Rising.

So…

Hello!! Remember Me?? I know, I know, I haven’t been here in a couple of days, and I must apologise in advance if this entry stops making sense at any point in time as it is a) being started at 5am and b) being started whilst I’m in labour and having pretty regular and strong contractions. Yes, today is the day…hopefully…
Finally.

Do you all feel like I’ve been pregnant forever? I sure do, I swear I’d have done less time for murder…well, in this country anyways, oh hush, mustn’t get all political and stuff here…well, not right now anyways. So as you’ve probably gathered, this is going to be the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT and also BIRTH STORY, but I’ll tell you how we got here and stuff first. I might recap some stuff we’ve already gone over last weekend, but that’s a) tough and b) you have a mouse, you can skip those parts if you so wish. I wouldn’t blame you.

SO…

As you know baby sister got into town last Wednesday. We had a lovely couple of days. We did bits and bobs Thursday and then had our hair cut Thursday night as my hairdresser is wonderful and freshly qualified so she wants some mobile work outside of the salon, which is great for me as I get my hair cut for 2/3s of the price in the salon and with 3 heads of hair to cut, that’s £60 in her pocket each time she comes to mine as there’s me, Mum and whoever else. So yes, I did that typical pregnant Mummy thing and cut all my hair off again, as I figured why not? New chapter in my life and my diary so why I’m I still growing the hair for the wedding that’s not happening? So chop chop chop and 4 inches later, I felt like me again. I felt ready and motivated to be maybe not so much a yummy Mummy (sorry Lianne!!) but a Glammy Mammy. Oh come on, I’m a Northern Bird. :). And to be perfectly honest, it’s worked an utter treat. I’ve gotten up every day and done my hair and make up and truly felt like a) myself and b) a grown up adult person. Which is only about time really, you know, considering I’m nearly 26 and bringing a little person in to the world. Anyways, then on the Friday, I took my sister to have her nails done and I was uncomfortable all damn day, but then considering the week before my fundal height (pubic bone – top of uterus/ size of bump from top to bottom) was 42cm and I was 39 weeks (should equate to 1cm to every week of pregnancy), with a baby weighing like a watermelon, it’s no bloody wonder I was uncomfortable. So we got on with the day and as it went on I got more uncomfortable, SO, in the end a relatively calm panic ensued…now, I know that’s a contradiction in terms, but that’s exactly what it was. I was getting ^Braxton Hicks^ for those that are bit behind you’ll see the reason for the sarcastic tone there just shortly. So I proceeded to have some tea, and a bath, and do my hair, and epilate my legs and what not…and then with great trepidation, I rang the Maternity Unit…yes, the same one that had me on blood thinners not so long ago for a throat infection *sigh* (yea, I’m still pissed about that!) and spoke to that rancid bitch who made me feel like a 2 inch tall daft cunt and was all “ohhh the pains are Braxton Hicks”

“ the pressure’s just the baby leaning on your bladder”

blah blah fucking blah.

I hung up after she was through making me feel a reet twat, and swore blind I wouldn’t ring them again until I was in labour. Which I stuck to. Well kind of. And so the weekend carried on, I got on with it, getting steadily more uncomfortable. It got no better and it got no worse, just bigger (I know that’s a very Sensory Processing Disorder description, but suck it up, I have to.) so I paid it no attention and on Sunday night I sat Ma & Young’Un down and told them the situation and we all agreed that the next day I would ring MY midwife at the Community Midwife Base. I got through about lunchtime (qu’elle surprise!) and my midwife was out and about on her travels as she works 3 clinics and also works on labour ward too at the Maternity Unit. A

nyways, I’m talking to this nice midwife called Susan, who listened to what I was saying and actually heard what I was telling her, and then she dropped the bombshell and confirmed my suspicions from the whole weekend. I was in Slow Labour. Now it all made sense. She told me to stay calm, and most importantly to stay at home, but if things happened then to ring the Maternity Unit, as this slow labour nonsense can go on for days and weeks. Thanked her immensely for her time and help, and proceeded to get on with my big fat pregnant life. Which was fine as I knew I was seeing the consultant on Wednesday anyways to have my internal and sweep.

