Spudulika is here.

Actually she's been here for quite a while, 18 days, and it's only now
that I've found the time to post.

The short story:  Baby girl born just after midnight on Monday 23rd
January, 10 lb 2oz, by C-section, after 19 hours of labour.  Named
Katherine (Katie).  Middle name tbc, probably Isabel, to give initials
KIT, to compare with her sister CAT.

The medium story:  I went into labour spontaneously - progress over last
time - at 5am Sunday morning, after a night where I got no sleep (too
damn uncomfortable).  No mucking around, straight into minute-long
contractions three minutes apart.  The first twelve hours of labour were
quite manageable.  I coped by walking round the block with my tens
machine on, hanging off lamp-posts & belly-dancing every time a
contraction hit, and not giving a damn how stupid I looked, and half
expecting neighbours to chase me off with broomsticks.  All was going
swimmingly, the baby was perfectly anterior and I was up to 9cm, and the
midwives persuaded me to get into the birthing pool which meant taking
the tens machine off (big mistake) because they thought I was so close,
then it all went completely pear-shaped.  Contractions became
unbelievably agonising and after another five hours of this I had gone
back to 5cm.  Buggers.  Midwives decided it was time to transfer to
hospital which was fine by me as by this time I was screaming for
another caesarean.  Hospital took quite a few hours to give me said
caesarean. My gut feeling for some hours had been that it wasn't going
to work, I wasn't going to be able to get this baby out via the usual
route.  I was right, too, because when they opened me up it was found
that the baby had turned & was completely posterior.  Looks like at some
point the head had gone back up, so the cervix had undilated, and she
had turned round.  Her size was a shock.  Nobody had expected her to be
so effing enormous. We had all been expecting her to be 8lbs or so.  But
10lbs and posterior - couldn't be done.

So after all that, it was still major surgery, but that's ok, because it
was necessary.  My recovery has been much better this time.

Will try to get a pic, but she's not the photogenic angel that Froggie
was. Is.