Well, I guess this is the last day (probably).
Created | Updated Feb 14, 2012
2nd February 2012
<cupid> had his first eviction notice yesterday (1st Feb) - a midwife doing some poking around to determine just how far along I was. Conclusion? Not really there at all. It caused some low level rumblings but didn't set anything going. Potentially it could still work up until later today, but given how un-ready things were it's very unlikely.
An appointment has been booked for tomorrow (3rd Feb) to have another examination and on the results of that, they'll probably go for attmpting to induce. If things have changed a lot between the two examinations and it now appears that he's packed his bags and is ready to go, then they'll let me go back home and give him a few more days to come out by himself. If not, however, he's very unlikely to emerge by himself before the stillbirth rates start to climb. We'd also prefer to start it over the weekend so Mr Vip can be with me during the early stages rather than either using up his paternity leave before he has to or be worried at work.
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of relief that there's finally an end in sight - by next week we will almost certainly get to see our son. But there's also an awful lot more emotion wrapped up in it which caused my first bout of tears since I fell pregnant (well, there was one other, but it was a hormone-fuelled outburst over nothing which I don't count). Please excuse the probably incredibly naive ramblings that will now occur. And the large amount of brackets. Apparently I like brackets today.
----------------
You see, I was looking forward to giving birth. Yes, I knew it was going to hurt, and undoubtedly be frightening to boot, but at the same time I wanted to go through it (in a water pool, with drugs on standby and with my hospital bag packed in case of emergencies, obviously).
I hoped I could be at home, where Mr Vip wouldn't be sent away overnight when I might need him, where I'd have one dedicated midwife to look after me, my own house and food and smells, not being surrounded by strangers, and being able to stumble into my own bed when it was all over rather than having to be stuck in a hospital, which never sleeps.
I also wanted to be able to do things with as few drugs as possible (probably the pain would override that, but I wanted to at least give myself a chance), so that when things happened I could remember them, and not have a baby that was drugged himself, which causes complications. To have that moment that mothers talk about when it's over, and you're high as a kite on your own endorphins.
Instead, an inducement robs me of those things. A best case scenario is that I have contractions that are stronger and more painful that normal ones, and because my body isn't aware that it's going into labour it doesn't make the hormones required to help cope with the pain. Yes, that's the *best* case scenario. The other cases are that I have the same chemically-painful contractions but they don't do anything, or I have contractions that are so strong they have to pump me with different drugs to calm them down.
If my body still refuses to go into labour they then pump me with different artificial hormones via a drip, so it's much harder to get up and move around. The drip also brings its own set of side-effects (mostly vomiting and... well, other bodily functions).
So I'm now in larger amounts of pain, with fewer natural hormones to help me cope. I can't use the birth pool (which is the second best form of pain relief after an epidural) so I will undoubtedly be cranking up the artificial drugs in order to cope, which in turn cross the placenta and drug <cupid>. It's highly likely I'll end up on an epidural, essentially tying me to the bed. If my body still refuses to go through with it they'll have to take him out by c-section after about three days of this (unless baby or I are in enough distress to merit it).
I didn't want to be afraid. If nothing else, it makes it worse, because adrenaline inhibits production of both oxytocin and endorphins which are those pain-coping hormones that I was looking forward to. But it's strange how I've gone from inviting birth to fearing it, and I don't like that.
This morning I'm better than I was yesterday after the sweep. I'm an optimist and I can usually find a silver lining in everything, and slowly that's beginning to re-assert itself. I'm still apprehensive, but I can try to comfort myself with science.
Firstly, if stats are to be believed (I'm not totally sure they are, everything about childbirth appears to be contradictory) then the incidence of him dying in the womb are rising as I type, and if we leave it to occur naturally it keeps on climbing. To lose him at this stage, especially if it was simply because I was afraid of placing myself in the hands of the medical profession, would be awful. He is safer this way. Maybe only by a few percentage points, but it is safer, that's why NICE recommend it. It's going to be harder for me and baby, but that's just another reason to be thankful that memories that don't remember pain.
Secondly, if he continues to not engage fully then I was going to be transferred to hospital anyway, because of the risk of the cord being born first, which could cut off his blood supply. Better to have a day's warning, to re-check the hospital bag and not be transferred, petrified for my baby's safety, in an ambulance.
