April 2011 - towards motherhood boucing on yoda balls, eating coc pops and riding frozen surfboards we are

[SnapFrakkleAndPop]

Raspberry leaf and all round.

Continuation from here. No Mofo C bombs yet been dropped in the delivery room although our first 2 babies have arrived. Congrats to gormers and Jo, we hope your little ones are still doing great.

Eh? What? Land in the garden???

Many congratulations on the swift arrival of your baby girl LJB.

How very exciting

Tell us more when you get the chance.

This lo's arrival seems so far away and yet people are popping left right and centre!

Wow LJB how exciting! Are you married to James Bond?

Congratulations on your baby girl :) Looking forward to hearing more details!

OMG girls this is so exciting - we are having babies!!

I am not going to be in the 5% either - not a twinge today, just that the baby has decided to stick it's bum right over to one side which is making me feel odd and look odder

Congratulations LJB! Very exciting! As is the 007 DH!

Ali I'm secretly pleased you're joining me on the wrong side of 40 weeks!

I feel like we're popcorn in a pan now - starting off with the odd pop, and I expect at some point in the next fortnight we'll be popping babies left, right & centre, and then there'll be some poor soul going right into May by themselves.

DH is out tonight with work mates, I don't think he'll miss much here, apart from some dodgy cooking and slight housework-OCD.

I've just dug the census form out, it's got to be completed tomorrow. I'm a bit gutted the baby hasn't arrived to go on it.

Oh my goodness LJB! And I can't wait to find out what the landing in the garden explanation is!

Still time petal, still time...

lol at James Bond dh

The poor soul going into May WILL be me

I am also going to take bets that I have the biggest baby

Wow two new babies!

Congratulations stuffed! and big welcome to baby Thomas...! And congratulations LJB and intrigued by DH's arrival!

Hope you're all doing really well :) Come back and tell us more when you're feeling able!

Wow LJB, just wow! I can't wait to read the details of the excitement, and find out new babies name! Congratulations to you all.

At this rate I'm going to expect someone to have had a baby eveytime I log on to MN!

Petal I'm glad I'm not the only one who has hung onto the census form just in case baby came in time to be included.

JKS I'm actually very of your birth pool practice run. The idea of having a big pool of water to spend the evening lounging in sounds bliss (all in the name of making sure everything works obviously!).

Kits at the risk of raining on your parade, I just wanted to point out (from a professional point of view) that having the venflon re-sited for every dose of antibiotics shouldn't be refused on the grounds of being an inconvenience or more painful although admittedly they will see it as both. There's also a far higher risk of introducing further infection into your body as it's an invasive procedure and one not always carried out with the greatest of hand hygiene, I'm not trying to be preachy but just talking from experience. If I was looking after you I would be unlikely to agree to that request. Better to have a slightly annoying needle in your arm for a while than have a great big swollen painful arm for a few days or worse, an infection in your blood!
I do however agree that prophylactic anti-b's are not such a good idea.

Ok nurseWajs has now left the building......

My goodness LJB, that's amazing! Congratulations!

Am so of those getting to cuddle small babies already. I've got one of the earliest EDDs (4 April) and nothing yet

Wow LJB congratulations on your swift arrival!!

ILTMI You beat me to it, I was thinking I would be the poor soul waiting til May!! We can wait together!! :)

Kits While you are entitled to your opinion on GBS treatment I would just like to argue for the other side as I am GBS+ and bloody thankful that I am going to be given the ABs.

I am very at people on here saying they are happy they havn't been tested, my HA routinely tests all women and when I tested positive I read up on GBS and saw some heart-breaking stories by women who hadn't been tested and went on to have GBS babies.

I had a positive GBS result from my urine earlier in my pregnancy this time around and although I was negative at the swab test a couple of weeks ago I am still having the ABs as the risks associated with a urine result are higher than those with the swab.

I tested negative when PG with DS1 but he did end up in the NICU within 48 hours of birth. He was put on antibiotics and pulled through but we were never given a conclusive diagnosis so can't say exactly what caused it but some of his symptoms did match those of GBS. I want to avoid all that this time so will definately by having the drugs and if it means I have a sodding great cannula/venflow/whatever attached to me during labour then that's fine, I would much rather put up with some discomfort and have it attached to me than have to see another one of my babies in the NICU again with all the tubes and wires attached to them.

So sorry ladies but if they April mums march on Kits consultant I won't be joining you.
( Liv now gets down from her high horse, and slinks off into the corner)

Congratulations on your baby girl LJB
Sorry I skipped the last few posts in my hurry to return rant about GBS.

Oh Gawd, does this mean I have to send off for another one of those giant cotton buds to stick up my bum? I remember doing quite a lot of reading about strep B with DD1 and scaring myself senseless. I think I have been blocking it out this time, with all the other things I've had to worry about.

Liv Your poor DS1

LJB That is one amazing birth story, go you! Congratulations on your lovely little baby girl x

kits hope ur ok

ljb huge congrats. Intrigued re landing. Look forward to an update.

I left my own party about 7pm. Bh was getting the better of me. Covent garden was so busy. I know I'm not invisible so how do people not see me? The tube wasnt busy at all yet a couple getting off the tubebumped my bump and my head. I was almost in tears. Then I had a terrible attack of ibs in the night followed by is kitten ok paranoia. Dh is out but has been in regular contact after last Fridays day out!

Hope everyone's having good weekends.

LJB congrats.

