Stay Positive!

So I felt the itch to blog today, and my current hosting on my main blog is down for whatever reason, so, nearly a year later, I am blogging right here again.

The last 10ish months have not been without drama - parenting two kids who were two under two for the majority of the last 10 months was no walk in the park.  There have been moments of pure bliss (oh my god I got them to nap at the same time?!) to sheer frustration, to infuriating anger, to soulful tears, to absolute joy.  It's a rollercoaster, let me tell you!

And I won't lie - I need to be real - there have absolutely been moments where I wanted just to get off the ride.  I just wanted to put them in their rooms and walk out.The reality of parenthood is that you love and care *so* much for these little people that when they don't listen and they don't understand and they just cry all the dang time that you break down, because your love for them is so overwhelming and you don't get why they don't get it.  Why can't you just sit and watch a movie?! Why can't you put your toys back in the box? Why can't you put your wet nappy in the bin rather than leave in the middle of the living room?

I believe I went through more than Baby Blues after having Emmett.  I thought PND would be something that you would only get with a first baby.  I believed that after having Lily, who was such a difficult baby who never slept, screamed a lot, cried a lot, that I could deal with anything this new kid could throw at me.

Instead, I was battling both of them.  Emmett started off just perfect - he slept well, he woke just for feeds, was happy while awake, then slept again.  Then came teeth, and he turned into a completely different child.  Now I am lucky if I can get 2-3 hours sleep during the night without having him wake up.  He's still a really happy little kid (until nap/sleep time or nappy changes), but he's obviously very different to what he was.  Which is to be expected I guess.

So I did fall.  I fell hard into (undiagnosed) late onset PND.  I never saw a doctor, but I recognised what I was feeling as abnormal.  Thoughts went through my head, wondering how my little family would cope with me were I not around.  The amount of tears I have cried in the last 10 months is probably the most I have ever cried since I was a child myself.  The amount of times I've been so, *so* close to snapping have been countless.

I'm out of that darkness now - well, mostly out, it's more just needing my eyes to see rather than a torch - and I'm coping better.  I still have moment of what is, in hindsight, complete insanity and illogicalness, to coin a term, but I'm better than I was before.

My point in sharing this and being so candid is to be there with other mums going through the same thing and letting you know you are never alone in this.  Speak to someone, get some guidance.  Whatever you are doing, whichever way you're doing it, is amazing and just perfect the way it's being done.

Solidarity, sisters!

Till next time,
Terri

And then there were four!

So after my birth story with Lily, this one isn’t going to seem a lot different! Things went down pretty similarly excepting the time of day and the sex of the baby at the end of it all!

I had been having minor contractions in the week or so leading up to my labour – very irregular and not painful in the slightest, so I just put them down to Braxton Hicks. I was due on the 18th, and definitely expected going past my due date as I went 11 days over with Lily.

The 18th came and went without event. By the 22nd I was having the minor contractions. On the 23rd, I lost at least part of my mucus plug, which made me hopeful because with Lily I’d gone into labour within 48 hours of my plug going. I was so ready for this baby to be out – I could deal with the same pains and things I’d had when I was pregnant with Lily, but I had an excruciating muscle pain across the top of my belly which was getting beyond bearable.

The 24th went by without much event, until late afternoon, around 5-6pm, where I started getting contractions that were still irregular but getting quite strong. I started timing them, and they varied from 5-20 minutes apart each time, so I wasn’t too concerned yet, just kept timing.

By 8:15pm, they started getting more regular, approximately 7 minutes apart at that point. I counted a few more before contacting my mum around 9:15, letting her know she’d better come over. Meanwhile, Michael got on the phone to the hospital and let them know we were heading through shortly, and I contacted my midwife to let her know too.

By 9:30 my dad had also arrived to stay at home with Lily, so Mum, Michael and I headed off on the half-hour drive to the hospital. We got about 10 minutes in, and Michael asked me if I had everything – I said, “I think so?”, and then I realised I’d forgotten the baby’s bag!!! The whole reason we were going to the hospital in the first place! I said oh well, just get Dad to bring it through and I’m sure the hospital will have a bunch of stuff anyway.

I continued having contractions on the car ride, between 3-5 minutes apart, and regulated out to 4 minutes by the time we got into the delivery suite at about 10:30pm. My midwife put me on the CTG for about 20 minutes, confirmed it appeared I was in active labour, and examined me – I was a stretchy 5cm. I was very relieved because I was worried that they’d just send me home and that it was all in my head! I continued to labour by wandering around the room for a while, swaying with contractions. I was anxious to get in the tub too soon, but by about 11:45 I decided I’d get in. The water provided some relief initially, but after an hour & a half or so (about 1:15), the pain was back up to ‘High’. I moved around in the bath, to sitting on my bum and leaning back against the side of the tub.

