My tiny man is one whole month old! I missed updating on the actual day (in fact I feel rather ashamed to admit that I FORGOT on the actual day - only remembered on the 22nd that Samuel turned one month old the day before!), but there it is. He will be 5 weeks old on Tuesday (it's Sunday today) - I can't believe how fast the time is going!
I don't have much time to update as Samuel is starting to wake now that I'm typing, and seems like he is going to be very hungry and cross if I don't hurry up and feed him, lol! I wish I had kept up better over the past couple of weeks. A lot has happened that I wanted to keep a record of, but I just haven't had time.
Right after my last update (literally, immediately!), Samuel became really fussy, and it got progressively worse each day until he was basically spending the entire day crying and seeming uncomfortable, and no longer doing calm things like making eye contact or smiling at me :( He would not fuss or cry if he was sleeping or breastfeeding, but otherwise he was crying constantly. He would start the moment he let go of the breast, and he started to have only a handful of catnaps throughout the day (10-20 mins at a time). It became hard to handle a really really upset baby all day as well as the four other little ones, and I started to worry that he was becoming "colicky". Only Matthew out of my others was like that as a small baby, and it was sooooooo incredibly hard. Matthew's colic started in the same way and at exactly the same age I think, so I was not feeling too optimistic about it. I did not know how I was going to cope with several more months of it! The only thing was that his evening sleep still remained consistent and good - if I got him nursed and asleep between 7 and 8pm, he would stay asleep the rest of the evening, and would then nurse right back to sleep after a nappy change and a feed, for another 2-3 hours.
On the very worst day, he did not sleep well during the evening. In fact he was still awake at 10pm crying, having had no sleep yet that evening! Thinking of this being the new norm was soooo depressing, as I hated seeing him in pain, and that is how he seemed to be. I figured he needed to see a chiropractor like Heather had suggested when he was born, so I made an appointment for him (and me - OW my hips are SOOOOO sore still!!) with the same place I took Benjamin to when he was a baby - they specialise in babies, children, and mothers who are pregnant or newly postpartum. The appointment wasn't until Feb 1st, but at least it was made.
So at 10pm that evening I marched downstairs with him and handed him to Neil because I had tried everything to soothe him, breastfed him to bursting point and still he was crying and wouldn't sleep. My back and arms were hurting and I hoped Neil would have an idea. He sent me upstairs to rest and held Samuel in the kitchen to keep the crying noise as far away from the sleeping children as possible in our teeny house! I heard him crying on and off for a while and then he stopped. After it had been quiet for a bit, I went down to investigate, and found Samuel fast asleep in Neil's arms. Neil said he had prayed over Samuel and then he had gone to sleep! I was so glad that he was asleep, and so grateful that Neil had taken the initiative to pray over him! We put him to bed and he slept intil 2am, and next woke at 5.45 or 6am. When he got up for the day, he was a totally different baby! Absolutely zero fussing or crying all day long, other than if he was hungry and I was taking too long getting my bra open, hehe! He was calm and physically relaxed, and seemed contented. He made eye contact and cooed and smiled all day! :) He still had quite a few catnaps in the bouncy chair and woke if I tried to transfer him to the bedroom, but he did take one nice long 2hrs and 45 minutes nap in the afternoon. That was Tuesday, and he has been calm and happy ever since!!! Well, he was kind of fussy for the hour before bedtime this evening, but anyway, God is so faithful and I am SO relieved!!
Ahh I didn't get to finish this, so Samuel has now been changed and fed, and then changed into a different sleepsuit after bringing up milk on himself (and me!), and then nursed some more, and now he's dozing draped across my front while I type this with one hand! :) These precious days are so fleeting so I am enjoying it while I can. It is just about midnight now and another week starts tomorrow, and I'm tired, but he isn't asleep enough yet for me to put him down, otherwise he might wake up. Hopefully if I hold him for 5 or 10 more minutes he'll stay asleep when I put him down and I can go and brush my teeth. So I may as well continue typing for now! :)
Samuel still hasn't used his crib! He naps on my bed or in the bouncy chair, though he doesn't stay asleep so long in the chair. If he stays asleep when I put him on my bed, he always sleeps for the next 2.5 - 3 hours. He now has one such nap per day, as yet unpredictably. He won't stay asleep any other time that I try it, but once a day at some point, he will. Usually that's somewhere in the afternoon but one day this week he started a long nap at 10.30am. It was a day that Benjamin had been awke since 4.45am (those molars again!) and poor Benji was exhausted, so he nursed into a deep sleep only 15 minutes after Samuel did. They both slept for a record 3hrs and 15 minutes! Which was perfect, since their naps were staggered by 15 minutes, so I had chance to nurse and change Samuel in the 15 minutes before Benjamin woke up. I got housework done, read alouds and other quality time with the older three, and I even managed to cut Nathan's hair after they ate lunch! They all badly need a haircut so the other 3 are on my to-do list this week! I am also preparing to start school this week - we start back on Mon 31st, and Matthew starts school for the very first time! :) He's so excited! I hope I can pull it off, but I am also really looking forward to it. Neil's birthday is on Tuesday too!
Samuel is now sleeping 4-5 hours consistently in the evening, and usually goes from about 8pm to 1am, or 7pm to midnight, or something like that. I just put him down now and he has stayed asleep next to me, so I can finish the typing a little faster if it doesn't disturb him! Then I MUST go to bed!
He wakes a couple of times in the night after midnight I think, but maybe some nights only once?? I really don't know, it could be more than that, but we now have a dark room (I kept the lamp on to see by in the first few weeks) and sleep tummy-to-tummy, so I barely come round enough to get him latched on and then fall straight back to sleep. My hips have been slightly less painful in the last two days, but before that I had to change sides with Samuel halfway through the night because it became too painful to stay on that side (also better for Samuel's head I should think!). The last two nights I haven't had to, so I had unknowingly been offering Samuel the same breast all night, and boy was I lopsided in the morning, haha! The side I hadn't used was engorged. Ow. In the evening he sleeps in my bed, and I just climb in next to him part way through the evening and go on the internet via my laptop. He isn't disturbed by it at this age, but he will be soon. Some evenings I am downstairs till bedtime though. Then I just climb in beside my sweet tiny man and go to sleep! I LOVE it. Love it soooo much. He is just precious and I love being close to him. I have no desire whatsoever to put him in his own sleeping space. It's just GORGEOUS sharing my bed with him.
