baby dramas

Well at 12 weeks (and 5 days) I thought we had the waking up down to 3 times a night, with one block of 5 hours at the beginning of the night, which was actually fine by me, but last night she went down at 8 and woke up 5 TIMES (at 11, then 1ish, 1ish, 3ish and 5ish.) She went back down at 8 but was disturbed by P slamming the front door on his way out to work.

It's easier and quicker to feed her (20min) than try and rock or pat her back to sleep in the middle of the night (about an hour or more!) although I always try to get her back to sleep first. It works 50% of the time.

She has just gone back to sleep now (11.20) and although i've been up since 5 I don't think i could sleep now. So it was a toss up between a shower or internet, internet won!

She is a very happy contented baby most of the time, she's pretty portable and loves being out. She doesn't like being strapped in the car but does fall asleep there after a little while. She finds it hard to sleep in new places, I think she is just a bit too nosey and doesn't want to miss anything!

She likes the bath, although she is touching both ends of the baby bath now. I don't like to waste water in the big bath, especially now we have water restrictions again, but looks like I will have no choice soon!

She makes big smiles all the time now, I got her a swing for her 12 week birthday she was full of smiles as soon as I put her in it, I hadn't even put the batteries in yet! It plays squeaky music and rocks by itself, perfect for 10 minutes to eat my dinner! although there is no substitute for real cuddles of course!

She did fall asleep in it the other day though, when I popped her in to go to the loo, I came back she was sound! I left her there and she slept for 2 hours! - what a bad Mummy! don't tell my CHN!

People keep commenting on her lack of hair - HOW RUDE! She actually has quite a bit, it's just really fair. But apparently is's just tooo funny to resist making a comparison between her and her daddy?

Well i'm off for a shower, just don't wake the baby!

Beachy!

Here's P on the beach last summer, doing his monkey impression.

Change in blog!

My old blog site was a bit rubbish, it wouldn't let me write new posts half the time, so when I did get 'round to writing I was unable to publish.
So I moved the main posts over to here and hopefully this will prove to be a more reliable website! We shall see!

I put Twilight on hold at the library, I was 26th in line, if all the people before me had kept it for the 2 weeks I would have been reading it this time next year! So I was surprised to get the call that the book was in, but when I collected it, I noticed it was a brand new book, so I guess they bought it just for me!
I read when the bubby is feeding, but she is getting a bit quick lately, so it's just 10 minute bursts! I was scared to start reading it. There was such a lot of people saying how good it was and I thought I might be disappointed. I'm not much of a Harry Potter fan and everyone had said how good that was too.
Not that I'm comparing it to Harry Potter, just that peoples opinions aren't always right if you know what I mean? So far I am quite enjoying it, although it's hard to concentrate in my sleep deprived state, it appears to be easy to follow, here's hoping it doesn't get complicated...

We went to the beach yesterday (sat in the shade of course) and hubby went in the water for the first time this season. I wanted to put bubby's feet in the water but the suncream says 12 months up and I didn't dare budge from the shade with her. She would probably have cried at the cold water anyway and I don't want her first experience of the ocean to be a bad one!

Driving test

I was scared of driving. Not just ordinary nerves but real fear. I had a greater need though; I couldn't face being stuck at home with my baby 24/7. And that took over the driving fear and I finally got the courage to start lessons up again.
The first instructor I tried was not nice, swore a lot but didn't talk to me apart from that.
I found someone I liked but stalled again over the Christmas period and had to pluck up courage to start AGAIN a few months back. And finally on 9th July 2008......At 11.40am my driving instructor, Alan, arrived to take me to the test centre for a 1.10 pm test. He was 20 minutes early but guess what? I was ready! I had spent the whole morning doing my best at relaxing breathing and positive visualising. (Who said birth classes were a waste of time!)
Even though we were early we still didn't have time to go round all the places that the test 'might' be so Alan just took a guess. I don't think I took any of it in though, too busy being scared. Not that it mattered, cus I didn't go that way anyway!
Baby spent the whole hour lesson kicking up a storm, she hates the pressure of the seatbelt anyway but with all the adrenaline too she really was manic! Arrived at the test centre DYING for the bathroom!I was the examiners birthday, I told him I would have bought cake, anything if he would go easy on me! but he went easy on me anyway! I really think (and Alan did too) that he made allowances for the giant baby bump! He wasn't bothered about manouvers (3 point turn etc) cus he could see I wasn't too comfortable turning round. He spent most of the time asking about the baby and telling me 'you'll be ok' and 'you're doing fine'
At one point I even said 'I'm really not doing very well' and he disagreed.

