Awww

Babychair just loves being bathed. Deckchair washed her hair first, while I took pictures and we were surprised at how quiet she was.

Even after she was fully placed in the water, she just looked around with her big beautiful blue eyes with surprise. She had a bit of a kick and seemed so content to be in the bath.

Our little water baby

This might sound like such a small thing to most people but I had my first solo trip with Babychair out of the house today.

We went to Meadowhall and spent the £20 gift voucher my parents friends had very kindly given us. I wanted Babychair to have a little outfit that both was girly and actually fitted her, in time for our weekend visit to the inlaws. I bought a little two piece, a cream top with long sleeves and a pink dress with ruffles and dots.

The trip there was uneventful, though I couldn't get in any of the children and parents spaces and I ended up struggling to get Babychair out of her carseat in a regular space and I had to set the pram up in the main flow of the car park.

I was even less pleased when I returned to the car park after completing our trip and saw two sets of parents with teenagers packing into and leaving the parent and child spaces...grrrr. Even the signs said specifically that only children in pushchairs should use those spaces.

Once released from the car, I struggled to get the pram moving in the right direction, until I remembered to unlock the front wheels blush

After that it was plain sailing, Babychair slept though the shopping trip, which involved a trip to both floors of the Mothercare shop and a visit to a cafe for a soft drink and chocolate cookie (naughty me)

Our first successful solo trip, next items on the list are changing nappies and feeding Babychair on outings....well maybe we can put these off for a while.

Maybe I should just stay in the house for the next couple of years !!!

Well, with the arrival of Babychair and the unexpected stay in hospital, this blog has been very quiet of late.

I am going to be updating events from the last nine days over the next couple of days, so it is worth looking back over the past dates for magically appearing entries and photos.

Speaking of which I STILL need to add my wedding and honeymoon entries to my blog from November 2005 !!!

My sister came down after work to visit and have a quick cuddle with Babychair and it seemed the right time to tell her that we were giving Babychair, her name as a middle name.

To say she was surprised was an understatement and we managed to capture the moment on film



My sister is going to be the best aunt ever to Babychair and a future babysitter (Deckchair and me hope)

Midwife arrived at 9:30am this morning !!!

Only I was up to take my early pain meds, both Deckchair and Babychair were asleep upstairs.

The midwife was very surprised that Babychair was sleeping so well, in fact I have to set the alarm to wake her for her night feed....she is such a sleepy baby

Good news she is now back to her birth weight of 8lb 12oz, which means she is feeding well. A relief for me as it is impossible to see how much milk Babychair takes while breastfeeding...for me this is validation that the sore nipples are paying off

Midwife advised to dust her cord with baby talc, as it is half off (update, it fell off completely this afternoon) and said how mellow and content baby Babychair is

We have one more midwife visit on Friday 1st September and then we get handed over to the health visitor team

Babychair is one week old today !!!

To celebrate Deckchair and I decided to go out for a bite to eat and a walk in our local park.

Weir just outside the park and cafe area

Me (BabiesEverywhere) pushing our fantastic Mama & Papas Pramette.

Deckchair cuddling Babychair

Babychair in her pram


Couple of pictures of the park's nature walk



Just a beautiful day and it was lovely to get outside

I really don't know how well we are doing at breastfeeding.

Babychair seems to latch on well despite my flat nipples and prefers one breast to the other. My milk has come in today and my breasts are feeling swollen and uncomfortable, so I hope that bit goes away.

I get quite a bit of pain every time she starts on a nipple, apparantly that is normal and will stop but my biggest concern is trying to keep her awake to have a long enough feed.

She tends to fall asleep whilst nursing and despite my best efforts I am struggling to get her to nurse more than 10/20 minutes at any one session.

I am trying to keep her awake by undressing her and tickling her feet etc but she still sleeps so much...bless her

The midwife found that Babychair had only lost 6oz in weight since birth, which is well within the acceptable 10% loss level for exclusively breastfed babies.