Wednesday eventually arrived, a little too soon as I was up from 1:45am, and we packed all the stuff up into my car and trundled our way up here, just in case by any stroke of luck that the sweep might work quick and start me off while I was in Outpatients. Bear in mind, the chance of a sweep actually working at all is about 30%, so we get here and they do the usual of taking a pee sample so it can be tested before I’m seen. Which is why I always arrive early. Anyways, they test my pee and while I’m in there the midwife is yakking away and asking all the usual questions…when my pee results come in…and they’re +1 for protein…big surprise…however, considering that it’s normally +2 I was like “ooh that’s down!” …yet they weren’t happy, so they checked my feet and hands, double checked my blood pressure and decided to be on the safe side they would take more blood…go nuts, there’s plenty in there…and then she asks about baby’s movements, so I told he’d been really quiet Thursday/Friday, really active Saturday/Sunday (what do you expect, he’s a Party Pickle like Mama used to be!), normal Monday/Tuesday and then really quiet on Wednesday. This sparked immediate alarm, and before I quite knew where I was, I was trussed up like the Christmas Turkey and on the heart tracer trying to find him and make sure he was OK…45 minutes later, it was decided he was happy enough, but they weren’t exactly happy at his distinct lack of movement, there was some but I didn’t feel most of it, so it was me they weren’t really happy with, especially as my placenta is fine and where it should be…they still don’t get that the Sensory Processing can affect these things….anyways, the consultant had come in just as I was coming off the monitor and she was asking about his movements and I told her he’d been like it for a couple of months and had been reporting it back at my appointments but not ringing up every time it happened as I wasn’t worried about it. Which, FYI, is not the right answer. So she tells me to get stripped and she’ll do my sweep, which is way better than when you have a coil fitted. Much less painful than that. Turned out my cervix was still long, posterior and semi-firm. She explained that she really wasn’t happy with the reduced movement issue, and whilst it was more than likely to be nothing, and whilst Pickle was happy enough at that moment in time, given my general history (when I decline it happens VERY fast indeed) and the fact that you’re only getting windows of observation at these appointments, he might not stay happy and okay and that things could change in 12 hours, a couple of days or indeed not at all, but she reiterated that she was concerned. So, then she looks at me and says,

“well, you’re 40 weeks tomorrow (by their dates, I’ve been running off mine!) so how would you feel about the possibility of being induced?”

Um, yes please!!

Now bear in mind, if the sweep didn’t work, they were going to induce the following week anyways. So I told her I would be fine with that considering how awful a pregnancy I had had, and how uncomfortable I’ve been 80% of the way through it. So she explains it all to me and tells me she’ll see what she can do. So she rings the In-Patient Ward and asks when they’ll have a bed for induction. She wanted me in that afternoon. No such luck for her. It would be the next morning. She booked me in and I was given my orders to turn up the next day at 9:30am. I left a very happy bunny indeed.

So that’s where my fairly vague entries in the last chapter ended and left you all hanging on in there…

So Thursday obviously arrived and I was up at 4am, all the stuff had been left in the car, as there was zero point in hoiking it all back up 4 flights of stairs only to have to bring it back down again. I even managed to have my show.

It was a pretty tense day to start with as Sprout was also booked in at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in order to have the open heart surgery he required to fix a hole in his heart. (He’s fine, in ICU and breathing on his own).

Anyways, we trundled back up to the Maternity Unit and got all checked in…and they put me on a 4 bed ward…FML…I’m not nearly sociable or patient enough for a ward…especially knowing that there’s was going to discomfort involved in the looming future. Good God, you can tell I was in the home of ‘The Scheme’. The two beds opposite me contained what looked and sounded like Junkies (smack more than likely) who it seemed were having a who can talk the loudest competition, and next to me was some other scabby rat who would also piss me off with the fact her and her boyfriend proceeded to bellow at the top of their voices on the phone every half hour. I’d been in half an hour when they finally came and did my observations and put me on the monitor, and did Pickle play fair? Did he heck. We spent a good 10 minutes chasing him, we finally got him when I was on my side. I was on it for an hour as we kept losing contact with him as he wasn’t happy about be poked and prodded. Once they were happy with him and his heart, they came round and did an internal again, my cervix hadn’t changed much overnight, and so they put in the first Oxytocin tablet…the first one, not so bad, better than the sweep. Less blood than the show too. Yeah, I bleed like a bitch if you start poking and prodding me in there. So they left me alone until teatime…well, I wasn’t alone…I had the junkies obliterate any hope for a proper nap

as their voices were on full pelt and the window was wide open despite the gale force winds and rain that were occurring outside and when they EVENTUALLY got discharged, I had the fucking Olympic Telethon Relay next to me…so much for a bit of peace and quiet. I’d started to get a few rumblings and was getting hungry, so my patience was starting to wear by the time they came back round to see me again. By this time my cervix had softened slightly but was still posterior, so they gave me another tablet…and by Christ was she rough, I also think she did a sneaky sweep whilst in there because with an hour I was hella uncomfortable and you could practically see the patience and tolerance running out of me. By the time I was sending Ma & Young’Un home at 8pm I’d stated getting really crampy pains and by 8:30pm I started timing them…roughly every 6 minutes and last about 2.25 minutes…so they gave me 2 paracetamol and put me back to bed…I think 6 paracetamol in one day is the most painkillers I’ve had in a LONG time. I got about 5 hours sleep as Thursday mutated into Friday…and then I started writing this entry in order to distract me somewhat from the contractions.