31 years old and 7 and a half months pregnant. Been in more bumps and scrapes than I can think of plus counselling for a serious accident. Been through 5 driving instructors in the UK and 3 in Australia. Been told I'm unteachable.
But guess what...I passed!

Heres hoping the birth goes just as smoothly!

Birth - Thursday 24th July 2008

4 weeks and 5 days until due date
I woke at about 6.15am to a warm gush of waters, shocked, I stood up to another flood. I knew straight away what it was.
Panicked and disorientated I headed for the door to phone Paul, I stopped short though as I remembered that the floors from the hallway to the kitchen had been sanded but Paul had yet to finish the painting. I couldn't get to either phone without crossing the floor and my waters were still leaking fairly heavily. I didn't want to stain the floor for evermore! I frantically looked around for something to soak it up while I made the dash for the phone. I had just decided on a pillow when I heard Paul, just about to leave for work. I shouted out to him that my waters had broken but I don't think he believed me, he said something like 'are you sure?' before coming in and seeing for his self that I was not mistaken!
All this time I was thinking 'this isn't right, it's too early' and was quite frightened. I had no contractions at all. I got Paul to bring me the phone and I called the maternity unit at John Flynn hospital. They told me to wait and see what happened and to call back in an hour by which time my obstetrician, Dr Dutt would be 'walking around' I guess that meant 'at work'!
During the hour I led in bed panicking I tried to relax and slow my breathing and eventually I got Paul to bring me all the books on birth that I had, where I looked up as much information about early membrane rupture as I could! This settled me a little bit. I could still feel the odd movement of baby too, which was reassuring.
When the hour was up I had still had no contractions whatsoever (looking back I think I had a couple of very mild ones but didn't know what they felt like) and phoned the hospital to tell them. The midwife told me to come in and get checked over, but not to rush, just head in when I could.So, I had a shower, messed about for a bit (Paul couldn't find his shoes!) And went for the 2 minute drive to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital at around 8am All the labour rooms were full when we got there so we were in a side room while they waited for one to become free. I was told that Dr Dutt was on his way. Baby was checked and her heartbeat was good and strong. The midwife told me to rest.Had a few pains and got excited, but they were irregular and then stopped altogether. Had a canula put in for the anti biotics.
Paul asked if he thought I would be able to go home but the midwife was pretty sure that the doctor would want me to stay. So it was a matter of waiting for the Dr to come see me and find out what to do next, and waiting, and waiting! We were finally moved to a birthing suite (hooray the one with the big bath!)At the change of shift the new midwife decided I should be walking around trying to bring the contractions on, so she showed me where the stairs were and I spent the next couple of hours going up and down, up and down! I decided at one point that 'up' worked and 'down' didn't so walked to the 6th floor and took the lift down to the basement a couple of times.
Paul left at some point in my 'walking' to go get my overnight bag and pack a few of bubby's things.On one of my long ascents I heard a voice calling my name, My obstetrician Dr Dutt had arrived at last and my midwife couldn't find me! This was about 5 o clock. He looked at me and said, do you want this baby tonight or tomorrow? I thought for a minute and answered, I'd rather have it tomorrow naturally than tonight... he agreed with me that I could wait, but if labour didn't start naturally by the morning then I would need to be 'augmented' it wasn't induction as m waters had already broken.
So we were back to the waiting game. Another midwife change then, At about 8ish we were asked if we would move to a different birthing suite as there was a lady waiting who was ready to pop. We agreed as there really wasn't anything happening with me. No big or regular contractions and still leaking fluid so having to go to the bathroom every few hours but I managed too sleep a few hours that night and hooray!
