Every mother has birth stories. You hear horror stories of labours that went on for days, of doctors or midwives bracing themselves on the end of the bed with their feet while they used forceps to rip the baby out of the birth canal, of blood and guts and all kinds of horrors. Some of these you can take with a big grain of salt, there is something about the human psyche that wants to horrify and out-do everyone else. So having said that here is my first birth story. No I have not embellished it, I don't think it needs it.
Like every first time expecting mother I was fairly apprehensive about the actual birth of my son. Yes we knew beforehand that he was a boy. I had watched documentaries, looked at articles and pictures so I knew exactly what was supposed to happen. About two weeks before our son was due I remember bursting into tears and telling my husband that there were only two ways for our baby to come out and I didn't like either of them.
But despite all that I had it all planned out. My birthing bag was packed, my birth plan written. I knew what was going to happen and I was prepared. HA! the joy of hindsight lets me look back and laugh at myself now.
My last Obstetricians appointment before the due date I mentioned something that had been worrying me. The babies movements had slowed down. All the women-who-know-all in my life had told me that this was normal and the baby was running out of room. But still it bothered me so I asked the doctor, I will be forever grateful that I did. ALWAYS ask, no matter how silly you think the question is because you never know that gut feeling could be right. She was surprised and told me no, there was room for twins in there and the baby should not have slowed down at all. If anything he should be getting more and more active. She pulled out her ultrasound and took a look. There was not enough fluid around the baby and the placenta was showing signs of aging. She sent me straight to the hospital. She threatened to call an ambulance when I said I wanted to drive myself rather than have my husband drive me and leave my car there. Her words to me "you will be going home with a baby!"
So with great apprehension we headed to the hospital. She met us there and they monitored the baby for a while. He was not showing any signs of distress so she said I could go home and pack some things, have some dinner and come back. I spent the night in an uncomfortable hospital bed unable to sleep because I was expecting to be induced the next day. The next morning I was monitored again and then the hospital sent me home. I was very confused, was my baby ok or not? I was told that I had to go back in every day to be monitored and I was booked in for an induction on the Sunday night (this was the Friday morning). So I went home and started cleaning the house, I would be having a baby in a few days. On Saturday I went back in and was monitored, no problems. Back home, more waiting. On Saturday night my husband and I went out to dinner at our favourite restaurant. It was quiet a civilized way to organize a birth really. On Sunday morning my father and his family all came over to have breakfast with me before I headed to the hospital for an induction that was likely to take several days.
At the hospital I was shown to my room and put on a monitor. Everything was fine. Then the midwife was called away before she could take me off the monitor. A few minutes after she left, the baby's heartbeat suddenly dropped. Normally it would be around 120 to 140 bpm, it dropped below 60. My husband ran to get someone. The midwife and the doctor came and told me I would not be getting the slow induction with gel, 12 hours later an amniotomy and then a drip if nothing happened 12 hours after that, I was going around to the labour suite and I was having this baby now! My head was spinning it was suddenly all happening. In the labour suite I got changed into an old nightie. The doctor broke my waters and a drip was put in my hand. 15 minutes after getting changed I was having contractions every 3 minutes. 15 minutes after that I was having double peak contractions every 2 minutes. It was happening so fast and my body wasn't ready for it. My cervix had not gone through any of the preparation that normally happens with these things. And I was in pain. I asked for the gas. It helped a little bit. But it was not long before I was screaming. And even while I was screaming the midwife would come in and increase the drip to increase my contractions. I tried to get out of the bed at one stage and hit her. How I hated that woman. I was not able to get up and move because they wanted to monitor the baby and the monitor only picked up his heartbeat if I was laying on my left hand side. I couldn't stand it any longer and I started telling everyone I was going home and tried to rip the drip out. My mother and husband were both there restraining me. I didn't know it at the time but my husband was very distressed because there was nothing he could do for me. My mother comforted him because I was beyond even noticing they were there. Finally I demanded an epidural. The midwife put it off.... and put it off and continued to put it off. She offered me Pethidine which I had put down in my birth plan as NOT wanting under any circumstances. But I was vulnerable, tired, in agony, I took whatever was offered. I wish I hadn't, I wish my mother or husband had stopped her but I guess they were desperate too. It did NOTHING! It didn't help at all. She told my mum that I seemed calmer. My mum didn't say anything at the time but she told me later she came close to swearing at the woman. Finally my husband put his foot down and demanded an epidural for me. The midwife finally ordered one. She had left it so long that there was only a registrar in the hospital but I didn't care.
I had to hold still while the epidural was inserted. My husband helped me and while he was holding my arms for me he asked the dumbest question ever, which I have still not let him live down, "What's wrong?". I only swore twice through the whole thing and that was one of them. My response "I'm having your f#$king baby!" Very funny in hindsight. Anyway I don't know how many contractions it took but it was a major strength of will that helped me hold still. 15 minutes after the epidural went in I was a different person. I was sitting up in bed and telling jokes. I watched some TV and tried to get some sleep. Everything that came before that has always been a red haze in my memory. I endured 4 hours of that agony before the epidural brought relief.
I did have a small "window" of pain. The medication from an epidural runs downhill like water and because I was laying on my left side so they could monitor the baby I had a patch of pain on the right side of my belly. So I would be allowed to turn onto my right side for a while until the pain relief took away that patch of pain and then I would have turn back to my left side so that they could monitor the baby. I thought it was hilarious, maybe some of the gas was still effecting me. I was numb from the chest down so every time I rolled over I had to get help. My legs would wander off the bed as every one was helping me turn my huge body over and I would have to ask someone to retrieve them for me. I felt like a roast in an oven being turned to cook evenly.
The epidural also marked the changing of the nurses shift and I got a new midwife, this one was lovely. And totally sympathetic. About 20 minutes after the epidural she came in and asked "would you like a catheter?" Which, of course, I thought was hilarious. Of course I didn't, what a dumb question. And then she told me why I should have one, being numb I couldn't open my bladder if I needed to and if it was too full the baby pushing on it could pop it like a water balloon. Ok of course I wanted one in that case :-)
Then around midnight my husband asked the midwife to check how dilated I was, it was almost 8 hours since the drip went in. She said it would still be a while but took a look anyway. To her surprise I was fully dilated. She called the doctor to come back in. At around 12.30 am I was told to start pushing. Now if you have seen a "birth" on TV or at the movies you "know" that from this point it is only minutes until the baby pops out right? Wrong, anyone who has actually been at a birth knows that at this point it can take hours of pushing for the baby to make it the few inches down the birth canal. As soon as I started pushing though the baby started showing real signs of distress again. His heatbeat dropped with every contraction and every push and took a long long time to start to come back up again. He was in trouble. It was too late for a Cesarean. The doctor told me if I didn't push harder she would get out the forceps. I didn't want those malformed salad servers coming anywhere near me so I told her I could do it. And I did! I pushed until I went purple, I pushed until I had an involuntary bowel movement, I pushed until I thought I was going to pop. The second stage of labour that normally takes hours especially for a first baby took 20 minutes. And my son was born. They put him on my tummy, the umbilical cord was very short. He was slimy covered in gunk, purple and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I feel in love with him instantly. I told my husband that I was so happy he was his father.
