Tweets - August 2014

Aug 1: Hot! Today is not a good day to be a heavily pregnant woman crawling around on the floor sandwiching a quilt together.

Aug 1: Cleaned and oiled sewing machine and now it doesn't squeak. Yay!

Aug 1: And it's squeaking again. :-( @robhu is doing his best to fix it but I suspect it's in dire need of a service.

Aug 1: The @robhu fixed my sewing machine! :-* So, 2 days to finish the quilt. I think it's do-able.

Aug 2: I have been baby showered. :) Baby can come when she's ready now. Well, maybe there are a few other things to do first...

Aug 3: Tired mama today. Induction (probably) tomorrow. Today is for resting, in theory.

Aug 3: Quilt finished. Out for lunch. Tired. Headachey. Hot.

Aug 4: Good night's sleep? Not going do well. Awake since 4. :-(

Aug 4: Induction day is here. First lot of meds are in. Nothing much happening. @robhu has gone to sleep on my bed.

Aug 5: Waters broke about an hour ago. Trying to get a little sleep between contractions. Trying to find position which is comfortable for both.

Aug 5: TENS good. Flipping weird though.

Aug 5: Four women in this induction suite. Judging by muffled gasps and groans, none of us is getting much sleep.

Aug 5: Am hula hooping zombie. When contraction starts I press button on tens then stand & circle hips. Tens and circling make it bearable, just.

Aug 5: Given up on sleep. No position in which I can sleep and cope with contractions.

Aug 5: Morning! Can't say I got much sleep. Contractions kept me awake. TENS machine taking the edge off nicely though. Wonder how today will go?

Aug 6: Phoebe Muriel Gwendolyn born at 4am. Forceps delivery. She's a tiny 6lb 7oz. I lost about 1l of blood and had to have transfusion & oxygen.

Aug 6: Doing ok now. Very tired! Phoebe guzzled like a champ at first feed and has mostly slept since. She is beautiful!

Aug 8: On my way home with my tiny Phoebe. So pleased. Had a rough couple of days & feeding is challenging but we're getting better at it.

Aug 10: Beautiful Phoebe.

Aug 13: Phoebe was born one week ago. We have survived one week. Mostly we are tired. But she is still beautiful.

Aug 13: Hooray for @robhu who held a screaming windy Phoebe for 2 hours while I slept.

Aug 16: She's got a very strong grip! http://instagram.com/p/rxYmPhTbnO/ 

Aug 19: Even in dreams I dream of sleep.

Aug 21: .@robhu to howling Phoebe after I changed her nappy "when you level up put all your points into teeth so you can bite her".

Aug 21: Trying to convince my baby that kicking my chest while flailing her arms & waving her head about is not an effective way to get more milk.

Aug 23: Baby sleeping. @robhu sleeping. I guess I should sleep too.

Aug 23: Except the baby is showing signs of waking up soon.

Aug 23: Cuddling a hiccoughing baby. They don't seem to bother her, just keep her awake and looking at me with a wide eyed stare.

Aug 23: When she's awake, my daughter looks like an anime character: enormous round eyes, button nose and perfect pink mouth.

Aug 24: Phoebe's body from the top of her bottom to the back of her neck is the same length as my hand from wrist to fingertips.

Aug 31: Cute and tiny baby of mine, please be properly asleep now. Your mummy is tired.

Phoebe's birth story - Part 1

I was booked for an induction on 4 August. I was nervous the night before – would they want me to come in today? I didn’t sleep well. But in the morning, I rang at 8:30 as instructed and was told to come straight in. We arrived around 9:45 and were shown to a bed in the induction suit on Sara Ward. There were 5 beds in a sunny room. My bed was by the window, overlooking a courtyard. The other beds were empty initially, although they would fill up over the course of the day.

After an initial 40 minute period of being hooked up to the monitor to check on baby’s heart rate, I started the induction drugs at 11:20 with a Propess pessary. Getting it in, pushed up past my cervix by Megan, the midwife looking after me, was quite uncomfortable. I had to lie still for an hour and be monitored some more to check that Zarquon was still happy and not being distressed by the process. After that, I could walk around.

Rob got pretty bored. There wasn’t much to do except wait, read, wander about. He took some pictures – the beginning of a series recording the whole process. At one point I went for a walk and he fell asleep on my bed which amused and confused the midwives.

That first day it felt like very little was happening. No contractions, nothing to do but bounce on the ball, read, go for walks. Eventually Rob went home and I went to bed.

Around 11:20pm, I felt some pains in my stomach, then a pop, then another one. I sat up and found myself in a pool of liquid. My waters had broken. Something had been happening that day. I called a midwife who checked the fluids (all clear, just a little blood), cleaned up the bed and found me some maternity pads (mine had got left in the wrong bag and were still in the boot of our car). Then I was hooked on to a monitor again for an hour just to check on baby. She was just fine. I was beginning to have contractions. I could see them as waves on the monitor trace and feel them as tightenings. Not too painful yet, but there, proof of something happening. I texted Rob to tell him what had happened. Neither of us were sure what the timescale would be from here, but the midwife told us we should get some sleep while we could, so I settled down to try to do just that.

It soon became clear that sleep wasn’t going to happen. My contractions got stronger and soon I couldn’t find a position in which I could both lie down and sleep and cope with contractions. I got a midwife to help me attach the TENS machine. I wore it for the next 24 hours and it made a big difference. After a while, I was sitting down bouncing on the ball or in a chair between contractions but had to stand when one started. Circling my hips helped, so did leaning forward against the bed.

I played Monument Valley on Rob’s iPad. It was a good distraction and the music was very soothing, though I had to put it down to stand for contractions. I don’t think I got any sleep, though judging by the moans coming from the other 3 occupied beds, neither did anyone else. I was in too much pain to sleep (and the gaps between contractions were too short to drop of in) but I felt the pain was bearable, especially with the TENS machine’s help. Eventually morning came. I ate hummus and chicken on brown toast in the kitchen (with stops for contractions). My last gestational diabetes friendly breakfast.

Welcome Phoebe!

She's here! Well, she's been here a week now, but I've been a little too busy to get to the blog.

Phoebe Muriel Gwendolyn was born at 3:49am on Wednesday 6 August via a forceps delivery. She weighed 2.915kg (6lb 7oz), was covered in vernix and had an Apgar score of 9 after 1 minute and 10 after 5 minutes. (10 is the maximum, I was a little proud to discover.)

I lost some blood (1.2 litres) during the delivery and had to have a transfusion shortly after the photo above was taken (by Rob) so I was a little out of it for the next few hours. 

Later that day we were moved down to the antenatal ward and had our first visitors - both sets of grandparents and Rob's siblings. We spent the next day and a bit in hospital and came home on Friday evening. It's been an emotional roller coaster of a week. We've had some problems with feeding and life with a newborn is pretty exhausting for everyone. 

I want to write Phoebe's birth story for the blog at some point. Rob took lots of photos during labour and while they're not exactly flattering, I'm ready glad to have them as a record of what happened.

In the meantime, Rob and Phoebe and I are getting used to life together as the three of us. She is beautiful! Even Rob has to admit she makes cute noises. :)