He is cooing so sweetly these days! I keep trying to catch it on camera (for a video clip) but EVERY time there's deafening bellowing in the background from another kiddie or else he stops and starts to fuss a bit instead of cooing, or someone comes and stands in front of the camera to make a silly face or ask me a question! Hopefully I'll get a good clip to share soon! He has Matthew's sweet husky little voice - only Matthew has had that type of voice so far. It's UNCANNY how many similarities there are between Samuel and Matthew. He SMELLS like Matthew did as a baby as well. Again, only Matthew smelled like that - he was quite a... strong-smelling baby, lol! Like a MAN smell, quite stinky sometimes! ;) Even right after a bath, it was like his sweat glands were all full of pheromones or something, and he was quite a sweaty baby in general. Arthur, Nathan and Benjamin weren't like that at all. Samuel is! He's also showing the start of cradle cap which all the boys have had (and Benjamin and NATHAN still do, even though they only ever have their hair washed with Dentinox!! What is up with that?! Nathan is THREE!!!), and his hairline is doing that receding thing now that his brain just had a growth spurt (so did his forehead therefore, hehe!), so it's becoming more visible. He has only had two baths (gasp! Yes, I'm a bad mother! ;) ) so far, but he has his hair washed with Dentinox. Hey ho.
His smile is so precious!! Big and broad and open and gummy, and he has a dimple in one cheek like I do (the same side too!). His face lights up when he smiles. I LOVE him so much!! He is beginning to get some newborn acne on his cheeks, poor little manny. He is otherwise doing great, and growing SO fast! He is now outgrowing all his 0-3 month sleepsuits and fits the smaller 3-6 month ones well. Craziness at just 4 weeks old!! He was 11lbs 1oz at three weeks old, and I guess he will next be weighed at his 6-8 week check. I have no idea what he weighs now but I'm guessing at around 12lbs? I am noticing my arm and shoulder hurting a LOT lately after holding him, so he must be gaining weight! He is tracking things with his eyes, and starting to watch his brothers around him (which they love!). He has smiled at Matthew and coos at him too, since Matthew is (as usual) the one who really puts in the time with little babies, sitting with them and being calm and interested in them. He was the same with Benjamin, and Benjamin warmed to him so much more than the others as a baby. Matthew has a real tender heart for little babies :)
I'm sure there's so much more that I wanted to write about, but for now I need to go to bed. I need to make an appointment for my 6-week postnatal check (just a week or so away!), and they'll send Samuel's in the post. Once he's had that check I will need to follow my tradition of finishing posting at this lovely blog, which is sad! I will try to update a couple of times at least before then, while I have the chance! I can't believe my new baby is almost at the end of the newborn stage already! :( I LOVE me a newborn!
I will be back though! ;) I have a couple of boys names at the ready for boy #6. Heather thinks the next baby will be born in June 2012, just in time for the Olympics! :) Matthew told me randomly the other day that he thought I would have another baby in October, but not this October. We shall see! I DO hope and pray that God will bless us with more babies yet! I hope it's not greedy of me, but I just love it so much, and don't want it to end!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
3 weeks old!
I'm still here! Absolutely no time to update - we've had no internet most of the last week anyway (tsk!!), but it's back on now by the looks of it.
Managing with Neil at work is incredibly hectic! My parents came to stay with my grandparents nearby last Friday and they've been to see us every weekday since then. They go home tomorrow so today was the last day they came over. They came each afternoon and it was LOVELY to have their help with keeping the boys entertained and busy (and the dishwasher running!) - they brought me sandwiches every day too. Love my parents! I'm a bit sad that they're going home!
Not quite sure how things will go without my parents around to help! A couple of the days this week have seemed absolutely unmanageable, but I think those were days when I had added stress factors. Nathan's 3rd birthday was on Wednesday, which also turned out to be the day that Samuel started breastfeeding like he was starting a growth spurt (he was!), and Benjamin started cutting both bottom molars at once - literally all of a sudden they were halfway up through huge purple swollen gums, my poor baby! :( Benjamin literally breastfed as much as Samuel did that day, either that or he was screaming and crying continually, and wanting to focus on making the day special for Nathey, I found it pretty stressful. Last week (before my parents came) there was one day that felt completely impossible to manage. I thankfully don't even remember the details of it too well now, but I do remember the bit where I was in the boys' bedroom rummaging frantically for a change of clothes for the one who had merrily tipped out a whole cup of water over the recently-opened Christmas presents, while Benjamin cried for me at the stairgate and Samuel cried in his bouncy chair and I just sat down on Nathan's bed and cried, saying, "I can't do it Lord! I can't do it Lord!" over and over. It was the last thing in an ENDLESS line of difficult-to-manage things that day and I felt so much less ready physically than I had expected to feel. Anyway, at that moment I was completely overwhelmed and did not know what to do. But, you know, I pulled myself together pretty quickly and changed a boy, cuddled another, and nursed another, and I survived.
But it is hard with 5 such very little ones! :S
Health Visitor came last week and since Samuel had just been weighed by the midwife 2 days before, she didn't weigh and measure him that day, but she sent someone to do that this week instead. So on Tuesday, at 3 weeks old exactly, Samuel weighed 11lbs 1oz - ANOTHER pound in a week gained!! He's at the 98th percentile for weight which I think is a record for one of my babies, even over Arthur (who wasn't far behind that as a baby)! His length was funny though - somebody has made a mistake somewhere because he ws 57cm long and DEFINITELY longer than he was a couple of weeks ago (he's filling out the length of even his biggest 0-3 month clothing) and yet he was measured at 59.5cm at birth?!?! Hmmmm! I would think that the birth measurement was wrong, but she was very careful and thorough. It's different though, because they use a tape at birth, and stretch them on a flat scale with the HV.
Anyway, growing boy! He's doing his 3 week growth spurt right now but it's not too bad. He's napping okayish, mostly in the bouncy chair but also on my bed once or twice a day for a good 2 hours each time, if I can put him down without waking him. He sleeps most of the evening now from about 8pm if I nurse him thoroughly (with 5 breasts, haha!) around that time. It's just after midnight now and he's stirring next to me having been asleep since 7.30pm ish. I'm noticing this is becoming "normal" for Samuel, which is nice! After that he'll usually need a full change and feed between midnight and 1am (yep, he's fussing and sucking his hands now!) and then wake around 4.30am to feed. Neither of us really wake up since we stay lying tummy-to-tummy (LOVE that!), and he wakes again about 3 hours later - usually AFTER I have to get up for Neil to go to work. It's quite nice to get the boys changed and eat breakfast before he wakes up for the day.