The baby was underweight. I didn't know it at the time but if he had only been 20 grams lighter he would have been sent off to the special care nursery. He looked a lot like a little old man with a very wrinkled face. And he would turn his eyes to "look" at us when my husband and I talked, he obviously recognized our voices. He didn't cry at all, until the midwife gave him his Vitamin K shot anyway. He spent most of the first day sleeping and while I should have been resting we had visitors, lots and lots of visitors. Then he woke up once they all left and the trouble started. I have already posted about that in my post on breastfeeding.
I wish the hospital hadn't sent me home the first time, he might have been stronger. I wish the midwife hadn't given me the pethidine, I am sure that is why he slept so long that first day. And I wish we had told all the visitors to bugger off and leave us alone. But even with all that, the moment that my son was born remains the happiest of my life and one I will never forget.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Breast feeding part 2
So I have told you the story of my struggle to breastfeed my first child. What happened with my second child? Was it easy because I knew what I was doing? Nope!
Again I was determined to breastfeed. I kept saying that I was happy to go either way depending on the child but in my mind I was still determined to breastfeed this child. My second child was a girl. Her birth was pretty normal and she was a healthy birth weight. She had no problems attaching and feeding. All was looking good. But I was in pain, lots and lots of pain. I didn't find out what it was until later, Raynaud's syndrome. This is where spasms in the vascular system cause a lack of circulation. It most often occurs in the elderly in their extremities but it can also happen to breastfeeding mothers in their nipples. And it is very painful. You know how it feels to lick something very cold and get stuck to it, now imagine doing this with a damp nipple instead. Yep very painful. It got to the point where I just could not stand it. In the middle of the night one night while I was still in hospital, I asked the midwives to give her a bottle. I couldn't do it. I was exhausted and sleep deprived. They made me read and sign a consent form that stated I knew that breastfeeding was the best for my baby but was choosing to give her a bottle anyway. I was too tired at the time to be upset about this but later I was outraged. They had seen me all but screaming with pain as I fed my baby they knew it wasn't a decision that I was taking lightly. Instead of offering me support and sympathy they made it even harder. None of them even looked to see if there was a problem they had just decided I was not coping with the usual pain you get when you first started breastfeeding.
However after that I continued to breastfeed my baby and a few days after I got home the midwife that did the home visit to check on me and the baby told me what was causing the pain in my nipples, she diagnosed it with a couple of simple questions, and the oh so simple cure for it. I had to take magnesium supplements. With in days it stopped and I could feed the baby in comfort. Unfortunately by then she had started to display the same symptoms as her brother had almost three years earlier. The constantly wanting to feed, the screaming and drawing up of the legs, the inability to sleep. When she was six days old, Boxing day, I was down at A and E with her because she was vomiting up blood. I got very annoyed when every nurse and doctor that spoke to me, would ask, before anything else, "is she your first child?". When I told them no they seemed to start taking me seriously. As if for some reason having some experience at being a mother somehow made her vomiting blood more serious. They all also asked if the blood was from me, from cracked nipples, to the point where I pulled out one of my boobs to a nurse to show her I didn't have cracked nipples at all. After many hours and many tests they finally decided that she had overfed, probably due to reflux and had caused a split somewhere in her esophagus. They sent us home and I later took her to the pediatrician. He put her on medication for reflux which seemed to help a bit.
By this stage our son had been referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist (sp?). We had to travel three hours to another city to see him. He diagnosed him with a "gastrointestinal motility disorder", uncoordinated movement of the muscles in the digestive system. Later after talking to other members of my family I found it was a common problem amongst my relatives. As an infant on liquid feeds this uncoordinated movement causes the milk to rush straight through the bowel. Eventually causing a type of acquired lactose intolerance. Later when solid feeds are started it causes constipation which is hard to diagnose because there is also overflow diarrhea where the body pushes liquid fecal matter past the blockage, very graphic I know, sorry. All this results in "colic", which I once heard a very wise man say "is a five letter word for we have no idea what the problem is!" Reflux, gas pain, hunger, cramps, the works. The poor kids, no wonder they screamed.
At six weeks we took my daughter down to the A and E at the big hospital in our city. She was screaming at the top of her lungs and did so for hours while we waited. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do but we needed help and no one seemed to be paying any attention. She was admitted and she and I were there for almost a week. They took her off breast milk and put her on formula. I expressed constantly to try and keep my supply up. I went home with a tonne of frozen breast milk. She settled down almost immediately on the formula. When she was discharged we had no answers and no offer of follow up. I felt very let down.
I asked my GP for a referral to QEII in the hope that they might be able to help us. But no such luck. It was a difficult stay because I had my son (then a very active almost 3 yo) with me too and my husband had to work. So I was caring for two children in a strange environment and this time the midwives and nurses where much less helpful and sympathetic. At one stage we even had to spend the day cramped up in our little room because Family Services had come to take a couple of unfortunate kids away from their mother. On the day of discharge one nurse talked to me and realized that I was suffering from severe postnatal depression but was unable to do anything to help me, it was too late. The stay had really been a total waste of time and nothing but a stress. Back home things continued as they had. Hours on end of colic and my feeling like a failure again.
The Pediatric Gastro finally saw my daughter at 3 months, after I got a referral from my wonderful GP, and diagnosed her the same as our son. Why did the top up feeds settle her? They were lactose free, they were thicker and heavier so went through the gut slower. We started adding thickner to her feeds and giving her a bottle every second feed. That made a huge difference. It wasn't long before things settled down. Being a Librarian through both of the ordeals of my children's feeding problems I had researched and read everything I could find. So I realised that my children could never be fully breast fed and it wasn't my fault. I still felt like a failure but at least I had more realistic expectations. My daughter ended up being partially breastfed until she was 15 months of age. Then I came down with pneumonia again. After a weekend in hospital she refused to take the breast and I decided that I it was time to wean her.
Now with my third child I have been researching bottles rather than ways to breastfeed. I know I am going to cop it from the breastfeeding nazis at the hospital and after. I will breast feed this child for the first few days possibly weeks but at the first sign of ANY problems I am going to put the baby straight onto the bottle. I have two older children that need their mum and I can't let myself get caught up in the sleep depriving, self doubting cycle that I did with the other two. My expectations are far more realistic this time. If I can breastfeed fantastic but if it doesn't work I am not going to make myself sick over it. It will be sad but I am not going to watch this baby scream in pain because of some ideal. And if the breastfeeding nazis have anything to say they can stick it, honestly they haven't been through what I have so they have no right to an opinion in my world!
Again I was determined to breastfeed. I kept saying that I was happy to go either way depending on the child but in my mind I was still determined to breastfeed this child. My second child was a girl. Her birth was pretty normal and she was a healthy birth weight. She had no problems attaching and feeding. All was looking good. But I was in pain, lots and lots of pain. I didn't find out what it was until later, Raynaud's syndrome. This is where spasms in the vascular system cause a lack of circulation. It most often occurs in the elderly in their extremities but it can also happen to breastfeeding mothers in their nipples. And it is very painful. You know how it feels to lick something very cold and get stuck to it, now imagine doing this with a damp nipple instead. Yep very painful. It got to the point where I just could not stand it. In the middle of the night one night while I was still in hospital, I asked the midwives to give her a bottle. I couldn't do it. I was exhausted and sleep deprived. They made me read and sign a consent form that stated I knew that breastfeeding was the best for my baby but was choosing to give her a bottle anyway. I was too tired at the time to be upset about this but later I was outraged. They had seen me all but screaming with pain as I fed my baby they knew it wasn't a decision that I was taking lightly. Instead of offering me support and sympathy they made it even harder. None of them even looked to see if there was a problem they had just decided I was not coping with the usual pain you get when you first started breastfeeding.
