Good morning my gorgeous ladies!
Finally I've got twenty minutes or so to post. Thank you all soooooo much for your kind wishes & good vibes. It feels like it's been centuries ...
LaRock, so sorry to hear about your friend, just awful. So many women on here have gone through it with immense bravery & I'm sure we she will too in time. I am thinking of her & sending positive vibes. The sun will shine again.
Sunkiss hello nice to meet you. And Jessi you are also in my thoughts, I know the scary place you're in ....
Lizzie, Helen, Christiana, Bookfish, Liven, Olga & everyone else I send you love & luck ...
Well ... 'Wrigglesworth', who doesn't have a proper name yet b/c I've hardly had five minutes with my husband and any time I do have am tired and grumpy, is doing fairly well at the moment - I say that with hesitation as the road ahead is littered with jeopardy but he's HERE!!!
After five years' trying, three years of fertility treatment, four failed cycles of IVF, an ectopic, a chemical, laparoscopies & hysteroscopies & finally a natural conception resulting in a complicated & scary high risk pregnancy that has tested my mettle to the limit. For the first time in my life there were moments when I doubted my ability to get through my situation but, with the help of some exceptional professionals (& a few exceptional ladies on this board), we made it. We still have challenges ahead & I'm sure the journey will be a long one, but for now at least I am able to call myself a mum - for the first time. And he is GORGEOUS!!!
I know the fabulous Kate has been kind enough to update you all regularly and that she's posted that yesterday, on his first week's birthday, Wriggles was moved from NICU into Special Care. In NICU he was strapped up to the CPAP breathing machine & under the ultraviolet lights 24/7 for jaundice so I only got to hold him once. But yesterday he seemed so much happier, free from all the gubbins, & we had a really good cuddle. When he was born his red blood cell count was v high & he was pretty bruised from delivery, so much so he looked like a giant, wrinkled, angry blueberry - but now his colour's down and the swelling has subsided & he's started to look like a little man ... No known cause for the poly has yet been established although I live in fear some nasty genetic condition will present itself in the weeks to come. The psychologists have suggested I have a chat with the senior consultants to help allay my fears as I just can't seem to let go even though they seem to be happy with him & his progress ...
My labour was pretty dramatic. Before giving birth I didn't realise that 'labour' was all the contractions & waters breaking etc & that delivery itself was fairly quick ... I thought labour meant you were pushing for 48 hours or whatever .. Anyway.
On the Friday morning, just as my Consultant, Andrew McCarthy, was doing his ward rounds, I had a little 'gush' of fluid. I mentioned it to him & he was fairly noncommital about it, suggesting it was probably cervical fluid. That evening, around 7pm, I started to experience cramping with my Braxton Hicks. I was a bit apprehensive & left my room to talk to a midwife & bumped into the Consultant who'd been managing my poly condition, Sailesh Kumar. He'd been planning on popping in to see me anyway as I'd had a really rough week that week & had emailed him & McCarthy b/c I wanted to go home. In retrospect I think it's likely that my hormones were playing havoc, something I always overlooked in my pg b/c it was so complicated. At times I think I forgot I was pregnant!!
Dr Kumar said I should expect some discomfort & contractions b/c I was showing like I was 34/36 weeks rather than almost 28 & I have enormous respect for him so took it at face value. But at Midnight I passed some brown discharge (although the Midwives were fairly relaxed about it) & all through the night I had painful 'tightenings' which made me cry out in pain. I hate weekends in hospital, when no one is around, and on Saturday it took until 1pm for me to be sent up to the labour ward to see the duty doctor who was on there. The registrar doing the rounds was busy and the duty doctor couldn't leave the ward, so instead they sent me to her. She examined me & said my cervix still had length & was closed but noted the brown discharge & watery fluid. She had me put on the CGT machine to monitor contractions for SEVEN hours; I was gutted. Saturday was meant to be my day of leave to go home & sit in the Spring sunshine with Matt & the cat. Instead I spent it looking at the sunshine bouncing off the walls of Wormwood Scrubs prison & reflecting back into my lonely little room.
Towards the end of the day the doctor said I could go back down to my room but as long as I kept an eye out for any fluid loss & notify her immediately if that happened. Overnight I filled two pads with fluid & was convinced my waters had gone but the midwives seemed fairly unfussed about it & when finally the senior registrar arrived early Sunday afternoon, he examined my cervix & told me it was dry & that the fluid was most likely discharge. I knew it wasn't - have never seen that quantity of discharge before - but he told me I could be active so Matt & his mum took me for a walk around Wormwood Scrubs fields in a wheelchair! Jesus we went quite far, it could've been a disaster!!!
So at ten that night, after Matt & his ma left, I was lying watching telly & felt a big 'gush'. I ran to the loo & it was pissing out of me so I called the midwife. She was about to call the doctor when she decided to get me to catch some of the fluid in a kidney bowl & then looked at it & said 'that's not amniotic fluid, that's urine' & told me I had involuntary incontinence from the pressure on my bladder of water & baby. To be fair amniotic fluid does look like urine, but I was catching pints of this stuff & also able to pee while the fluid was gushing at the same time. So I called for the midwives again & this time a different one came. She took one look at the kidney dish & me on the loo with fluid gushing out & said 'that's not urine, get into bed - you're at risk of cord prolapse'.
My bed was wheeled up to the labour ward & I texted Matt to say he should come back in, my waters had broken & a Senior Registrar came to see me. She said that even if my waters had gone that wouldn't necessarily mean I could go into labour & that, even though I'd started having really painful contractions which came every 6 minutes (Matt was timing them), she didn't want to remove the stitch until we were sure in case it put me into labour early.
Matt stayed with me until about three & after he left I tried to doze in-between contractions while swimming in pools of water. At 5am I called the lovely Junior midwife who was looking after me as my bed was in rivers & needed changing & while she changed it for me I popped to the loo.
Cue Horrors!!! I sat down on the seat & felt something fall between my legs & slap heavily between my thighs - of course I thought it was the baby and screamed & screamed until they all came running & carried me back to my bed shouting 'please don't let my baby die .. What is it what is it'.
'we don't know, the doctors are coming ...'
Tbc bollocks I have to shower & get ready for hospie, I'm off on a mammoth scribe sorry everyone blah blah baby brain will finish up later ... Express express express my lofe ks a fountain of breast milk Mwoah xxxxxx
She has now somehow to work through her grief, but I'm not sure how. The loss of a child is the ultimate nightmare for any parent, and one which should just never happen to a loving mother 
Wishing her lots of love xxx
!! i pray all goes well with ur delivery hun!!
) an elective cerclage at 13 weeks is a whole different story than one at 22 weeks. Your chances of success are 99,5%- or, like my doctor had said, 100%; you either do it to succeed or you don't do it at all. Still, it's only normal for you to be terrified after what you've been through, so don't fight it. Once the day is here and over, and the next days, and weeks too, you'll start to breathe again.
i am looking forward to folw u! I am sure u with the early cerclage will be very fin, mine was an emergency one, but is still holding. 
I'm guessing they've got the all clear on his health so far? No obvious signs of a problem which caused the poly? Certainly all the early signs look good. So pleased for her. Please pass on my regards again Kate 
