Hi ladies,
finally got internet connection sorted. Sorry for the long absence! I did once write up a message for DP to post here but he forgot. Ah well - we have had other things on our minds.
First of all, a big happy welcome to Viv, so good to see you here :)
Thanks everyone for cheering me on. I have had a quick look through the thread but impossible to catch up with everything.
Well so here's what's been going on: About 24 hours after my waters broke, I started having contractions (around 2am on Monday). By morning they were coming regularly and when they had been about 3 per 10 minutes for a while, we went in to hospital. Where we were sent back home due to being the grand total of zero centimetres dilated. A few hours later I had a slightly raised temperature and meconium discharge, so we went back in. Spent a while in the assessment room, and when they checked me out again, I was still all closed up.
So I had to have an induction, and after about 10 hours of "3 per 10 minutes" contractions without any results, I couldn't face that, so had an epidural. But as soon as that was set, baby's heartrate started dropping, and with the meconium and premature rupture of membranes, it was decided that an EMCS was really the only option.
So at 21:54 on 23rd August, our little beautiful boy, Ianto, was born by CS, weighing 3300g. (I think that's 7lb4)
Unfortunately though, he was running a temperature, and given all the risk factors that had led to the EMCS, he was (luckily!) thoroughly checked over - and it was found he had an (as yet unkown) infection. He was taken away for a canula to be placed for a course of antibiotics (they took my baby away - I found that very distressing). Blood cultures were started and we were told we'd have to stay in for 5 days for the antibiotics.
Things were going well. On day 4 my milk came in. At about the same time Ianto started making trouble feeding - he was always clearly hungry but refused the breast, and was very apathetic. On day 5 he was found to be seriously dehydrated, and although the blood cultures had not revealed any bugs, his infection markers were still as high as initially, indicating that whatever was causing the infection had not been defeated.
So he got a feeding tube down his nose and I was put to expressing, and what felt like hundreds of tests were conducted to determine what was causing him to be so poorly. (For instance, we were made to catch some of his urine. That made for some very funny situations. Will be glad to elaborate on that at another time 
)
Well the good news is that force-feeding him down the tube worked - it got him out of the negative cycle of not having enough strength to feed. And in the following two days, his infection markers came down significantly. Then they did finally find the bug causing all the havoc in the original blood cultures - group B Strep. Fortunately the antibiotics he had been and is getting should work against this.
So Ianto is now much improved. I'm suffering a bit from engorged breasts due to all the expressing on top of trying to continue breastfeeding whilst he was being tube-fed. As Group B Strep is very hard to fight, the team here (who have been great, btw) have decided it would be best to have a 10 day course of the antibiotics - rather safe than sorry. So tomorrow (Wednesday) they will be repeating all the tests and then hopefully we can go home after he gets his last dose of antibiotics at lunchtime on Thursday. I am really, seriously yearning for home.
So, I've got to stop now - another feed is probably imminent, and I really need to catch some sleep. These past 10 days since my waters broke have been quite exhausting.
I don't know when I'll find time to update again, but will try.
Best wishes all round!