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The Best Laid Plans Part 2

16 May

I shouldn’t be blogging right now, but I need something to take my mind off of things just now.

I’m sitting on the sofa with my beautiful 1 week old daughter in her basket but her mum is currently sitting in hospital waiting to be seen. She was admitted this evening after finally being seeing by our local doctor after days of complaining that she couldn’t eat due to excruciating pain and then vomiting. She is so weak she can’t lift her own baby and hasn’t been able to enjoy having her home.

I guess the fact that I had to stay at home with Olivia and have a neighbour go up to the hospital with my wife because no babies are allowed in that part of the hospital, that that just sums up the responsibilities of being a parent. I now can’t focus all of my attention on my wife and need to care for both of them, which is great, but difficult when both need so much care at the same time.

Removing the fact that my wife has been suffering terribly for the past 7 days and hasn’t been able to fully experience the first week of parenthood, things have been going *ok*. It’s been what I can only assume are the usual “is this ok”, “is that normal”, “should she be making that noise” questions to the midwife each morning when she comes round. The answer to pretty much all of those has been “yes, that’s normal”.

My wife’s milk came through a couple of days ago, which is great, so she feels she can now feed her daughter a bit better. However, it would seem our daughter is a hungry little thing who simply cannot be satisfied by breast alone. So she is feeding on the breast until she gets bored, pulls away, refuses to take any more, then screams her lungs out. The only way to satisfy her is to then top her up with a bottle of formula (until my wife can express enough to use as the top up). After about 100ml of formula, off she drops for about 3-4 hours of happy sleep, which is lovely to see.

I would say the hardest thing we’ve had to deal with so far, minus the emotional upset caused by the milk not coming through and us having to resort to bottles, is the fact that we seem to have a “sicky baby”. There’s nothing quite like finishing a feed and then for most of it to come up and soak through whatever she’s on and then into our duvet. Yum. I believe our house probably smells of “new parent” :-) Apparently this sickness is quite normal as long as it’s not after every feed and that she’s alert and still going to the loo, which she is. Still worries the hell out of you when you first see it though. Olivia on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care. That’s my daughter – happy to sit in sick and poo, as long as she’s fed.

So I’m going to go now. Olivia is beginning to wake, so better go warm the bottle as mum’s not here to breastfeed first.

Please cross your fingers and hope that mum is ok and is home soon. Thanks.

Tiny Little Baby Steps

13 May

I will make this one brief, because as you’ll probably have guessed,  I don’t have much free time!

Our beautiful baby is now 4 days old and is doing well (now).

Those 4 days have been exceptionally emotional and also very stressful.

One of things we wanted to do was to breastfeed our baby. Breast is best after all. When your baby is born the chances are your wife’s milk will not yet be in and colostrum will be there in the breasts waiting to be given to the baby. However, what with the stresses of the section and also the fact that our baby is over 9lbs in weight, my wife is not able to produce enough colostrum to keep the baby happy and her milk has not come in yet. This equated to a very upset mum who thought she was failing by not being able to feed her daughter, and a very upset baby who was starving all the time.

We eventually caved, for everyone’s sake, and gave her a bottle (after a rush to a 24Hr Tesco at 2am to get formula). She wolfed it down and went off to sleep – something she hadn’t done since she’d come home. No crying, no panic in her eyes, no high pitched squeal. She was full. We fell asleep feeling really guilty that we’d given our baby what we’ve always viewed as second best.

The next day, my wife was hit by the baby blues, as our NCT instructor called it. In other words, my wife cried her eyes out all day. This hormone rush coupled with her guilt over not being able to feed her baby, coupled with the scream of a hungry baby getting frustrated with breasts that should be feeding her was just too much. It was a terribly upsetting day.

That night, for our own sanity and to keep our daughter going, we gave her some breast and then gave her a bottle. She went down for 4 hours. Wonderful. We did the same again overnight and again she slept for 4 hours.

The following morning (today), we felt great. We’d slept, she’d slept and she’d eaten. We decided to continue with the breastfeeding in the hope that her milk was on its way in. Sadly it wasn’t. This led to more tears from both parties due to frustration, hunger, guilt and disappointment. We gave her another bottle and she settled immediately. We also immediately felt awful.  Thankfully the midwife then arrived for the daily checkup. She was a life saver. She has to advocate breastfeeding, and we understand why, but she agreed that because the milk wasn’t in, we needed to top up the feeding, because the baby she was looking at was contented, happy and sleeping. She should have been like that after a good feed from the breast but it was clear she was not. As far as she was concerned, this was not the same baby she saw the day before.