However after that I continued to breastfeed my baby and a few days after I got home the midwife that did the home visit to check on me and the baby told me what was causing the pain in my nipples, she diagnosed it with a couple of simple questions, and the oh so simple cure for it. I had to take magnesium supplements. With in days it stopped and I could feed the baby in comfort. Unfortunately by then she had started to display the same symptoms as her brother had almost three years earlier. The constantly wanting to feed, the screaming and drawing up of the legs, the inability to sleep. When she was six days old, Boxing day, I was down at A and E with her because she was vomiting up blood. I got very annoyed when every nurse and doctor that spoke to me, would ask, before anything else, "is she your first child?". When I told them no they seemed to start taking me seriously. As if for some reason having some experience at being a mother somehow made her vomiting blood more serious. They all also asked if the blood was from me, from cracked nipples, to the point where I pulled out one of my boobs to a nurse to show her I didn't have cracked nipples at all. After many hours and many tests they finally decided that she had overfed, probably due to reflux and had caused a split somewhere in her esophagus. They sent us home and I later took her to the pediatrician. He put her on medication for reflux which seemed to help a bit.
By this stage our son had been referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist (sp?). We had to travel three hours to another city to see him. He diagnosed him with a "gastrointestinal motility disorder", uncoordinated movement of the muscles in the digestive system. Later after talking to other members of my family I found it was a common problem amongst my relatives. As an infant on liquid feeds this uncoordinated movement causes the milk to rush straight through the bowel. Eventually causing a type of acquired lactose intolerance. Later when solid feeds are started it causes constipation which is hard to diagnose because there is also overflow diarrhea where the body pushes liquid fecal matter past the blockage, very graphic I know, sorry. All this results in "colic", which I once heard a very wise man say "is a five letter word for we have no idea what the problem is!" Reflux, gas pain, hunger, cramps, the works. The poor kids, no wonder they screamed.
At six weeks we took my daughter down to the A and E at the big hospital in our city. She was screaming at the top of her lungs and did so for hours while we waited. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do but we needed help and no one seemed to be paying any attention. She was admitted and she and I were there for almost a week. They took her off breast milk and put her on formula. I expressed constantly to try and keep my supply up. I went home with a tonne of frozen breast milk. She settled down almost immediately on the formula. When she was discharged we had no answers and no offer of follow up. I felt very let down.
I asked my GP for a referral to QEII in the hope that they might be able to help us. But no such luck. It was a difficult stay because I had my son (then a very active almost 3 yo) with me too and my husband had to work. So I was caring for two children in a strange environment and this time the midwives and nurses where much less helpful and sympathetic. At one stage we even had to spend the day cramped up in our little room because Family Services had come to take a couple of unfortunate kids away from their mother. On the day of discharge one nurse talked to me and realized that I was suffering from severe postnatal depression but was unable to do anything to help me, it was too late. The stay had really been a total waste of time and nothing but a stress. Back home things continued as they had. Hours on end of colic and my feeling like a failure again.
The Pediatric Gastro finally saw my daughter at 3 months, after I got a referral from my wonderful GP, and diagnosed her the same as our son. Why did the top up feeds settle her? They were lactose free, they were thicker and heavier so went through the gut slower. We started adding thickner to her feeds and giving her a bottle every second feed. That made a huge difference. It wasn't long before things settled down. Being a Librarian through both of the ordeals of my children's feeding problems I had researched and read everything I could find. So I realised that my children could never be fully breast fed and it wasn't my fault. I still felt like a failure but at least I had more realistic expectations. My daughter ended up being partially breastfed until she was 15 months of age. Then I came down with pneumonia again. After a weekend in hospital she refused to take the breast and I decided that I it was time to wean her.
Now with my third child I have been researching bottles rather than ways to breastfeed. I know I am going to cop it from the breastfeeding nazis at the hospital and after. I will breast feed this child for the first few days possibly weeks but at the first sign of ANY problems I am going to put the baby straight onto the bottle. I have two older children that need their mum and I can't let myself get caught up in the sleep depriving, self doubting cycle that I did with the other two. My expectations are far more realistic this time. If I can breastfeed fantastic but if it doesn't work I am not going to make myself sick over it. It will be sad but I am not going to watch this baby scream in pain because of some ideal. And if the breastfeeding nazis have anything to say they can stick it, honestly they haven't been through what I have so they have no right to an opinion in my world!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
1 in 88
There are lots of tests you have when you are pregnant. I had my 12 week ultrasound last Friday along with the associated blood test. Every thing seemed fine. The baby had a good heartbeat and we were pretty happy about it all. So we went and told everyone. Yesterday I got a call from my GPs office, they had the results from the blood test and my doctor wanted me to come in and talk about them. So after a sleepless night I trundled off the doctors today, telling myself that it was probably nothing to worry about. I was wrong. There are three trisomy disorders that they check for. A trisomy disorder is where there is an extra chromosome on one of the 26 pairs we all have. The most common and most well known is Down's Syndrome. Two of the three were fine but one isn't. It is just a screening test, they are just looking for women who need further testing. The results come in a ratio. My risk of the baby having Down's is 1:3000+ which is good. But the one that is a worry is Trisomy 18 or Edward's Syndrome. My risk went from 1:300+ for my age to 1:88 because of a particular protein marker in my blood. 1:88 is not good. I have been referred to the Natal health unit at the hospital. I was totally spun out by the news. I walked out of the doctors office feeling like I needed more information. I am a librarian, finding more information is always what I do when something happens. So I went and searched Edward's Syndrome. The more I read about the Syndrome the more upset I became. It is bad, it is almost always fatal. 90% die in uterus before birth. Of the 10% that survive to birth 50% die in the first week, 90% in the first year. Their life expectancy and quality of life if they do survive is pretty bad.
The more I read about the testing the less stressed I became. It was just a screening test. It just tells me that there is a risk not that there IS a problem with the baby. An amnio will diagnose the condition and tell us for sure one way or another. So for now it is just a case of waiting. Very tense waiting but just waiting.
I just realised I never followed up on this story. I had the amnio, there was nothing wrong with my baby boy (yes we found out). He is now a very healthy happy baby :-)
The more I read about the testing the less stressed I became. It was just a screening test. It just tells me that there is a risk not that there IS a problem with the baby. An amnio will diagnose the condition and tell us for sure one way or another. So for now it is just a case of waiting. Very tense waiting but just waiting.