The same midwife as the night before was back in the morning, her name was Katherine. She organised the Syntocinon (a synthetic form of the hormone oxytocin) drip ready for me and we waited a little bit for the go ahead from the doctor.At about 10am she started me on a low dose and gradually built it up over time, so as to reduce the likelihood of me screaming for pain relief! I started off on the bed with all the monitors on, but Kath said I could get up and move around whenever I wanted. I rode them out for quite a while. At 12 midday I had an internal I was 2-3cm dilated. I was offered gas but wasn't in so much pain that I thought I couldn't handle it and was worried that it might got a lot worse, so I held out. Kath thought I had a high pain threshold – whoopee for me!I sat up on the edge of the bed for a little bit, Paul sat facing me on a stool and I would lean onto him when the contractions kicked in. Unfortunately every time I did lean forward the babies heartbeat would slow, not sure if this was just a break between the monitor and baby Kath asked me to do one without leaning forward – that was too hard! Paul warmed up the wheat pack for me and putting that on my belly helped a lot. Gave Kath the excuse to pump up the drip another notch though. It was really getting pretty unbearable now and had a few tears.Got in the shower at about this point with one warm water stream pointing at my back and a hand held shower on my belly. (stuff the water restrictions ey?!) Trying really hard to focus on letting the contractions 'go' and do their job instead of gritting my teeth and holding on to them. I vocalised the pain 'owwww'. Paul sat opposite me and held the shower during contractions. This was working pretty well for me and I was still able to talk in between! Changed the hard little stool in the shower for the ball and that helped too.
After a while I thought I could get out of the shower and try something different but as I was drying off a contraction hit and I realised how much the water was helping so I got back in.3.00pm The midwife's shift was over and I got a different midwife, also called Kathryn. She told me that I would have to get out of the shower so she could do an internal. I was NOT happy about that. The internal was more painful than anything up to this point. I was 9cm – I WAS happy about that! From 2 – 9cm in 3 hours was pretty good. She let me get in the bath, that felt so nice, even better than the shower. I leaned forward onto the side of the bath and Paul poured water on my back. I think now is when I really started to vocalise as the contractions felt a lot worse though and I felt faint and scared. Kathryn gave me some oxygen. She forgot to turn it on first of all, I wondered why it was so hard to suck! She kept using the waterproof heart monitor for the baby and it was reassuring to hear the babies heartbeat good and strong every time.
Eventually I felt like I needed to push, Kathryn asked me to get out of the water as there were just 'too many risks' I told Paul to tell her that Dr Dutt had said I was allowed to birth in the water as long as the baby was doing well, I still had to get out though. (Here is where I wish I had insisted and also wish I had Paul in the water with me as I felt quite spacey and needed something solid to hold onto) So I was up onto the bed for the last bit.
Apparently I pushed for around 45 minutes although I couldn't tell at all, it felt like a much shorter time. At each push I could feel progress but then it felt like the head would return to where it was before, I was so frustrated.At some point the doctor was there, he said there was just a little bit of cervix stopping the head coming out. He tried to stretch it with his finger, that HURT. If I didn't get it out on the next push he would cut. Boy, did I push then! As regards the pain, this was absolutely the worst bit, helped only by the fact that it was the 'last' bit of pain and would be all over soon.
5.13pm Dr Dutt said 'show me your hands' I held them up and he put the baby into them. She was pink and white, heavy, solid and real. I couldn't quite believe what I had in my arms. After all the noise I had been making I lay quiet and watched as the paediatrician checked her over and wrapped her in big towels to keep her warm, I can remember saying 'my baby' very quietly to myself, I didn't cry like I thought I would, because I don't think I believed it.
I was given an injection and the placenta was delivered, I saw it out of the corner of my eye but really wasn't too interested. I had struggled over the decision about whether to have the injection or deliver it naturally, but the baby was out and I really didn't care any more I just wanted the whole thing over.
The midwife asked for her to be unwrapped and put her on me skin to skin, she put her on the breast straight away. I know this from the photographs but can't remember anything from Dr Dutt stitching me up to saying 'I don't feel well' when I had a bleed and lots of people rushed in and poked and prodded me more. My temp was 101 and BP something over 30. Another drip to stop the bleeding, catheter and lots of pushing on my belly – and I thought the pain ended with the birth, I was wrong.
Don't know where the baby was, I told Paul to go find her. He wouldn't until I was feeling a bit better. Paul answered his mobile phone too at some point, and someone would have heard my screams. Next time phones will be banned.
Did I just say next time? Have I forgotten already?
Amélie Rose Jacobs, born 25-07-08 at 17.13 weighing 2870 grams (6lb 4) length 50cm head 34.5cm