So Friday arrived and I was contracting away…maybe not so happily…hell, I was uncomfortable as they come and and getting grumpier, and having been up for 3 hours by the time the doctor arrived to check me I was starting to feel really quite arsey, and then the doctor arrived…and she was LOVELY…thirds a charm eh? I think she could see that by the stage my baby bits were still pretty tender from Ninja Fingers the previous afternoon, and so she was gentle, quick and efficient, I don’t think she even took her fingers out when she was doing the pill bit…she was FANTASTIC!! But yes they gave me a third Oxytocin tablet to help keep softening me up. She was pretty happy with me softening up, and could touch my membranes. She told me they could have taken me down then and broken my waters, but that it could still be a bit difficult and would probably cause me unnecessary suffering and pain. So her final decision was that they would come back at 1:30pm to do another examination and make a plan on what would happen next. So I just lay there like I was told, with every damn digit crossed hoping that this final tablet would do the trick. The pain by now from the contractions was getting to me, and I decided that I was going to put my big girl pants on and have some breakfast as even though I really wasn’t feeling like eating, I knew Pickle needed something and I would need it to keep my energy and blood sugars up when it all went grizzly. So I had the piffly bit of breakfast provided and decided to take matters in to my hands regarding pain relief, I had been offered paracetamol, but I really didn’t want any more pills, so I hunted out a bathroom with a bath. Who knew water was so amazing? I got in the bath, and could only have been in there about 30 minutes at most, but it helped so much!! It effectively killed all my pain for a good 30 minutes before I started to feel sore again, although the downside, was that it felt like we’d pressed a reset button, so it was back to normal for my mood and I could cope again. Such a shame I couldn’t have a pool to labour in though, maybe next time though?

The doctor came back at lunchtime and did a final exam on me, as I couldn’t have any more Oxytocin. They were hoping that I’d be ripe enough for have my waters burst, and I was thankfully, despite this I wouldn’t be sent down to labour ward until 4pm that afternoon, so I got on the birthing ball and bounced and bounced, again, excellent pain relief.

We got to labour ward and they did all my heart trace stuff and Pickle was fine. They tried to break my waters, and failed. So they came back an hour or so later to try again, and they succeeded. Turns out I really did have lot of water in there, as we had a medium size gush, only to be followed by me losing around a cup of fluid every contraction.

By about half past 6 that evening I was contracting well and regular, and it was really getting to the stage where because I hadn’t really slept in two nights, the more tired I became the more I was starting to struggle, so despite my reluctance, I took the gas & air. It really did help but I wasn’t overly keen on it, as the buzz it gave me was a little too close for my epileptic comfort, within half an hour, the midwife had paged the anaethestist to come and fit me an epidural as I was so tired that it was just becoming more and more of a struggle to cope with the pain, however, he was in blooming surgery, so I would have to continue with the gas and air for a further couple of hours until he arrived to fit my epidural. Within half an hour of being sticked in the back I was literally pain-free…and I mean, 100% PAIN FREE. I managed to stay in high spirits then until about 11pm, when they examined me again, and I was only contracting at 3 every 10 minutes and was still on 3cm dialated, despite it having been 6 hours since I had had my waters broken, so they made the the decision to put me on the Syntocin drip…yeah, Pickle really didn’t like that. After 2 hours Saturday arrived and Pickle was NOT happy on Syntocin, his heart started to dip with every contraction I was having, and I STILL had made no further progress, so it was decided they would give it another hour, re-examine and take it from there, At 3am it was decided that enough was enough. I was to theatre, and that I was to have an Emergency C-Section before Pickle got any unhappier, they did not want to have to deal with having to do a Crash C-Section. By 4am, we were in theatre.

At 04:44, on the 15th September 2012, Pickle had been delivered. His first cry caused Young’Un to positivley weep and weep and weep. Me? Yes, there were tears, I won’t even try to deny that. He weighed 7lbs 1oz at birth, had his Vitamin K orally and scored a 9 on his AGPAR. He’s got a head of dark hair and is utterly beautiful. He’s the perfect mix of me and my Grandfather. He’s not as long as I expected, but is definitely what could be described as long and skinny.

And guess what else?

He’s breastfeeding.

As promised, I tried him about an hour after he was born, and he took more or less straight away to it and it was fine, and then he took again 2 hours later..I won’t breastfeed past about 3 months I dont think, but I will continue to pump, just because by then he will probably start teething, yet I still want him to have the breastmilk for the first couple of years.

I love my son wholeheartedly, there’s just something about becoming a mum that changes everything about you and how you see the world. As I finish writing this, everything is right in my world .