I just realised I never followed up on this story. I had the amnio, there was nothing wrong with my baby boy (yes we found out). He is now a very healthy happy baby :-)
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sleep
One of the most common things people say to first time parents before their baby is born is that they should "stock up" on their sleep. That would have to be one of the stupidest things ever said to new parents. Sleep doesn't work like that. You can "catch up" on lost sleep, you can even have a good nights sleep and feel good the next day and might even cope better with a subsequent disturbed night. But you CANNOT stock up on sleep like some squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter shortage. It just doesn't work like that. The other reason that it is a stupid thing to say is because for the pregnant mother, sleep disturbance happens a long long time before the baby is born. It can start as early as the first trimester. And with all those extra hormones running around making you more than a little loopy anyway, sleep deprivation just adds to the fun. There is a reason that sleep deprivation is used as a torture. Losing sleep not only leaves us feeling grumpy, tired and having trouble concentrating, it can also have a negative effect on our health.
Why does the sleep deprivation start so early? Well the first reason is a pregnant woman's bladder is NOT her friend. The additional hormones stimulate more urine production and even the small weight of that tiny fetus and growing uterus resting on top of the bladder make holding on for too long impossible. By the time you get to your second or third pregnancy the muscles that control all of this can be a bit weak too so the urgent signal can come at any time through the night "wake and go pee or you will wet the bed!"
Another reason for sleep disturbance is the vivid dreams that come with pregnancy. I don't know why this happens and I am not sure anyone does. I have heard from someone that it is to do with hormones but who knows how true this is? Last night I had nightmare after nightmare. Not a good nights sleep. Dreams from me trying to leave to get to a presentation I am doing on Saturday just to find myself standing at the door suddenly naked, or without my notes or other necessary items. Then the dreams about premmie babies or deformed babies or forced abortions complete with babies screaming. No prizes for guessing where those dreams came from. It is my 12 week ultrasound this afternoon and being 37 I am a bit worried about the health of this baby.
The final reason for my problems sleeping, and I don't know if this is common to pregnant women or not, is the changes to my bodies thermostat. Leaving the covers off left me feeling cold after a while but when I put them on it wasn't long until I woke up covered in sweat. Gotta to love a body that doesn't know what it wants. Sigh I just hope I get a decent nights sleep tonight before my big presentation tomorrow or I may just find myself trying to leave the house sans clothes ;-)
Why does the sleep deprivation start so early? Well the first reason is a pregnant woman's bladder is NOT her friend. The additional hormones stimulate more urine production and even the small weight of that tiny fetus and growing uterus resting on top of the bladder make holding on for too long impossible. By the time you get to your second or third pregnancy the muscles that control all of this can be a bit weak too so the urgent signal can come at any time through the night "wake and go pee or you will wet the bed!"
Another reason for sleep disturbance is the vivid dreams that come with pregnancy. I don't know why this happens and I am not sure anyone does. I have heard from someone that it is to do with hormones but who knows how true this is? Last night I had nightmare after nightmare. Not a good nights sleep. Dreams from me trying to leave to get to a presentation I am doing on Saturday just to find myself standing at the door suddenly naked, or without my notes or other necessary items. Then the dreams about premmie babies or deformed babies or forced abortions complete with babies screaming. No prizes for guessing where those dreams came from. It is my 12 week ultrasound this afternoon and being 37 I am a bit worried about the health of this baby.
The final reason for my problems sleeping, and I don't know if this is common to pregnant women or not, is the changes to my bodies thermostat. Leaving the covers off left me feeling cold after a while but when I put them on it wasn't long until I woke up covered in sweat. Gotta to love a body that doesn't know what it wants. Sigh I just hope I get a decent nights sleep tonight before my big presentation tomorrow or I may just find myself trying to leave the house sans clothes ;-)
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Common Courtesy
not so common! Ok a bit off topic today. This morning when I was dropping my son off at school we followed two older boys into the school and neither of them made any effort to stop the door from closing even though we were only a couple of steps behind them. On my way out of the school I held the door open for a couple of girls going in and neither of them said a word. In the car park I was in my car with my reverse lights on when a father in his Porsche pulled up right behind me and sat there while his son got out. On the drive to work someone cut into the waiting line of traffic, obviously they were too good to wait like everyone else. All of these things smack of two things a lack of "common" courtesy and a lack of consideration.
I have a friend whose ex-husband is a teacher at a very expensive private girls school here. He had a call one day from a mother demanding to know why he wasn't teaching her daughter manners. Obviously a parental inability to teach manners has nothing to do with socio-economic factors. When I was working in retail a mother and child came up to the counter with the child demanding "I want a doughnut, I want a doughnut!". The mother stopped the child and made her repeat the demand as a question with a please "Can I have a doughnut please?" The mother then turned to me and demanded "Two doughnuts!" I must say the temptation to look at her and say "say please!" was almost over whelming. Our children learn manners from the example they see in the people around them. If we use manners with them then they will use them with us and others. It is a very easy thing to let slip but it is also an easy thing to stick with. Teaching our child this most basic of human skills - being considerate of others and having meaningful interactions with them is so important. It is a huge shame on our "modern" society that we think we don't have time for this.
When I talk to my kids about why manners are important I tell them that manners and courtesy are the grease which makes life and society run smoothly. I am often told what good manners my children have, which surprises me, it makes me proud as well but it surprises me because it means they are different to the other children around them. I for one will continue to do my best to teach my children to think of others and to show them respect because I think in turn it will mean others will think of them and show them respect. It will make their lives that much better and more meaningful and after all isn't that what we all want for our children.
I have a friend whose ex-husband is a teacher at a very expensive private girls school here. He had a call one day from a mother demanding to know why he wasn't teaching her daughter manners. Obviously a parental inability to teach manners has nothing to do with socio-economic factors. When I was working in retail a mother and child came up to the counter with the child demanding "I want a doughnut, I want a doughnut!". The mother stopped the child and made her repeat the demand as a question with a please "Can I have a doughnut please?" The mother then turned to me and demanded "Two doughnuts!" I must say the temptation to look at her and say "say please!" was almost over whelming. Our children learn manners from the example they see in the people around them. If we use manners with them then they will use them with us and others. It is a very easy thing to let slip but it is also an easy thing to stick with. Teaching our child this most basic of human skills - being considerate of others and having meaningful interactions with them is so important. It is a huge shame on our "modern" society that we think we don't have time for this.
When I talk to my kids about why manners are important I tell them that manners and courtesy are the grease which makes life and society run smoothly. I am often told what good manners my children have, which surprises me, it makes me proud as well but it surprises me because it means they are different to the other children around them. I for one will continue to do my best to teach my children to think of others and to show them respect because I think in turn it will mean others will think of them and show them respect. It will make their lives that much better and more meaningful and after all isn't that what we all want for our children.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Breastfeeding
Ok it is a topic that will provoke strong reactions in a lot of people. There are your breastfeeding nazis who seem to think that no pain no discomfort no problem should ever ever stop you from breastfeeding your baby. They will tell you the horrors that await "artificially" fed babies. A term that conjures up images of feeding a newborn baby the liquid equivalent of MacDonalds in an inhumane cold plastic bottle. They will tell you that you won't bond with your baby, that the baby will be less intelligent, have more health problems, more allergies and you will forever regret not being a "true" mother. Then on the other end you find some women, very few, who find breastfeeding is disgusting and should either only be done in total privacy (like the toilets, as if they would eat their lunch in there) or not done at all. I think this attitude says more about the women (and some men) who have it than anything else. After all women have breasts so they can feed their babies not for the enjoyment of men.
