Proud Mummy moment!

I created this blog so I could come on and write about things going on in mine and baby bug's life at the moment. So I can share this with others, get advice from other parents and also so we can look back in years to come and remember our thoughts and feelings at the time and perhaps even let baby bug read it himself one day! So with that in mind and now that I have blogged about how he got here, I have decided to fast forward 9 months to where we are now with my posts from now.

So that brings me to today, when we had a seriously proud Mummy moment!!! My baby boy crawled! After weeks and weeks of just rolling himself across the room and then slowly progressing to commando shuffling then vaguely rocking on his knees. In the week that we returned to our tots group that we attend after baby bug having a bout of illness and found that pretty much all of the babies born around the same time as him are crawling and pulling themselves up on things and some even walking around the furniture. I honestly thought my baby bug was never going to go, and I'm not proud but will admit I was even a bit jealous! I'm sure all Mums have felt this way at some point, compared their child to other children. We don't like to admit it and we know we shouldn't do it but lets face it we have all done it at some point in our child's life I'm sure. That "why is your baby doing that and mine isn't?" moment - or on the flip side that "Ooh MY baby can do this" moment. Everyone reassures you, "all babies are different, some babies never crawl, oh he will get there" I will admit all of the above was going through my mind lately.

Until tonight.... when I stripped my baby boy for his bath and left him sat in nothing but his nappy on his bedroom floor, I went to check the bath and came back to find him crawling towards me. Not reaching his arms out and whinging, not rolling, not shuffling himself on his elbows and dragging his legs behind. Proper crawling! After that initial "OMG hes actually crawling!!" moment I remembered my husband was still at work and missing it so I went and grabbed my phone, and started to film, by which point he was at my feet so I had missed getting most of it on video, so I put him back to the exact spot I left him in, sitting on the floor, phone at the ready and prayed he would do it again, and sure enough he did!! Babbling away, looking very proud of himself my super clever baby crawled out of his bedroom to meet me at his door and I got it all on video for one VERY proud Daddy to watch (over and over again) when he got in from work. Then came the phone call to the grandparents and the Facebook updates so they could see the video and I could share my super proud Mummy moment with the world! He is now sound asleep in his bed but I am still reeling with excitement!!! He's been trying SO hard for ages and hes finally done it! Soo proud!

Baby Bugs Birth Story....

So taking off from my last post, hubby has left to go home and get some rest and I am trying to rest in my room on the maternity ward having just been given some Meptid to help with the pains, so I can try get some sleep. I was just about to drift off to sleep when I suddenly felt really not right, I buzzed the midwife who came through just in time to hold out a bowl and catch my vomit! Eurgh! I looked at her and said "I REALLY don't feel well...",  that is the last thing I remember. Next thing I know I'm waking up with an oxygen mask on my face and the crash team around my bed!! To say I felt scared is an understatement! The first thing I did was put my hands on my tummy and made some feeble attempt at saying "Baby?" No one answered my question, instead what I heard was some doctor who I had never met before saying in a slightly panicked tone, "Is the oxygen at 10? Her SAT's are only 70! We need to get them up. We need to get her downstairs. We need to call the husband." I looked at the familiar face of the midwife who passed me the sick bowl and she started to explain things to me. I had a seizure, and it was a pretty bad one, probably a reaction to the Meptid. She explained that all the people around my bed were the crash team and that my husband was on his way back. I saw the now not so panicked looking doctor smile at her and say "96, much better, keep the oxygen on" the doctor then looked at me and said "We will see you downstairs in the delivery suite." WHAT?? Did that woman just say delivery suite? I'm only 2-3. My hands go to my tummy again as I ask her "Is he coming out??" "Not right now, but he will be out sometime today, your oxygen levels dropped very low during your seizure, which means his were even lower, we need to get him out soon in case this happens again." and with that she left the room and suddenly I felt my bed moving, the were wheeling me down to delivery suite right away.

