Fab Feb Fourth Thread: are we blooming yet?

[onwardandupward]

Here we are! This should do us for a few weeks...

any one else aving trouble sleeping ?

can any one help?

I generally have trouble sleeping Tcs and did in early pregnancy - found no water/drinks after 8, really good long winddown (bath, reading, scented candles, soothing music, no tv) helped too. If all else fails, try relaxation techniques (focus on breathing and slow it right down) as they helped me too - am ok at the moment but sure the insomnia will raise its head again at some point. Some foods are supposed to be good for aiding sleep (turkey, lettuce, marmite and wholemeal bread apparently all good sleep aids for some reason).

Oh, and a few other posters on this thread have sworn by dream genii pillow if is general discomfort preventing sleep...

hope it improves for you soon.

Ohhh the genii pillow has really helped me. I?ve only used it for two nights so far but it has been so much better ? £40 well spent. Before that, I was waking at 3 or 4 and feeling miserable as I couldn?t get back to sleep. And everything seems SO much worse at that time! The true test will be Sunday night which is always the night of the week which is worse ? actually Monday this week because of the B Hol. Try the pillow TCS.

I?m so pleased about having the baby in February too. I really feel like we will all be able to hunker down for a couple of months and then enjoy a beautiful spring and summer! Hooray.

Oh, and making sure I get some exercise of some sort in during the day seems to help with sleep thing too TCS.

Yes - fingers crossed for a nice summer in 2009. Was off on maternity leave in 2006 over the summer with DS and the summer was glorious - rather hope will be another glorious summer when am off with no 2 as would have been v depressed to be on mat leave this "summer"....

Also I totally love that my maternity leave will be in January when all you want to do anyway and cook stews and sleep. I am so glad we are not going to be heavily preggers in the hot summer too.

Hot summer nadsss...do you live in England?

Ha ha I know ? there was a hot summer once though?I think?in 2004 maybe! I do remember sunbathing though! We toy with putting the heating on in the evenings at the moment ? outrageous for August.

we seem to have had our heating on loads this summer - sometimes just to get the washing dry too.

I'm praying next summer is good , last summer was pretty rubbish when I was off with DS1 although I did manage to get burnt in the couple of weeks in april once i finished work and before he arrived. My best birthday present last year was a mac-in-a-bag that I could keep in the buggie

Having a very bad afternoon - we're off to see REM next saturday at twickenham and I had arranged for one of my rangers to babysit DS - i emailed her today to remind her and she booked to work in waitrose till 6 and we need to leave at 4 to get there typical 19yr old uni student - no diary. going to see if any of the nursery nurses at his nursery can do it instead, but will cost a lot more

Markstretch - you look great! I have a similar sized bump but don't look as bright eyed and bushy tailed as you. A general grey pallor and overwhelming tiredness is the look here. To cheer myself up I have been browsing the Isabella Oliver catalogue and trying to convince myself that if I buy just a few "key" pieces this will sort out my work wardrobe until maternity leave. But it's so expensive and I could probably buy the whole H&M maternity range for a the cost of just a couple of things from Isabella Oliver! Can anyone vouch for the quality? Is the sizing OK or do things come up big / small?

I think I'm feeling flutterings too but seems very early. I expect it's wind.

Evening everyone. Hope you are all well.

Just wanted to say that I also had a back-to-back labour first time around. This caused my waters to break early (dd was trying to move around) and I had a nightmare birth. Two days after waters broke I went into labour but dd got stuck this caused a lip on my cervix and every contraction was pushing on the back of her neck not her head. Her heartbeat dropped as she was stuck and wouldn?t come back up. There was no time for c section so midwife cut me down below and yanked her out. I had a good chat to midwife about it this time and she said it is very common for back to back babies in first pg in older women, and all the complications were linked to this. I will be monitored at the later stages of pg but she says that there is no reason to believe that it would happen again and even if it did because I am now stretched there would be lots more room and the baby would turn very easy this time.

However dp has ruled out a homebirth as had we been at home with dd we could have lost her and we can not risk that.

onward and lardy - I'm very interested to hear your back to back stories.