Bless! He's sucking his index finger really noisily right now (and very contentedly!) - never seen him do that before!
I have photos, but no time! Soon, hopefully. He is smiling occasionally and once did a HUGE beaming smile which changed his whole face - gummy and broad! :) Like Arthur's smile I think. He is starting to coo like he is really wanting to communicate with me, but just the odd one or two now and again - soooooooo sweet! :)
I have a ton more I could say but I need to nurse my sweetie pea and go to sleep! Back soon hopefully! :)
Managing with Neil at work is incredibly hectic! My parents came to stay with my grandparents nearby last Friday and they've been to see us every weekday since then. They go home tomorrow so today was the last day they came over. They came each afternoon and it was LOVELY to have their help with keeping the boys entertained and busy (and the dishwasher running!) - they brought me sandwiches every day too. Love my parents! I'm a bit sad that they're going home!
Not quite sure how things will go without my parents around to help! A couple of the days this week have seemed absolutely unmanageable, but I think those were days when I had added stress factors. Nathan's 3rd birthday was on Wednesday, which also turned out to be the day that Samuel started breastfeeding like he was starting a growth spurt (he was!), and Benjamin started cutting both bottom molars at once - literally all of a sudden they were halfway up through huge purple swollen gums, my poor baby! :( Benjamin literally breastfed as much as Samuel did that day, either that or he was screaming and crying continually, and wanting to focus on making the day special for Nathey, I found it pretty stressful. Last week (before my parents came) there was one day that felt completely impossible to manage. I thankfully don't even remember the details of it too well now, but I do remember the bit where I was in the boys' bedroom rummaging frantically for a change of clothes for the one who had merrily tipped out a whole cup of water over the recently-opened Christmas presents, while Benjamin cried for me at the stairgate and Samuel cried in his bouncy chair and I just sat down on Nathan's bed and cried, saying, "I can't do it Lord! I can't do it Lord!" over and over. It was the last thing in an ENDLESS line of difficult-to-manage things that day and I felt so much less ready physically than I had expected to feel. Anyway, at that moment I was completely overwhelmed and did not know what to do. But, you know, I pulled myself together pretty quickly and changed a boy, cuddled another, and nursed another, and I survived.
But it is hard with 5 such very little ones! :S
Health Visitor came last week and since Samuel had just been weighed by the midwife 2 days before, she didn't weigh and measure him that day, but she sent someone to do that this week instead. So on Tuesday, at 3 weeks old exactly, Samuel weighed 11lbs 1oz - ANOTHER pound in a week gained!! He's at the 98th percentile for weight which I think is a record for one of my babies, even over Arthur (who wasn't far behind that as a baby)! His length was funny though - somebody has made a mistake somewhere because he ws 57cm long and DEFINITELY longer than he was a couple of weeks ago (he's filling out the length of even his biggest 0-3 month clothing) and yet he was measured at 59.5cm at birth?!?! Hmmmm! I would think that the birth measurement was wrong, but she was very careful and thorough. It's different though, because they use a tape at birth, and stretch them on a flat scale with the HV.
Anyway, growing boy! He's doing his 3 week growth spurt right now but it's not too bad. He's napping okayish, mostly in the bouncy chair but also on my bed once or twice a day for a good 2 hours each time, if I can put him down without waking him. He sleeps most of the evening now from about 8pm if I nurse him thoroughly (with 5 breasts, haha!) around that time. It's just after midnight now and he's stirring next to me having been asleep since 7.30pm ish. I'm noticing this is becoming "normal" for Samuel, which is nice! After that he'll usually need a full change and feed between midnight and 1am (yep, he's fussing and sucking his hands now!) and then wake around 4.30am to feed. Neither of us really wake up since we stay lying tummy-to-tummy (LOVE that!), and he wakes again about 3 hours later - usually AFTER I have to get up for Neil to go to work. It's quite nice to get the boys changed and eat breakfast before he wakes up for the day.
Bless! He's sucking his index finger really noisily right now (and very contentedly!) - never seen him do that before!
I have photos, but no time! Soon, hopefully. He is smiling occasionally and once did a HUGE beaming smile which changed his whole face - gummy and broad! :) Like Arthur's smile I think. He is starting to coo like he is really wanting to communicate with me, but just the odd one or two now and again - soooooooo sweet! :)
I have a ton more I could say but I need to nurse my sweetie pea and go to sleep! Back soon hopefully! :)
Monday, January 3, 2011
Nearly 2 weeks old already!
Wow, the time is passing so fast! I can hardly believe that Samuel is going to be 2 weeks old tomorrow! Christmas came and went so fast, and then I blinked and 2010 had passed into the memory banks and 2011 was here! Crazy.
Today is Monday 3rd of January and it's the last day of Neil's paternity leave. Tomorrow he'll go to work at 7.30am and not get back until about 7pm. Yikes! I have such a mixture of feelings about the new normal around here! I'm so excited - breathlessly excited! - to be starting out as the mother of five children, spending my days watching them grow and learn and develop, and managing my home and my little ones. It's such a challenge (and TOO hard sometimes, but you keep going I guess!) but ohhhh so rewarding! And exciting to tackle. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing - no job or career could possibly hold this much anticipation or joy or love or thrills or rewards for me, I'm sure of it. It has to be hard work and a big challenge in order to be THAT thrilling and rewarding. So in part I am eager for tomorrow because it's the start of a new year which stretches out ahead of us, and a new beginning with a new little person in our family. I'm excited for all that it means, and all that the year will hold for us!
But ohhh I'm scared, lol!
How in the wide world will I juggle the needs of five little people, when the youngest is a needy newborn baby and the eldest is only just 6?! I was never proficient at it with four little people (trust me, I was NOT "there" yet!) so I am not sure how to proceed!
Personality-wise, I work well under pressure, and better still when I don't have someone else to fall back on. If Neil is at home I will manage less well, than if he's at work. I rise to the challenge, and I can't afford to be lazy (which is my tendency unfortunately!). It's a GOOD thing that I need to do my days without Neil home for 12 hours, although it's kind of the last thing that I want to do right now, thinking about the week ahead! ;) It will be good for me!
