Monday, November 17, 2003

 
quick cheat - a post from my bulletin board. time of the essence!

He's about to wake up and we've only been home a couple of hours, so I'll be quickish.

the various pangs turned into proper labour last Tuesday night (41w1day); at 2.30 am we headed to hospital, probably a bit earlier than we should have as it turned out. once I got there things slowed down, partly because of that classic medical environment thing, despite our best efforts. monitoring showed some heartrate dips with contractions so I was put on a belt; dr turned up around 8 and got things moving by breaking my waters - we got a nicer midwife then and my friend came in so there were lots of good contractions in the morning. but despite trying to get it moving along (it's hard to get up and walk around knowing it will bring on more contractions, you know!), baths, etc, by the time the dr came back at 5 I was no further dilated - 4cm, same as in the am. I was only on gas, air and a TENS machine and hadn't slept for 2 nights so was getting pretty tired. also the later shift midwife was really annoying, kept fiddling with me - male, but I know there are good and bad male ones. there was an option to put up a strong syntocin drip and give me an epidural to keep trying "naturally', and we even checked that we could get another midwife to help me through that if we chose that (didn't see annoying one again after that!), but further to non-progress was the discover that the baby was posterior and therefore needed an extra 2cm to get out. that, plus my previous cervical surgery, which could have been stopping dilation, plus the odd low heartbeat (turned out cord was around his neck), plus an only 50% chance of vaginal delivery with the drip, plus the risk of forceps, plus my exhaustion, meant we chose (and the dr gave us time) to go into theatre.

so at 8.30 (after a spinal tap - boy did I sit still for that!), I got to kiss a wriggling, blood-covered little boy. dh went with him to the ward. it only took an hour in recovery, shaking like mad, before I could go up and do the first feed. they took him away overnight (our choice again) b/c we were too wrecked/drugged to care for him if he threw up mucus, which caesar babies do. midwife brought him to me when I woke once in the night for a visit. woke thursday am feeling stunned and wondering how I could pick him up and cuddle him, care for him, but I'm moving better every day, and he's just the most amazingly beautiful creature I've ever seen or touched. have been keeping visitors on a short leash so we can recover and learn to feed and "drive" him. dh is doing a fabulous job - he's so gentle with him - and will be home with me for a week and a bit to stop me exerting myself!

I haven't been around the threads yet to see the news - will asap - just wanted to let you all know and say I hope everything is going well and that you have so much to look forward to. still exhausted, btw, but whatever, who cares!

:)

bb

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