She also explained that I have an invitation for 'Birth Afterthoughts' next month, to go back to the hospital to go though my medical records with one of the staff.
She said it can help me deal with having experienced a traumatic birth and also to fill in the gaps in my memory.

I am going to take them up on the offer as it does scare me to see pictures that my husband, Deckchair took of me holding Babychair in a very dopey way in the High Dependant Ward and I have no memory at all of that time.

I also feel very helpless and tearful when I think of the labour and maybe this meeting will make me feel better about what happened, when I find out why some things happened the way they did.

I know I should just be grateful that Babychair was born healthy and I am healing from the third degree tear but I still am so upset that the birth was so far from anything I wanted out of labour, I feel like I failed.

I was deleting old programmes off my Tivo and I burst into tears when I saw the 'Home Birth' programmes on the list. I never even got to try for a home birth and I never will be able to try in the future as the hospital midwife informed me that any future births would be an automatic c-section and even the thought of a c-section scares me silly.

Babychair and I finally got discharged from hospital today. Deckchair came to pick us up at midday, it was so wonderful to get out of the hospital

It felt so weird being outside...the sun seemed so bright, everything was so busy and surreal. I felt so dizzy and out of it, even though I was so happy to be going home. In a horrible way I had got use to being in the hospital enviroment and it just seemed odd to be outside in the real world.

Just getting home was so emotional, I sat down on the rug in the living room and just burst into tears as I was so happy and relieved to be home.

Deckchair surprised me wth a brie and bacon sandwich which I had been craving thoughout my pregnancy....bless him for remembering.

Anyway onto the important things...Babychair's photos

Babychair in her carseat

Babychair in her Moses basket

Babychair's First Present from her daddy

...which was this beautiful pink bouncy chair which I had seen at Babies R Us

.......GIRL !!!

We have been blessed with an 8lb 12oz bouncing baby girl, to be named Babychair on the blog, as a mixture of my online name (BabiesEverywhere) and my husbands online name (Deckchair).

She was born on 20th August at 2:40pm via forceps at the local hospital.

To say the birth was a nightmare would of been an understatement...it was as far from a natural birth as possible.

The brief outline was I ended up being induced in hospital, having a load of different drug relief ending with an epidural/forcep delivery.

I had a third degree tear and lost 4 pints of blood i.e. half my body weight. It all gets a bit fuzzy at that point. I spend the first 24 hours in the High Dependant Unit (don't remember much about that time either, what I remembered was very painful)

Then I have spend the next three days in hospital with Babychair. We were discharged home on the 24th August and I have spend the last three hours asleep in my own home...bliss

On the bright side Babychair was born healthy (bit jaudiced but nothing serious) and she is such a beautiful baby. We are so in love with her and I couldn't image life without her

Here is a picture of our precious daughter at four days old

Deckchair came to the bathroom whilst I was having a bath and praying for my contractions to start again, he had received a phone call from hospital. Apparantly I was positive for Strep B and I had to go to hospital to be induced...I just cried and cried...the last thing I wanted was to be induced, strapped to a hospital bed with constant fetal monitoring.

But we had no choice, Strep B can be very nasty for a baby and we had to do what the professionals recommended. After repacking my hospital bag and having a very tearful phone conversation with my mum, we set off with a heavy heart to the hospital.

I had steady contractions all day, roughly every ten minutes apart but they weren't gettiung stronger or closer together

All in all a tiring and disappointing day.

No baby yet, contractions still only 10 minutes apart.

When I rang the local hospital too check when they needed to be notified of my pending home birth, they were concerned that my waters had broken and that I still wasn't in proper labour and asked us to go down to the maternity hospital for a Strep B swab, just in case baby doesn't come in the next three days.

We spent hours in the small triage room waiting on the one very nice and over worked nurse and the one very nice and over worked midwife to get the five minutes of attention we needed before we could go home.