And thirdly, about 30% of babies in my area are induced. Yes, it's crushed some of my hopes but I'm not the only one - lots of people go through this and if it were that bad there would be no two-or-more children families. <winkeye>
I've heard fantastic reports from friends who have been on the consultant-led unit (which is where I'll be), and I'll be looked after in hospital for as long as I need. Yes, they'll send Mr Vip away in the evenings but they recently extended the opening hours for partners so he can be with me for a lot more than when we first looked at the unit.
I'm in exactly the right place if something goes wrong, and remember, before there was decent medical intervention and trained midwives, 1 in 4 mothers or babies *died* during childbirth. Trust the science. It works.
=========================
14th February 2012
Well, little <cupid> is ten days old now - born at 7pm on 4th February 2012 - and let me sleep for a solid four hours, plus another couple last night. Two good nights on the trot!
That's the good bit. Now I'm going to go back to the birth.
Already some things are a bit hazy, and the trauma and fear is starting to abate. I had difficulties sleeping once I got home and the adrenaline wore off - everything seemed to remind me of something.
So, how was it? 32 hours long, from the application of the inducement gel at 11am on Friday to delivery on Saturday. I spent Friday afternoon having 'prostin pains', which are essentially mild contractions. They hurt, but not bad enough to ask for pain relief. Come the evening the midwife (and student) conduct a sweep and conclude that absolutely nothing has happened, and in fact we've gone backwards as his head was no longer fully engaged.
Mr Vip is sent home shortly afterwards. I've had a couple of hours off from the pains at this point, but at about 11pm they start again in earnest - four minutes apart and painful enough to make me stagger up to the midwife station to ask for drugs. Co-codamol at first but then later they give me an injection (it's not pethadine, I can't remember its name but it came with an anti-nausea injection too). This manages to take the edge off them but I stay awake all night with them. They don't seem to get worse, or closer together, just constant and rhythmic.
Come morning and they start to abate, and gradually get further and further apart and stop. Baby is put on a monitor for an housr, and it shows that he's absolutely fine. Eventually the midwives are free to come and do another sweep at around 11am, and they give me the great, good news that I'm now about 5cm dilated. I was so relieved that the previous night hadn't been in vain I was in tears!
The sweep gives another kick start to the contractions, and they start again, stronger this time, and about 10 minutes apart. They offer a TENS machine, which I took, and I was really quite impressed at how useful it was. Mr Vip did find it funny that when not having a contraction, the impuse intensity made me twitch. But it had to be that level, as otherwise during a contraction I couldn't feel it at all! After a couple of hours I also had another of those injections like the one I'd had overnight.
The contractions gradually start to get closer together, and eventually at about 5 mins apart they have an opening in the delivery ward and I am transferred into a wheelchair. At this point I am starting to get pretty scared of the intensity of the pain, and getting into that wheelchair was a scary idea, and sitting down was very uncomfortable (I was either on my knees or on my side during contractions at this point).
Then there was a magic fifteen minutes where I was transferred to the labour room, where I had no contractions. Enough time to get there, get the TENS machine off (Mr Vip forgot to turn it off before removing the pads and managed to shock himself, which would have been funny were I not so scared), and get myself up onto the bed.
From this point it gets a lot worse. I have a couple of contractions that are so strong that all I can remember is sucking so hard on the gas and air I almost pass out, and coming around hearing myself screaming. My hearing went into high pitched white noise, and all I wanted to was to be knocked out, make it over. My waters broke at this point, so I had to try to move in order to try and get dry sheets under me. Not that appeared to matter - I had quite a lot of waters so they kept on making the sheets wet through pretty much the rest of the labour.
That was about 3pm. When I started to come round a bit I was almost optimistic - I was now fully dilated and I'd heard that pushing stages don't tend to last more than a couple of hours. No such luck.
Partly because I was so exhausted, having not slept the night before and not eaten since breakfast I was both dehydrated and very low on energy, I wasn't able to push. It also took me a long time - possibly an hour? I'm not really sure of any timings at this point - to realise that in the pushing stage you don't breathe through your contractions, like you do in early labour, you hold your breath and use them when the urge to push comes over you. By trying to breathe through you are essentially wasting the pushes, and you have to use them. After a couple of hours the contractions were dying off. I kept on trying to push without them until the midwife figured out what I wass doing and tried to get me to stop. I was getting pretty desperate to get him out at this stage.