When I got to delivery suite I was taken into a delivery room where the midwife who did my check when I got to hospital (and mentioned she lived across the road from me) was waiting for me. She helped me get comfortable and explained that it was likely I was going to get my waters broken, if they could, to try help things along and she hooked me up to a monitor to check how baby was. As she was doing this my husband arrived and appeared to be completely oblivious to what was going on, he said he had literally pulled up outside our house when his mobile phone went off and all they said was "Your wife needs you, you have to get back to the hospital now" so the poor guy had to drive all the way back not knowing what was going on with me or our baby. So myself and the midwife explained to him. I could see on his face that he was relieved to hear that we were okay but also he was still exhausted having had no sleep. How on earth were we both going to get through today when we were both so shattered?! Just after 8am another midwife came in and introduced herself, it was shift change time and the midwife who lives across the road was going home. My new midwife was lovely, her name was Beth, at first glance I thought she seemed quite young, later after chatting she said she had been qualified for 8 months and was loving working on delivery suite. She seemed pretty confident and was very friendly but at the same time quiet which was quite nice as although she was constantly in the room with us and there whenever we needed her to be she took a bit of a backseat and left myself and my husband to get on with what we needed to do. Just after 9am, after explaining what she was going to do and that it might not work, Beth attempted to break my waters. Wow! That was a strange feeling, I was suddenly sat in a puddle of warm water. So it had worked then. I couldn't believe how much water there was and that even quite a while after she did it there was still loads of water coming out every time I moved. I think I just assumed there would be one quick gush and that would be it. Once it was done she told me the Dr's said my contractions weren't quite as strong as they would like them to be at the moment but they would give me 1 hour from my waters breaking and if things moved along enough for them then they wouldn't interfere anymore. So I got out of the bed and got myself dried up and got on the gym ball to start bouncing, quite a task when you have a monitor hooked up round your belly, let me tell you! Every time I moved the monitor lost my baby's heartbeat and she had to readjust it again, I wanted to get up and walk about but felt so restricted with all these cables attached to me. Seeing that I was comfortable on the ball, eating a cereal bar and texting my friend who I mentioned in my last post, hubby decided to try get some sleep on a makeshift bed that they had on the floor of the delivery room, it was a plastic mattress with a sheet and a blanket and pillow, I remember thinking what a genius idea it was for these exhausted dads to be! So I sat and bounced on my ball and text the only person who knew I was in labour, we had decided that as both our families lived so far away that we wouldn't tell them I was in labour as we didn't want them to worry. We hadn't told our families we had decided this though. We just thought it would be much nicer to just surprise them with a call once baby had arrived. An hour after bouncing away the midwife who had briefly left the room comes back in to tell me that the doctors weren't happy with my progress so they wanted to put me on a syntocin drip, which they would be increasing the dose of half hourly until baby arrives. At this point I decided I would have one last trip to the loo then get back on the bed.

As she is hanging my drip Beth begins to plead with me to reconsider having an epidural, I have always said I would like to try my very best without one so I refuse even though she tells me that the drip does make the contractions a LOT more intense and that not many women who have it manage without the epidural. So up the drip goes and I start to feel a bit nervous and anxious as it suddenly hits me that OMG I'M ABOUT TO GIVE BIRTH TO AN ACTUAL BABY!! One thing that shocked me was I wasn't expecting the drip to work as quick as it did, literally within a few minutes of it going up I was having some VERY intense, and bloody painful, contractions and I was having them very frequently. After a few contractions and with the intensity increasing I started on the gas and air. From this point onwards I can't actually remember very much at all, partly due to the gas and air but I think part of it was due to my mind actually blacking it out. I just remember that as the pain started getting more and more intense I suddenly have a blank. So the next few parts of my story is partly from flash backs I have had since then, partly from some vague memories I have and from what hubby has told me....

