bananabump
Mummy to Leo!
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- Feb 15, 2011
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Hi Ladies!
Well, I can't quite believe I'm sitting here writing this to be honest! I've had a feeling throughout the whole pregnancy that my little boy might make an early appearance but never actually thought it would happen in the way that it did!
So here goes my birth story (sorry it might be a tad long - I tend to ramble!) and also a few bits about recovery and the first couple of days of motherhood :
Some of you may have seen the thread I posted about last week having various different early labour symptoms like losing my plus, Braxton Hicks, backache, some blood loss and then on Friday night what I thought was some leakage of my waters! Well on Saturday 20th August I rang the labour ward and they asked me to go straight in for some monitoring, which I did. Turns out it was my waters that had started leaking and after examining me they told me I was also 3cm dilated! They decided to keep me in overnight and kept me on a trace as I hadn't been feeling him move much all day either.
Sunday morning they told me they hadn't been happy with his movements or heartrate on the monitor because he really wasn't moving much, if at all, and there was some sort of irregularity with his heartbeat too which they didn't really explain at the time. They sent me home for the night to get some rest as I hadn't been able to sleep a wink all night at the hospital, and then booked me in for a scan Monday morning.
So Monday morning came and off we went to the hospital. The scan was awesome - it was so nice seeing our little man again! Everything about him was perrrrfect apart from the fact that he still just wouldn't budge! She tried everything but said she wasn't at all happy that he hadn't responded or moved so they got me back on the monitor for some tracing. As soon as she strapped me up and turned on the machine his heartrate was ridclously low and stayed low for about 3minutes so she started panicking and got my OH to go and get another midwife from the ward and pressed the panic button by my bed! When the other MW came she told her to get a bed ready to take me down to labour ward!! Obviously me and OH were in shock and really worried but then his heartrate started to increase and went back up to within normal range and everyone calmed down a bit. She got a Consultant to come down and have a look at the trace from the monitor, and when she came she said that she wasn't happy with it and wanted to INDUCE me there and then!!!!
Twenty minutes later and I'd had the pessary inserted to start labour! We started ringing our mums and text our best friends just to make them aware that in a few days time we would have our baby boy... I started having a few period type cramps/pains but nothing major. And then it happened again - his heart pretty much stopped from what it sounded like on the monitor! So they rushed the consultant back in who promptly turned round to my OH and said 'right, can you go with Becki the MW please and get your scrubs on.. we're going to theatre!!!'. I was absolutely speechless (and I'm getting teary now just thinking about how surreal the whole situation was!).
I had 2 consultants and 3 midwifes in the room with me who started taking blood, attaching me to a drip, stripping me off to put a gown on me and taking my blood pressure! Then I was wheeled off to theatre. My OH waited outside while they got me ready, it really wasn't that bad at all having the spinal block done.. just a bit of pressure in my back and then all of a sudden my legs went really warm and I couldn't feel them!! They moved me so I was lying down on the bed, put the little curtain up in front of my face and then for my OH in. He was teary eyed already, mainly because of the shock of it all I think, he gave me a kiss and asked if I was ok. I couldn't feel a THING and didn't even know I'd been cut open, let alone that he'd been born - until the midwife popped her head round the curtain and said Congratulations!!
Then it got a bit scary again, Leo was a bit traumatised by the whole situation and had a LOT of mucus inside him aswell so he wasn't breathing at all when he came out. They took him straight over to the table where they started pumping on his little chest and pumping the mucus out of his nose and mouth! I started crying and asking if he was ok, so my OH got up and went over the table just as they got a little oxygen mask out to put on him!! It was a very long 8 minutes of resuscitation but he finally made a tiny little cry and he was brought straight over to us for a cuddle! He weighed 6lb 10oz and was absolutely gorgeous!
We went into a recovery room for an hour or so for some skin to skin and the midwife was showing me how to get him to latch on for BF. Then they took me up onto the ward (it was 11pm, by this point) and I got settled for the night. Didn't get any sleep at all the first night as Leo was really struggling with latching on so I was having to hand express milk every 2 hours along with trying to get him to feed every 3hours! By Tuesday morning he still hadn't had enough of a feed from the milk I'd been expressing so we gave him a top up of 10ml formula. Throughout the course of the day I kept trying with the BF, along with having our close family and my 2 best friends coming to visit, but he still was wayy too lazy to keep going. He would have a few sucks but then go to sleep!!