Then came the drips - saline for my dehydration (plus lucazade through a straw to get some energy in me) and oxytoxin to try to get my contractions started again. I was too exhausted to prop myself up on my hands and knees, which was the position my body wanted me to be in, and being on my back hurt, so we ended up on my side with a leg resting in a stirrup. At this point I have to salute Mr Vip who then had the task of holding my leg higher during each contraction to give <cupid>'s head enough room to emerge. It must have been hard work, but he did say it gave him a front row seat.
This time I knew what to do, but I was so tired that even when the pushes came I felt like I wasn't able to push enough. He kept on crowning and then sliding back in, and I was getting more and more upset each time. I honestly thought at this point that I wasn't going to be able to do it. It also hurt, of course, and at the pushing stage they take away the gas and air because it interferes with the pushing. The contractions don't hurt as much, but the stretching of your - ahem - girl parts is a completely different pain and I admit that I also didn't want to push then because of that. It's a truly awful choice that's no choice at all, because you are so programmed to push it's almost impossible not to.
His heartrate was steady though, so he wasn't in distress, so although I believe a consultant had been called just in case they were still pretty determined to get me through this naturally. At one point I asked if they could use a vonteuse - I just wanted him out! According to Mr Vip this happened on the penultimate push, and on the next one enough head emerged for her to get a grip, get the cord out from around his neck (not tight around, just looped), and then tug his shoulders out.
The feeling of relief when I felt the shoulders go was incredible. It is kind of true that you forget the pain at that point, but that's also because the pain gone, and you know that it's finally, finally over. There wasn't much elation on my part, just relief mixed with curiosity. <cupid> was wrapped in a towel and placed on my chest (they'd got me on my back again by this point) while we waited for the placenta, which came out with no complications. I was actually pretty curious to see that as well, but it was taken away pretty promptly (probably to check that there wasn't anything left inside me, which is dangerous). What took me an Mr Vip by surprise was how fake the cord looked - all rubbery!
Probably because of my inability to push as hard as I wanted, I came out of the birth itself with only a minor graze, as his hand had come up by his face and scratched me on the way out. I hadn't torn at all, which was a great relief as I'd expected to tear pretty badly as I have quite dry, inflexible skin.
Then came the time to get me to a shower. This was far more upsetting than I expected. I had to get into a wheelchair, wich was painful in itself. Initially I wanted to walk there myself but after the two steps to the chair I realised that just wasn't a clever idea as I wasn't strong enough. Then a slightly bumpy journey down the corridor to the shower, but the worst part was when the midwife had explained everything and left me to it. My belly had shrunk a bit but now just looked pitiful with huge scar-like stretch marks (it still does, ten days later, although smaller now my womb is almost back to normal). I couldn't stand properly so was hunched over, and of course I was still bleeding heavily and in physical discomfort (although not downright pain). Thankfully going through it did force me to stand up, to walk, and bend so by the end I was starting to feel better.
I came back to see Mr Vip incredibly happy and a very asleep, contented baby in his arms. We stayed a little longer to get our things in order, and have a visit from Mr Vip's dad who was so excited and happy he almost didn't know what to say, then we were transferred down to the post-natal ward and Mr Vip was sent home.
---------------------
<cupid> was a very sleepy baby in the first couple of days, sleepy to the point of not wanting to feed. While it was nice that I hadn't got a screaming baby, it became more and more concerning that he wasn't eating anything and that did take some time to happen. I stayed an extra night in order to try to sort out breastfeeding difficulties, and finally manged to get discharged on Monday evening. Admittedly we were back on Tuesday night to ask for help with feeding, but by day five we were starting to get things going and he had only lost 8.5% of his birth weight, which is within normal limits. By the next weighing he had put on 200g, which was a good surpise as the midwife would have been happy with 40g!
Saturday wasn't so good as he had developed snuffles to the point that he couldn't sleep or feed. We were re-admitted to hospital overnight but it cleared up with the application of some saline nasal drops, which just dissolved the worst of the mucus. It took until 4pm to get discharged, but finally we got home.
Since then (today being Tuesday) we have had two very good nights, with only a few hours of <cupid> being awake when not feeding, and as Mr Vip is still on paternity leave we've both been able to get reasonable amounts of sleep. We even had five hours between a feed, four of which I spent asleep! I am aware that this will get worse a) when Mr Vip goes back to work and b) when the grizzly stage starts at about three weeks, but at the moment it is glorious and I am very relieved.
In summary? The birth was horrific, but the horror is starting to fade and I'm finding it easier to get to sleep now I'm not being haunted by reliving parts of it every time I close my eyes.
There is a lot more I could type but for now I need to get dressed and get some food inside me before the midwife arrives in 40 minutes for <cupid>'s next check up.
