Olivia's Big Adventure

Well, for the next four hours or so nothing much else happened. Around 8 am the nurses checked and found Ellen fully dilated, and then it was time to push. I don't have any pictures of what happened next because a) I was busy, b) if I'd pulled out a camera at that point all I'd have got was pictures of my scrotum in Ellen's tightly clenched fist, and c) what followed was, well, let's just say not what you'd want to look at over a meal. Unless you're a fan of rotten.com or consumptionjunction. You sick f---.

So instead we have recruited Ajax, the Emergency Backup Cat*, to help us with our very own "Historic Re-enactment"of the actual moment of Olivia's birth:

*In case of emergency, if primary cat is unavailable remove Emergency Backup Cat and pet vigorously.

8:00 AM: Start pushing. No sign of baby yet.

10:00 AM: Pretty much every standard thing tried, even bribes and lures. No sign of baby yet.

11:00 AM: Baby can barely be seen. Midwife hands "lifts-weights-five-times-per-week" wife knotted towel and instructs "pull on this." On first pull, wife removes midwife from floor. Midwife changes position and calls "pull" some more.

11:10 AM: Baby is just barely crowning, so doctor removes something that looks exactly like a brake bleeder with a jelly-jar lid on one end and attaches it to baby's head. This is called "vacuuming", but it looks a lot like "baby fishing" to me.

11:17 AM: After much impressive pulling, tugging, and heave-ho-ing a baby squirts out like a bar of soap squeezed out of a tube. A size-10 head passing through a size-8 passage leaves baby comparing favorably to infant Alien. Robin Williams' kid looked like a little old man dipped in 40-weight. Mine looks like the victim of an unfortunate custard factory accident.

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