HERE I AM!!!!! PICS ON THE PROFILE....
Thanks so much for your good wishes and to Egg for playing such an effective role as liaison.
Malcolm Michael was born on Sat morning at 7lbs4 not the 10lber we were anticipating!
Birth story follows. I should say I don't want to make people nervous about labour and that in my entirely unkowledgeable opinion it may not necessarily have been like this if they hadn't intervened in the first place.....
On Thursday night I had a show and some period pains and went in as he wasn't engaged and in "unstable" position. Was found to be in "very very early" labour and waters broken and sent home. Contractions started kicking in properly about 3am on Friday but by lunchtime were in a really erratic pattern. Went back in at luchtime and found to be 3cm dilated( - this isn't too bad at all I thought) By 4pm was still doing ok - conxs were really painful but was coping on gas and air and getting nice relaxing breaks in between. The midwife then decided to break the main waters (had just been the other ones that had gone) and that's where the nice story ends.
From 4 to 6pm was in screaming pain with conxs of about 90 seconds with less than a minute in between. At the end of this I had progressed only 1 cm since lunchtime so was now just 4cm....... Midwife sugested epidural before I could open my mouth to ask for it but was another hour before it went in and by this point had turned into a mad crazy-eyed woman.
The epidural was fantastic - absolutely amazing that you can just stop the pain like that whilst still progressing. It took another 4 hours to become fully dilated and I was grimly aware of the chart showing the contractions and wondering how I could have coped. The baby's head was still too high by the time I was fully dilated so had to wait another hour before starting to push and started to get really terrified about the pain returning since they won't top up the epidural once you're pushing. At midnight I started to push but made no progress at all over the next hour. I gave the pushing my all as I wanted it over with quickly before the pain came back. They then gave me drugs to strengthen the contractions (and more epidural thank fck!) and waited another hour - but by 2am the wee man was still hiding from the world and his head hadn't come down at all. Added to that they were beginning to suspect he was back to back, and his heart rate was starting to dip, so they took me into theatre to try ventouse, then forceps (or the other way around)both of which failed, and then c-section. Never having been in an operating theatre before it was somewhat alarming to be there as the subject! There were about 10 people all around me and it was totally chaotic, with tubes getting attached to the wrong lines and wrapped round my neck, and the surgeon trying to work out how his stool worked...... Once the pulling methods had failed they opened me up and lifted out the baby - it was so fast and so simple given all the grief that had preceded it! He had in fact been back to back and the surgeon saw his little face peeping out of me. They washed and dressed him and put him on my chest, him staring at me with these bright black eyes out of his little red face, and his tiny rosebud mouth making funny little shapes and looking like he thought it was all a bit funny.
We were in for another three days which was great since I got to get lots of support with feeding him - although the first night was awful - it had never occured to me that I was going to have to look after him on my own without dp for almost 12 hours. He screamed every time I put him down and I couldn't sit down cause I would go straight to sleep..... Breast feeding has been a nightmare that I won't go into here - but basically I don;t care too much as long as he gets food down him.
We brought him home last night and that was possibly the scariest bit yet- was washing bottles at minight last night in floods of tears because I just couldn't see how on earth we were going to be able to keep this little thing alive from one day to the next. Feeling much happier today though. Really beginning to feel how much the c section is affecting me physically - missing my mechanical bed at the hospital a LOT! Seem to get about 30 seconds warning that I really need a wee (or worse!), find i really difficult to lift Malcolm out of his basket and can't even clear my throat without feeling like my insides are going to fall apart.
I have put together some things I have learnt:
- You do poo when you push, it is noticeable and you do care about it.
- You don't look 4 months pregnant the next day. You look like you are still about to have a baby.
- You become very very forgetful.
- There were more but I just can't remember them!