A very late announcement

It’s only taken me almost seven weeks, but here it is, my baby announcement. Orla arrived on St Patrick’s Day, much to the utter delight of her Irish daddy. In the end, she was born four weeks early after I began bleeding again and showed signs of early labour. My C-section was classed as an emergency, though – thanks to the fact I’d eaten two slices of toast that morning – I actually had several hours to get my head around the fact I would be meeting my daughter that day. Despite the fact she was going to be premature, I was relieved the consultant took the decision to deliver her when she did. My hospital stay had become pretty tough, particularly that week as Poppy had picked up a sickness bug and was crying down the phone to me, begging me to go home to her. Every part of me wanted to up and leave so I could be with my little girl, but I knew that would be a stupid thing to do. And of course, she couldn’t come up to the hospital to visit me either as we couldn’t risk the spread of infection. It broke my heart.

So it was with nervous excitement that me and Paddy laughed and joked away the hours waiting in the labour ward for the operation I’d spent weeks and weeks worrying about. We met the team who were going to be performing my surgery, who tried their best to convince me that, basically, they had got this. Just before we left for the operating theatre, The Proclaimers and The Pogues came on the radio in the labour suite, as if to confirm Orla’s Scottish and Irishness.

At that point, my nerves really got the better of me, and as I sat on the hospital bed in the floodlit theatre, with Paddy kitted out in ridiculous ill-fitting hospital scrubs, it felt like the set of a film, not something that was happening to me. My entire body began to shake, and I remember being asked if my heart rate was always that high, thinking ‘do I really need to answer that?!’ We were encouraged to put on some music, so a rather bizarre conversation about indie music and Bluetooth connection ensued as the anaesthetist inserted a spinal into my back, pointing out the microscopic mistake her predecessor had made just over five years ago when I was giving birth to Poppy, which meant my epidural didn’t work. I remember thinking she was amazing to be able to spot that, and I felt safe in her hands.

The operation itself was pretty straight forward. I lay there chatting to Paddy about the amazing spa weekend he was obligated to buy me for going through all this, while LCD Soundsystem, Father John Misty and Metronomy provided the soundtrack (Orla was pulled out to Metronomy’s The Look). I didn’t really know for sure that they had started until the midwife announced our baby would be here in five minutes or so. There was some almighty tugging inside my stomach, there was some much-welcomed crying as she was pulled out of her home of eight months, and there she was. At five minutes past seven, Orla finally entered our world.

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Musings from a hospital bed…

When you get to the stage where you have to ask strangers to put your stockings on for you….

Day 10 in the Big Brother House Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Still managing to cling on to my sanity (I think). I have good days and bad days, but there are things I try to do to help me get through the latter, and to try to keep my spirits up to make my stay as bearable as possible.
So here are some of my observations/bits of advice/general ramblings about extended hospital stays. In no particular order, other than the order they popped into my brain…

1. You can never have too much moisturiser, hand cream, lip balm and body lotion. Hospitals are like saunas, your skin will not survive unless you obsessively moisturise.

2. Establish a routine. Then sometimes break the routine to feel like a rebel.

3.Shower and get dressed every day. At the very least, it kills half an hour. And it stops you earning the nickname of ‘the smelly one’.

4. Try to get some fresh air as regularly as possible. It’s often the best medicine.

5. Try not to get into a fight with the patients who gather outside to smoke, polluting your fresh air.

6.Try not to give the evils to the pregnant patients who gather outside to smoke, polluting your fresh air.

7.Drink as much water as you can, for the same reason as point 1.

8. Invest in good quality earplugs (especially when you’re on a maternity ward).

9. Make friends with the staff. Small talk and a smile can be your saviour.

10. Be prepared to make the same jokes with every member of staff you see. (Just try not to make the same joke to the same person twice….not cool).

11. Treat yourself to a sausage and tattie scone roll at least once a week.

12. Take advantage of the little-known free telly between 8am and 12pm. I look forward to my double bill of Frasier at 9am. Yes, I genuinely do.

13. Never turn down the offer of a visitor. Visitors break up the day and tie in nicely with point 2.

14. If you have rubbish veins (like me), make sure you forewarn whoever is about to stick a needle in you. With any luck, they’ll abort mission and call in an expert without making (yet another) failed attempt.