After a while on the gas on air I can remember asking the midwife if she would check how far on I was because I felt that I was a further on now. She said I may be further on but she wouldn't be able to check me until 4 hours after breaking my waters because of infection. "FOUR HOURS" I shouted, I can't have this pain for another four hours! It was so intense that I couldn't imagine it getting any worse, she told me that I had a long way to go and that it would get worse, a lot worse. It was at this point, I asked for an epidural. She confirmed that I was sure, as did hubby as I had told him no matter how much I'm in pain to try and talk me out of it if I ask for one as my birth plan was only to have one if medically necessary. I remember saying to him with tears in my eyes "you have no idea how much this hurts, I can't do this if its going to be this bad and worse for HOURS!" So off the midwife went to get the epidural. Then everything goes blank again. I remember seeing a different midwife at one point, felt like a few seconds, later found out she was there for quite some time actually, while Beth was on her lunch break. Blank again. Then I remember seeing Beth again, she was asking me if she could put a clip on my baby's head to monitor his heart rate, I had another 2 seizures and with that and all the other thrashing around in pain the monitor round my tummy wasn't staying on and due to me having seizures they had to keep a check on baby. I just remember feeling really out of it and simply saying "Ask him" referring to my husband. Then next thing I know she is saying my name to catch my attention and looking me right in the eye and saying "you are 8cm dilated" something she discovered whilst placing the monitor on my baby's head "I told you!!!" I shouted back, I just KNEW I was further on than she thought I was. At this point, the anaesthetist walks in the door just in time for the midwife to inform her that I am 8cm so chances are I probably won't be needing an epidural. I said I still wanted it. She went through the consent, and I apparently listened and agreed, but wasn't really with it due to the pain so it took a little bit of time. She then went off to sort a few things out and when she walked back in the door I was 10cm and starting to push, so she just turned around and left. The next part is blank for quite sometime. Obviously I had no concept of time that day, whatsoever but I later found out that once the drip had gone up I went from 2cm-10cm in 2 hours and then I was at stage 2 and pushing for 3 hours.

After I had been pushing for around 2 and half hours, the midwife called a doctor in as she was concerned about my progress. Baby's head was coming out whenever I pushed but then it just kept going back in, for some reason the rest of his body just wouldn't come out and every time I tried to push his heart rate was dropping. The doctor stayed through a few contractions so she could have look and she said he seemed to be in an awkward position and I would need to go to theatre. She said she would try to deliver him by forceps but she wasn't entirely sure of his position as she was struggling to find where he was so they would have to prep me for c-section in case that failed. It was at this point for some reason that I started to get a bit more clarity and I can remember pretty much everything from this point onwards. After the doctor left the room an anaesthetist came in again, it was a different one from before. He was German and really funny and was like a breathe of fresh air when he walked in the room, he was making jokes and lifted everyones spirits. He stayed with us from then until my baby was born. He said there was a little bit of a wait for theatre so with my permission he would like do a spinal to make me comfortable and then give me the epidural when we got to theatre. I remember him putting a yellow form in front of me and a pen in my hand whilst I was bending over the back of the bed on all fours, pushing through a contraction and asking me to sign a consent form. I felt completely out of it, had no control over my body or my mind and just refused point blank to do it. I said my husband would do it but this man was telling me that no he couldn't do it and a mini-argument ensued. My husband stepped in to pacify the situation and said "I will read the form to make sure its okay and you can sign it?" I agreed. So he read it and I scribbled what probably looked nothing like my signature on to this yellow piece of paper midst contraction! Then I remember being lay on my side and they gave me back the gas and air which had been taken off me quite some time back because I was in a world of my own and they needed to communicate with me. I used it to breathe through the pains whilst he put the spinal in. My husbands fave quote of his was when he was about to wipe the cold iodine on my back in a strong German accent "Now, your in for a coooolllld treat, and its not an ice-creeeaam". YES, I did let this man put a needle in my spine, but in my defence I was in so much pain that if the German stood behind me with a needle in his hand was Adolf Hitler himself telling me he could take my pain away I would have let him!!! The spinal goes in and needless to say everything from this point on was a lot more pleasant and my memories have returned!

