Here. We. Go!

What an exciting and exhausting few weeks we’ve had!

15 days before his due date, at 5:30am on the 6^th May, our Henry made his entrance into the world, weighing in at a healthy 7lb 12oz (3.52kg, for you strange people who use metric to measure babies).

So let’s go back to the beginning.

(And by the beginning, I mean last year).

4^th May 2017 – I spent the day in hospital, had my laparoscopy and we found out that we needed IVF to have a baby.

Fast-forward to 3^rd May 2018.

It was a Thursday, and was both the Local Council Elections and a Parents’ Evening at my husband’s school (NOT for a year group he teaches, thank goodness). On Parents’ Evening days, his school finishes slightly early and any staff who don’t have appointments are encourage to go home straight away, so he made it home around 3pm and we immediately drove to the local church to vote. Once we’d finished there, he suggested going home via the shop so that we could get an ice cream – music to a heavily pregnant lady’s ears when it’s so hot outside!

On the drive to the shops, it’s lucky no police cars were around because we’d definitely have been pulled over for my husband to be breathalysed! Swerving the car all over the road and hitting every. Single. Pothole.

“I’m trying to jiggle the baby out of you!” he responded when I asked what on earth he was doing.

Fair enough.

Anyway, we bought our ice creams and drove (swerved/bounced) home. Standing outside the front door as my husband unlocked it, my waters broke.

You mean it WORKED?!    

        

Side note – had I tried to work up to my original maternity leave date, I’d have been dismissing the children on the playground at the end of the day when my waters broke. Thank heavens I took maternity leave early because THAT would have been a story that never got forgotten at school!

Now let me warn you – these next few posts are going to go into specifics about labour and childbirth, so if you’re squeamish about it, or just don’t particularly want to read those details about someone you know, I’d stop reading now!

Ok?

Sure?

Righty-ho, here we go!

I honestly don’t know how some people say that they weren’t sure if their waters had gone or if they’d wet themselves because for me, the feeling was so alien that there was no way I could confuse the two! Maybe that isn’t how it feels for some people but for me, there was no mistaking what had happened.

Still, I said nothing about it to my husband, just mumbled something about needing the toilet, and escaped to the downstairs loo.

More waters. And more.

By the way, for any pregnant women reading this – they don’t warn you quite how much amniotic fluid there is. It’s a lot. Just… a lot. Buy all the maternity pads. Seriously, all of them.

Once I was sure that I wasn’t imagining it, I told my husband, “So… we may have a Star Wars baby yet!” (May the 4^th be with you, for anyone who has been living under a rock).

I then ran back to the toilet because yet more waters made an appearance.

(I told you – a lot! Pads. Get them).

So the next job was to call the hospital but for some reason, I felt really silly doing it! I shouldn’t have – waters breaking is a perfectly legitimate reason to call the maternity assessment unit – but I did.

They asked me to put a fresh pad on, wait for an hour and then come to the assessment unit, bringing that pad with me so that they could check it was my waters and not urine. So that’s what we did.

We arrived at the hospital around 5:30 and I was taken to labour suite to be assessed, as the assessment unit hands over to labour suite at 6, so they figured they may as well send me straight there. They confirmed pretty quickly that it was indeed my waters breaking, and hooked me up to a monitor so they could see a) how baby was doing and b) whether I was contracting yet.

Hint: I wasn’t.

Medically, this is called PROM (Pre-labour Rupture of Membranes), which is when the amniotic sac breaks more than 1 hour before the onset of actual labour.

The pad with the blue strap is measuring our baby's heart and the pad with the pink strap is measuring my contractions.

I did have to stay in for a few hours (about 4 in the end) because the baby’s heartbeat was a little bit too high for the midwives to be completely happy, but eventually he settled down. I was sent home with the instruction to return to the hospital the next day (the 4^th May) at 4pm to be induced.

Blimey.

Logically, I knew that would be the next step if my contractions didn’t begin on their own overnight, because they can’t leave the baby out of the protection of the amniotic sac for very long, but still, eeep!

I asked the midwife what I needed to bring with me for the induction and she replied, “Everything. Once you come in tomorrow, you won’t be leaving until you’ve had the baby.” Double blimey.

Off I went home, hoping of course that my contractions would start overnight, would increase relatively quickly, and I’d be able to go into hospital the next morning, avoid induction and just pop a baby out.

No such luck, of course!

I did have twinges of pain throughout the night, and I found it very difficult to sleep because of the heat, the twinges and the fact that every time I moved, yet more waters came out. So I spent a good portion of the night sitting on towels and plastic bags on the sofa, making lists of housework to do throughout the Friday before I was due at the hospital.

To be honest, the only thing that stopped me actually doing those jobs overnight was the fact that I was too scared to move, lest I ruin the furniture or the floor with more leaking waters!

We spent Friday morning and early afternoon doing housework, making sure that when we returned from the hospital, we wouldn’t be greeted by a house that was stressful.

