MSE Pregnancy Club V

oh my goodness - I can't possibly try and catch up with you lot. Firstly congratulations to 3onitsway and to anyone else who has given birth when I've been away. :wave:

I thought I'd come back and give you my birth story. Now, I suggest that if you are sqeamish (thinking AF here) that you don't read it!!! You have been warned Oh and sorry it's so long.......

I felt funny all thursday - crampy and irritable and by 9pm I was sure that I was definately in labour. Husband was fabulous and held my hand when the contractions came. I did use my TENS, but actually found it more relaxing to take it off once the contractions were established. I called the MW to come out about midnight as things were moving along and then all of a sudden my waters broke. I have never seen so much liquid! It just didn't stop :eek: At this point we hadn't got the birth pool up (I didn't want hubby out of my sight) and althouhg we had the spare room bed all prepped with waterproof sheets and old duvets etc I only wanted to be in my own bed so was surrounded by old towels - typical.

The MW arrived and we carried on labouring for about half an hour until she suggested I have a bath and get examined. When I moved off the bed we could see the waters were very badly stained with meconium, so we were to go to hospital. that was fine by me - baby's health comes first. Anyway as I got out of the bath I was spectacularly sick everywhere so an ambulance was called.

Got to hospital about half 1ish in the morning and because of the meconium I couldn't have diamorphine or pethidine so as I was 4cm dilated and hurting opted for an epidural. Bliss - pure and simple. Baby was very very quiet (unlike her as she wriggled all through pg) so we had to have some fetal blood sampling - not pretty, but couldn't feel it because of the epidural. However, the four samples they took didn't work for some reason so they let me be, keeping constant monitoring going.

This went on until about 10.30am when the doctor decided that as baby wasn't waking we needed to try the blood sampling again to determine if a c-section was necessary. By this point I was 9cm dilated...... as they were about to try the sampling again something happened (no idea what!) and all of a sudden I was being told I needed a c-section now. I was totally happy with this as it was all for the safety of the baby - and me and after 14 hours or so I was tired too.

The c-section was fine - a bit weird feeling, but quick, totally pain free and not even uncomfortable. Hubby was again brilliant looking after me with another nurse. He watched Annabel being born and then couldn't tear his eyes from my stomach! All of a sudden he jumped up and followed the peadiatrician and I didn't get to see baby. I was told it was a girl (I was SOOOOOOO pleased at this news ) and the nurses kept me talking about names etc. When Hubby came back I knew by his face things weren't good and he told me baby had been taken to intensive care as she wasn't breathing.

Unfortunately I lost 3 times as much blood during the c-section as normal so was placed on the high dependency ward and couldn't see Annabel. Poor Hubby was so torn as to which bedside to be at - I just kept telling him to stay with Annabel, though he did take a couple of pictures of her for me to see. That helped a lot as I didn't feel like I had a baby at this point :eek:

After about 10 hours I was able to go and see her and by this point she was off the oxygen and had a few of the initial tubes removed. The staff were amazing and after that first visit made sure someone took me up every 4 hours to try feeding and keep close to her. she is sooooooo gorgeous

We were in hosiptal for about 5 days or so and we both went from strength to strength. My milk supply is a bit haywire as I have such a low iron count at the moment it's not come in properly, but we are persevering with joint breast feeding/expressing and formula topups.

Since we have been home times have been good but also tough - the day we got out of hospital my husbands grandmother died and my great aunt had a stroke - and typically Baby blues hit home a few days ago. But each day is a new day and we are doing really well. The MW has been great and although our ten days are up, they are continueing to see us until we feel ready to let them go!

I am sooo in love and would do it all again for Annabel - but I have to say that the experience has husband and I still thinking that she'll be an only child we'll need a good few years to let the scars fade emotionally.

Good luck to everyone with the rest of your pg and births - I'll try and pop back, but don't seem to have much time these days

thanks for all your support ladies :hugs:

ChasingButterflies wrote: »

imo nothing wrong with american names (dd1 has one!) + points are I have only ever met 1 other child with the same name whereas ds's name is a popular one... - points are telling the inlaws :rolleyes: Logan I have a soft spot for because it was one that I liked - but Kai is lovely too...

tbh dd2 was going to be Ruby until I was standing outside the registry office - I phoned up dh - almost in tears saying "it isn't right, she just isn't a Ruby" and I got the ok to go with the other names we had :rotfl: You have to bear in mind that all of ours were registered on the last possible day due to parental squabbling over names We also have a surname that is full of vowels so it is a bit of a mouthful - trying to get names to match up with it is a pain...

We did this with with ds1 + 2, their names weren't popular (although they are becoming so now) Telling the Grandparents, well they pulled faces at both boys names, and I couldn't really care less what they think:)

I think I just panicked a bit as we had two names picked out for ds1 and just decided when he was born which one to go with , and ds2 we found out was a boy through Amnio at 22wks so had 1 name and stuck with it....I just feel so un-organised!!!

Ruby is a lovely name, and one I had on my long list of girls names, before we whittled it down to two. What name did you go with?

Mel x

Oh r.mac sorry you had such a bad time with the birth, I was actually crying reading it.

Thank you so much for sharing though:)

Mel x

tinkerbelluk wrote: »

Morning all

Just a quickie we're heading up for the baby show in London next week and for those that have been before how long does it take really to do it? Do I need to allow a full day?

We're planning on coming up for the weekend so any recommendations for shops to visit whilst I'm in London for baby stuff?

i am not sure if you need to allow a full day as i have never been before, but if you are using public transport check the baby show's website becuase when i looked into going i think one of the tube lines running to where it is is going to be out and you need to divert somewhere else.

RedMel - On the first letter front My BFF is Lindsay and her sister is Anna their parents are Linda and Andy
I suppose the Mrs, Mr, Miss helps differentiate tho