Month: January 2006

Feeling so much better now the antibiotics have kicked in and Will was an angel all day yesterday, feeding every two hours on the dot – I even managed to watch the first episode of Series 3 of the OC! We went for a walk through the villages, I’ve made a few baby mixes for the iPod which I plugged in and away we tootled, singing tunelessly to ourselves. William is clearly not a Kinks man, but seemed to like Keane….I’ll have to have a think about what we’ll have for our next foray into the outside world.

Eddie came home bang on 6 and like a model father whisked William upstairs for his bath and a chat. He had his dinner in the sitting room with us and then we got to bedtime and The Nightly Fear to see if he will or won’t go to sleep. But maybe we’re doing something right because he slept really well, feeding again at 3am and going back to sleep until 7! He’s upstairs now looking angelic as usual.

This morning the midwife is coming to do his guthrie test (I have no idea what that involves, but will let you know) and weigh him. It’ll be really interesting to see how he’s growing because to me he feels alot heavier. Then this afternoon we’re going to Granny’s funeral, which we’re not looking forward to obviously, but we can say goodbye and everyone can see William which will bring a little light into an otherwise very sad occasion.

Look at this little angel baby – it seems amazing to me that he can turn from this into a screaming, crimson demon in a matter of seconds….

Had a classic harrassed mother day yesterday, just felt so rough and everytime I moved William started to cry so I essentially spent the entire day in bed without being able to sleep or do anything. When it continued after supper we began to despair, but then at 11 he fed for an hour while Eddie and I dozed off, and then slept through until 5am. Could this be the beginnings of Will sleeping through the night? God I hope so. He’s upstairs now still asleep, but I’ll do the same as before and try to keep him up as much as possible in the day so he’s knackered in the evening. The most important thing is for Eddie to get his rest so he can survive work.

In the meantime, I’ve actually managed to make breakfast, bathe and dress – more than I achieved yesterday!

We were all set for another night of incessant screaming, but by some miracle, Master William actually managed to sleep through the night with only a couple of feeds! Now we’re desparately trying to remember exactly what we did so we can replicate this tonight.

Unfortunately, despite all this extra sleep, I’ve managed to get mastitis and woke up in the middle of the night with sweat pouring off me, but shivering terribly. Eddie took me to the doctor’s this morning and now I’m on antibiotics so hopefully it should clear up in a day or so.

In the meantime I’m gutted not to be seeing the NCT girls and showing William off, but never mind, there’s always next week – he’ll be the last baby to come along to our weekly gatherings! Better late than never, eh?

Will’s sitting with Auntie Victoria, who’s doing a sterling job of keeping him awake, the plan still being to try and keep him up as long as possible so he sleeps through the night. So far it’s not working! I finally got him to sleep at 04.30 this morning, and collapsed on the sofa, too scared to take him upstairs in case he woke up again. Then today he’s been a fairy baby again, but we’re trying feeding at 2 hourly intervals and also went for a long walk around Heath End and East Woodhay which gave him a bit of fresh air. Who knows what the evening holds. But I rather suspect we can guess. Plus, I’ve had NO sleep since this morning so by tomorrow I’ll be a limp rag.
Eddie goes back to work tomorrow, so it’s time I earned my keep again. Am really going to miss being looked after! But on the positive side it may also help us to start getting into a semblance of a routine – even if William doesn’t, at least Eddie, Molly and I will have some structure to our lives again.

Lots of ‘firsts’ this week, this is us about to head out into the wilds of East End in our turbo-charged, four-wheel drive super-pram. It’s fantastic to be out in the fresh air again. I can feel myself getting stronger and can’t wait for the day when Eddie, Will and I will be tramping across the hills together.

For now, though, the post box and back is a good start.

Alas now known as the calm before the storm when Will turns into the Demon Baby From Hell and screams all night…

He’s slept with us the last couple of nights, but tonight we’re going to start training him to sleep in his moses basket. It’s not going to be easy, but basically whenever he falls asleep he’ll go in the basket, and that’s that. Time check – 01.35, only a few hours to go then 🙂

Eddie has been amazing over the course of the past week, doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry etc around the house; driving up to see Will and I every day, and before that, during the whole induction process he was a rock, always there to keep my flagging spirits going. Every day he makes me the most amazing meals to keep my strength up, I don’t know what I’d do without him.

In a way I’m dreading next week and being all alone, but I was also thinking that I’ll be ready to look after Eddie for a bit too. He’s going to be so tired with Will so difficult to get to sleep at night. It’s going to be a tough few weeks ahead.

Given I spent 5 days in hospital attempting to have Will, I’m afraid I feel obliged to share the gory details with you….

As you know, the midwife came last Monday and couldn’t do a sweep so I was booked for an induction on Thursday 5th January. Eddie and I went in that evening and I was given a pessary to bring on contractions. They started relatively quickly and were pretty painful, lasting for about a minute every 10 minutes. However it wasn’t enough to start labour and I spent a sleepless night on the ward.

In the morning, the midwife examined me and I was only one centimetre, so they gave me another pessary and Eddie and I spent a tortuous day of contractions and trivial pursuit before being told I hadn’t got any further at around 6pm. By this time all the other girls who were due to be induced had gone into labour, and the current midwife on duty felt so sorry for me she let me have a float in the birthing pool for a bit to ease the pains. Not quite how I’d envisaged using it, but at least I can say I had a go 🙂

On Saturday morning they examined me again with a view to trying a third pessary. I’d spent another sleepless night with irregular contractions and was dreading another day of this. Fortunately the doctor thought my waters had broken and decided to put me on a syntocin drip. They asked if I’d like an epidural from the word go and I decided this was the way forward after 2 sleepless nights.

Jan, the aneasthetist put in the epidural which was weird, but fine. It just feels like someone’s pouring cold ice down your back. Then they started the drip….

2 hours in, the midwife decided to double-check that my waters had actually broken, and found that they hadn’t completely. So she had to break them, which dropped the baby’s heartbeat dramatically. Panic ensued but we got it back up again and continued.

Eventually at around 1.00am on Sunday, we got to 9 cms, but were having problems as Will’s heartrate had gone up from 120 bpm to 170, the drip distressed him. But if we turned it off, my contractions stopped. So it was a no win situation and the lovely registrar decided it was time to go for a c-section to get him out.

Eddie scrubbed up and I was wheeled into theatre shaking like a leaf. They topped up the epidural and 5 minutes later, after much pushing and shoving to get Will back up into my womb and out of the sunroof, I heard a scream and everyone converged into one corner.

What seemed like hours later, Will was finally placed into my arms wrapped in a towel, absolutely perfect. Eddie and I both burst into tears of happiness. He was with us at last.

At last!

William David Houghton arrived at 02.07 on Sunday 8th January by caesarean section weighing 8lbs.

Elvis would be proud.

STILL no baby – so the tree’s been hacked into small pieces and Eddie and I have cleaned the house from top to bottom. Not sure if that counts for nesting (possibly the one form of natural induction we haven’t tried), but although it hasn’t worked either, the house is looking spotless.

Very excited about tomorrow, the midwife’s coming to do a stretch and sweep – sounds like some kind of ghastly exercise class – it remains to be seen whether it has any effect on our overly comfortable child.