On Friday my parents are coming!! I can't wait to see them, and neither can the boys - they LOVE Nana and Grandy! I'm so excited for them to meet Samuel as well. They've seen his photos but it will be lovely to see them hold him and see all the things about him that I've been telling them on the phone, for themselves. They are travelling up from France on Thursday, and staying with my grandparents until the following Friday. Apart from the weekend, they are planning to come here for part of the day every day, yay! To help me with the boys mostly, and to meet Samuel. Nathan's birthday is next week (HOW ON EARTH WILL HE BE THREE?!?!!) and Neil has to work that day so I am really happy that my parents will be here and can help me make the day special for him. I have 3 children aged 2 and under at the moment! Two, one, and newborn! :) And four and six! :) Anyway I am looking forward to my parents visiting because it will help me to have them here. I have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on my own, which will be interesting!
I get tired very quickly when I do things with the boys these last few days - I've been going downstairs for anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours, just slowly tidying the living room (which is beyond description, truly) or sitting with Samuel in my arms, or just chatting with the boys as they play. I get tired quickly and go back upstairs with Samuel when that hits, and just feel like I need a long nap to recover from sitting downstairs! I'm nervous about the days to come since I will never get the chance to nap. It has been several babies since I last was able to nap, no matter how desperate the need, obviously! I hope I hold up physically.
I have made a list this evening to help me keep focused tomorrow. This is all I want to achieve tomorrow and even though it's basic I think I will not manage much more, and will have to work at just achieving what's on the list!
* Drink 4-6 glasses of water
* Benjamin down for a nap at appropriate time
* Meals on time for all of us (give or take 30 mins)
* Read aloud to the boys (at least 1 hour)
* Nappy changes for all the nappy wearers, at least morning, noon, and bedtime! (Nathan and Benjamin are full-time nappy wearers, no potty training yet. Matthew wears a nappy at night and whenever he needs to poo still.)
* Keep on top of the living room floor (tidy-ish)
* Read Bible and pray, at least first thing, but if possible at any moment I can grab too!
* Feed and cuddle Samuel as much as possible. Change his nappy as often as needed (LOTS lately!).
That's it. Hopefully I'll manage to keep the above stuff going, because if I do I think the day will go okay for us all. I am not sure what we'll have for dinner - there are precisely NO freezer meals this time! I have no idea why that slipped my mind, but hmmm, that could make things tricky! I'm guessing tomorrow's dinner for the boys will be baked beans on toast, since it's quick, easy, nutritious, and one of their favourites! :)
Another part of me is just feeling so sad that my babymoon is over! :( I still get to snuggle my tiny man, but it has been so precious just focusing on him and snuggling him ALL the time. He has mostly slept all his sleeps on my front. These last two or three days I have started to put him down next to me on the bed when he is WELL asleep on my front. I don't want to! But I started to get worried about when Neil goes back to work, and what if he absolutely will not sleep unless he's on my front by then?! Today I really feel that pull of the fact that it's the last day where I get to rest in bed with my tiny love. Even when he's been happy and contented NOT in my arms, I have still scooped him up anyway and held him close all curled up against my chest, and kissed his little soft head a zillion times, and rubbed his back until he fell asleep - as often as I could. I know I can't do that during the week after today, and I really have a lump in my throat just thinking about it. The demands of the day will mean I have to keep on putting him down to deal with issues with the boys, discipline, and various things that need doing like nappies and meals. Samuel is SUCH a contented little baby. He doesn't mind being put down, but I can feel him relax more when he's in my arms. He goes so calm and still, and just blinks and does his sweet fast breathing, and eventually dozes off. I LOVE holding him! I will hold him just about as much as I possibly can even with Neil at work, but I know I will need to keep putting him down, and he won't be able to take his naps on me.
A sling would fix that, I know, but I don't get on well with slings in general. Either they hurt my back, or even if they don't, I find them too cumbersome, especially when trying to tend to the other little ones. I can't pick up or lift a toddler when I have a baby on my front, even with 2 arms free. It just doesn't work for me. It's possible to cook a meal or change a nappy with a baby on my front, but I find it physically straining and exhausting to do so. My back hurts just trying to lean round the baby to get things done. So I am not going the slinging route, unless he ends up a colicky baby and it's a survival tactic for a while. I HOPE he won't be!! But so far he seems very very laid-back and calm and happy. He's such a precious blessing!
Our last bouncy chair broke when Benjamin was a baby, so when I realised we didn't have one, I went looking on eBay. I wanted a Fisher Price one with a vibrate function, like our old one. We had a Fisher Price Kick and Play before and it was brilliant. Just the right bounce-ability when pushed with a foot, and the vibrate function was very helpful too! I needed one that was being sold locally enough so that I could avoid postage costs. I found a more basic Fisher Price bouncy chair for £5 (I think?) just a few streets away from us, and won it! It has a vibrate function but no lights and sounds like the other one, which I'm PERFECTLY happy about! ;) It has a built in blanket to cover the baby up if it's chilly, which is sweet! And it does bounce as nicely as the other one, so I'm pleased about that. After I washed the cover, I put Samuel in it (yesterday or the day before, I can't remember which!), and he was very happy there while his brothers stroked his head and put the blanket on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off, etc, and bounced the chair none-too-gently. The chair got nudged and bumped a few times as they busied themselves playing next to it, which made Samuel jump a bit, but he was calm through it all. Eventually he started to fuss a bit, so I put the vibrate function on and rocked the chair gently with my foot, and he went very still, just blinking. Over about 10 minutes, his sweet little eyelids got heavier and heavier, until he went to sleep. Today I put him in the chair for a short while and he did the same thing. After he had been asleep about 5 minutes I picked him up out of the chair and put him in my bed upstairs and he stayed asleep for a couple of hours. So I am cautiously hopeful with the bouncy chair to help me! :) It's a safe place to put him down, so long as I do not leave the room. Our house is conveniently teeny tiny so we only HAVE the one room to be in anyway, lol! ;) Very handy at this stage! I think if I need to go to the toilet or the kitchen, I will have to take him with me. Or just not go to either of those places unless I have him put to bed upstairs or something.
