So I left you
in the lurch (what IS a lurch?!) right after my BMI clinic. The rest of the
pregnancy was fairly non eventful. I got bored. Bored of being preggers, bored
of banging on about being preggers, bored of moaning about being preggers (I know,
ME? Bored of MOANING? WTF!). I couldn’t even bring myself to type about it
anymore. Which is extremely lazy and flaky of me. I don’t deserve readers, I REALLY
don’t.
But the bitch
is back, as they say. And with me I bring a lovely new Mini Copter and
subsequent Blog title change and therefore blog direction. Now I will be just
nattering on about how brilliant my children are. Ha! Of COURSE I won’t. I’ll
just be moaning as usual but it will be more kids/life in general themed rather
than blathering about being pregnant and how much it sucks. If that sounds like
your bag then dig right in....
Firstly I would
like to describe to you in minute detail (!) the process of having my baby.
Because it was, for me, my ideal birth. I feel SO lucky to have had a good one
this time around. I really feel like it was a “One Born Every Minute” style
birth.....you know the ones which make you blub and feel all warm and fuzzy. And
I still can’t believe I was lucky enough to experience that after fretting so
much about induction and c-sections etc.
I was due to
be induced at 38 weeks on the wed morning because of having Obstetric
Cholestasis. I was fairly ambivalent about this because I wasn’t looking
forward to days on end waiting for the induction to work but I WAS looking
forward to end to the pregnancy and the sheer not-being-able-to-move-muchness
of it. By the end I was MASSIVE and had pretty bad
The week
before I saw my consultant and she told me I was a Polyhydramnios
which meant I had a lot of water and that they wouldn’t give me a stretch and sweep
that week (as planned) because they wanted me to be in hospital when my waters
broke.
In the week
leading up to my induction, I tried everything natural I could to bring labour
on myself...I really didn’t want to go thru the artificial route again. So I scoffed
loads of fresh pineapple, drank loads of raspberry leaf tea, ate loads of hot chilli sauce
and had sex. Well it worked!!!!!!! On the Monday I noticed I was having a show.
With Gus my show had happened after the induction had started and it was a one-off
mucus plug. This carried on from Monday night thru to tues morning, at which
point I started to get quite severe tightenings/Braxton hicks every couple of
minutes. So much so that it scared me because I thought, if this how painful at
the beginning, how the hell will I cope by the end?! But they stopped. But I was
VERY excited because I knew something was happening and I knew it would mean
that even if I was still being induced the next day, there’s a good chance that
it wouldn’t be as long a process.
At 4.30pm I was
sat on the sofa chatting to my cousin and pop! Some of my waters went! I say
some, because although I knew that some had definitely gone and I hadn’t just
lost all bladder control, I knew it couldn’t be the whole lot given how much
water I was carrying.
By 7pm I was
heading to the delivery suite with contractions every 3-5 minutes. Boy, they
were painful. But that’s ok, I thought...they’re supposed to be. It’s a good
sign. It means I’ll dilate quicker! And they’ll give me gas and air as soon as I
get to hospital right?! WRONG. They put me on a trace for 40 minutes before
even examining me. BoooO! And then when they did I was only 2cm! I wasn’t even
in ESTABLISHED labour! Wtf!!!! NOOOOOO! They told me they wouldn’t examine me
for another 4 hours and I might as well go home and I wasn’t even allowed gas’n’air
til I was 4cm! (which would be in 4 hours!!!!!). I was distraught. Contractions
are REALLY fooking painful man! It was agony. I didn’t want to go home because I
didn’t know how I would cope with the pain. So they let me stay in a room on
the maternity ward for the 4 looooong hours. I say long. They weren’t really
that long. They were mainly spent with me hanging on to various surfaces around
the room, staring at the timer on my phone counting thru the contractions and
breathing slowly and deeply. But I was SO relieved when I was allowed upstairs
and on the gas and air. It was bliss. It made me SO chilled. And thank fuck
because the epidural I demanded didn’t work, despite countless top ups and
industrial strength doses (apparently). In fact it did make my lower body
completely numb...because my bum is so fat it felt like I was sitting on a
bouncy castle! But all my contractions were still really painful and my back
was killing (because she was back to back).
But even tho
it WAS painful, the gas and air gave me focus and relaxed me in between. SO
much so that Emlyn managed to get 3 hours sleep! After 12 hours (from the
beginning of the contractions in my house) I was getting ready to push. I still
couldn’t quite believe they were going to let me push her out and that they
thought I would be able to. I know that sounds crazy but because I was whisked
off to theatre for a forceps delivery last time, I really kept thinking it was
going to happen again. And actually, even tho I didn’t KNOW this at the time,
they were trying to leave it as long as possible for her to come down as far as
possible into the birth canal because they thought there was a chance I’d need
intervention because she hadn’t turned. Thankfully I was unaware of this and
when they told me to push, I was pushing with all my might. I pushed just a
handful of times and suddenly her head was out....I was so shocked! I had
pushed with Gus for an hour and a half and NOTHING happened so I could not
believe it! So getting completely carried away with it all, instead of waiting
for her to tell me to push again, I just carried on pushing and pushed her
right out ...when the midwife wasn’t even looking..and resulting in some unpleasant tearing...but OMG the flood of emotion at
that point in my life was absolutely IMMENSE. I was instantly in tears, sooo shocked
I’d pushed her out (I didn’t believe Emlyn when he said she was out!), SOOOO
happy she was alive and well and HERE, and so shocked the pregnancy was all over
and Joni Angharad had arrived in the world at 7.36am on 16th October
2013 weighing 7lbs8oz! And she was immediately plonked straight onto my
chest....just like in One Born! I had skin on skin! I fed her! I properly fell
in love with her immediately! Which probably sounds weird to say because you’d
think that would be a given....but with Gus, even tho I knew I loved him
straight away (of course!)...it took a while to have soppy feelings for him
because I felt so overwhelmed and scared and ill. It was amazing to have these
feelings straight away this time. I can’t overstate it enough....
It was
amaaaaaaaazing!
The badly
stitched up foof which had to be done with a supervisor in tow, wasn’t so
amazing...the construction workers outside the window dropping tons of metal every
10 minutes thus rendering every nap obsolete was less amazing and the steaming
hot ward, with one toilet on the whole floor working, every child crying and
every bed having 20,000 visitors was also less amazing. But thankfully I had
the confidence this time around to tell them I was discharging myself by the
end of the day if they had not given me the all clear. And I was home and
sleeping in my own bed with Joni and Emlyn by my side that night.
 |
| Hi! I'm Joni and I'm cute!!!! |
I have SO
much more to write....about Gus meeting her, about a little unplanned trip back
to hozzie, how we’re all doing now, 5 weeks on. But I need to feed a certain
young lady! So I will endeavour to not leave it as long next time blog fans!
But hope you've enjoyed the first new blog bout lil Joni Jo's arrival. Ciao for now!
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