<cupid> had his first eviction notice yesterday (1st Feb) - a midwife doing some poking around to determine just how far along I was. Conclusion? Not really there at all. It caused some low level rumblings but didn't set anything going. Potentially it could still work up until later today, but given how un-ready things were it's very unlikely.
An appointment has been booked for tomorrow (3rd Feb) to have another examination and on the results of that, they'll probably go for attmpting to induce. If things have changed a lot between the two examinations and it now appears that he's packed his bags and is ready to go, then they'll let me go back home and give him a few more days to come out by himself. If not, however, he's very unlikely to emerge by himself before the stillbirth rates start to climb. We'd also prefer to start it over the weekend so Mr Vip can be with me during the early stages rather than either using up his paternity leave before he has to or be worried at work.
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of relief that there's finally an end in sight - by next week we will almost certainly get to see our son. But there's also an awful lot more emotion wrapped up in it which caused my first bout of tears since I fell pregnant (well, there was one other, but it was a hormone-fuelled outburst over nothing which I don't count). Please excuse the probably incredibly naive ramblings that will now occur. And the large amount of brackets. Apparently I like brackets today.
----------------
You see, I was looking forward to giving birth. Yes, I knew it was going to hurt, and undoubtedly be frightening to boot, but at the same time I wanted to go through it (in a water pool, with drugs on standby and with my hospital bag packed in case of emergencies, obviously).
I hoped I could be at home, where Mr Vip wouldn't be sent away overnight when I might need him, where I'd have one dedicated midwife to look after me, my own house and food and smells, not being surrounded by strangers, and being able to stumble into my own bed when it was all over rather than having to be stuck in a hospital, which never sleeps.
I also wanted to be able to do things with as few drugs as possible (probably the pain would override that, but I wanted to at least give myself a chance), so that when things happened I could remember them, and not have a baby that was drugged himself, which causes complications. To have that moment that mothers talk about when it's over, and you're high as a kite on your own endorphins.
Instead, an inducement robs me of those things. A best case scenario is that I have contractions that are stronger and more painful that normal ones, and because my body isn't aware that it's going into labour it doesn't make the hormones required to help cope with the pain. Yes, that's the *best* case scenario. The other cases are that I have the same chemically-painful contractions but they don't do anything, or I have contractions that are so strong they have to pump me with different drugs to calm them down.
If my body still refuses to go into labour they then pump me with different artificial hormones via a drip, so it's much harder to get up and move around. The drip also brings its own set of side-effects (mostly vomiting and... well, other bodily functions).
So I'm now in larger amounts of pain, with fewer natural hormones to help me cope. I can't use the birth pool (which is the second best form of pain relief after an epidural) so I will undoubtedly be cranking up the artificial drugs in order to cope, which in turn cross the placenta and drug <cupid>. It's highly likely I'll end up on an epidural, essentially tying me to the bed. If my body still refuses to go through with it they'll have to take him out by c-section after about three days of this (unless baby or I are in enough distress to merit it).
I didn't want to be afraid. If nothing else, it makes it worse, because adrenaline inhibits production of both oxytocin and endorphins which are those pain-coping hormones that I was looking forward to. But it's strange how I've gone from inviting birth to fearing it, and I don't like that.
This morning I'm better than I was yesterday after the sweep. I'm an optimist and I can usually find a silver lining in everything, and slowly that's beginning to re-assert itself. I'm still apprehensive, but I can try to comfort myself with science.
Firstly, if stats are to be believed (I'm not totally sure they are, everything about childbirth appears to be contradictory) then the incidence of him dying in the womb are rising as I type, and if we leave it to occur naturally it keeps on climbing. To lose him at this stage, especially if it was simply because I was afraid of placing myself in the hands of the medical profession, would be awful. He is safer this way. Maybe only by a few percentage points, but it is safer, that's why NICE recommend it. It's going to be harder for me and baby, but that's just another reason to be thankful that memories that don't remember pain.
Secondly, if he continues to not engage fully then I was going to be transferred to hospital anyway, because of the risk of the cord being born first, which could cut off his blood supply. Better to have a day's warning, to re-check the hospital bag and not be transferred, petrified for my baby's safety, in an ambulance.
