About two weeks prior to his birth, a routine midwife check up revealed something neither of us had expected to hear. Baby was breech. The pregnancy had developed without daily complication. Sam had been lucky, no morning sickness to complain of. In fact little discomfort bar the more regular physical tolerances mothers need to develop when carrying. This news, for a mum who dearly wished to deliver naturally, was unwelcome to put it mildly. Breech is a word consultants and most midwives recoil from in abject horror. The very first syllable had the registrar sharpening her scalpel from the moment we walked on to the delivery suite ward. Yet Sam was adamant. This would be a natural birth.

Mum takes up the story in a letter she wrote to our Thomas in the first week of his life, following 72 hours of post birth monitoring… “Most, but not all, breech babies in the UK are currently born by caesarean. In fact in England, the number of [natural] breech births fell to 0.4 per cent in 2007. I was adamant that I didn’t want a caesarean, not for any stubborn ‘I’d like everything to be natural’ reason, but simply that bringing you into this world was already going to have a huge impact on your big brother Jack’s life, and I wanted that impact to be as positive and unifying as possible.”

In a wedding blog, long accounts of breech birthing procedure could seem a little indulgent, maybe out of place, and indeed much of the story is missing here. But in an industry where children oft become the next part of the tale, I wanted to take a few moments to announce the next part of our own story. Suffice to say for our friends and clients who have enquired of late, Thomas is here now; mum and son doing well, after what was quite an eventful birth. Buy me a glass of Syrah sometime, I’ll recount a tale of a man surrounded by scurrying emergency theatre staff, in one hand my wife’s, in the other, my trusty Leica.

Just a footnote about Thomas and Jack’s mum, and mums everywhere. The word awesome is possibly the worst overused Hollywood-ism to present itself in everyday life, inappropriately used in almost every connotation; used by people that watch far too many PG rated films. ‘Britney, she’s so awesome!’ But I think I’ve found the one place it sits truly comfortably. Childbirth. If there is ever an awesome experience, it is this surely. I’m in awe of my wife Sam, for making the decision to travel the path she did by having Thomas naturally in such unusual circumstances in a litigation nervous healthcare society. I was in awe of you first time around, the word seems ever more fitting with our second experience. I love you for your strength, determination and devotion to me, our children and our life. And I promise not to use ‘awesome’ again.

Those natural shots are always the best!

Ready for my close up!