I'd never heard of this before and it does seem to be a major factor for excruciating pain. It is indeed a "secret ghastliness".

I was 34 when I gave birth - I guess this does make me an "older woman" (if so, what does that make me now!!?)

Suddenly it all made sense - I wish they'd explained this too me 3 years ago (maybe they did and I was on too many drugs to comprehend what they were saying).

At the moment I am swaying in the direction of the c-section, but I have not made my mind up 100 per cent.

At least it's not raining for once and ds and I have been touring the parks of London in the sunshine.

Hi Ladies,
Hope everyone is well?
Can i have permission to moan and rant???
Feeling really sad and slightly depressed today, it's quite a long story so i'll try to keep it short.....
I've had a falling out with my brother and his family, this happened about 5 months ago it was a silly arguement thats got blown out of proportion, anyhow now i don't talk to them at all. It was ok at first i kind of got used to the idea, i obviously didn't tell them i am pregnant but they now know through the village we live in. They only live round the corner from me so i do see them around but we just completely ingnore one another. But now i've found out they're moving, it's not too far away but i'm worrying now that it's all final and we'll not ever sort things out as i wont know where they are. My husband just says to concentrate on the family that obviously love and care for me and not waste my time on those that dont, i understand what he's saying but i still feel awful. I cannot approach my brother now as him and his wife are very stubborn and will just make me feel even worse if i try to make amends. So i'm now wondering what to do? Do i just forget about it and move on? I just want to stop stressing as it's not doing me ar the baby any good.
I'm really sorry for the long essay, imagine the full story !!
Thanks for listening to me moan, any advice would be fab.
Take care xx

No medic explained it to me at the time as being this enormously different experience. No women jumped forward and said "ah yes, posterior labour". And then, when I met my new (independent) midwives they asked me to talk through my previous experience. And it was like this:

hind waters going first [tick]
NHS protocol immediately starts the clock towards intervention, even though something like 90% of women will go into spontaneous labour within 96 hours [tick]
very irregular contractions to start with [tick]
very long slow progression with just a couple of centimetres dilated after 24 hours [tick]
back ache. Oh my. The back ache. And just intensified during contractions. [tick]
when waters do go (or artificially ruptured in my case) very very fast progression, made doubly intense if (like me) you are on an induction drip by that point [tick]
very long second stage(because the baby is coming out with an unexpected bit of its head first [tick]

In retrospect, I am truly astonished that I did not have that cascade of intervention leading to C-section. I imagine most first-timers with posterior labour do end up at some point on that cascade, and I was just lucky to get away with just an induced labour (avoid if you can, first timers. The contractions are intense, to say the least. Make sure they are absolutely absolutely sure your baby is getting overcooked before you allow it)

Had I known in advance that a posterior presentation might well mean an epic labour (mine was 32 hours with the induction after 24), I would have been much better prepared - to rest in the early stages, and ask for monitoring for infection rather than automatic induction. Ah well. We learn all these things first time round, yk?

Once I started actually quizzing other women, the posterior labour stories started coming out, and seems to be always long and always the back pain making things harder. Find out how to turn your babies, everyone!!!! I plan to!

very irregular contractions to start with HAD THAT varied for every min to every 10 mins for 15 hours
very long slow progression with just a couple of centimetres dilated after 24 hours HAD THAT
back ache. Oh my. The back ache. And just intensified during contractions. HAD THAT thought it was just my shitty back though
when waters do go (or artificially ruptured in my case) very very fast progression HAD THAT
very long second stage(because the baby is coming out with an unexpected bit of its head first ONLY DIDN'T HAVE THIS BECAUSE MW WAS ARTIFICALLLY STRETCHING MY CERVIX TO GET DD OUT ASAP AS HER HEART HAD STOPPED CMPLETELY AT THIS POINT

wonder was dd back to back? had most of those with ds as well except for the long second stage.... but oh my fucking god, i've just remembered dp telling me about watching ds coming out and he always talks about him being facing up and looking at the ceiling (i was on my back)!!!!

fucking hell, the bastard mws didn't even tell me they were back to back.

i was in full fledged labour with both for 15 hours (after niggling pre labour for 2 days with dd) to get to 3cm and then they broke my waters and i had them 2 hours later.