And thirdly, about 30% of babies in my area are induced. Yes, it's crushed some of my hopes but I'm not the only one - lots of people go through this and if it were that bad there would be no two-or-more children families. <winkeye>
I've heard fantastic reports from friends who have been on the consultant-led unit (which is where I'll be), and I'll be looked after in hospital for as long as I need. Yes, they'll send Mr Vip away in the evenings but they recently extended the opening hours for partners so he can be with me for a lot more than when we first looked at the unit.
I'm in exactly the right place if something goes wrong, and remember, before there was decent medical intervention and trained midwives, 1 in 4 mothers or babies *died* during childbirth. Trust the science. It works.
=========================
14th February 2012
Well, little <cupid> is ten days old now - born at 7pm on 4th February 2012 - and let me sleep for a solid four hours, plus another couple last night. Two good nights on the trot!
That's the good bit. Now I'm going to go back to the birth.
Already some things are a bit hazy, and the trauma and fear is starting to abate. I had difficulties sleeping once I got home and the adrenaline wore off - everything seemed to remind me of something.
So, how was it? 32 hours long, from the application of the inducement gel at 11am on Friday to delivery on Saturday. I spent Friday afternoon having 'prostin pains', which are essentially mild contractions. They hurt, but not bad enough to ask for pain relief. Come the evening the midwife (and student) conduct a sweep and conclude that absolutely nothing has happened, and in fact we've gone backwards as his head was no longer fully engaged.
Mr Vip is sent home shortly afterwards. I've had a couple of hours off from the pains at this point, but at about 11pm they start again in earnest - four minutes apart and painful enough to make me stagger up to the midwife station to ask for drugs. Co-codamol at first but then later they give me an injection (it's not pethadine, I can't remember its name but it came with an anti-nausea injection too). This manages to take the edge off them but I stay awake all night with them. They don't seem to get worse, or closer together, just constant and rhythmic.
Come morning and they start to abate, and gradually get further and further apart and stop. Baby is put on a monitor for an housr, and it shows that he's absolutely fine. Eventually the midwives are free to come and do another sweep at around 11am, and they give me the great, good news that I'm now about 5cm dilated. I was so relieved that the previous night hadn't been in vain I was in tears!
The sweep gives another kick start to the contractions, and they start again, stronger this time, and about 10 minutes apart. They offer a TENS machine, which I took, and I was really quite impressed at how useful it was. Mr Vip did find it funny that when not having a contraction, the impuse intensity made me twitch. But it had to be that level, as otherwise during a contraction I couldn't feel it at all! After a couple of hours I also had another of those injections like the one I'd had overnight.
The contractions gradually start to get closer together, and eventually at about 5 mins apart they have an opening in the delivery ward and I am transferred into a wheelchair. At this point I am starting to get pretty scared of the intensity of the pain, and getting into that wheelchair was a scary idea, and sitting down was very uncomfortable (I was either on my knees or on my side during contractions at this point).
Then there was a magic fifteen minutes where I was transferred to the labour room, where I had no contractions. Enough time to get there, get the TENS machine off (Mr Vip forgot to turn it off before removing the pads and managed to shock himself, which would have been funny were I not so scared), and get myself up onto the bed.
From this point it gets a lot worse. I have a couple of contractions that are so strong that all I can remember is sucking so hard on the gas and air I almost pass out, and coming around hearing myself screaming. My hearing went into high pitched white noise, and all I wanted to was to be knocked out, make it over. My waters broke at this point, so I had to try to move in order to try and get dry sheets under me. Not that appeared to matter - I had quite a lot of waters so they kept on making the sheets wet through pretty much the rest of the labour.
That was about 3pm. When I started to come round a bit I was almost optimistic - I was now fully dilated and I'd heard that pushing stages don't tend to last more than a couple of hours. No such luck.
Partly because I was so exhausted, having not slept the night before and not eaten since breakfast I was both dehydrated and very low on energy, I wasn't able to push. It also took me a long time - possibly an hour? I'm not really sure of any timings at this point - to realise that in the pushing stage you don't breathe through your contractions, like you do in early labour, you hold your breath and use them when the urge to push comes over you. By trying to breathe through you are essentially wasting the pushes, and you have to use them. After a couple of hours the contractions were dying off. I kept on trying to push without them until the midwife figured out what I wass doing and tried to get me to stop. I was getting pretty desperate to get him out at this stage.
Then came the drips - saline for my dehydration (plus lucazade through a straw to get some energy in me) and oxytoxin to try to get my contractions started again. I was too exhausted to prop myself up on my hands and knees, which was the position my body wanted me to be in, and being on my back hurt, so we ended up on my side with a leg resting in a stirrup. At this point I have to salute Mr Vip who then had the task of holding my leg higher during each contraction to give <cupid>'s head enough room to emerge. It must have been hard work, but he did say it gave him a front row seat.