So in we go to theatre and I'm moved on to the trolley, crazy German dude stood to my left pumping what seems like a ridiculous amount of drugs into all these various lines coming out of me and I start to feel numb down one side, my left side however not so much. There is loads of people I have never seen before wandering around, the crib from the delivery suite has been brought through, I look at it and suddenly remember the reason I'm there. There is an actual little person going to be in that crib shortly. Arrrrghh! My husband is then brought into the room and crazy German dude starts spraying me with this cold stuff. Don't feel it on my right side, its completely gone but again not my left. He then says to me, "OK, we have almost maxed out the dose I can give you, I will give you one more dose and if that doesn't work IF the doctor has to do a C-Section then it is highly likely that we will have to do it under a general anaesthetic" WHAT??! I start to get teary, the thought of going to sleep and waking up to find my baby has already been born was just unimaginable. I couldn't bare it. This next dose better work then. So he gives me it and it does numb be a good bit more but I still have some feeling but not a lot at all down the left side of my upper torso, my legs and lower torso were completely gone though, didn't feel a thing. This is the point where the most bizarre thing I have ever experienced in my life occurred and I'm not talking about my baby being born, no. It was when I looked to the left to talk to my husband and grabbed his hand and when I looked forward again my legs were wide to the world and up in the air in stirrups!! WTF??!! That was the most insane thing I have ever experienced. The midwife caught a glimpse of my expression and said "strange isn't it?" I was slapping my legs to make sure they were mine, how were my legs that high up and that far apart without me knowing they had put them there and without me feeling it? Slapping didn't work. For me for the rest of that time in theatre I just convinced myself that the legs didn't belong to me, I couldn't quite process they were mine!

Then it was time... the doctor was there at the ready with the forceps, and the midwife had her hand on my stomach feeling for contractions. I suddenly started crying and got really emotional. This is it, I'm about to meet my baby. The midwife said to the doctor "now" and the doctor looks down there and does something not sure what as I can't feel a thing, then says "right, go" and everyone around the bed is telling me to push, not to scream, just push, so I take a big breath, grit my teeth and push for Scotland.... "Woah!" shouts the doctor "I have a head, stop pushing" she then tells me that the baby just needed rotated with the forceps, his head is out and with the next contraction I should have a baby. She then asks me if I want to feel my baby's head. I put my hand down below and touched my son for the very first time, those damn tears are blinding me again, "HAAAAAIIIIIRR" I shout out whilst sobbing my eyes out at the same time. There is an echo of laughter around the theatre from all in attendance, including my hubby, who then puts his hand down so he can touch his sons head, I see him start to well up at this point too whilst gripping my hand tightly with his other hand. Then the midwife with her hand on my tummy says "right, here we go, its a good one..." and then they all will me on to push again! So one more time I take a deep breath, grit my teeth and push with all I've got.... then suddenly... there he is! The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in all my life is right there on my tummy, eyes wide open actually looking around the room as if noticing he is some place new and taking it all in. Now the rest of the flood gates open and neither myself or my husband can see for tears. The midwife gives my husband the scissors to cut the chord and then... gone! Suddenly I can't see my beautiful boy anymore I can only see the doctor again. My baby is taken behind me to be checked over by the paediatrics team. I want to see him. Why won't they let me see him? Hang on a second, hes not crying... "why isn't he crying?!" I ask quite urgently. "Because hes content" says the midwife, "hes totally fine, don't worry". My husband is still stood next to me, "go", I say "go, with him!!" and off he goes and then suddenly after the paeds team have fussed with him a bit more, there is the sound I'm waiting to hear. My baby is crying. Then all I can do is sit and listen to whats going on behind me whilst looking at the doctor in front of me, who some how already has my afterbirth out and is almost done stitching me up. Did I push again? I must have done because the placenta is out. Apparently I did, but honestly I can't remember doing so. Then my husband appears beside me with our son in his arms, all wrapped up in a towel and a blanket. I just remember thinking, hes amazing, hes amazing, hes amazing just over and over in my head that's all I could think. Then the midwife comes over and tells us he was 7 pounds and 8 & 3/4 ounces and that they recorded the time he was born as 16.10. Then suddenly I'm moving again, they take us back to our delivery room and I'm passed my baby for the very first time. I still feel so shaky and not got any feeling in my body so I pass him back to my husband, then the midwife comes over and asks if he has a name I look at my husband, we had two names picked and decided we would pick one when we met him and decided what one suited him best, I ask him "So is he Evan or Noah?" my husband needed no time to think he looks at the midwife and says "Evan, his name is Evan James R" and that was that! After this phone calls were made to our families, who had no idea whatsoever that I was in labour and then soon after I was moved to the observation area as they were very busy and needed my room. Down there I watched my hubby change our baby's first nappy, and dress him. Bless him, it took him half an hour to put on a vest and a sleep suit! After he was dressed my husband went off to get himself some food as he hadn't ate all day and to make some more phone calls. Whilst he was gone, a care assistant came and asked if I would like to breastfeed to which I said yes but I haven't got a clue how, and she gave me my baby and said she would help me try. She put him on my bare chest and I said "I've not had any skin to skin with him yet, I've not really had a cuddle yet!" So with that comment she took my baby and said "Oh, well lets fix that then" and 10 minutes after my husband had taken half an hour to dress my him, my son was naked again, in nothing but his nappy and on my chest cuddled in. She then said that she would leave me for a while so we could get some time to bond before trying to breastfeed and that she would be back soon. She left and I just sat there holding him close, I couldn't feel anything from just below my chest down, or move my lower half,  I was shattered, I was hungry, and I felt dirty, but yet I felt like I was in heaven. It had been a long journey but he was finally here and in my arms. Bliss, just bliss.

