By 28 weeks I'd finished the nursery (one benefit to sleepless nights.... which also reminds me that i should post about how great Cooper is doing in his new 'big boy"bed and room). Baby girls nursery looked like someone had vomited pink frills and lace all over it. I'd try to keep in colour scheme with the already existing pale greens and browns used for when Cooper was born, but the pink certainly was excessive. I had managed to find a complete bedding set on eBay, a cheeky little monkey themed set which worked perfectly, I then scrolled Pinterest for wall art ideas that I could easily make on my own and DIY projects that would just complete the room. One such project was wall papering a cheap old stand alone wardrobe - as it turns out the cost and time it took to wall paper it could have been better spent just buying a nicer one, but in the end the finished product looked amazing and helped make the room come together.
At 30 weeks we suffered a scare. I had managed to pick up some sort of tummy bug and spent 2 days trying to hold down meals and water. It was the start of the 3rd day when the cramping began and didn't stop and I decided that I should check in at the maternity ward to be assessed. As a result of the constant throwing I was in pre-term labour and was quickly sent off to have some injections to stop the contractions. The problem with the injections is that they can cause your blood pressure to drop, and as I normally have quite low blood pressure (100 / 60) I was only allowed two injections before it became to risky and as such I was also given some steroids to help develop the babies lungs should the contractions not cease and I had to delivery my baby girl. 12 hours after the 2nd injection the contractions had stopped, I spent the next 36 hours in hospital being monitored but was able to go home and resume normality again but was told to take it easy (not something I do well unfortunately).
From there things sailed somewhat less comfortably, the reflux persisted and worsened, the insomnia did not improve and the already crowded space that was my uterus seemed not to want to grow along with my growing baby, resulting in two tiny feet under my rib cage, a small bony bottom pushed against my stomach and a skull wedged firmly between my pelvic bones and resting on my cervix. I was the kind of uncomfortable at 36 weeks that I was at 39 with Cooper, the kind that contemplates the old wives tales for induction, but knows better than to rush an unborn baby into the world for fear of complications or healthy problems.
At 37 weeks I went to bed one night with some mild cramping that started in my lower back and radiated through to my lower abdominal, I thought nothing of it at the start, but as the night progressed so did the intensity. I anxiously spent the next 7 hours timing the contractions, only to have them fizzle out at around 6am. This happened a few more times through out my 37th week and all I could think was my uterus does not need any more practise, it's done it once, surely it can just draw on it's own previous experience when the time comes.
I was extremely fortunate this pregnancy to be assigned a 3rd year student mid wife, this meant that every appointment and every false alarm I had her to guide me through. I think it's called continuity of care and it was wonderful. It was around this time that I started thinking about labour, and what I could remember from Coopers birth. I remember it being painful, I remember begging for an epidural(that I had to let wear off),I remember the epidural making me a little loopy, unbalanced and incoherent at times and then I remember him being placed onto my chest after 21 hours of labour and feeling totally overwhelmed. I wanted this time to be different, I wanted the mid wife to be 100% on my page and able to talk me through the pain, I wanted her to enforce the birth plan I had set (which mind you was far more fluid than that of Coopers), I wanted her to be strong when Simon couldn't.
This time I wanted a drug free birth.
No comments:
Post a Comment