This time I knew what to do, but I was so tired that even when the pushes came I felt like I wasn't able to push enough. He kept on crowning and then sliding back in, and I was getting more and more upset each time. I honestly thought at this point that I wasn't going to be able to do it. It also hurt, of course, and at the pushing stage they take away the gas and air because it interferes with the pushing. The contractions don't hurt as much, but the stretching of your - ahem - girl parts is a completely different pain and I admit that I also didn't want to push then because of that. It's a truly awful choice that's no choice at all, because you are so programmed to push it's almost impossible not to.
His heartrate was steady though, so he wasn't in distress, so although I believe a consultant had been called just in case they were still pretty determined to get me through this naturally. At one point I asked if they could use a vonteuse - I just wanted him out! According to Mr Vip this happened on the penultimate push, and on the next one enough head emerged for her to get a grip, get the cord out from around his neck (not tight around, just looped), and then tug his shoulders out.
The feeling of relief when I felt the shoulders go was incredible. It is kind of true that you forget the pain at that point, but that's also because the pain gone, and you know that it's finally, finally over. There wasn't much elation on my part, just relief mixed with curiosity. <cupid> was wrapped in a towel and placed on my chest (they'd got me on my back again by this point) while we waited for the placenta, which came out with no complications. I was actually pretty curious to see that as well, but it was taken away pretty promptly (probably to check that there wasn't anything left inside me, which is dangerous). What took me an Mr Vip by surprise was how fake the cord looked - all rubbery!
Probably because of my inability to push as hard as I wanted, I came out of the birth itself with only a minor graze, as his hand had come up by his face and scratched me on the way out. I hadn't torn at all, which was a great relief as I'd expected to tear pretty badly as I have quite dry, inflexible skin.
Then came the time to get me to a shower. This was far more upsetting than I expected. I had to get into a wheelchair, wich was painful in itself. Initially I wanted to walk there myself but after the two steps to the chair I realised that just wasn't a clever idea as I wasn't strong enough. Then a slightly bumpy journey down the corridor to the shower, but the worst part was when the midwife had explained everything and left me to it. My belly had shrunk a bit but now just looked pitiful with huge scar-like stretch marks (it still does, ten days later, although smaller now my womb is almost back to normal). I couldn't stand properly so was hunched over, and of course I was still bleeding heavily and in physical discomfort (although not downright pain). Thankfully going through it did force me to stand up, to walk, and bend so by the end I was starting to feel better.
I came back to see Mr Vip incredibly happy and a very asleep, contented baby in his arms. We stayed a little longer to get our things in order, and have a visit from Mr Vip's dad who was so excited and happy he almost didn't know what to say, then we were transferred down to the post-natal ward and Mr Vip was sent home.
---------------------
<cupid> was a very sleepy baby in the first couple of days, sleepy to the point of not wanting to feed. While it was nice that I hadn't got a screaming baby, it became more and more concerning that he wasn't eating anything and that did take some time to happen. I stayed an extra night in order to try to sort out breastfeeding difficulties, and finally manged to get discharged on Monday evening. Admittedly we were back on Tuesday night to ask for help with feeding, but by day five we were starting to get things going and he had only lost 8.5% of his birth weight, which is within normal limits. By the next weighing he had put on 200g, which was a good surpise as the midwife would have been happy with 40g!
Saturday wasn't so good as he had developed snuffles to the point that he couldn't sleep or feed. We were re-admitted to hospital overnight but it cleared up with the application of some saline nasal drops, which just dissolved the worst of the mucus. It took until 4pm to get discharged, but finally we got home.
Since then (today being Tuesday) we have had two very good nights, with only a few hours of <cupid> being awake when not feeding, and as Mr Vip is still on paternity leave we've both been able to get reasonable amounts of sleep. We even had five hours between a feed, four of which I spent asleep! I am aware that this will get worse a) when Mr Vip goes back to work and b) when the grizzly stage starts at about three weeks, but at the moment it is glorious and I am very relieved.
In summary? The birth was horrific, but the horror is starting to fade and I'm finding it easier to get to sleep now I'm not being haunted by reliving parts of it every time I close my eyes.
There is a lot more I could type but for now I need to get dressed and get some food inside me before the midwife arrives in 40 minutes for <cupid>'s next check up.
