Molly Rose Sendall arrives

Molly seems to be well and truly oblivious of the ordeal that Helen (and to some much less significant degree, I) went through in order to bring this beautiful little girl into the world.

And I do not just mean the gruelling labour from from arriving at Stoke Mandeville at 7pm on New Year's Eve to arriving back on the maternity ward at about 8pm tonight, a whole 2 days later. As many of you reading this will know, it has been an epic and mostly tortuous journey that began over 5 years ago. That it should end with such a phenomenal crescendo, I suppose should have come as no surprise.

If you have heard the audio blogs below, you will know something of what went on and that I was banished from the operating theatre for the emergency C section that brought it all to an end because they had to give Helen a general anaesthetic and although I apparently do scrub up well, I was not sufficiently scrubbed up to be able to stay this time. So I missed a front row seat let alone a walk on extra part in the final act of this incredible drama.

However, I was able to stand in the corridor outside the operating theatre and witness, at least audibly, Molly's less than quiet arrival. As she began to scream the place down, I stood and cried like a baby too. It is hard to express in words the deep welling of emotions that I went through in that moment as my daughters new lungs, filled with air for the very first time and screamed blue murder. By the time the midwife strode through the operating theatre doors and presented me with the large bundle of towels in which was wrapped my new daughter, I was a blubbering wreck of truly Oscar Award acceptance speech proportions. I still keep breaking into tears now some 7 hours later.

Helen and Molly are going to have to stay in hospital for about 3 days. Helen was still very groggy and in considerable pain when I left the hospital. She was also utterly and completely spent. We should all have listened to her sooner when she said she honestly believed that she was not progressing any further and that she felt she could not go on. I should have trusted more to her knowledge of her own body than to the obvious experience and expertise of the midwives and doctors who sought to persuade her to go on trying to push. She clearly knew what only became apparent to them when they had her legs up in stirrups in the operating theatre about to attempt a forceps delivery.

Anyway, that's all amniotic fluid under the bridge now. Molly is here and she is utterly wonderful. I hope you will all be able to get to know her.

I think it is time I finally had some sleep....