He has not used his crib at all so far - well, I tried him in it when he was fast asleep once at under a week old, and he stayed asleep less than 10 minutes on his back in there, and then woke up kind of fussy. He sleeps with me at night and I have no plans to change that any time soon. LOVE co-sleeping! :) For naps though, once Neil is not with the little ones in the day times, I need to do something different I think. While he's tiny, he is safe on my bed unsupervised, but only until he gets near to the age where he could roll. And even so, I don't feel safe even now putting him there for naps, because Arthur and Matthew are able to let themselves upstairs through the kiddy gate now, and I don't want them to have access to him on the bed if I don't know they're in there.
Soooo I will try transferring him to his crib once he's fallen asleep either breastfeeding or in the bouncy chair. I am not too confident about it because if I put him on his back he is likely to wake up pretty quickly. If I am in the room with him all the time, I have been putting him on his tummy to sleep, because he goes off to sleep on my front (tummy down) and his front is therefore all warm and toasty, and he stays settled if he goes down on his tummy if he fell asleep that way. He sleeps for a couple of hours every time like that. I am not crazy about sort of training him to be a tummy sleeper though, because at night he sleeps on his side or on his back next to me in between nursing, and he seems to have no problems sleeping on his back. So I don't want to mess with a good thing! I know how hard it is to try to get a baby to sleep on his back who is plain hurting or uncomfortable on his back for whatever reason - two of mine have been that way, but Samuel is definitely not so far. I don't want to lay him down in his crib on his tummy to sleep and then walk away and shut the door. So I will persevere trying to transfer him asleep onto his back in the crib and hope he stays sleeping. I think he will wake within 5 minutes every time and eventually get cross and overtired, but I'll give it a try anyway. I also suspect he'll take some of his naps actually in the bouncy chair. He is disturbed by the noise around him so I want to try to get him napping upstairs if possible, because it doesn't seem fair to him to see him flinching and startling at crashes and bangs and screeches from his brothers, even though he stays asleep! That can't be as good a quality of sleep for him, and I want him to be well rested at all times.
Anyway, so I need to change the crib sheets tonight in preparation for tomorrow, and also find the spare monitor to plug in where he'll be sleeping, so I can hear when he stirs. The video monitor is in the boys' room so I can see/hear when Benjamin wakes from his nap and during the evening, but we have an old monitor (which hopefully still works!) that I need to put in with Samuel too.
I hope I can do it! I feel like I'm pretty sure I CAN do it, but it's a bit nerve-wracking at the moment! I need to somehow stay calm and sane so that I treat the boys the way they should be treated, and not get snappy or shouty or irritable with them if I get tired. They are HARD work, behaviour-wise, so that's a challenge at the best of times.
Samuel is doing great! :) The midwife came yesterday and discharged us to the Health Visitor, who will be coming tomorrow at noon. I am sad and nostalgic about the midwife discharging us because it is an official closure to the whole pregnancy and birth thing, which - as you know - I absolutely love and adore! :) So I am sad to leave that behind. Again! I can't believe I have done it five times now, and I feel kind of clutchy around the throat thinking that I may not have many more times left to experience, compared with how many I have been through already. I mean, I can't see myself being pregnant five more times, as much as I would LOVE to. I'll be 35 next month. I am hoping and praying (actively!) for more babies yet!
Samuel is waking so I will have to finish this later. I have photos to add, and just a bit more waffle about my darling boy! I'm so besotted with him, he is just delightful and lovely in every way and it's going to be hard to get back to normal life when I'm still SO in babymoon mode!
Oh, he seems to have resettled himself (he's on his tummy next to me in bed), so I'll carry on for now!
The midwife weighed Samuel yesterday at 12 days old and he now weighs 10lbs 2.5oz! He was 9lbs 1.5oz exactly a week before, so he has gained over a lb in a week! She was very pleased with his weight gain and his colour. He had a lot of swelling and bruising to his face, which has FINALLY started to go. I would say his swelling is all gone now, and his bruising almost all gone - it's not really noticable at all any more unless you know what to look for. Poor little man still has red patches on the whites of his eyes from the birth, and the midwife told me that can take several weeks to clear up. I am noticing today that the worst patch has started to look less red at last, and the others are more pinky now, so that's good. Anyway, she was very pleased with him because even with bruising he has had no jaundice whatsoever. He has been feeding almost constantly though, so that will have been flushing his system out very well.
He feeds on demand, basically whenever he is awake, hehe! I am working on making sure he has FULL feeds, so if he dozes off after one full side, I still wake him up and offer him the other side. Once he's well and truly stuffed, I let him sleep. He will then typically sleep for a couple of hours, or 2.5 hours even. My policy this time around is to make sure that's the longest he sleeps before I wake him up and feed him again. The idea is that with feeds no further apart than 2.5 hours in the day, he will be well tanked up during the day and eventually begin to space out his night-time feeds by himself. I hope! I have no idea of his nights, none at all! I lay down next to him and nurse him, and we both fall asleep. Next thing I know, he's fussing and I wake up enough to offer him the other breast and fall back to sleep. Fast forward to another moment where I become aware of him fussing, and I glance at the clock and acknowledge the time, offer him the breast and fall back to sleep. When I next wake, I have no recollection of the time I saw on the clock the last time, offer the boy the breast and fall back to sleep. And so it goes on! So I just can't tell you anything at all about his nights. I don't know how often he wakes, how many times each night, how long he feeds for, how much sleep I'm missing or how often my sleep is disturbed. I'm a bit frustrated because I really DO want to know the answers, and I try to be aware of it during the night, but I'm so half asleep that I forget it before morning comes and can't recall it by then! I think I would have to come round enough to physically write down the time each time I wake, to know how the nights are going, but that seems like a big faff so I probably won't get around to that! It's a GOOD way to do it, as it preserves my sleep in the best way possible. Samuel nurses back to sleep right away every time I feed him at night, and often has alert times after feeding during the day, so I am happy to see him being specific in that way about day and night. I don't give him the opportunity to be alert and wakeful in the night mind you! ;) I fall asleep and don't engage him at all. I also don't change his nappy at all, unless he is wet through (not happened yet) or has obviously pooed. Once or twice I have missed a pooey nappy until a couple of hours later because I have just fallen back to sleep and missed it, which I feel bad about!