i hated that hospital anyway for myriad other transgressions but ffs, why not tell me that?!!!!

dinky, they taught me to feed lying down as it meant they had to do less... they wouldn't have known a good latch from a bad one if their lives depended on it thank god for my PHN once i got home and for the MN book that someone gave me as a gift!

good evening - after this mornings sickness etc I curled up and watched Take That on C4

KazzaL - glad you found the April 07 thread - they are fantastic in every way - I have met some of them and talk to others by phone - hope you find them welcoming

Have a couple of friends who had back to back labours and they were all really long and really painful - so much so that when lovely community midwife told me that DS was turning back to back at 32 weeks and I told them, they told me to do EVERYTHING I could to turn him back the right way (which he did at about 38 weeks)which I did. Still the little tinker ended up being 2 weeks overdue and was in early labour with him for 2 days before being induced, ho hum....

Sounds like posterior to me, pink. And the short second stage with Ds - that was presumably your second labour? THat would support the theory that by second time around, everything is, ahem, prestretched.

We've got to get ourselves some optimal baby positioning literature, women! My mw has a book she's going to lend me, but there's no need for ages yet.

thing is, i was convinced with ds's preg that he was back to back (knees poking me in places they shouldn't have if he was in the right place!) and spent weeks on my knees trying to turn him but nothing was ever said to me about is so i sort of presumed i'd ben being paranoid about it all. he was my second and both of them came out with an arm over their face so i'm clearly disturbingly 'roomy' down there

i do think with dd if the mw hadn't turned me onto my knees she would have been a ECS as i tried one push on my back and screamed so loud i must have terrified the other women on the ward and than cried and told the mw i couldn't push as it was so agonising. funnily enough on hands and knees it was hard but not excrutiating.

this is all very interesting except that my waters never broke - until they got the hook out at the bitter end.

So what can you do to turn a baby round - I did the all fours stuff and was very mobile, just in screaming agony for about 2 days until they took pity on me and gave me an epidural.

I'm genuinely interested to hear more.

Hi everyone, gosh you've all been very talkative Dont have time to read everything as am off for a BH weekend 'oop north'. Hope you all have lovely weekends, the sun shines and we are all blooming peoperly when I get back
Take Care xx

Hi all

I too had a back to back labour with DD. I progressed quite quickly but then got stuck for hours at 8cms. They broke my waters too with one of those hooks and when dd was (eventually) born she had a huge cut along her head from the hook.

I pushed for 90 mins and she did not budge so it ended in ECS. 24 Hours in all. It was not pleasant. They told me she didn't descend as she was simply in the wrong postition and her chin was getting stuck, preventing her from fully engaging.

So desperately hoping to avoid that happening this time around.

I was told my dd was back to back and tried everything to move her but she wouldn't move. My labour was 36 hours from when hospital took me in. Don?t know how far dilated I was at this time because they would not examine me as my waters had gone 2 days before this. They examined me an hour later when the pain was just too intense and I was 8 CM dilated. Still took 35 hours from this point though and then she was yanked out.....

She had such bad cuts as well as they had no time to be careful I have uploaded a photo so you can see the mess they made, although they really had no option so I don?t feel bad. She is however fine now and only has one scar from it all but I am sure the stress of birth was the reason behind her bad reflux..

Oh lardy- bless her.

Are they the cuts on her face? Poor little thing. Sounds like you had a tough time too.

I honestly think it's far harder to find people who have had a positive birth experience than a bad one, isn't that a terrible shame

Yes they are cuts on her face. The care i had though was second to none. The midwifes were amazing and made the whole thing as good as it could be. The aftercare they gave me was good as well, I had to be kept in for 4 days as there was a high risk of infection and the midwife who got her out came to see her every day we were in there. So it was not all bad (well I am doing it all again anyway ).

dp has just confirmed ds was facing forwards on the way out so he was definitely back to back and the more i think about it the more i'm convinced they didn't turn dd over to hand her to me (was on hands and knees and she sorta dropped out all in a rush and i'm sure i just picked her up off the bed from her back)

well if this one is facing the right way it's going to seem pain free in comparison, lol