It was great to begin with but my body started to tell me that I needed to get out of the tub, and onto the bed on my knees. I told my midwife between contractions that I needed to get out. She tried initially to talk me out of it because she knew how badly I wanted to have a waterbirth, but I told her that I need to be on my knees. She offered me gas & air, which I took for a couple of contractions, but then I started feeling so space-cadety that I just wanted out. My mum and Michael helped me out of the bath (I had one contraction as I stepped out and squatted down on the floor), and got up on the bed. My midwife had raised the back of it up so I could drape my arms over the top of the bed and kneel.

Once I was up there, I felt a lot better, and it wasn’t long before I started feeling the need to push. I started pushing, and then felt baby’s head right down low. I remembered what it was like having Lily, and knew it was going to hurt, but this time since I knew what it was going to be like, I just went inward, bore down and pushed as hard as I could. His head came out after about 3 pushes, and his body in the next 2 or 3.

My midwife had Michael cut the cord rather quickly after his body came out, which surprised me because I’d requested delayed cord clamping, but it wasn’t long before I realised why – the cord had been around his neck and he wasn’t breathing. Another midwife (who’d come in to assist my midwife for the delivery) had whisked our baby up to the heat lamp and was rubbing him down to get him to breathe. Michael rushed over to him and the look of worry on his face scared the shit out of me. Not long after (although it seemed like ages!), our baby let out a little whimper and then a louder, gurglier cry. It was such a relief, I just cried out for him. I had to deliver the placenta before I could hold him, so I assisted my midwife with a small push to release it.

My waters and everything had made a real mess of the bed, the absorbent pads and things on it, so the midwifes had to clean all that up before I could turn around and sit back to hold my baby. I turned around, my midwife checked me for tearing (I had a small graze), they handed my baby to me, and he was PERFECT. In every single way. We had skin-to-skin time, and he latched on almost straight away. My midwife had worked a shift already on which was now the day before, so she headed home and said she’d be back later in the day and check in on us.

After a short while the other midwife weighed and measured him – both of which I asked her to do twice because I couldn’t believe the measurements she was telling me!

So, welcome to the world:

Emmett Robert

25th May 2014

Time:  2.17am

Weight: 10lb 2oz

Length: 57cm [~22.5in]

The Dreaded GTT, and Other Randomness

Well, I'm writing this post while sitting in the waiting room of the local pathology clinic.  I'm here for the next 2.5-3 hours for the delightful Glucose Tolerance Test, something I'm sure all second-and-subsequent time mms look forward to *eyeroll*
Seriously, this is the most annoying, depressing bloody test I've ever had.  It sucks more than the 3.5 weeks I spent in hospital in Hobart. Really.  Not only have I not eaten since 9pm last night (now 9:22am) but I have to have blood taken at least twice and drink a horrible flat lemonade which tastes like shit.  Not looking forward to the next couple of hours of this.

In other news, I've suspected Lily has been teething for the past few weeks, and my suspicions were confirmed last night when I was able to take a look at her gums to find one tooth had broken through on the top right side, looks like another one or two is pushing through on the left, and possibly another two on the lower gum.  Poor little bugger - she's obviously been going through hell with these  'teefers', but at least I can say I did the right thing by giving her Panadol and Nurofen often, which I was kind of worried about since I didn't know for sure that her teeth were the problem, but I'm now justified in my medicating her!

My mother-in-law has been kind enough to buy Lily her first "big girl's bed".  It's still 5-7 weeks away, but it is a custom order so a wait is to be expected I suppose! We looks at frames because I wanted something with storage underneath, but all the frames had a sort of bar or something just outside of where the mattress sat, so if she fell out she'd be likely to hit her head or other parts.  So we've ended up ordering an ensemble with 2 drawers built into the base, and a headboard.  The base will be a fuchsia color from a durable, hardwearing fabric, and the headboard will be a velour-esque fabric in magenta.  It's going to look awfully cute - I can't wait for it to arrive and for her to have her first night in a big bed!  I'm hoping it will improve her sleep too, being a more comfortable mattress than a foam cot mattress.

Anyway, I've babbled on long enough.  Hope to be back soon with more updates on our growing family :-)

It's a...

On Christmas Eve, we went for the 19-week morphology scan, to make sure baby was growing in accordance to my dates and nothing was longer or shorter than it should be.  Everything was looking fine, particularly this...

Yes - that, dear friends, is a baby penis.  We're having a boy!

