aw fools what a cutie! Both your DS and your DD are gorgeous in fact!! 
Well I failed to get online this weekend, but I am here now! DP is back at work today (eep!!) so I have no one else here to hold Odie while he sleeps/fusses! However, quite miraculously he has gone down in his car seat and remained asleep (so long as I constantly rock it that is...) so I have managed to put washing on, go to the loo (ooh, the excitement!) and now get online for a bit on my laptop! Woo!
It's good to know you've all had similar experiences with wind/clingy babies! I am definitely looking forward to him settling elsewhere - even if it is unbelievably cute when he dozes off on me and lies there snuffling and snoring on my chest! Am torn between wanting to hold him all the time and wanting to be able to put him down/get on with other things! I feel ridiculously guilty putting him in the cot, he's so little and only been out in the world for such a short time - it seems mean to put him down! He should be able to sleep on his mummy if he wants to! For now i'm trying to strike a balance between lots of newborn cuddles and starting to get him used to sleeping elsewhere. But it's hard - I could sit and hold him & stare at him all day!!
Davina - am also doing kind of packed lunches - have sandwiches/foodstuffs that can easily be eaten one handed for my lunches! (We too have Odie in white sleepsuits quite often and he has gained an assortment of chocolate smudges and toast crumbs so far...) Is going to be interesting trying to eat and drink enough without DP getting everything for me! (tries to pretend I don't feel completely pathetic worrying about coping with 1 baby when other folk on the thread have a toddler to manage too! I am in awe!)
I know I haven't really gone back and talked about what happened in hospital / Odie's birth - but the truth is it was the most awful horrible time, in particular the hours leading up to the c-section, which were probably the worst of my life and I'm very aware there are folks left on the thread that haven't had their babies yet and I didn't want to post a big long negative comment detailing all the shit that went wrong/bad things the hospital did. I think that's probably the last thing someone approaching their birth needs to read... So read on only if you're sure - will keep it as short as I can /not mention everything as I'd be typing all day!
So - following a sudden worsening of the pre-eclampsia i was admitted on the wednesday night then had my waters broken at 10am, was ignored by midwives for hours, started getting minute long contractions every 3-6 minutes quite quickly, did this for several hours, failed to progress, failed to get access to the birth pool before eventually discovering late afternoon that progress has reversed and my cervix was now moving backwards to a posterior position again despite hours of contractions/intense pain. Finally got a short period in the pool around 5.30pm ish, only to discover that my arthritis was too bad at this point to benefit and I really couldn't continue (my hips/lower back/pelvis were completely seized and I was in constant agonising pain) and super frustratingly the pool actually made my nausea worse, causing me to start vomiting with each contraction... :(
I then agreed to a c-section - but as I had been told to eat lunch by the crappy midwife (despite the consultant earlier telling me not to) I wasn't able to have a c-section for another hour - so at 7pm. I agreed to continue labouring in my room for that hour with no epidural/pain relief as they said they could definitely get me in for a spinal at 6.55 ready for the scheduled c-section at 7pm, so there was no point doing the epidural as it would take too long to take effect. 7pm came and went - the anaesthetist never arrived. We tried to find out why - eventually we discovered he'd been called away on an emergency and there was no other anaesthetist available. We were then left alone, with me in excruciating pain by this point, until the shift change - no updates and no checking on fuzzy - I was so scared and worried for fuzzy as if he'd become distressed a) no one would know and b) there was nothing they could do as there was no one available to do an anaesthetic and get me into theatre.
I was eventually taken in for my spinal at 9pm. During this time we only saw midwives when we went looking for them - only when the shift change came on at 8pm ish and my lovely midwife from the first stay in hospital arrived did we start getting any updates/support. (A few days later one of the midwives who had been on shift that day saw us and told us how she had found it too upsetting to see me like that and have no news, so she had just stayed away from my room rather than come in and tell us there was no update on the time I'd get taken in!!!) They weren't even able to provide me with a TENS machine during this time (and entonox made me puke so that was a no go). If i'd known I was going to have 3 more hours of pain like that I would have accepted an epidural - it was the worst pain I have ever experienced (the contractions themselves weren't so bad - to be clear - it was the effect it had on the arthritis that was the problem). I honestly felt like I couldn't get through it - I felt absolutely desperate and was so afraid I was going to be forced to carry on labouring when I was making no progress. I even had one midwife try and suggest that as I'd gone that much longer was I sure I didn't want to just carry on and give birth naturally... grrr!
Anyway - by the time they put the spinal in I was contracting for a minute in every 3 minutes, but still not progressing, which made getting the spinal needle in tricky! The first location was no good so we had to start over and try a second! However, the staff in theatre were lovely and very supportive and I felt very well looked after, so that was something. The relief to finally be out of pain was indescribable. The c-section itself went OK (few minor complications)- and the moment I finally got to meet Odie/Fuzzy was amazing. When they held him over the screen I was gobsmacked! There was this enormous, hairy baby that looked way too big to be a newborn! His head was properly squished from being engaged in my pelvis so long - poor thing! Everyone in the room was in complete agreement that he would never have come out vaginally and I was right to call it quits and go for a c-section, which was very reassuring, as I had been feeling pretty bad that I hadn't managed the natural birth I had longed for. In all honesty, once I saw how big he was I stopped feeling guilty pretty instantly - it truly was the right call to switch to a c-section - no matter what the repurcussions for my health could be.
By the time I was wheeled into recovery I had started to regain feeling in my legs, so I was relieved the c-section had gone smoothly and was over and done with! The rest of the stay was OK; 2 hourly obs as my pre-eclampsia didn't go away, so very little sleep (still have raised BP now and am on meds for another few weeks) and lots of horrid unsupportive midwives - one lovely one on post natal night shifts though who really made up for the crappy ones. My arthritis post spinal wearing off was bad, but bearable thankfully. (I'm still achy and stiff in my back, but it's slowly easing off, am hopeful it's going to stay calm despite my reduced meds). Then just as they were going to discharge me my anaemia suddenly worsened quite dramatically and they insisted on 2 blood transfusions - hence another 24 hours in hospital. Trying to feed/change Odie with cables in the back of my hand was not fun! He thought they were a wonderful toy!
Once I got home I was on high dose beta blockers (to manage the pre eclampsia) and they really messed with my head - when I was tired I was getting these weird semi lucid periods - I'd be talking to DP and it was as though I was suddenly asleep, right in the middle of a dream, except I was still talking, then i'd suddenly be awake again and would be half way through a sentence and not know what I was saying/thinking about - DP would only know when I suddenly started talking nonsense/saying things unrelated to the conversation we'd been having. Worst of all, every time I had this happen, I was back in the hospital in my head. :( It was awful. I constantly was reliving the worst part of my stays in hospital. Apparently at one point I turned to DP while he was holding Odie in bed and said "is it really only 20 minutes since they broke my waters?" and was very very confused when DP pointed out that we were home and he was holding Odie! I'm on a lower dose now (otherwise DP would have been staying home longer!!) so this isn't really happening now thankfully!
Anyways - that's the short version of my hospital fun. The community midwife has strongly urged me to put in a formal complaint about various aspects of the "care" I received during my 2 stays - I know I should, but i'm not sure I can face sitting and writing it all down and talking/thinking about it lots - I just want to enjoy being a mum and focus on the good in my life. Will see how I feel in a few weeks I think.
And with that i have to go as odie is awake and grizzling! Apologies for typos/essay!