15. Cannulas are the work of the devil.

16. Always order soup as a starter. It’s generally ok, there’s a decent chance there might be some contribution to your 5 a day in there somewhere, and at least you’ll have something in your stomach when the main course is inevitably inedible.

17. Buy more data for your phone.

18. When someone asks if you want anything brought in, ask for fruit. Just trust me.

19. Putting on hospital stockings is actually impossible when heavily pregnant.

20. Just putting on socks is actually impossible when heavily pregnant.

21. Take one day at a time.

22. Fill your laptop with easy viewing box sets. (My current guilty pleasure is Gilmore Girls….)

23. Make the most of the opportunity to read actual books.

24. Never walk around the hospital/hospital grounds in your Pjs and dressing gown. Self respect and standards can – and must – be maintained.

25. Get a portable charger if you don’t have one already. The plug sockets are way too high to be of any use for a charging and chatting combo.

26. Crisps are great, whether you’re in hospital or not.

27. Listen to your favourite music daily.

28. Try to actually get some rest. When else can you lie around all day, guilt-free?

29. Get a visitor to bring you in a take-away every so often.

30. Be grateful you’re not in prison.

Rubbish veins/not a junkie.

The final countdown

Greetings from the world’s worst advert for pregnancy. Or the world’s best advert for contraception, whichever you prefer.

So, where do I begin? Since my last (highly uplifting) blog I have been diagnosed with a complication called ‘major placenta praevia’. Tune in now for another brief medical lesson. There are varying degrees of this condition, and of course, I have to have the worst one. Basically, instead of my placenta – the organ which provides food and oxygen to a baby – being at the top of the womb as it should be, it is at the bottom. The problem with this is that, unfortunately, it is completely covering my cervix – aka my baby’s exit route. So obviously the baby will have to find another way to make her entrance into the big bad world, namely by caesarean section, which in itself isn’t that much of a concern. However, the other main problem with a major praevia is that it can, and frequently does, lead to the placenta bleeding. And it can lead to it bleeding a lot. Think losing your entire blood volume in 10 mins……This is why major placenta praevia is categorised as “potentially life threatening”. And this is also why, after a couple of recent episodes of bleeding from my placenta, I am not being allowed out of hospital until I deliver this baby.

In total, I’ve been in hospital for nine days because of the bleeding. This morning, a consultant told me that this will be my home for the next few weeks, and she is going to book my caesarean section to be carried out in three weeks. I have mixed feelings about the decision to keep me in hospital. The biggest part of me is relieved, as knowing they could deliver my baby within 10 minutes of a major bleed because I’m here in hospital is a massive comfort. With the best will in the world, there’s no way I could get from my house and ready for surgery in less than 30/40 mins if I had a big bleed at home. But, on the other hand, obviously it’s far from ideal when I have another daughter at home who needs her mummy just as much as the one growing inside me does.

But anyway, it is what it is, and as everyone keeps telling me, I’m in the best place. So long as the baby is born safely (and I manage not to bleed to death in the process) then it will definitely be worth it. And on the plus side, I now have my own room with en suite, a TV and room service, so it’s practically like being in a hotel. And I can binge watch multiple TV shows without feeling guilty, so it’s not all that bad…

My new pad for the next few weeks.

Is it in your tummy?

Hedgehog, bunny, or baby?

So, Poppy finally got her wish – a baby in my tummy. Which explains my blogging absence over the past little while. I’ve been absent from many aspects of life recently – I’d forgotten just how exhausting being pregnant is. I’d forgotten a lot about pregnancy actually. I guess your memory wipes itself a little bit, erasing all the horrible parts so that you’re not put off ever reproducing again.

At 16 weeks, I’m starting to feel it fluttering around inside, and that’s the part of pregnancy that your memory keeps. That stage of feeling the first signs of life growing inside of  you is the best feeling in the world.

I remember feeling Poppy’s first tiny kicks, but it’s sometimes now hard to imagine she was ever just the image on a scan. And now she’s holding a scan picture of her little brother or sister, desperate to be able to feel those kicks with her own hand.

Suffice to say, she’s over the moon with the news, and – on occasion – is even cutting me a bit of slack when I don’t feel like chasing her in the park or lifting her up the stairs.

To watch the video of her initial reaction to the baby news, visit http://www.facebook.com/writeonmumblog. Her complete and utter disbelief is just the sweetest.