He did start to get a couple of sore patches when he was first doing lots and lots of breastmilk poo after his meconium cleared out, so I've been using Sudocrem since then and he has no sore or red patches any more, even if he poos frequently. He typically will do 3 or 4 pooey nappies in the space of about 30 minutes, and then nothing for 5 or 6 hours, so that's better than some of my little ones who have just pooed and pooed and pooed around the clock and ended up sore no matter the barrier cream! It never really cleared up until a couple of months later when the frequency of poos calmed down.
Samuel's eyes are grey. They were so dark and murky the first week, and even with good light from the window and him looking directly into it, I still couldn't see any discernable colour to them, just dark murkiness. But this week they have been lightening up just slightly, and I can see that they're dark grey at the moment (no blue at all), and there is a ring around the pupil that I can't describe at the moment, but it could turn into a sort of tan-coloured ring like Benjamin's, I am guessing. Benjamin's are grey with a tan ring, just like mine, and I wonder if Samuel's will be similar. No way to really know this early, but I like guessing! :) They could also turn brown, as Arthur's started out grey too. His eyebrows and eyelashes are starting to "come out" now and so far to me they look light brown, so I think he'll have the same hair colour as Arthur and Benjamin. Nathan's is similar too, but his hair is slightly darker brown than the others, and Matthew's is quite fair - a cross between blonde and light brown. I think Samuel's eyebrows are more brown than Matthew's were though, so I think his colouring will be more like Arthur and Benjamin.
Samuel definitely looks most like Matthew in the face (their noses are almost identical!) but he's also a mix of all of them. It's lovely to see the unique combinations of each child as they arrive! This is probably a good time to post some photos! :) I think Samuel has been asleep nearly 2.5 hours now so I need to wake him up and feed him if he doesn't wake up himself. Here are the latest photos - starting way back on Christmas Eve at 3 days old:
Here is Samuel on Christmas Day in another Christmas outfit! :) Good old eBay! His eyes were still swollen, and his bruising probably peaked from that day. It seemed to really come up. He was looking at the window (he seems to really like looking at any light source, especially natural light, and will stare at it for ages and ages):
I already have a photo of Samuel in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit (which they all wear and get photographed in!) which I posted last entry. But here's another one, just for the records! He was 6 days old here, and really did not fit it any more in the length. He doesn't fit ANY of his newborn (up to 10lbs) sleepsuits now - his feet are restricted by the length as he's such a LONG baby! Neil got the box of 0-3 month clothes out of the loft today and the first load is in the washing machine, so that's a relief! I can't believe we're cracking that box open so soon! Anyway, here is Samuel looking at the window again, in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit! :)
So many people keep on saying how BIG he is, which I guess he is for a brand new baby, but as far as human beings go he is still EVER SO TINY! And that's how he seems to me, he is just soooo teeny tiny in my eyes, almost to the point where I can't understand why people keep on about how big he is, lol! I took a photo of him sleeping on his front with my hand laid gently on his head, just because when I was stroking his little head like that, it struck me again how tiny he was, and so I wanted to capture that to dispel the myth that he's this gigantic baby! ;) He was 6 days old here too:
Here is a series of photos that I took when Samuel was 8 days old, just before the boys' bedtime. Arthur and Matthew came up to see him as they often do at that time of day, and I realised I didn't yet have any photos of the boys with Samuel, except for the one I posted last entry of Benjamin holding him. So I got out my camera, even in the poor light (hence grainy photos), and took a few photos of them. Matthew is very taken with Samuel (just as he was/is with Benjamin, only more so) and is a very calming influence - he gets very serious about him and talks in hushed tones near him, and constantly wants to stroke or kiss him. He strokes his little head or tummy soooo gently and carefully. That's why he's wearing such a serious expression in one of these photos - this is Matthew looking after Samuel and taking the job very seriously. They are both giving him a kiss in the last photo, when it was time for them to go and get ready for bed :)
And lastly, here are 3 photos of Samuel taken when he was 9 days old, on my bed. His one Christmas present was a Very Hungry Caterpillar touchy-feely toy, and he does seem to focus on it and look at it so I put it near him sometimes for him to look at. I put it on the bed and fiddled about with depth of field, wanting to focus on Samuel and make the caterpillar blurry. While I was doing that I managed to catch him starting to smile at me! :) Samuel looked me right in the eye at 7 days old, raised his eyebrows in surprise as though recognising me for the first time, and SMILED! I couldn't believe it because he was only 7 days old, long before babies are apparently "able" to do proper social smiles yet, but I knew it was not wind, and was definitely "social" behaviour. Matthew and Benjamin were my previous earliest smilers at 3 weeks old which was already "early", but 7 days?!! I do know baby smiles by now, after 5 babies, but I still didn't mention it at first in case I was wrong. But he has smiled at me about once or twice a day, every day since, and at Neil a couple of times too. All the occasions were when he was particularly alert, focused on our faces, and being held about 12 inches from our faces as we talked to him. Definitely social smiles! :) I still can't believe he's doing it so early but there we go! In the last photo here, he was just beginning a smile - see how his eyes are so different and all lit up as he switches into his "social" mode?! :) Such a sweet little peanut!
He's fed and asleep curled up on my chest right now. Bliss!!! I will miss it so much tomorrow but at least I can still do it in the evenings and at the weekends! This precious stage is so fleeting and passes WAY too quickly. How I long to slow down time so that I can revel and soak in it all I like! *sigh*
The one sad thing that I have noticed about my sweet little Samuel is that he has undoubtedly got Arthur's curly feet :( I'm soooo sad about it, though my mum reminds me that it's not bad going to only have two out of five with the stupid curly feet gene (okay she didn't call it that, but that's what I think of the darn thing!), considering Neil was one of 3 siblings affected by it out of 4. Ugh. I know it means many rounds of both his little legs in full plaster casts, traipsing back and forth to the hospital with all the kiddies for frequent appointments, night boots that will disturb his sleep, and follow ups FOREVER where the physio struggles to figure out why his feet are not staying straight despite the treatment (ongoing with Arthur, whose feet are still curly and whose next appt is next month). So sad to have to begin it all over again, and to have to see my little baby in plaster casts. His feet don't look as curly as Arthur's did before his first casts, BUT the thing that concerns me is that they also turn in at the ankle, which Arthur's didn't, sort of suspiciously like clubfoot. But, I can flex them into a straight foot position, but they don't have any flexibility beyond that. I will not be hanging around waiting for the Health Visitor to notice and refer him, which is how we did it with Arthur and the physio told me she really should have seen him as a newborn (he was 3 months old before his appt came through). I will be phoning Arthur's physio tomorrow morning, and I'm sure she'll arrange to see Samuel pretty quickly.
