Well I suppose I'd better post the birth story (he's eight days old already).
I had pre eclampsia with dd and afterwards had some problems with liver function and platelet levels for six months or so. So when my blood pressure started to shoot up to scary levels at 32 weeks I was admitted for a few days each week. It was fairly obvious things were progressing though I felt okay - very tired but okay, aside from a few headaches.
DS was very active - and I wasn't unduly concerned until we got to 35 weeks and my blood pressure failed to drop below 110 diastolic for a week . That's the lowest it got from thereon in.
The docs put me on BP meds but because I had severe sickness I wasn't keeping them down or at least not enough of them. But since I was coping fairly well with things and had the ability to monitor at home I stayed out of hospital for another week (except for two days) with check ups every other day at the midwife assessment unit.
Come 36 weeks I was home for a few days and went into early labour. Desperately hid upstairs till mother in law went home and DH insisted I go into hospital as my BP at the time was through the roof (I seem to remember it being 131).
I should mention at this point that I am petrified of hospitals. Hence when I got there and a stroppy registrar turned up everything stopped instantly - they'd got a CTG showing I was contracting every six minutes but then within ten seconds of the doc arriving everything stopped - not a twinge, nothing.
But they wouldn't let me go so kept me in for observation and I escaped two days later with the agreement again for monitoring.
So that was the Monday. Friday I went in for my regular blood pressure check and having taken it and my urine sample the midwives all vanished into a corner to talk this is never an encouraging sign .
Phone calls were made, the supervisor of midwives turned up, DH was called and I was told the jig was up and I was in hospital 'for the time being' and that I was not to get up or move while they waited for blood test results. I agreed that if he hadn't arrived by my due date, we'd have a scheduled caesarian (at this point I actually said I'd have one today if they stopped taking blood every few hours).
I was then warded back into the high risk unit and monitored every two hours and a 24 hour urine collection started the next day.
Meanwhile every night between 2am and 4am I started having strong regular contractions and each and every time they took me down to the labour ward they stopped . Was getting quite cross at this point and refused point blank to be taken down there anymore.
The results of the 24 hour urine test were bad. I knew they were bad because two consultants turned up and sat on the bed. There must be a class in medical school on 'communicating bad news' which includes the advice to sit on the patient's bed and hold their hand.
The upshot was they were only willing to wait another 48 hours - and either I could have an induction - which we'd already discounted as we tried last time and my cervix did not respond at all to the syntocins, or have a scheduled caesarian on the Wednesday and an emergency one if he made another bid for freedom before then.
Oh and did I mention he kept turning to breech?
Many scans later we confirmed yes, c section on the following morning and DH rang round to arrange my mum to look after my little monkey DD.
So that night the midwives left me alone a bit, I was sort of relieved that it was going to be over soon and also really sad because I had lost my homebirth and indeed my vbac but I was swelling up like a balloon and felt so crap too. Mostly I wanted to get home to DD and cried buckets every day when she went home.
Come midnight I was fairly chilled out though except for these funny pains, they weren't like any of the previous ones and I mentioned it to the midwife and she put me on the monitor and immediately asked if they were painful. Not at all I told her, actually they are quite nice.
Apparently they were 100% on the TOC (I have no idea what that means but very strong in the contraction stakes) and there was also a massive amount of fetal movement. His heartrate was okay. Then they started to hurt, but not in a bad way - I know that doesn't make a lot of sense but I sort of went into myself and took myself off to the day room to stand in the dark and look out the window. The midwife found me after an hour and said she didn't want to take me to the labour ward because it would stress me out but did I want some pain relief.
I said no, hoping things would just happen and went back to bed and fell asleep. Woke up the next morning still having them and everyone had a bit of a panic and moved my caesarian forward by five hours.
The caesarian itself was not very eventful, once again dh looked fab in scrubs while I was dressed in an unflattering hospital gown. Why do these things have 'hospital use only' emblazoned on them - is there a secret underground market for bum revealing smocks????
I had a spinal which was weird, I could feel him kicking even as they were rooting around inside me and also could feel both feet throughout - which was very disconcerting. The spinal wore off in about an hour - they gave me a very low dose because I don't handle narcotics well at the best of times.
He was breech again when they got in there - despite being head down which is probably why he didn't make it out on his own the previous evening. He didn't cry when he came out and I was really worried because they rushed him to the rescuscitaire to check him but he was absolutely fine and was bought back to me to see within a minute or two - which felt like hours.
They had a really hard time getting him out though, apparently the scissors broke trying to cut through the scar and they had to get a second set . My previous CS scar had adhered all the way through my stomach muscles and so they've actually had to remove some of my lower abs. They will of course grow back over time but it's left me very bruised and battered and because I could only have paracetamol afterwards I was very sore for a few days.
Olly started nursing immediately in the recovery room and continued to do so for 45 minutes on one side and then asked for more so I popped him on the other. So his birth weight (7lb 8.5) is after two feeds.
He's generally very quiet, only ever makes a noise when he's hungry (so quite often but he doesn't scream). He seems very chilled out and just sits there looking around at everything. Poppy has fallen in love with him (although she keeps trying to sit on him in her bid to get closer) and the tandem breastfeeding has really helped the two of them accept each other.
She's going through a 'I want milk' stage because she sees him feeding but it seems to be tailing back to normal now (though she's not been very well today so she's been mad for boob again).
For those of you contemplating tandem feeding a word of warning - you can get a lot of milk. I'm talking pints of the stuff. The rules at our milk bank are that you can't donate for six weeks - of course I've been nursing for 21 months now so they are having a think and I think I'll start donating next week but the stuff is literally running out of me and it's hungry tiring work feeding two (or more). But I do think it's been worth it if only for the improvement in sibling relationships.