Katie is fast asleep in her sling, she refuses to sleep unless someone is holding her so the sling is a godsend. Becky is kinda occupied with breakfast and Dora so I'll try to take the opportunity to give you all the gory details =)
I'm not sure when the contractions started, I kept waking up from the pain but it wasn't until 4am that I twigged that they were actually contractions and not the same constant period pain I had had for the last two days.
After half an hour or so of timing them I realised that we'd have to go to the hospital and get it checked out but I decided to try to wait until a more civilised time. So at 6.30 after having phoned the labour ward I woke up dh (who was grumpy and in denial) and dd1 who were dropped off at my pil's house.
Once on the labour ward I was hooked up to a monitor, baby's heartbeat was good and contractions were coming regularly. By now I was rather pleased that I was having a c-section as the pain was getting fairly bad and I was no longer keen to experience the pain in well eastablished labour. A doctor came in and did an internal exam, ouch!!! and informed me that I was in early labour and I would not be going home until the baby was born. Dh finally realised that it was for real and went out to get my bags. The doctor hadn't been able to say wether I'd be having the baby the same day by c-section or if they would try to wait and see. Luckily they decided to do the section pretty much straight away. Luckily I had had the foresight to not eat or drink anything other than water once I realised I had contractions.
After what seemed like an eternity I was walked to the theatre. It was all really calm and everyone seemed in a good mood. I had the spinal put in fairly quick and it made my bloodpressure drop so they injected me with something that made it go up again. This kept happening throughout the section which was rather unpleasant. After some very odd feelings we heard suction and a couple of seconds later Katie was born. I was feeling quite worried that she might have some breathing problems since she was a little early but she immediately started squawking and crying and it wasn't long before I was able to hold her. Since my bloodpressure kept dropping, making me feel sick and dizzy, Dh got to hold her for most of the time in theatre. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but it seems that I had a concealed abruption, which was my biggest fear throughout the pregnancy, and the amniotic fluid had a lot of blood in them. There was also some problems with the membranes. I'm quite pleased that we're not planning more children as another pregnancy would be very high risk.
Once in recovery I asked to have skin to skin with Katie and that was sorted for me straight away. She was really alert and kept looking at me. I was besotted and kept stroking, kissing and sniffing her
It didn't take very long for feeling to return to my legs and I immediately started wriggling them. Up on the ward I was able to breastfeed Katie but she wasn't very keen. She soon fell asleep and DH went to get Becky so she could meet her little sister. It was just lovely to see them together for the first time.
I kept being sick throughout the day and couldn't keep anything down so I was hooked up to a drip throughout the day. In the end they gave me an injection to stop me throwing up all the time.
In the middle of the night Katie decided it was time to start being more awake and she started feeding, very frequently but for very short periods of time. She really didn't like sleeping on her own but slept on my lap most of the night.
The next two days continued the same with visitors and me being very sleepy. In the evening Katie suddenly got the idea of feeding and fed for two hours straight. This jumpstarted the milk which started coming in properly the day after.
I insisted on being sent home on friday once I'd had my last injection for bloodclots and it was just lovely to get home. I'm managing well on just ibuprofen for the pain and Katie is eating well. I even got some decent sleep as DH has been taking Katie through the night and sleeping with her in the crook of his arm.