. My waters broke and Ann said that the baby's head was right there so I gave a few big pushes and Isaiah Paul John Miles was born at 5:45am on 11^th December!

Ann had forgotten to bring her weighing scales with her, so Paul stood on our bathroom scales and estimated that Isaiah's weight was somewhere between 3 and 4kgs (depending on the angle that he stood on the scales). We had Isaiah properly weighed at the hospital later and his birth weight was 7lbs 10oz.

Isaiah was wide awake for the first few hours of his life and so he saw when his big sister came bouncing into the bedroom saying “nunu” (Arabic for “baby”) and pointing at him. Kira is very fond of her little brother and likes giving him kisses and pointing out his toes, ears and mouth!