Well then. It’s the 1st Sept 2018 and I’ve just discovered an old private blog I had been doing has gone bust (damn you, Blog.com). In it was many entries starting from finding out I was pregnant, through the pregnancy and then several months after my little girl was born (born March 2016). It was written in the form of letters to my Little Love and was a general update on Life and Things. Photos, funny stories and all sorts were included. I set up an email address for my little one and sent her the link with the intention of sending her the email and password when she was older, so she could read things. That ain’t happening as planned now, sadly. Ah well, a lot of it was drivel and drama, I’m sure no great loss.
Now that my Little Man has been born (May 2018) and blog.com is gone, I’ve gone on Google to find a reliable alternative… this seems to be it so fingers crossed things don’t go pear shaped. I’ll again write in the view of letters to my darlings, and sometimes will write like this, just an ongoing internal blah of words.
We’d spent months trying to get pregnant, eventually I had a positive test and a relatively stress free pregnancy (excluding feeling nauseous for three months). Then three bloody weeks before I was due, on the Wednesday of my last week of work I got a text from the Other Half at 5pm- he’d been in an accident and was waiting for an ambulance. I called and found out he’d been cycling home, was nearly there (as in, he just needed to cross one road and then go another hundred or so metres) and a car came out of a driveway without looking. He’d hit the brakes, went flying over the handlebars and into the car, and upon landing on the ground had dislocated and broken his left elbow.
I found out which hospital he was going to and got there, waddling as quickly as possible to the ER and explaining what had happened. They told me to wait as he hadn’t arrived yet. Quite a long long time later I went back and checked again, and they said he was in cubicle 5 (or whatever one it was). I went through the ‘Authorised Personnel Only” door to cubicle 5, only to find an orderly removing the bed linens and cleaning up. Immediately every cliched horrible possibility started running through my head. The orderly told me they had just moved the patient to cubicle blah at the other end of the corridor so I went there. There was a lovely lady and her husband there, but not my Nick. I went back to the original cubicle and was busy wringing my hands trying to find someone who could help, when he was wheeled in — they’d assigned him to that cubicle as the ambulance was coming in, but hadn’t told me that he hadn’t arrived yet.
Many many hours later he went for his second or third lot of xrays. The Drs were trying to get it through as quickly as possible because ‘he was there with his very pregnant wife’ and they wanted me to be at home and comfortable. A cast and some strong pain killers later, we were able to go home (this was probably close to midnight by then). He had a Drs appointment for 3 weeks later to remove the cast and replace it with a half brace.
I went into hospital on the evening of the 1st March due to lack of movement. I was induced that night, then on the 2nd (baby’s due date) Not Much Happened… eventually it culminated in an emergency caesarean section and our little girl was born at 2.01am on the 3rd March 2016. The same day, the other half needed to go back and get his cast replaced. He called up that morning (3rd) to explain what had just happened and if possible to please reschedule and the bastard on the phone told him the next clinic where the procedure he needed done wouldn’t be for a few more weeks so he had to go. He did go and while speaking with the Drs who were actually chopping off his cast he told them his daughter had just been born a few hours previously. Long story short, they were furious that the receptionist he’d called had not told them what was going on as they would have been perfectly happy to reschedule given the circumstances.
My darling girl was and is perfect. She is stubborn, stroppy, beautiful, happy, curious and an absolutely amazing child. In two days’ time she’ll be 2.5 years old and yep, even though it goes slowly, time does fly. The hardest thing with my sweet is she has always been a shit sleeper, for months she wouldn’t sleep longer than 90 minutes or so, even overnight, and my God I was a mess. It happened that each time I done the Edinburgh Scale test for Post natal depression, I happened to be having a good day so was never officially diagnosed however I am sure I did have it, and I am equally sure that the lack of sleep was the main reason.