I was up and in the shower on Tuesday and walking about too (the regular cocktail of drugs helped massively with this) and the midwifes were all saying I was doing great for only the next day after surgery. Tuesday night was horrendous again with no sleep and a bit of a scary rugby playing midwife who kepy man handling my breasts to get Leo to feed but no such luck so he had a couple more tiny cups of formula during the night too. As you can imagine, both me and Leo were pretty grumpy by Wednesday and I just really wanted to go home! So when they told me that they were going to keep me in until the following Monday so they could make sure he was feeding properly, I neally had a nervous breakdown!! haha (wasn't that extreme really lol) So me, OH and one of the midwifes had a really long chat and I made a decision to stop BF and go onto the bottle instead. He had 2 great feeds and then they discharged me last night! (Wednesday)
I'm sooo glad I decided to switch to bottle feeding - all throughout pregnancy I've been really really up for BF so I was a bit gutted when I realised I was going to have to look at stopping. BUT Leo really wasn't going to grasp the concept of it anytime soon, so not only was he getting really hungry but also I was getting really tired an couldn't imagine how many more sleepless nights I'd be able to have before snapping! My OH really enjoys giving him a feed too so it's great bonding for Dad and I make sure I still get a LOT of skin to skin with him myself for bonding too.
Anyway, I should probably stop now, even though I could go on writing all day.. Leo is now officially my favourite subject to talk about!! haha He is an absolutely amazing baby, good as gold! He hasn't cried once apart from when he was born, when he is hungry he just makes a couple of squeaking noises and makes sucking movements with his lips, he sleeps allllll the time apart from in the evening when he becomes quite alert looking around at everyone/everything, he's having 50ml formula every 3-4 hours and then filling his nappy afterwards so we can combine feeding with changing, and everytime I look at him my heart melts and I fall in love with him aaaaall over again!
The midwife has been round today and said that me and OH are doing an absolutely fab job! My wound is healing nicely and she was really surprised that I was up and about without any problems! All in all, I'm on a total high at the moment and couldn't be happier! So for anyone that is worried about the birth/the first few days after - Don't be!! As soon as you hold your wonderful little person in your arms for the first time, as cliche as it might be, you will forget everything and just be amazed with what a precious miracle you have created!!!
Wishing you all a happy and healthy remainder of your pregnancies and thank you soooo much for all your support and kind words for the past 7/8 months!
Here's what my little man has been upto whilst I've been writing this..... hehe
x x x x
Well, I can't quite believe I'm sitting here writing this to be honest! I've had a feeling throughout the whole pregnancy that my little boy might make an early appearance but never actually thought it would happen in the way that it did!
So here goes my birth story (sorry it might be a tad long - I tend to ramble!) and also a few bits about recovery and the first couple of days of motherhood :
Some of you may have seen the thread I posted about last week having various different early labour symptoms like losing my plus, Braxton Hicks, backache, some blood loss and then on Friday night what I thought was some leakage of my waters! Well on Saturday 20th August I rang the labour ward and they asked me to go straight in for some monitoring, which I did. Turns out it was my waters that had started leaking and after examining me they told me I was also 3cm dilated! They decided to keep me in overnight and kept me on a trace as I hadn't been feeling him move much all day either.
Sunday morning they told me they hadn't been happy with his movements or heartrate on the monitor because he really wasn't moving much, if at all, and there was some sort of irregularity with his heartbeat too which they didn't really explain at the time. They sent me home for the night to get some rest as I hadn't been able to sleep a wink all night at the hospital, and then booked me in for a scan Monday morning.
So Monday morning came and off we went to the hospital. The scan was awesome - it was so nice seeing our little man again! Everything about him was perrrrfect apart from the fact that he still just wouldn't budge! She tried everything but said she wasn't at all happy that he hadn't responded or moved so they got me back on the monitor for some tracing. As soon as she strapped me up and turned on the machine his heartrate was ridclously low and stayed low for about 3minutes so she started panicking and got my OH to go and get another midwife from the ward and pressed the panic button by my bed! When the other MW came she told her to get a bed ready to take me down to labour ward!! Obviously me and OH were in shock and really worried but then his heartrate started to increase and went back up to within normal range and everyone calmed down a bit. She got a Consultant to come down and have a look at the trace from the monitor, and when she came she said that she wasn't happy with it and wanted to INDUCE me there and then!!!!
Twenty minutes later and I'd had the pessary inserted to start labour! We started ringing our mums and text our best friends just to make them aware that in a few days time we would have our baby boy... I started having a few period type cramps/pains but nothing major. And then it happened again - his heart pretty much stopped from what it sounded like on the monitor! So they rushed the consultant back in who promptly turned round to my OH and said 'right, can you go with Becki the MW please and get your scrubs on.. we're going to theatre!!!'. I was absolutely speechless (and I'm getting teary now just thinking about how surreal the whole situation was!).