Is tonight THE night?!

My due date for baby bug was the 16th July 2011, just over a week before this date I start to have little niggles and every night, I was having braxton hicks. Tightenings sometimes, pains sometimes, but never both tight and painful at the same time. Every night like clock work, and not long after going to bed they would ease off but I still wasn't sleeping well as I was so uncomfortable.

On 12th July, the niggles started a little earlier than usual - in the afternoon. Hubby went off to work at 4pm and not long after he went out the niggles got a bit stronger and for the first time I was having both pains and tightenings at the same time, not one or the other like before. I tried to just keep myself busy and distracted.

By about 9pm I was getting really uncomfortable so I decided to have a bath, I had been told clary sage oil can help move the contractions along so I put some of that in my bath and it seemed to work, by time I got out of the bath they were getting pretty intense, pain was still bearable but they were coming regularly, every 7 minutes, and were lasting about 30 seconds and they were stopping me in my tracks. I can remember being in the bathroom and actually bending over the sink for a few seconds using it to hold me up and then suddenly being able to stand up and move again once it passed, it was at that moment I thought to myself "OH! This might be THEE night!" I then started to text a close friend of mine who is a midwife describing what was happening to which her response was "try and get some sleep now, if you are going into labour, you need your rest" Yeah, this just didn't happen at all! By the time hubby got in from work at 11.30pm I was pacing about the place, he was absoloutely shattered from a very busy shift and took just one look at me and said "No, not tonight, PLEASE not tonight!" I then told him to get to bed and try get as much sleep as he could because there was so sign of these "braxtons hicks" going away this time. I also tried to sleep. Tried, and failed. By 2am the pains were getting so sharp I just couldn't settle at all so I called the hospital who asked me to come in so I could get checked over. So we grabbed the hospital bag that had been packed and ready to go for about 2 months "just incase" and off we went, with an extremely tired hubby still not amused that baby had decided to make his move on THIS night of all nights!