My contractions felt ten times worse whilst I was within the hospital and my Tens machine battery gave out and I was so upset and told the nurse I had to go home for a battery but luckily she managed to find me one (bless her).

I was so relieved to get home, even though I ended up sleeping on the sofa as my contractions were numerous and intense enought to keep me awake but were not getting closer together.

Thursday 17th August7am
Rang my mum and told her about the waters breaking and my contractions which seem to be coming at 5 minute intervals now !!! She was so excited and is going to call me at lunch time and after work. She couldn't believe how calm I sounded, that is because I have waited 9 months for today and I can't wait to met Bert...I know labour is a painful experience but at the end of it I will get to meet my child !!!

7:30am
Had a shower and got dressed, left Deckchair in bed. He'll need all the sleep he can get for later

8am
Rang Tigerfeet to tell her the news, she was pleased for me as she knew how fed up I have been over the last few days.

9am
Rang my sister, as she is not in work this week (as she is moving into her first house with her partner) I didn't think I could ring any earlier than this.

Rang MIL

9:30am
Put on Tens machine, well Deckchair did.

Slow contractions all day maybe 10 minutes apart.

Rang hospital to ask about when I get a home midwife.

They rang community midwives, then rang me back and asked me to come to Jessops for a strep b swab.

Reluctantly went in at 9:30pm and got back at 11:20pm

Contractions very strong whilst I stayed up and talked to my sister every 8 minutes.

Sent Deckchair to bed and I decided to sleep on the sofa.

Friday 18th August
Since 12:00pm I have been having very infrequent but very strong contractons which are very painful, plus I am going to the loo every hour.

It is now 3:50am and everytime I try and lie down I have a very strong contraction, whilst I sit/stand up I get nothing..plus my waters are still leaking I am so tired, Bert is kicking away but I am worried about his/her having to put up with less water.

Unless things really start moving shortly, it is not looking like I will be having the home water birth I wanted. I am starting to wonder when Bert will be here.

My community midwife is meant to be visiting me in the morning and I know one of the topics will be inducement in hospital..just as she wanted from the beginning...she doesn't believe in first babies being home births.

I know Bert was fine 11pm last night and that is the thing most upfront in my mind that I do whatever is necessary to bring Bert into this world as a healthy baby.

To be updated

I had that kind of feeling you get when your period starts, so I dashed to the toilet and on the way out of bed and the few steps to the toilet my waters broke !!!

The first gush or so had blood in it and I can't remember if that is a problem or not. I remember from the baby classes that green or brown water meant going to the hospital, as the baby was in distress but nothing about blood.

I have posted on the two parenting boards for advice and I'm typing up this entry whilst waiting for a response. One board is Americian (www.pregnancy.org) and the other English (www.mumsnet.com), so hopefully someone will be around to give me advice. I usually google for answers but my head isn't working well at the moment !!!

I am still leaking, thank goodness for maternity pads (too much information I know) but I am so excited that something is happening.

I wonder how soon I'll go into labour...I think they let you go 48 hours from the time of waters breaking which was 3:55am.

I am getting crampy BH, I wonder if these are mild real contractions !?!

I went back to bed and woke Deckchair up to tell him my waters have broken...I wonder do I let him go to work or should I keep him home with me...I told him to stay in bed but as I'm downstairs typing this I can hear him in the bathroom.

Update: Bless the internet Liz responded on the USA board and said I proberly had a bloody show at the same time as my waters breaking and not to worry about it :)

Second Update: What do I do now...I just had my first two contractions, shall I go back to bed and get some sleep or stay up for a bit !?! Deckchair came downstairs and gave me a cuddle:)

Third Update: Another waterfall drove me to the loo again...I've sent Deckchair to bed as the contractions are only 10 minutes apart and armed with towels, I'm going to try and get some sleep myself...good night everyone (I can not believe I am up on the internet at 4:53am in the morning