That afternoon, which was exactly one year to the day from when we found out we would need IVF to have a baby, we went into hospital to have our IVF baby induced. There’s some kind of poetry in that, I feel.

Maternity leave, surprising symptoms and a pesky placenta!

So I’ve been a bit rubbish updating this blog recently, but now I am officially ON MATERNITY LEAVE, I have time!

What is it that I’ve been up to these last few weeks, then? I last left you 6 weeks ago, while I was off work with pregnancy related exhaustion and contemplating bringing my maternity leave forward from 38 weeks to 36 weeks. Well I’m 37 weeks and 3 days pregnant, and here I am, on my 2^nd week of maternity leave!

It was definitely the right decision to bring my maternity leave start date forward 2 weeks! The final week at work was utterly exhausting and I’m so glad that I decided to listen to my body and start at 36 weeks. When I think about how I’d be feeling if I was still at work today… I don’t think I’d have coped!

I know some people do manage to work a lot closer to their due date and ideally I would have liked to, as it would mean longer on maternity leave after he’s born, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

Teaching is such a physically active job and also requires you to be performing (a very accurate word to describe what we do) ALL day long. If you work in an office or call centre, for example, you can grimace and pull faces, sit in funny-yet-somehow-comfy positions, and take a few minutes to run to the toilet.

These simply aren’t possible when you’re responsible for a class of 7 year olds! You’re on your feet teaching and demonstrating, you’re walking around the classroom checking answers and making sure that everyone is able to do the work, you’re having to be active and energetic enough to make the lessons engaging and stimulating, and you certainly can’t leave them all alone in the classroom while you run to the toilet! I do love my job but it definitely is not easy when you’re 8 months pregnant!

After a lovely send-off from my colleagues, I’ve fully embraced maternity leave! The first Saturday was spent in lovely sunshine with a wine glass full of sparkling strawberry fizz and a box of chocolates; I had a haircut and used my mum-to-be spa pampering kit!

Since then, it hasn’t been quite as fun to be honest. I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out paperwork and doing general housekeeping, simply to keep my mind off how uncomfortable and restless I am at the moment!

Just cannot find a comfortable position to sit or lay in, my feet are like hippo feet, my heart feels like its racing, I’m feeling nauseous, and every time I change position slightly, I need a wee… definitely needing things to take my mind off it!

Surprising symptoms

There aren’t many symptoms that have surprised me this pregnancy, probably because I’ve read around the subject so much while we were going through the IVF, but as we’re coming to the end of the journey, two things have stood out to me that no-one mentioned!

The first is clicky fingers. I’ve always had joints that crack easily but this has taken it to a whole new level! Reading up online, this seems to be fairly common and not something to worry about, but it has taken me totally by surprise. Apparently it’s caused by two things: fluid retention in your joints and also your joints all loosening up as your body prepares for birth.

It doesn’t bother me at all. Like I say, I’m used to cracking joints, but it was definitely a surprise to find that this was a symptom of late pregnancy.

The second surprising thing has been that my bump is almost numb to the touch!

It’s the weirdest sensation – if I touch my bump with an object (like a pencil) rather than my hand, I can sense that something is touching it but nothing more than that. I can’t tell if it’s soft or hard, hot or cold, rough or smooth.

So strange!

Again, reading up on this shows that quite a few women go through it. The explanation given seems to be that the skin over the bump is just so stretched, it goes numb. Odd!

A pesky placenta

At my 20 week scan, I was told that my placenta was quite low, though thankfully not covering the cervix at all, so I would need another scan at 32 weeks to check if it had moved up out of the way. It was explained that a low cervix can cause excessive bleeding during a natural birth, as the pressure of the baby’s head pushing against it can cause damage. If my placenta hadn’t moved by 32 weeks, a c-section might be considered.

“Don’t worry, in 90% of these cases, the placenta has moved by 32 weeks!”

Of course, it hadn’t.

At 32 weeks, the scan showed that it was roughly 3cm away from the edge of the cervix, and at the hospital I’m with, they would prefer at least 5cm.

“We’ll re-scan you at 36 weeks and make a decision then. It might have moved, but even if it hasn’t, they may think 3cm is far enough away at that point. It depends where baby’s head is.”

This is where all the confusion comes in! Everywhere seems to have different views on how far away the placenta needs to be to be considered safe! Some hospitals want it to be 5cm away, some want it to be 2cm away, and all measurements in between. It made it quite difficult to predict whether I was likely to be considered safe for a natural delivery or not.

36 weeks rolls around and we finally had our answer!

It seems to be far enough away to allow me to attempt a natural delivery. Not that we actually know how far away from the cervix the placenta is, because “baby’s head is so far down, we can’t measure it!”

Two different sonographers checked and agreed that the baby’s head is already so low down that it is below the placenta completely, which means the placenta must be far enough away, even if they can’t take a measurement in mm.

Huzzah!

So now, it’s a waiting game.