Hello lovely ladies!
Ella was born at 8lb 14oz and has only lost 1% of he weight at her three day check up! She's my absolute diamond I am so in love.
I haven't been back to update for a while as to be honest...it's been a traumatising week.
On Monday I was all set to wait to hear we could go home. I'd sent my hubby off at 8am to go sleep and to come back at 2pm to see us and wait to go.
It's a rather long, frustrating and upsetting story for me so I'm going to tell the short version. A midwife came and told me I had to be on antibiotics for 48 hours as well as my baby because I was showing infection markers. I explained I have an ear infection I'm struggling to get over, can they check into that and please consider letting me go.
So let's skip the rest. We didn't get out of there until 5.30pm Wednesday. I think I cried everyday I was in there, struggling to breastfeed, to feel positive and felt downright let down by the whole system. I had at least 20 different midwives see me, tell me different ways to feed, different reasons why it wasn't working, and a whole bunch of assumptions as to why Ella was crying, latching wrong etc etc.
I walked out Wednesday with a perfectly healthy baby who had to endure a canular in her arm for two days and distressing blood draws. I have 5 canular bruises and marks on my arms and it all was all nothing.
Staying in a ward for all that time was horrible. We couldn't sleep through the noise, all I wanted was to go home and sleep. Since waking at 8am Sunday, I did not get one single minute of shut eye until Thursday 1am for 2 hours. I kid you not I had zero sleep...My blood pressure was raised and my HR so I had observations every 4 hours. They couldn't figure out why my heart rate averaged at 126bpm.
I could and did tell them why....I was massively sleep deprived and upset, no one cared. No one actually came and spoke to me about how I felt emotionally and maybe if they did I wouldn't have been treated like a sick person. I felt fine...but I was an absolute disaster on the brink of serious depression.
Wind forward and I'm home by 6pm Wednesday....first thing we did was get Ella in her carry cot to continue her snooze. We didn't get much sleep that night at all but we both on Thursday morning looked at each other and said that the 2 hours we got was that best bloody sleep ever!!!
Yesterday was amazing...All I'd wanted was to be home with my baby and husband and around housework, breastfeeding, midwife visit and implementing our slow training for the dog to meet the baby....I spent about 6 hours with Ella in the swaddle wrap and I had never felt happier.
I even finally got a shower Thursday morning! After a good old cry before where I just let it all out to my husband about how let down I felt by the system. I couldn't have done any of it with my husband. He spent every night with us, travelling back and forth every 6 hours to be with the dog...came back 2 hours later and helped me to learn to breastfeed and make sure I ate.
It's now Friday and baby girl is 4 days old! Another tough night but I'd swap that every time for those nightmare days in hospital. Today the plan is to really nail this latch for breastfeeding as my nipples are bloody chapped as hell. I need to also nail a 2 hourly expressing routine. Oh and today is visitor day so we have three sets of friends visiting throughout the day to meet the baby. I can't wait for a bit of swaddle wrap time with my love
Labour was....an experience!! No pain relief I pushed her out and got three stitches bit otherwise I've been so pleased with my recovery. Bleeding is like a medium period and the only real problem is sore muscles as I still struggle to get up and about. Probably could do with a nice stretch of sleep to help thst!
I hope all you ladies have been doing well!!