I had 2 consultants and 3 midwifes in the room with me who started taking blood, attaching me to a drip, stripping me off to put a gown on me and taking my blood pressure! Then I was wheeled off to theatre. My OH waited outside while they got me ready, it really wasn't that bad at all having the spinal block done.. just a bit of pressure in my back and then all of a sudden my legs went really warm and I couldn't feel them!! They moved me so I was lying down on the bed, put the little curtain up in front of my face and then for my OH in. He was teary eyed already, mainly because of the shock of it all I think, he gave me a kiss and asked if I was ok. I couldn't feel a THING and didn't even know I'd been cut open, let alone that he'd been born - until the midwife popped her head round the curtain and said Congratulations!!
Then it got a bit scary again, Leo was a bit traumatised by the whole situation and had a LOT of mucus inside him aswell so he wasn't breathing at all when he came out. They took him straight over to the table where they started pumping on his little chest and pumping the mucus out of his nose and mouth! I started crying and asking if he was ok, so my OH got up and went over the table just as they got a little oxygen mask out to put on him!! It was a very long 8 minutes of resuscitation but he finally made a tiny little cry and he was brought straight over to us for a cuddle! He weighed 6lb 10oz and was absolutely gorgeous!
We went into a recovery room for an hour or so for some skin to skin and the midwife was showing me how to get him to latch on for BF. Then they took me up onto the ward (it was 11pm, by this point) and I got settled for the night. Didn't get any sleep at all the first night as Leo was really struggling with latching on so I was having to hand express milk every 2 hours along with trying to get him to feed every 3hours! By Tuesday morning he still hadn't had enough of a feed from the milk I'd been expressing so we gave him a top up of 10ml formula. Throughout the course of the day I kept trying with the BF, along with having our close family and my 2 best friends coming to visit, but he still was wayy too lazy to keep going. He would have a few sucks but then go to sleep!!
I was up and in the shower on Tuesday and walking about too (the regular cocktail of drugs helped massively with this) and the midwifes were all saying I was doing great for only the next day after surgery. Tuesday night was horrendous again with no sleep and a bit of a scary rugby playing midwife who kepy man handling my breasts to get Leo to feed but no such luck so he had a couple more tiny cups of formula during the night too. As you can imagine, both me and Leo were pretty grumpy by Wednesday and I just really wanted to go home! So when they told me that they were going to keep me in until the following Monday so they could make sure he was feeding properly, I neally had a nervous breakdown!! haha (wasn't that extreme really lol) So me, OH and one of the midwifes had a really long chat and I made a decision to stop BF and go onto the bottle instead. He had 2 great feeds and then they discharged me last night! (Wednesday)
I'm sooo glad I decided to switch to bottle feeding - all throughout pregnancy I've been really really up for BF so I was a bit gutted when I realised I was going to have to look at stopping. BUT Leo really wasn't going to grasp the concept of it anytime soon, so not only was he getting really hungry but also I was getting really tired an couldn't imagine how many more sleepless nights I'd be able to have before snapping! My OH really enjoys giving him a feed too so it's great bonding for Dad and I make sure I still get a LOT of skin to skin with him myself for bonding too.
Anyway, I should probably stop now, even though I could go on writing all day.. Leo is now officially my favourite subject to talk about!! haha He is an absolutely amazing baby, good as gold! He hasn't cried once apart from when he was born, when he is hungry he just makes a couple of squeaking noises and makes sucking movements with his lips, he sleeps allllll the time apart from in the evening when he becomes quite alert looking around at everyone/everything, he's having 50ml formula every 3-4 hours and then filling his nappy afterwards so we can combine feeding with changing, and everytime I look at him my heart melts and I fall in love with him aaaaall over again!
The midwife has been round today and said that me and OH are doing an absolutely fab job! My wound is healing nicely and she was really surprised that I was up and about without any problems! All in all, I'm on a total high at the moment and couldn't be happier! So for anyone that is worried about the birth/the first few days after - Don't be!! As soon as you hold your wonderful little person in your arms for the first time, as cliche as it might be, you will forget everything and just be amazed with what a precious miracle you have created!!!
Wishing you all a happy and healthy remainder of your pregnancies and thank you soooo much for all your support and kind words for the past 7/8 months!
Here's what my little man has been upto whilst I've been writing this..... hehe
x x x x
n'awwww he's gorgeous ! Xx
huge congratulations!!