To anyone who hasn’t had a child yet (or to the father of children)- yes, kids are a joy and a pleasure, and are goddamnably difficult. Excluding sleep deprivation the hardest thing I found was that I lost myself. I would go several days in a row and not leave the house. I would go several days in a row and not speak to anyone except the baby and my partner. He would come home from work and I’d pounce- asking for everything about his day, asking him to just hold the baby, asking him to cook, clean, go away, come here… you name it. Yes, I know it was hard for him and I realise completely that it isn’t just the mum who has the hard part but… it is the mum who has the hardest part. Here in Australia (I am a Kiwi however I do live here. New Zealand is and always will be home and I do hope one day to talk the other half into moving there with our kids) 1 in 5 mothers will have post natal depression. I believe that it is a lot higher than that, it just slips through the cracks or, like me, the new mum goes to the Maternal Health nurse on a ‘Good’ day. Hell, sometimes for me a good day meant I got out of bed and kept the baby fed, clean and alive. One of the toughest evenings I remember is baby had been crying and crying for bloody hours, I’d fed and changed her and she just needed sleep but she wouldn’t drop off. After a long time I knew I was so close to doing something I went and put her in her cot and went downstairs into the kitchen, bawling. Probably less than 30mins later the other half got home, I was still crying (not noisily, I was too tired and worn out for that. It was just tears constantly leaking from my eyes). I told him the baby was upstairs and if he could please check on her, he came down and said she was fast asleep. I immediately started crying harder because to me, this was proof that she loved her cot more than she loved me because if not, then how was it possible that the cot could get her to sleep and I couldn’t?
Another time, another horrible, lack of sleep day. I ended up screaming at her (because obviously that’s the best way to calm an upset infant. Or anyone). I placed her in her cot and ended up curled up in a ball on our bathroom floor and I just completely blanked out. At some point the other half arrived home from work and found me, god knows what he thought.
We have had so many good times though, me and my little girl. Showing her how to eat, how to get dressed, listening to her learning to laugh and talk and run and dance. Even if I had to go back and do it all again, knowing how impossibly difficult it was, I would do it again.
Ellie, my darling little girl, I love you more than I have loved anyone before.
Fast forward to mid 2017. We’d been trying for a second baby for several months again and one day, I got a positive result back. A few days later I started spotting, then bleeding. I had an urgent Dr’s appointment and was sent for an emergency scan. The sonographer done an external scan and advised he couldn’t see any egg sac, no sign of life, no heartbeat. Based on that, my Dr advised I either had a phantom pregnancy, or was miscarrying and would loose my baby over the next few days. I was devastated — even though this little creature was smaller than a poppy seed, it was my baby and I wasn’t able to be the safe place it needed. It hurt, physically, mentally and emotionally. A couple days after the scan was the birthday for my other half’s mum and the whole family got together happily, completely unknowing that I was going through one of the worst times of my life.
A few days after that I went for another scan, which was meant to be the ‘first’ one. It was at a better clinic (the emergency scan had been at the first place that could fit me in). I told the sonographer there that this scan was just to confirm the lost baby. He performed the external scan then requested permission to do an internal one, ‘like the first sonographer’. I almost said no, as there was just no point, however said yes. I think it was a masochistic need though, I had not been able to keep my baby therefore I should be punished further for it. While doing the internal exam I said that the previous exam had been external only, and this sonographer was horrified when I told him that no internal scan had been done at the ‘miscarriage scan’. He was furious, and hurting on my behalf. Then so clearly I remember he said “if he’d (the original sonographer) done the scan properly then I may have been able to hear this”. He clicked a button, and a heartbeat echoed through the room. My baby’s heartbeat.
It turns out that at that early stage, of course you are miles too early for an external scan to pick up things like heartbeats, sacs, and life. When we went to the Dr for a check that afternoon she also was horrified to hear that the first scan had been so wrongly done. It apparently is just known that any pregnancy scan, especially that early, must be internal as it’s the only way to get a reading, so she hadn’t even thought to ask us if it had been performed the first time.
This time round, I had morning sickness for months, vomiting and feeling shit, though strangely I wasn’t as exhausted as I had been with the first one. I put that down to having a much lowered baseline, and higher tolerance for the whole ‘no sleep’ thing. I was determined to have a VBAC if medically possible, I just so badly did not want another c-section. Partly because by then we’d moved into our own home which wasn’t walking distance from anywhere and partly because of the 6-week no driving, no doing anything strenuous recovery period. I had a 2 year old toddler. “Not doing anything strenuous” wasn’t going to be an option.
Again there were a few dramas by the time the due date came around, mainly due to an obstetrician pressuring me into signing papers for a c-sec. I was able to withdraw my consent as the same Obs. had also just checked and said baby was healthy with a good amount of amniotic fluid there, and that all was well.