After much discussion it was agreed that we will continue with breastfeeding and then top up with formula until the milk really comes in. There’s a danger that the baby will prefer the bottle to the breast, but we don’t have much choice right now. Hopefully the milk will come in before she gets too attached to the bottle as we need her to continue to try and get milk from the breast in order for it to actually produce it. Catch 22 really isn’t it? Fingers crossed. Even if she expresses and then we bottle feed, that’s still good for both mum and baby.

So after all that, we ventured out for the first time as a family :-) It was only to the card shop up the road to get thank you cards, but it really helped my wife feel normal. Olivia seemed to enjoy it too (assuming she even noticed as she slept the whole way).

A couple of neighbours have popped round asking if I want to go and wet the baby’s head this evening and my wife has said I should go (I felt I should stay). If I am needed it’s only a 2 minute walk away and I will only have 1 pint as I will be needed during the night :-)

So if it stays like this then great, life is wonderful. If the milk comes in and baby will take it, even better.

I am a proud dad of a wonderful little girl and a proud husband of a very strong wonderful wife (who is just a little hard on herself).

The Arrival and The Best Laid Plans….

10 May

She is here. Our daughter, Olivia, has arrived at last!

At 3am yesterday morning I was woken by my wife saying she thought her waters had broken. Within minutes the contractions started. We phoned triage, as instructed, who then asked us to come up so they could check everything over and then send us home again.

When we arrived the midwives found that there was meconium in the waters, which meant the baby had gone to the toilet while still in the womb. We were then informed that this could cause some problems and may suggest the baby was distressed, so we wouldn’t be getting sent home.

That was the first point of our birth plan out the window. We had hoped to be able to spend as much time as possible at home during labour and only go in when necessary, as was suggested during out NCT classes.

The next thing they did was to put my wife on a monitor, which meant she needed to stay lying flat on the bed. That was the second part of the birth plan out the window. My wife had hoped to be as mobile as possible during labour.

The baby’s heart rate was elevated and the contractions were making my wife’s hip pain unbearable. The amount of pain she was in was horrific and very upsetting for us both. She made it to 10am before the midwives suggested it might make sense if she had an epidural as she was understandably not coping well with the excruciating pain which was not doing her or the baby any good. That was the third plan point out the window. My wife had hoped she would be able to get through with just gas and air.

Once the epidural kicked in, the difference was amazing. She calmed down and began to focus more and even smiled between contractions.

Over the next few hours blood pressure went up, bloods were taken from mum and baby, more epidural was given, progress monitored and I tried to push the point that we did not want an assisted delivery due to the worry that there is a raised chance of long term damage when using forceps to turn the baby. After much discussion we agreed that if things progressed well and the baby turned itself, which it was trying to do, then we would go ahead with a vaginal delivery and only use forceps if required to help her out, which is less invasive than turning the baby when it is higher in the birth canal.

18 hours or so later, she was examined again and was only 7cm dilated, so the decision was taken out of our hands and they began prepping for a caesarean.  By this point my wife was exhausted and scared. She’d never had a major operation before and was concerned for the baby. With some reassurance she was taken off to be prepped while I got cleaned up and into scrubs – which are very fetching by the way, if I do say so myself :-)

I was called in to find that they had already started. Thankfully I saw nothing, but my wife was not coping well. It would seem a section is not sensation free, only pain free. Tugging and pushing seem to be the main feelings, which must be quite unsettling. However within about 3 minutes she was out. She was whisked away to be checked over to make sure the meconium hadn’t caused any problems. That moment seemed to last an eternity. Was she going to be brought back to us or was she going to be rushed off to have her lungs cleared? Thankfully she reappeared and was put on mums chest. I’m welling up just thinking of that moment. She was so perfect and pretty. Our little girl.

Mum was stitched up and then we all went back to the labour room to recover. Baby Olivia was weighed and then checked over (10 fingers, 10 toes) and then handed over to mum. Within about 2 minutes she was feasting away, which was wonderful to see as breastfeeding was our main goal and she seemed to be going at it with vigor.

I have no idea how long we were there for after that. We were both exhausted, drained but exceptionally happy. Once they had finished feeding, mum was cleaned up while I held my new daughter. Words cannot describe what I felt.

The midwives then started getting ready to take mum and baby up to the main ward, so I headed off home. That was the single longest and slowest drive I’ve ever done. Being that tired is not good for road safety. Thankyfully at 02:30am there is no-one else on the road!

I would like to thank all the staff in the labour ward at Stirling Royal Infirmary. They could not have been better. The level of care we got was spectacular. The NHS may get a hard time, but in this case, it was an incredible service.

So there you have it. Nothing went as planned, our bags of “supplies”, iPod playlists and birth plans went out the window the moment the waters broke. But do you know what? It doesn’t matter. It was only one day and that one day delivered the most precious thing in the world – our daughter. As they say, The Best Laid Plans…