I can't lie - I was a little disappointed when we first found out, only because I was so looking forward to having another little girl (and since we already have all the clothes, it would have been easy!).  I guess I thought it would be easier on Lily, since she is (and will continue to be) the only girl amongst her sibling and her cousins, but I guess that doesn't matter too much ultimately.  Once I went shopping for some little boy clothes, I was feeling a little more enthused and am now pretty excited to welcome Emmett Robert into our lives!

As for Lily, she celebrated her 1st birthday on the 26th November '13, and had an awesome party on the 30th - she was definitely spoilt rotten, and the sheer number of people who showed up for her party just shows how much love this little girl has around her; I think we had about 40 guests in total.  She had so much fun and totally flaked out at the end of the day (!).  Here's just a couple of shots from her party:

I just can't believe our little girl is 1 already, and that we have another on the way - what a whirlwind the past couple of years have been!

New Life

Wow so it's been a while since I last posted, thought I'd better get another post in before the end of the month ;)

Firstly, happy Pagan New Year to all my Northern Hemispherean friends who are today celebrating Samhain, and to my fellow Southern Hemisphereans, Blessed Beltane!  Can't believe we're back here again!

And speaking of being back here again, we have some special news - Michael and I are expecting our second child in May 2014!  It's a little sooner than we originally anticipated - we were planning on trying for our second late next year, when Lily was about to hit her 2-year mark, but this one decided s/he must exist now (!) so I'm currently 11 weeks in, making me due on the 18th May 2014.

I can't lie - I'm SUPER anxious about this pregnancy.  I think because of all the stuff we went through when I was pregnant with Lily (read here and here), I am frightened that the same thing will happen again, even though rationally I know that every pregnancy is completely different.  I've had awful dreams that I've lost the baby, that we went for a scan and couldn't find a heartbeat, and all these scary thoughts even though I've had no reason to believe anything is wrong - and all was confirmed as just fine when we went for a scan today; little heart flickering on the screen, and growing well.  It was so reassuring to see that little heartbeat, and to see little bubba wriggling around - I nearly cried out of relief.

I know what I went through with Lily is the least of it - and that others have been through much, much worse - but it was a scary time for me and with nothing worse to compare it to, those moments were some of the most frightening I've ever experienced in my entire life.  I spent nearly 3 weeks of last year not knowing if Lily was going to be born premature, or if she'd even make it at all. 

And I know that every thing turned out perfectly in the end, and we now have a super healthy 11-month old who is growing and developing in leaps and bounds (started walking in the last week!), but I think between scans, until I can feel baby moving, that fear is always going to be there.  You can't shake it when you've been through difficult times in similar circumstances before - it's human.

That being said, we're SUPER excited to be adding another little kiddo to our household - our little ones will be 18 months apart almost exactly - and I think that's a great age gap to have.  They'll hopefully grow up really loving each other and getting along well and sharing their fun moments (not without arguments of course, but that's part of being a brother or sister!).

Update - September 2012

I completely forgot about this blog - sorry!

We've been on an interesting journey the past couple of months.  I returned to work in June, only to be laid off as a redundancy 4 working days later.  I was pretty disappointed after giving my employer 3.5 years of my dedication and loyalty, but now we're just cutting our losses and I'm continuing to look for part-time work elsewhere (and I've been applying for -everything- *sigh*.

Lily is now 9.5 months old, has 2-and-a-half teeth, is almost standing (with guidance, not support!), and I have no doubt that she'll be walking by the end of September.  We're still having issues overnight with her waking numerous times a night, but nothing we can't deal with I guess.  She's got curls coming through which, let's be honest, she was destined for anyway!  

Here's the munchkin and I at her Poppy John's birthday celebrations:

How Time Flies

Lily is now 6 months old (today she's exactly 27 weeks), and growing like an absolute weed.  I weighed and measured her this morning - she's over 10.5kg and is 75cm tall.

We today went shopping for more outfits for the monkey, since she's growing so fast - she was in 00s early, and is now almost fully grown out of them.  The poor thing has been wearing pants too short for her legs lol.
So her Nanny (my mum) and I took her out shopping to Target and she was spoilt rotten with a whole new wardrobe full of 0s and 1s - a lot of items to mix-n-match and create new outfits for the winter months.

Meanwhile I've been slowly packing away the stuff that no longer fits properly into boxes under her cot - we'll keep them in case the next one (no, not yet!) happens to be a girl - if it's not, then I'll donate them because I'm definitely not going to have more than two!

In other news, there is definitely a tooth on its way through - Lily's cutting her first tooth in the front on the bottom lefthand side.  I was so excited for her when I first saw it, and it's becoming more and more prominent all the time.  Can't wait till it finally actually pops through and we can take awfully cute photos of Mr. Toothie.

I think that's about all for now.  I'll edit this post if I think of anything else, or add another one.