*sigh*
Other than that, things are going well with my newest little man! When the midwife was packing up to go yesterday, she said (completely deadpan), "See you again later this year?" LOVE THAT, hehe! I answered, "Yeah, probably!" ;) And she said, "Going to be another boy?" And I said, "I should think so! I'm thinking of names already!" - which (shh!) I am! ;) Pretty sure that if God blesses us with another baby it will likely be a boy! And I'm already excited about that - my desire for a daughter, whilst THERE, seems to diminish with each baby that comes. I'm more excited for another sweet baby boy right now, than a baby girl. I love my boys! :)
Okay, that's all for now. I will try to update again soon, and work on my birth story in bits whenever I can. Heather has written loads of notes during my labour and no doubt will give me a copy next time I see her, so that will help me! :)
Today is Monday 3rd of January and it's the last day of Neil's paternity leave. Tomorrow he'll go to work at 7.30am and not get back until about 7pm. Yikes! I have such a mixture of feelings about the new normal around here! I'm so excited - breathlessly excited! - to be starting out as the mother of five children, spending my days watching them grow and learn and develop, and managing my home and my little ones. It's such a challenge (and TOO hard sometimes, but you keep going I guess!) but ohhhh so rewarding! And exciting to tackle. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing - no job or career could possibly hold this much anticipation or joy or love or thrills or rewards for me, I'm sure of it. It has to be hard work and a big challenge in order to be THAT thrilling and rewarding. So in part I am eager for tomorrow because it's the start of a new year which stretches out ahead of us, and a new beginning with a new little person in our family. I'm excited for all that it means, and all that the year will hold for us!
But ohhh I'm scared, lol!
How in the wide world will I juggle the needs of five little people, when the youngest is a needy newborn baby and the eldest is only just 6?! I was never proficient at it with four little people (trust me, I was NOT "there" yet!) so I am not sure how to proceed!
Personality-wise, I work well under pressure, and better still when I don't have someone else to fall back on. If Neil is at home I will manage less well, than if he's at work. I rise to the challenge, and I can't afford to be lazy (which is my tendency unfortunately!). It's a GOOD thing that I need to do my days without Neil home for 12 hours, although it's kind of the last thing that I want to do right now, thinking about the week ahead! ;) It will be good for me!
On Friday my parents are coming!! I can't wait to see them, and neither can the boys - they LOVE Nana and Grandy! I'm so excited for them to meet Samuel as well. They've seen his photos but it will be lovely to see them hold him and see all the things about him that I've been telling them on the phone, for themselves. They are travelling up from France on Thursday, and staying with my grandparents until the following Friday. Apart from the weekend, they are planning to come here for part of the day every day, yay! To help me with the boys mostly, and to meet Samuel. Nathan's birthday is next week (HOW ON EARTH WILL HE BE THREE?!?!!) and Neil has to work that day so I am really happy that my parents will be here and can help me make the day special for him. I have 3 children aged 2 and under at the moment! Two, one, and newborn! :) And four and six! :) Anyway I am looking forward to my parents visiting because it will help me to have them here. I have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on my own, which will be interesting!
I get tired very quickly when I do things with the boys these last few days - I've been going downstairs for anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours, just slowly tidying the living room (which is beyond description, truly) or sitting with Samuel in my arms, or just chatting with the boys as they play. I get tired quickly and go back upstairs with Samuel when that hits, and just feel like I need a long nap to recover from sitting downstairs! I'm nervous about the days to come since I will never get the chance to nap. It has been several babies since I last was able to nap, no matter how desperate the need, obviously! I hope I hold up physically.
I have made a list this evening to help me keep focused tomorrow. This is all I want to achieve tomorrow and even though it's basic I think I will not manage much more, and will have to work at just achieving what's on the list!
* Drink 4-6 glasses of water
* Benjamin down for a nap at appropriate time
* Meals on time for all of us (give or take 30 mins)
* Read aloud to the boys (at least 1 hour)
* Nappy changes for all the nappy wearers, at least morning, noon, and bedtime! (Nathan and Benjamin are full-time nappy wearers, no potty training yet. Matthew wears a nappy at night and whenever he needs to poo still.)
* Keep on top of the living room floor (tidy-ish)
* Read Bible and pray, at least first thing, but if possible at any moment I can grab too!
* Feed and cuddle Samuel as much as possible. Change his nappy as often as needed (LOTS lately!).
That's it. Hopefully I'll manage to keep the above stuff going, because if I do I think the day will go okay for us all. I am not sure what we'll have for dinner - there are precisely NO freezer meals this time! I have no idea why that slipped my mind, but hmmm, that could make things tricky! I'm guessing tomorrow's dinner for the boys will be baked beans on toast, since it's quick, easy, nutritious, and one of their favourites! :)
Another part of me is just feeling so sad that my babymoon is over! :( I still get to snuggle my tiny man, but it has been so precious just focusing on him and snuggling him ALL the time. He has mostly slept all his sleeps on my front. These last two or three days I have started to put him down next to me on the bed when he is WELL asleep on my front. I don't want to! But I started to get worried about when Neil goes back to work, and what if he absolutely will not sleep unless he's on my front by then?! Today I really feel that pull of the fact that it's the last day where I get to rest in bed with my tiny love. Even when he's been happy and contented NOT in my arms, I have still scooped him up anyway and held him close all curled up against my chest, and kissed his little soft head a zillion times, and rubbed his back until he fell asleep - as often as I could. I know I can't do that during the week after today, and I really have a lump in my throat just thinking about it. The demands of the day will mean I have to keep on putting him down to deal with issues with the boys, discipline, and various things that need doing like nappies and meals. Samuel is SUCH a contented little baby. He doesn't mind being put down, but I can feel him relax more when he's in my arms. He goes so calm and still, and just blinks and does his sweet fast breathing, and eventually dozes off. I LOVE holding him! I will hold him just about as much as I possibly can even with Neil at work, but I know I will need to keep putting him down, and he won't be able to take his naps on me.