Then somewhere in the middle, often leaning towards one end or the other you find most women. This is where I sit. I was determined with the birth of my first child that I was going to breast feed. I didn't and don't judge any one that doesn't but I was going to. It was the one thing I was stuck on. The cloth nappies, I was flexible, where the baby slept, I was flexible, clothes toys everything else I was flexible. But I WAS going to breastfeed. Unfortunately it was not that easy. My eldest child lost a lot of weight before he was born because the placenta had started to break down. His birth was hard and I was lucky not to have ended up with an emergency cesarean. He was a low weight, and look liked an old man where all his skin was wrinkled up. On the second day the pediatrician saw him and said he was to have top up bottles of formula at least until my milk came in. The poor thing was too exhausted to feed properly but too hungry to sleep so I was already exhausted myself by this stage because he would attach to my boob, feed a little, fall asleep, I would go to take him off and he would wake up and cry. So he got top up feeds. Which didn't help my supply. I tried expressing as soon as my milk came in but that wasn't working either. When we eventually left hospital the midwives told me he was fine and I would not need to top up feed him at all. They were wrong. The same cycle that established itself in the early days of feed, sleep, detach, wake, scream, started again. And went on and on and on. He was colicky for up to 18 hours a day and although I didn't know it at the time also had bad reflux. It was a nightmare. I ended up sleep deprived and very depressed. I went to a lactation consultant, that told me he was putting on heaps of weight so we didn't need to give him the formula feeds and wouldn't listen to me when I told her that they were the only thing that would stop him from screaming. I felt a total and utter failure. I couldn't even do the most basic thing for my child, feed him. We took him to back to the pediatrician who told us it was probably an allergy to milk, something that runs in my family. So I cut all dairy out of my diet. When that didn't help I started cutting out other allergens until I was pretty much eating, lettuce, chicken and rice. Still nothing helped except to give him a bottle.
Why didn't I give up breastfeeding? I had the nurses and everyone telling me he was getting enough and he would be fine but they weren't there at 3am when one of us would take him for a drive out of desperation. Eventually I ended up at QEII, which is a level 3 hospital for mothers and babies with sleep or feeding problems. They were wonderful. They set me up with a supply line, I would put a bottle of warm formula in my bra and a very fine tube would be taped beside my nipple so that my son could attach to me but get formula. The idea was to increase my supply while giving him a feed so we would no longer need top up bottles. It started to work, although my little man being so smart started to refuse to take my boob if there was no supply line or attached bottle. I would try pinching off the line part way through the feed but he would pull off and give me a look that just said "I know what you have done!" I was just starting to despair of ever having my son, who was 4 months old by now, fully breastfed. Then my own health let me down. After months of sleep deprivation, restrictive diets and depression I ended up in hospital with pneumonia. I was very sick. The only reasons they didn't keep me in was because they didn't have the beds, I threatened to sign myself out and my husband (a school teacher) was home on school holidays to look after me and the baby. I was given a ton of different medications. With each one the doctor would tell me "this is safe for breastfeeding". After the fourth script I stopped him and asked, "you say each one is safe for breastfeeding but what about all of them together?" He didn't know. No one did. My husband had been bottle feeding my son while I was in hospital and between that and the doubt in my own mind about what all these different medications might do to my child I finally decided to give up the struggle to breast feed.
The change in my child was astonishing. By the time I was well enough to notice he was in a routine. He was sleeping through most nights. The colic stopped. He was on a prescription formula. It is specially processed so that the milk proteins that can cause allergic reactions were already broken down before hand. The pediatrician had also put him on medication for reflux. He was a happy healthy baby at last. I still felt like a failure and the occasional questions from other mothers, old and young, and health professionals about why he wasn't breastfed didn't help. We then went through three years of avoiding milk in all forms until he was given the all clear by an immunologist. In hindsight with what happened with my daughter later I suspect that milk was never his problem. But again this is a topic for another post. I will always wonder if my son's tendency to be sensitive and easily upset comes from spending his first four months of life in pain and not getting good sleep. I guess it is something I will never know. However he has grown into a very healthy and generally happy boy. :-)
Then somewhere in the middle, often leaning towards one end or the other you find most women. This is where I sit. I was determined with the birth of my first child that I was going to breast feed. I didn't and don't judge any one that doesn't but I was going to. It was the one thing I was stuck on. The cloth nappies, I was flexible, where the baby slept, I was flexible, clothes toys everything else I was flexible. But I WAS going to breastfeed. Unfortunately it was not that easy. My eldest child lost a lot of weight before he was born because the placenta had started to break down. His birth was hard and I was lucky not to have ended up with an emergency cesarean. He was a low weight, and look liked an old man where all his skin was wrinkled up. On the second day the pediatrician saw him and said he was to have top up bottles of formula at least until my milk came in. The poor thing was too exhausted to feed properly but too hungry to sleep so I was already exhausted myself by this stage because he would attach to my boob, feed a little, fall asleep, I would go to take him off and he would wake up and cry. So he got top up feeds. Which didn't help my supply. I tried expressing as soon as my milk came in but that wasn't working either. When we eventually left hospital the midwives told me he was fine and I would not need to top up feed him at all. They were wrong. The same cycle that established itself in the early days of feed, sleep, detach, wake, scream, started again. And went on and on and on. He was colicky for up to 18 hours a day and although I didn't know it at the time also had bad reflux. It was a nightmare. I ended up sleep deprived and very depressed. I went to a lactation consultant, that told me he was putting on heaps of weight so we didn't need to give him the formula feeds and wouldn't listen to me when I told her that they were the only thing that would stop him from screaming. I felt a total and utter failure. I couldn't even do the most basic thing for my child, feed him. We took him to back to the pediatrician who told us it was probably an allergy to milk, something that runs in my family. So I cut all dairy out of my diet. When that didn't help I started cutting out other allergens until I was pretty much eating, lettuce, chicken and rice. Still nothing helped except to give him a bottle.
Why didn't I give up breastfeeding? I had the nurses and everyone telling me he was getting enough and he would be fine but they weren't there at 3am when one of us would take him for a drive out of desperation. Eventually I ended up at QEII, which is a level 3 hospital for mothers and babies with sleep or feeding problems. They were wonderful. They set me up with a supply line, I would put a bottle of warm formula in my bra and a very fine tube would be taped beside my nipple so that my son could attach to me but get formula. The idea was to increase my supply while giving him a feed so we would no longer need top up bottles. It started to work, although my little man being so smart started to refuse to take my boob if there was no supply line or attached bottle. I would try pinching off the line part way through the feed but he would pull off and give me a look that just said "I know what you have done!" I was just starting to despair of ever having my son, who was 4 months old by now, fully breastfed. Then my own health let me down. After months of sleep deprivation, restrictive diets and depression I ended up in hospital with pneumonia. I was very sick. The only reasons they didn't keep me in was because they didn't have the beds, I threatened to sign myself out and my husband (a school teacher) was home on school holidays to look after me and the baby. I was given a ton of different medications. With each one the doctor would tell me "this is safe for breastfeeding". After the fourth script I stopped him and asked, "you say each one is safe for breastfeeding but what about all of them together?" He didn't know. No one did. My husband had been bottle feeding my son while I was in hospital and between that and the doubt in my own mind about what all these different medications might do to my child I finally decided to give up the struggle to breast feed.