Am typing one handed so forgive spelling etc lol

Woke up about 4ish Tues morning went to the loo, got back to bed and felt a pop....got up and discovered waters had definitely gone had a few light niggles but only what i had been getting anyway with BHs so only rang hosp at about 8ish. they insisted i go in so got sorted and made it in by about 10 ish.
still not contracting with any force they did urine and blood tests planning to send me back home. They decided i was edging on pre-eclampsia so decided that rather than wait they would induce straight away. They put a tablet thingy in which kind of made things start but it died off again so ended up being stuck in bed with the drip being monitered from about midnight. Had my tens machine and managed with just that and breathing hard lol until about 4 when they examined and said i was 4-5 cm so started on the gas and air.....Thomas was born 4.43 so the examination must have triggered a bit of progress.

Only a bit of grazing so not too bad.
Was home by about 11am
Top tip for hosp bag, and home after.....moist toilet wipes!!!!
Having trouble with feeding at the mo but will keep going.

Great to hear from you stuffed. good luck with the feeding, and well done :-). Give Thomas a cuddle from me :-)

Sounds pretty good overall stuffed :) Good luck with the feeding - lots of cuddles should help (like you need an excuse!).

liv :( for DS1 - that must have been so stressful.

LJB - congratulations Hope you are doing ok after such a quick birth, sounds ideal but can be shocking to the system.

Stuffed - do persevere with feeding, lots of skin to skin and snuggling with baby T in bed :) (for a good cause lol)

I may have misled you Ali & others - had both boys in the pool with me
They thought it was super fun. Anyway it all works, DH was nervous about me heading off to the other side of town for a last night out dinner with other mums but i made it without having the baby in the car
With DS1 we tested the pool on the Sunday night & waters broke 5am Monday morning, so he had reason to be nervous i guess.
And, made me laugh, as i got in the car to go out, 'Let's get something started on a Saturday night' song came on

Anyway, DS2 coughing and up early, as usual. Though i can sort of say he made it to 6am - a lie-in for him....

LJB - have added your news to the stats thread :)
Also see that your DH is an airline pilot, hope your garden doesn't now look like this !

liv sorry to hear about your ds1. Stories like yours highlight how serious group b strep could be to the baby. It would make sense to me that there should be some kind of reliable screening test for it that every woman should be offered when pregnant. I know that if its found in urine in pregnancy then I would be offered antibiotics in labour and agree to have them. I don't know how sensitive urine is from the point of view of screening. I've no idea either if you tested positive in a previous pregnancy whether you should be treated as positive in every subsequent pregnancy or not but i've kind of buried my head in the sand about it this time round.

LGB congratulations on your new arrival. I too am very intrigued to know more about your DH having to land in the garden. Do you have your own helicopter pad?

Cycle I'm due on the 4th too and no signs at all of anything happening here. No increase in BHs, no increased discharge. I think I will go overdue like last time. So I'm sure your bundle of joy will probably put in an appearance sooner than mine!

I was amazed this morning to find dd did not wake up until 7:50am, then realised clocks changed (our alarm clock changes automatically) but even considering that 6:50 am is a lie in as she has been up at 5:45 all week. The noisy birds have the cheek to sing outside her window and wake her apparently!

stuffed good to hear from you. Hope feeding is getting a little easier for you. Sending you a virtual hug!

LJB & Stuffed massive congratulations!

MrsW That's a valid point about the venflon and infection. I'll talk it through with my consultant. Having said that, vaginal examinations put me at high risk of infection and I'm currently pencilled in for regular ones of those so that's an interesting area of contradiction that I can bring up with him. I actually had six venflons sited during my caesarean/the preceding 12 hour period - three of which didn't work as they weren't properly sited and no one seemed remotely bothered by the potential for infection then.

Liv77 Thanks for your comments. Your plans this time are obviously and rightly based on your previous experience and so are mine. My twins were premature so I know all about how heartbreaking it is to watch your babies have tubes pushed into them and not do so well. I would never put this baby at risk just for my own selfish reasons. However, personally for me (and I can't and won't speak for anyone else on this) there has to be a balance between reflexive, protocol treatment and allowing me the chance to labour with minimal intervention. I had a very invasive, traumatic birth under gen anaesthetic last time (due to various interventions being bodged) and dealt with PND/PTSD for a year following my daughters' birth. I'm keen to strike the right balance this time. I'm not going to put my baby at wilful risk (and am upset at the implication that I would) but I am going to make an informed choice based upon the facts and my risks of having PND again. If I misjudge it all then everyone can line up and say they told me so, but I know from last time you can have every intervention under the sun and be treated as nothing more than a piece of medical meat for them to stick their needles and 'just in case' drugs into you and it doesn't mean that you won't have a shit birth and be left physically (and emotionally) damaged by the things done to you. I have to find the right balance and that's on me and me alone but if I research and make my decisions based upon that and my consultant's advice then I can live with that.

Right, not sure how I feel about all of this right now so I'm going to stop. Hope we all have a good Sunday. Maybe another baby will arrive (loving the popcorn analogy).

I've got the discharge Jen! I did get bad BHs last week but although I get them in the night and if I walk too far, those have eased off too. I'm clinging to my mum's experience as with me she said she felt nothing different in the run up to labour. She just woke up in the night, sat up, and her waters broke in a 'Biblical flood'. Her contractions started almost immediately afterwards.

Baby has been doing a repeat rolling motion though, he's been turning and sticking his bottom right out above my belly button. It sticks so far out it leaves me breathless and very uncomfortable.

Bless my mum, she's just texted to say she's turned her phone off for church but will check in with me straight afterwards!

Just a quick one to say that Finn William Philip arrived at 06.20 today at 39+3. Weighing 8 lbs. 6 hours from start to finish. No pain relief. No stitches. Home and meeting his brother & sisters by 09.10!!