When we got to the hospital we were called into a sideroom where a midwife came and talked to us, she was going through all my details while I was pacing around the room and chirped up "Oh you live across the road from me!" Oh great, thats exactly what I want to hear from someone who is about to give me an internal! You usually expect to not have to face the prospect of bumping into these people in the street after you have left the hospital, (thankfully though, I haven't seen her so far lol) she told me that I was 2-3cm dilated and having put me on the machine to monitor my contractions she said the contractions weren't quite as strong as they should be and usually she would send me home at this point, however, due to my seizure disorder she wanted to check with the doctor first. She then comes back to say that as I had been having false alarms for over a week and was so tired the doctors had decided to admit me as tiredness can be a trigger for my seizures and if I have a seizure while in labour (even very early stages) it could deprive the baby of oxygen so they wanted to keep me in to keep an eye on me.

She then offered me some Meptid to help ease the pain a bit so I could get some rest,  I had decided when writing my birth plan that I didn't want any pain relief other than gas and air unless it was medically neccesary, but as I was so early on and I knew I really needed to get some rest I thought yeah why not and agreed to have it. So she gave me the injection and took me up to the maternity ward where they had a nice private sideroom ready for me, I got settled and tucked up in bed for some rest and happy that I was settled hubby went off home to get himself some sleep and said he would be back in a few hours.... we weren't expecting what happened next.....

Learning of baby bugs existence...

So its as I sit here I thinking about what to write I realise that I really should have set this blog up before baby bug was born, because even though he is only 19 weeks old sooo much has already happened. So for my first few posts I shall do a quick summary of the journey so far. I shall start with how we discovered baby bugs existence.

I found out on the 5th of November 2010 that I was pregnant with baby bug. It was my second pregnancy, I had a missed miscarriage in June 2010.  This was obviously a very upsetting and distressing time for us both so we decided not to try again straight away. We felt we would know when the time was right to try again, and we did. Hubby went on detachment with work for a few weeks and while he was away we both had decided individually during our time apart that we were ready to start trying again for the family we have both always wanted. So when he got back we knew the time was right. Having tried to get pregnant for 2 years before my first pregnancy we really weren't expecting it to happen in the first cycle of trying, but it did!

My periods were never reliable so when I was late I didn't think anything of it really but I then started to have this "feeling" like something was different, so I decided to take a pregnancy test. I stumbled to the loo half asleep first thing in the morning, wee'd on the stick, looked at it, no line - negative! So I just set the test on the side, washed my hands, jumped back into bed, mumbled its negative to hubby and proceeded to dose back off to sleep. Shortly after this hubby got up and went to the loo, he shouted through from the bathroom "I thought you said that test was negative?" "It is negative!" I replied. "No its not..." he says, bringing it through to me and showing me the test. I could see there was a VERY faint line in the box, my first thought was it MUST be an evaporation line because it didn't appear straight away. There was another test in the box so I took that and again there was a very faint line. My heart started racing and we both got so excited. I couldn't possibly be pregnant this quickly after deciding to try again, could I?

So we decided the best thing to do would be to go out and get a Clear Blue Digital test, which apparently gives the best results. So hubby went out to the local village to get one, while I went and downed some water knowing that I wouldn't want to wait to wee again and would want to do the test as soon as he got back. That turned out to be a bad idea as I ended up pacing about the house in my pyjamas desperate for a wee! It felt like he was gone forever but eventually he got back and I went and took the test and right enough it was positive! So 3 pregnancy tests later the news sunk in and we allowed ourselves to get excited!!

Over the next couple of weeks I almost forgot I was pregnant really, I was trying not to think about it as I didn't want to get too excited having been through the first 3 months of pregnancy before and getting all excited only to be told on the day of my 12 week scan that there was no hearbeat and my baby had stopped growing at 6 weeks. The thought of going through the disappointment of that loss again hurt too much so I tried not to allow myself to get excited. As the weeks progressed though I had some ultrasound scans and then eventually heard the babys heartbeat and started to feel movements, and I allowed myself to get more and more excited with each of these pregnancy milestones.

Eventually arrived the evening of 12th of July 2011 when those braxton hicks I had been having every night for a week didn't quite go away. I shall write about what happened next in my next post...