The change in my child was astonishing. By the time I was well enough to notice he was in a routine. He was sleeping through most nights. The colic stopped. He was on a prescription formula. It is specially processed so that the milk proteins that can cause allergic reactions were already broken down before hand. The pediatrician had also put him on medication for reflux. He was a happy healthy baby at last. I still felt like a failure and the occasional questions from other mothers, old and young, and health professionals about why he wasn't breastfed didn't help. We then went through three years of avoiding milk in all forms until he was given the all clear by an immunologist. In hindsight with what happened with my daughter later I suspect that milk was never his problem. But again this is a topic for another post. I will always wonder if my son's tendency to be sensitive and easily upset comes from spending his first four months of life in pain and not getting good sleep. I guess it is something I will never know. However he has grown into a very healthy and generally happy boy. :-)
Monday, October 25, 2010
Headaches
I suffer from headaches. No one has ever been able to figure out why. Anything that raises my blood pressure can set off a sudden onset migraine that leaves me writhing in pain. Unfortunately while I am pregnant I can't take the medication that normally helps keep these head aches in check. The drug can increase my baby's chance of having spina bifida. So there is no question of my taking it. I can last out another six months until the baby is born. I have heard that it is safe for breastfeeding but I am not sure I want to be taking so many medications and passing them onto the baby. Anyway that is a whole new post. In the mean time I am having battle frequently with bad headaches. The worse ones are making my morning sickness worse, I usually feel a bit sick when I have a bad one so it is just piling up on top of the morning sickness. Today is a bad one. I am struggling along at work but only with the help of some Panadeine which has its own unwelcome side effects. What I really want to do is go home and sleep for the day but alas it is not an option. So on with the day and thinking about my perfectly healthy baby to keep me going :-)
Thursday, October 21, 2010
"Placenta brain"
Anyone who has ever been pregnant or spent time with someone who is pregnant will know what I mean. It seems as soon as you have a small parasite nestling in your womb it sucks all the life out of your brain. It was bad with my first pregnancy. Here's me who can remember our social calendar 6 months in advance, pay all the bills on time and, according to my husband, recite back something said in the heat of an argument 5 years previously, suddenly unable to remember what shopping I was supposed to pick up on the way home. And your brain never recovers. I never found myself miraculously able to recite back something my husband had promised a year ago. But I learned to cope. Then along came the second pregnancy and it got worse. Not only did I forget what I was going to the shops for I forgot to go to the shops. I would walk into a room and wonder why I was there. I started to wonder if I had some early onset of Alzheimers or even what my Mum calls "Old-timers". Again I managed to never have the power cut off and I learned to cope. Now with a third pregnancy it is so much worse again. I can forget what day of the week it is. I can certainly forget what I was just doing at any point in time. I forget appointments, dates and phone calls. Get a diary you say?! I have one. The problem is I have to remember to write things down and THEN I have to remember to look in it occasionally. I have a diary and a calendar that lives on the kitchen bench at home, supposedly to keep track of kids events, family gatherings, bills etc etc. I have a personal diary to keep track of what I am doing on any given day. And at work I have Outlook into which I put anything and a reminder pops up at the appropriate time. Again I have to remember to actually put things in. I do owe a lot to the Outlook calendar, I even have reminders in there for the days I need to pick up my son from school. Without which I know there would have been days when I would have gotten to 3pm and wondered vaguely what I had forgotten before my phone would ring at 3.15 with my sons teacher on the other end wondering who was supposed to be picking up my child.
Again I have to wonder what the evolutionary advantage of losing your faculties ever offered to pregnant women. Did primitive hunter gathers find it advantageous to forget where they left their first born child? May be the trauma of being so thoroughly forgotten by the one person who is supposed to care the most toughened our offspring up and left them better able to cope with the rigors of primitive society. What ever the reason for it there is one small advantage, in 12 months time when I am busy caring for our new baby and our older children all the pains and complaints of pregnancy will be well forgotten.
Again I have to wonder what the evolutionary advantage of losing your faculties ever offered to pregnant women. Did primitive hunter gathers find it advantageous to forget where they left their first born child? May be the trauma of being so thoroughly forgotten by the one person who is supposed to care the most toughened our offspring up and left them better able to cope with the rigors of primitive society. What ever the reason for it there is one small advantage, in 12 months time when I am busy caring for our new baby and our older children all the pains and complaints of pregnancy will be well forgotten.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
thanks
Ok I would like to say something important today. I want to thank my husband. The past few weeks have been just as trying for him as they have been for me but I have been totally focused on myself. The tiredness and morning sickness have robbed me of my energy to do much at all. The house is constantly a mess and a lot of things have fallen behind. At the moment you can't see our lounge suite for the huge mountain of washing that is waiting to be sorted, a lot of that washing he has done not me. A lot of the care for our older children has fallen to him too. Through all this he has been very supportive and given me a lot of TLC. He brings me breakfast in bed every morning to help me get going and to help with the nausea. He gets home from work as early as he can and looks after the kids while I slip off for an afternoon nap. He not only baths the kids but will often start on dinner too. I am very lucky to have him and I know that I could not survive without him. I love you. Mel
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Hormones
There is an old and very crass joke that goes "How do you make a hormone?" "Kick her in the crotch!". I did say it was crass. But seriously what is the deal with hormones. Ok you expect a bit of a change when you are pregnant, after all it is making some pretty big changes to your body. But really what is with the emotional stuff. What evolutionary niche did the tendency to cry at the slightest provocation fill? Last night, ok the house was a mess, what else is new, I was seeing all the new furniture I had dreamed of disappearing, it was the start of my working week, but why oh why did I burst into tears when I started putting the kids toys away. Feeling overwhelmed yes, tired yes, but weepy WHY? When we were still hunter gatherers and that Sabre toothed tiger was stalking the slow one in the mob, (ie the one with the big pregnant belly waddling along behind everyone else) was bursting into tears really going to make the tiger stop and decide to eat the slightly faster grandmother over there? Hmm I don't think so. The extra blood, the fat deposits even the water retention I can all understand as being beneficial for mother and bub but I just don't get the over emotional hormonal state. Oh Well only 30 weeks and 3 days to go, but who is counting ;-)
House renovations
Ok so we are having a third child and we have a smallish three bedroom house. Why can't the kids share? That is what I thought. I was happy to have two of them share a room. We have a boy and a girl so the baby is going to be the same sex as one of them. But my husband was pretty adamant that he wanted the kids to each have their own room. And the more I thought I about it the more I agree. We are not rich by any means but we do have the means to provide our kids with a bed room each. Ok it is taking a loan from the bank to do it but what does that matter. What is more important than our kids. We have a double garage that we haven't been able to get a car into in some time. It is too full of junk, including all our baby stuff that we hadn't gotten around to selling or giving away, thank goodness. So we are going to convert it into a bedroom, a study/craft room and a play/rumpus room. It will be wonderful to have a bit more space. Our daughter will probably move into the new bedroom and she will be able to pick out the colours etc. I can already see what she will pick now, Pink Pink and more pink. She is very much a girly girl :-) The baby can have her old room, which has always been the nursery and is the closest to our room. The study/craft room is the one I am most excited about I have to admit. I do have a dedicated craft space but it is basically a little cubby hole in our bedroom. So I have to be quiet and any mess has to be stepped over etc on a daily basis. Having a room with the computer and all my craft stuff in it will be heaven. I have already started planning out how I am going to organise it. I know we are having a new baby and I am more excited about getting a craft room. What can I say? I will be excited about the baby when it arrives don't worry.