On Thursday 24th May at 1am our toddler came into our room as she often does. She was quite unsettled and several times ‘kissed baby good night’, though eventually drifted off to sleep, though I was restless and couldn’t. At 3am I felt and heard a ‘click’ right on my pubic bone. I still have no idea what exactly it was, however soon afterwards I started having contractions. I couldn’t relax and so to not wake up the toddler or the other half I wrote him a quick note saying I thought our baby would be coming that day and that I was in the spare room trying to rest. About 5am when I went to the loo the mucous plug came out (grotty) and things were really hurting. I was crouched on the floor of the shower with hot water running on to me when the other half stuck his head through the door around 7am to see what was going on- he’d stepped over my note without seeing or reading it, so I sent him back to find it.
Throughout the Thursday the pains got worse. I called the hospital and they got me to head in, however as things weren’t going as fast as they wanted, I was sent home around 6 or 7pm with instructions to come back once contractions were longer and closer together. Throughout that night things just hurt, more and more. I had the other half call one of our good friends who had offered to look after Ellie if needed, and she arrived just after 2am. During the trip into the hospital the contractions came thick and fast, each time I would loose awareness of anything around me. As it was stupid o’clock we had to go into the Emergency entrance and a contraction hit right when I was trying to give my info… the poor guy at the reception had already taken one look at me and forcefully called for a wheelchair, poor bugger. I was taken up to Maternity and as soon as I got into the room I told the nurse I needed gas and an epidural. Gas was easiest as all the rooms have it, however I kept throwing up (fun side effect). The anesthetist apparently came to administer the epidural but as the Dr hadn’t been yet, was unable to proceed… however a few hours later the Dr came, checked and gave the OK and shortly after, the anesthetist arrived and put in the epi. Absolute bliss — I had been awake since about 1am Thursday and it was now probably about 7am Friday, and I just conked out. Don’t know if I slept so much as lost consciousness, but in any case I was able to rest. The other half had been up for much of the night also so when the shops opened at 9am (the hospital is next to a mall), with my blessing, he popped out and got a bloody massage. I shit you not. About five minutes later my blood pressure dropped a lot and they put the loudspeaker call out for Emergency Medical Team to Room 19. A dozen people magically appeared, checked everything, got the bed lying horizontal again (they’d raised it up which had my the blood leave my head), and then headed out. I had to have the EMT in two or three more times that morning due to various things.
The obstetrician checked about 8am and I was progressing well, she said I’d be checked roughly every 2hrs (baby kept moving so the monitors kept loosing the heartbeat. Awkward. The 10am check went fine, again progress was being made though if needed they would see what they could do to hurry things along if things didn’t speed up further by midday. Contractions were going well, they were just hoping I’d be dilated a little more than I was, but oh well, we’d see!
Just before midday bub’s heartbeat dropped again (little wiggler) and I’d moved over to my left side to lift it up a bit. The midwives came in (the monitors are hooked up and show both in the actual delivery room and the main nursing station) and the heartbeat steadied. They said the Dr was in surgery so wouldn’t be there right on midday (no dramas there!), then one said if I didn’t mind she’d do a quick check? I was fine with it, so she popped her hand there to check, looked at the other midwife and said “I can feel the baby’s head, get a team in here now.” I learned that ‘Code Pink’ means a baby is on it’s way. This all happened just on midday and within again a couple of minutes there was a full delivery team in the room including it turned out, the Dr who was the head of the department. After a short amount of time, my little man was born (12.16pm on the 25th May). He pooed everywhere on the way out, bless.
An hour or so later the other half’s dad called to chat (neither set of parents had been told when I went into hospital) and Nick was thrilled to let him know our wee boy had arrived. They chatted for a while then other half headed to our friend’s place to pick up toddler so she could meet her little brother. Before they arrived I was sitting next to the window cuddling Wee Man and I video called my mum. We chatted for a few moments then I turned the phone around so she could see what (who) I was holding. She burst into tears and kept asking me if that was my baby… because obviously I go around snuggling with other random newborns. I let her know we had a son, she was so excited and couldn’t believe that I hadn’t let her know when I was in hospital (I explained it was because the last time, she’d called a few times and as she hadn’t heard much over the course of the day, had got it into her head that I had died and the other half just didn’t know how to tell her.)
Griffin, my sweetest little boy, I love you more than anyone else and equally as much as your sister.
OK I’ve been typing for close to an hour and am knackered so I will go to bed now. I’ll do more later, and will try and make vaguely regular entries from here on in. I’ve made both of you your own email accounts so will send you the link to this shortly…. so in many years you can read over your mum’s pregnancies with you each, and births of you each. There are a ton of details I haven’t added in and won’t (seriously, this is already an Epic Saga) but you’ll get to know them as we go along.
Love you both, Elliebelle and Griffie.
XX Mum