The midwife’s eyes flickered.

Concern.

She was monitoring my baby’s heartbeat and apparently it was too ‘stable’.

“Hmmm. Your baby shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, putting away the equipment.

An hour or so later, I was being prepped for an emergency C-section.

My son was due in June but he was a BIG baby.

I mean, one doctor had unwisely mentioned ‘gigantism’ in an early appointment.

The decision had been made to induce a week early.

After an induction with my first boy, I’d desperately hoped to avoid this, trying all the natural ‘bring it on’ methods I’d heard about.

But it wasn’t to be and in late May we’d entered the hospital, me still on high alert for any small sign our baby had decided it was time to move out.

Induction gel had been inserted, as it had with my first, and I settled in for a wait.

But at first check the midwife had made that annoying call – the baby should have been showing signs of change, movement, disturbance.

He was, however, determinedly still. And that worried her.

I was reacquainted with ‘the claw’ (anyone who’s had their waters broken knows this one) but that yielded amniotic fluid AND blood.

So on to the table I went, tears streaming down the side of my face while my husband obliviously had fun playing dress ups with the theatre gear while chatting to the team.

Our son came out a silent scream.

They literally held him above us and his face was a scene of utter devastation.

Then he was whisked away.

“Follow him,” I told his dad, as I waited for my tummy to be put back together.

He was the biggest baby in NICU – by far.

A source of affectionate fun for the hospital staff and for his family.

The meds I was given didn’t touch the sides so instead I had something that wiped out the pain – and me too.

I was taken to see him in the unit but kept falling asleep in my wheelchair.

I refused the drugs after that and laid in my hospital bed waiting for him to come to me.

I was told they’d have him out of the little hot box and with his mummy by midnight, 22 hours after he was born.

Awake, alert, I was desperate for my baby.

I’d hear wheels roll down the hospital corridor and wait excitedly, expectantly, only to hear them roll right past.

Eventually he came to me, probably around the same time he’d been born the day before.

He was put into the crook of my arm, all nine-and-a-bit kilos of him.

To me, he was tiny.

And I was in love, all over again.