So we had a meeting with a building designer yesterday and he told us that what we want is doable and will should (very big provisos on this word) get past planning regulations. It is also doable with our budget. That was the disappointing part, I was really hoping that he would tell us that we had heaps so we could get some new furniture and the soft furnishings but I guess we are just going to have to save every cent we can so we can get those things. All in all I am pretty happy about our plans. :-)
So we had a meeting with a building designer yesterday and he told us that what we want is doable and will should (very big provisos on this word) get past planning regulations. It is also doable with our budget. That was the disappointing part, I was really hoping that he would tell us that we had heaps so we could get some new furniture and the soft furnishings but I guess we are just going to have to save every cent we can so we can get those things. All in all I am pretty happy about our plans. :-)
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Telling family
Always a big moment with any pregnancy. I wanted to wait until the end of the first trimester, there is less chance of anything going wrong after that point. But my husband was keen to tell everyone. So we compromised and waiting until after I had the dating ultrasound which turned out to be at 6 weeks into the pregnancy. There was a heart beat so that is a good sign. I still felt and still feel nervous that something could go wrong but I was keen to tell our children and if we told them we might as well tell our parents because 6yo and 3yo are not known for their ability to keep a secret. So we invited the whole family over for a dinner to "celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary".
A couple of hours before the dinner we sat down with our older children and told them they were getting another sibling. Our 3yo girl didn't really take it in and was distracted by something else almost straight away. Our 6yo son was a different matter. He was very excited and loved the idea. He went off and drew a picture of me with a speech bubble over my head and asked us how to spell "I am pregnant". It was very cute and we told him he should use it to tell everyone.
So a couple of hours later my mum shows up on time. An hour and a half later my brother- and sister-in-law show up. We wait another hour for my husbands parents but they never show. We tried to call them several times but got no answer. By this stage our little man is chomping at the bit to show everyone his news. So we tell him to go ahead. Everyone thinks it is a cute drawing but no one seems to twig why he would draw it. My mum asks "so who said that?" I smile and say "I did". She looks at me in disbelief, she was well aware that we were not keen to have any more children. Finally everyone gets the message that yes I am pregnant and we are having another child.
The next day we get a call from my in-laws, appologising for forgetting about dinner. I am not really impressed, my husband had been pretty upset. This is not the first time that they have done this, it is not even the second, I have lost count actually. On one occasion they forgot about his 30th birthday dinner. Anyway they stop by that afternoon to see us. My husband to my annoyance doesn't say much about them forgetting, he told me earlier that there was no point. I think he should let them know how hurt he was.
Anyway our son shows them his picture and my father-in-law thinks it is a good joke that he is telling them until he looks up at my husband who is nodding, then at me who is also nodding. The first words out of his mouth are then "but I thought you had yourself fixed?!" which just cracks me up. It brings up the mental image of sending my husband off to the vets to be "fixed" like we did with the dogs. "Hi is he done yet? Can I pick him up? does he need one of those cone things for his head to stop him licking the wound?".
Then a phone call to my Dad in Queensland and a call to my brother in Melbourne and the whole family know. Our closest friends also know but we are keeping it mostly to ourselves for the time being. I am only 8 weeks pregnant and there is still a lot that could go wrong.
Fingers crossed it all goes right :-)
A couple of hours before the dinner we sat down with our older children and told them they were getting another sibling. Our 3yo girl didn't really take it in and was distracted by something else almost straight away. Our 6yo son was a different matter. He was very excited and loved the idea. He went off and drew a picture of me with a speech bubble over my head and asked us how to spell "I am pregnant". It was very cute and we told him he should use it to tell everyone.
So a couple of hours later my mum shows up on time. An hour and a half later my brother- and sister-in-law show up. We wait another hour for my husbands parents but they never show. We tried to call them several times but got no answer. By this stage our little man is chomping at the bit to show everyone his news. So we tell him to go ahead. Everyone thinks it is a cute drawing but no one seems to twig why he would draw it. My mum asks "so who said that?" I smile and say "I did". She looks at me in disbelief, she was well aware that we were not keen to have any more children. Finally everyone gets the message that yes I am pregnant and we are having another child.
The next day we get a call from my in-laws, appologising for forgetting about dinner. I am not really impressed, my husband had been pretty upset. This is not the first time that they have done this, it is not even the second, I have lost count actually. On one occasion they forgot about his 30th birthday dinner. Anyway they stop by that afternoon to see us. My husband to my annoyance doesn't say much about them forgetting, he told me earlier that there was no point. I think he should let them know how hurt he was.
Anyway our son shows them his picture and my father-in-law thinks it is a good joke that he is telling them until he looks up at my husband who is nodding, then at me who is also nodding. The first words out of his mouth are then "but I thought you had yourself fixed?!" which just cracks me up. It brings up the mental image of sending my husband off to the vets to be "fixed" like we did with the dogs. "Hi is he done yet? Can I pick him up? does he need one of those cone things for his head to stop him licking the wound?".
Then a phone call to my Dad in Queensland and a call to my brother in Melbourne and the whole family know. Our closest friends also know but we are keeping it mostly to ourselves for the time being. I am only 8 weeks pregnant and there is still a lot that could go wrong.
Fingers crossed it all goes right :-)
"What?!"
As always there are some funny stories about this pregnancy that I would like to share. There are also some not so funny stories that I will share but I think how we found out that we are going to be parents again is pretty funny. It is also bordering on TMI so be warned ;-)
Well I got all my usual monthly symptoms, sore boobs (see what I mean about TMI), constipated, wanting to rip everyone's head off for no good reason... But then nothing. Most of those symptoms went away... well they changed anyway. My boobs got sorer, still constipated but far from wanting to rip everyone's head off I constantly swung between feeling happy and wanting to cry at the smallest thing. Still that didn't really twig any thoughts of pregnancy, sounds a bit dumb now but remember we were using contraception. Anyway a couple of days down the track the thought started to creep up on me that maybe just maybe I was pregnant. I was talking to my closest friend on email and I slipped a PS in at the end of one of the emails, "PS. I think I am knocked up". About 10 seconds after hitting the send button my phone rang and my friend told me, in spite of the evidence, that I couldn't put something like that in a PS. Later that day I started to get some cramps I told her and we decided that I had been wrong.
That evening the cramps had gone away and my period still hadn't arrived. I was still feeling really emotional and my boobs hurt to the point were my arm brushing against them almost sent me through the roof. I hadn't really thought any more about it though until I was cooking dinner. I was browning some mince, normally a pretty nice cooking smell but it was making me feel ill. Then I added some red wine to the mince and I almost vomited into the kitchen sink. Ok that is not normal. Once we had our kids in bed I asked my husband to go to the store to pick some stuff up and I gave him a shopping list
Milk
Bread
Pregnancy test
He read the list and just looked at me.
