Monday, 28 November 2011

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.....

Sunday, 27 November 2011

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...