"You're late?"
"No honey I just thought it would be fun and a good way to waste some money", no I just thought that really, I guess I was on the down swing of my hormonal cycle. I simply said "Yes!" So he came back with a single pack of the cheapest test on the market, I guess he didn't really believe it either. I took the test and there was the faintest of faint positive result. No way! We both pointed out that I had done something wrong with the test. Now feeling very agitated I sent my husband back to the shops. He came home with a three pack of the same brand. I took another two both with the same very positive result. Hmm nope still can't be true. So I saved the fourth and final test for the following morning, knowing that a morning test is the most accurate. Sure enough the next morning brought a much darker line and a much more convincing positive test. Oh Shit!
So off to the doctor, still not really believing it. That was until I was sitting in the waiting room reading a story about a dog that was saved from the bush fires, it was all I could do not to burst into tears. Ok so I was REALLY hormonal, it finally started to sink in. I walked into the doctors office and said "I'm pregnant!" I guess the look on my face said it all because she just started laughing at me.
Of course the blood test confirmed it and I have now had an ultrasound too. Seeing that little heartbeat was the final positive for me. I am having another baby and I couldn't be happier!
Well I got all my usual monthly symptoms, sore boobs (see what I mean about TMI), constipated, wanting to rip everyone's head off for no good reason... But then nothing. Most of those symptoms went away... well they changed anyway. My boobs got sorer, still constipated but far from wanting to rip everyone's head off I constantly swung between feeling happy and wanting to cry at the smallest thing. Still that didn't really twig any thoughts of pregnancy, sounds a bit dumb now but remember we were using contraception. Anyway a couple of days down the track the thought started to creep up on me that maybe just maybe I was pregnant. I was talking to my closest friend on email and I slipped a PS in at the end of one of the emails, "PS. I think I am knocked up". About 10 seconds after hitting the send button my phone rang and my friend told me, in spite of the evidence, that I couldn't put something like that in a PS. Later that day I started to get some cramps I told her and we decided that I had been wrong.
That evening the cramps had gone away and my period still hadn't arrived. I was still feeling really emotional and my boobs hurt to the point were my arm brushing against them almost sent me through the roof. I hadn't really thought any more about it though until I was cooking dinner. I was browning some mince, normally a pretty nice cooking smell but it was making me feel ill. Then I added some red wine to the mince and I almost vomited into the kitchen sink. Ok that is not normal. Once we had our kids in bed I asked my husband to go to the store to pick some stuff up and I gave him a shopping list
Milk
Bread
Pregnancy test
He read the list and just looked at me.
"You're late?"
"No honey I just thought it would be fun and a good way to waste some money", no I just thought that really, I guess I was on the down swing of my hormonal cycle. I simply said "Yes!" So he came back with a single pack of the cheapest test on the market, I guess he didn't really believe it either. I took the test and there was the faintest of faint positive result. No way! We both pointed out that I had done something wrong with the test. Now feeling very agitated I sent my husband back to the shops. He came home with a three pack of the same brand. I took another two both with the same very positive result. Hmm nope still can't be true. So I saved the fourth and final test for the following morning, knowing that a morning test is the most accurate. Sure enough the next morning brought a much darker line and a much more convincing positive test. Oh Shit!
So off to the doctor, still not really believing it. That was until I was sitting in the waiting room reading a story about a dog that was saved from the bush fires, it was all I could do not to burst into tears. Ok so I was REALLY hormonal, it finally started to sink in. I walked into the doctors office and said "I'm pregnant!" I guess the look on my face said it all because she just started laughing at me.
Of course the blood test confirmed it and I have now had an ultrasound too. Seeing that little heartbeat was the final positive for me. I am having another baby and I couldn't be happier!
Mirror
Well I had a good look in the mirror this morning. And I mean I really looked. Most of us (all of us?) look in the mirror and look at one particular thing, do I have something in my teeth, do I have a zit? Or we see the picture in our heads. In my head I still look the way I did when I was 17, given that that was 20 years ago the real image has shifted a bit. So I took a real look at myself. And I saw a very overweight middle age woman who is suddenly pregnant and looking very very tired. So what can I do to improve this image? I have been resting a lot lately, well I am pregnant and I currently have a kidney infection which is not much fun so I have needed plenty of rest. But is it possible to have too much. I look around my house and what a mess it is, and think about what a mess I am and I think I need to get moving! So what can I do? It isn't like I should or even could launch myself into a sudden fitness routine. I do need to take it slowly. So I am going to go and organise that gym membership I am owed and I am going to get out my Wii fit again. Even if I just do some yoga every night for the next few weeks it is still moving.
I am also going to stop giving in to my cravings. I know that you are supposed to give in to cravings because the theory is that it is something your body needs but am I craving Chinese takeaway because my body really needs CHINESE TAKEAWAY or simply because I need some salt and possible some oils? So I am going to try and steer to the healthier option. If I am craving Chinese Takeaway ok, I will make myself a stir fry and see if that will do.
Hopefully by the time this baby arrives what I see in the mirror won't be so much of a tired overweight middle aged woman as a slightly healthier (being realistic here) slightly less overweight and not so tired middle aged woman. :-)
I am also going to stop giving in to my cravings. I know that you are supposed to give in to cravings because the theory is that it is something your body needs but am I craving Chinese takeaway because my body really needs CHINESE TAKEAWAY or simply because I need some salt and possible some oils? So I am going to try and steer to the healthier option. If I am craving Chinese Takeaway ok, I will make myself a stir fry and see if that will do.
Hopefully by the time this baby arrives what I see in the mirror won't be so much of a tired overweight middle aged woman as a slightly healthier (being realistic here) slightly less overweight and not so tired middle aged woman. :-)
Here!
So here I am 37 and unexpectedly pregnant with our third child. I only ever wanted two children and we have a boy 6 and a girl 3 who are my world. Sure over the past few years I have gotten cluckier and cluckier but if I let my, what a teacher of mine once called, "enviable good sense" take over I knew that it probably wasn't a good idea. Not just the three bedroom home that we built and love and never want to leave, or the small car that will just fit a family of four, my babies were nightmares. Don't get me wrong, I love them and loved them then too, with all my life. That is probably why it was so hard when they would scream in pain for up to 18 hours a day. I ended up in hospital when my son was 6 months old with pneumonia because I had not been looking after myself while trying to cope with the demands of a baby that never slept. My daughter ended up in A&E at 6 days old because she was vomiting blood from over feeding and then in hospital at 6 weeks old because she would scream constantly. They both have a problem with their bowels that it seems runs in my family and explains my history of irritable bowel, reflux and heartburn. Not to mention we are just getting to the point where our children are becoming more independent and life is getting that little bit easier. My husband certainly didn't want a third child. And despite what a lot of people might think we were using contraception. However as my GP laughingly told me NOTHING is ever 100% effective. I guess the proof is in my morning sickness. Despite all of this and how this has thrown our little world into turmoil I can't help but be happy. A baby is a blessing and I can't help but feel blessed. I know my husband who was very firm on never wanting any more children can't seem to wipe the grin off his face and our children are pretty happy to be getting another sibling too. Now just to survive this pregnancy and sort out the practicalities :-)
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