A sling would fix that, I know, but I don't get on well with slings in general. Either they hurt my back, or even if they don't, I find them too cumbersome, especially when trying to tend to the other little ones. I can't pick up or lift a toddler when I have a baby on my front, even with 2 arms free. It just doesn't work for me. It's possible to cook a meal or change a nappy with a baby on my front, but I find it physically straining and exhausting to do so. My back hurts just trying to lean round the baby to get things done. So I am not going the slinging route, unless he ends up a colicky baby and it's a survival tactic for a while. I HOPE he won't be!! But so far he seems very very laid-back and calm and happy. He's such a precious blessing!
Our last bouncy chair broke when Benjamin was a baby, so when I realised we didn't have one, I went looking on eBay. I wanted a Fisher Price one with a vibrate function, like our old one. We had a Fisher Price Kick and Play before and it was brilliant. Just the right bounce-ability when pushed with a foot, and the vibrate function was very helpful too! I needed one that was being sold locally enough so that I could avoid postage costs. I found a more basic Fisher Price bouncy chair for £5 (I think?) just a few streets away from us, and won it! It has a vibrate function but no lights and sounds like the other one, which I'm PERFECTLY happy about! ;) It has a built in blanket to cover the baby up if it's chilly, which is sweet! And it does bounce as nicely as the other one, so I'm pleased about that. After I washed the cover, I put Samuel in it (yesterday or the day before, I can't remember which!), and he was very happy there while his brothers stroked his head and put the blanket on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off, etc, and bounced the chair none-too-gently. The chair got nudged and bumped a few times as they busied themselves playing next to it, which made Samuel jump a bit, but he was calm through it all. Eventually he started to fuss a bit, so I put the vibrate function on and rocked the chair gently with my foot, and he went very still, just blinking. Over about 10 minutes, his sweet little eyelids got heavier and heavier, until he went to sleep. Today I put him in the chair for a short while and he did the same thing. After he had been asleep about 5 minutes I picked him up out of the chair and put him in my bed upstairs and he stayed asleep for a couple of hours. So I am cautiously hopeful with the bouncy chair to help me! :) It's a safe place to put him down, so long as I do not leave the room. Our house is conveniently teeny tiny so we only HAVE the one room to be in anyway, lol! ;) Very handy at this stage! I think if I need to go to the toilet or the kitchen, I will have to take him with me. Or just not go to either of those places unless I have him put to bed upstairs or something.
He has not used his crib at all so far - well, I tried him in it when he was fast asleep once at under a week old, and he stayed asleep less than 10 minutes on his back in there, and then woke up kind of fussy. He sleeps with me at night and I have no plans to change that any time soon. LOVE co-sleeping! :) For naps though, once Neil is not with the little ones in the day times, I need to do something different I think. While he's tiny, he is safe on my bed unsupervised, but only until he gets near to the age where he could roll. And even so, I don't feel safe even now putting him there for naps, because Arthur and Matthew are able to let themselves upstairs through the kiddy gate now, and I don't want them to have access to him on the bed if I don't know they're in there.
Soooo I will try transferring him to his crib once he's fallen asleep either breastfeeding or in the bouncy chair. I am not too confident about it because if I put him on his back he is likely to wake up pretty quickly. If I am in the room with him all the time, I have been putting him on his tummy to sleep, because he goes off to sleep on my front (tummy down) and his front is therefore all warm and toasty, and he stays settled if he goes down on his tummy if he fell asleep that way. He sleeps for a couple of hours every time like that. I am not crazy about sort of training him to be a tummy sleeper though, because at night he sleeps on his side or on his back next to me in between nursing, and he seems to have no problems sleeping on his back. So I don't want to mess with a good thing! I know how hard it is to try to get a baby to sleep on his back who is plain hurting or uncomfortable on his back for whatever reason - two of mine have been that way, but Samuel is definitely not so far. I don't want to lay him down in his crib on his tummy to sleep and then walk away and shut the door. So I will persevere trying to transfer him asleep onto his back in the crib and hope he stays sleeping. I think he will wake within 5 minutes every time and eventually get cross and overtired, but I'll give it a try anyway. I also suspect he'll take some of his naps actually in the bouncy chair. He is disturbed by the noise around him so I want to try to get him napping upstairs if possible, because it doesn't seem fair to him to see him flinching and startling at crashes and bangs and screeches from his brothers, even though he stays asleep! That can't be as good a quality of sleep for him, and I want him to be well rested at all times.
Anyway, so I need to change the crib sheets tonight in preparation for tomorrow, and also find the spare monitor to plug in where he'll be sleeping, so I can hear when he stirs. The video monitor is in the boys' room so I can see/hear when Benjamin wakes from his nap and during the evening, but we have an old monitor (which hopefully still works!) that I need to put in with Samuel too.
I hope I can do it! I feel like I'm pretty sure I CAN do it, but it's a bit nerve-wracking at the moment! I need to somehow stay calm and sane so that I treat the boys the way they should be treated, and not get snappy or shouty or irritable with them if I get tired. They are HARD work, behaviour-wise, so that's a challenge at the best of times.
Samuel is doing great! :) The midwife came yesterday and discharged us to the Health Visitor, who will be coming tomorrow at noon. I am sad and nostalgic about the midwife discharging us because it is an official closure to the whole pregnancy and birth thing, which - as you know - I absolutely love and adore! :) So I am sad to leave that behind. Again! I can't believe I have done it five times now, and I feel kind of clutchy around the throat thinking that I may not have many more times left to experience, compared with how many I have been through already. I mean, I can't see myself being pregnant five more times, as much as I would LOVE to. I'll be 35 next month. I am hoping and praying (actively!) for more babies yet!
Samuel is waking so I will have to finish this later. I have photos to add, and just a bit more waffle about my darling boy! I'm so besotted with him, he is just delightful and lovely in every way and it's going to be hard to get back to normal life when I'm still SO in babymoon mode!
Oh, he seems to have resettled himself (he's on his tummy next to me in bed), so I'll carry on for now!
The midwife weighed Samuel yesterday at 12 days old and he now weighs 10lbs 2.5oz! He was 9lbs 1.5oz exactly a week before, so he has gained over a lb in a week! She was very pleased with his weight gain and his colour. He had a lot of swelling and bruising to his face, which has FINALLY started to go. I would say his swelling is all gone now, and his bruising almost all gone - it's not really noticable at all any more unless you know what to look for. Poor little man still has red patches on the whites of his eyes from the birth, and the midwife told me that can take several weeks to clear up. I am noticing today that the worst patch has started to look less red at last, and the others are more pinky now, so that's good. Anyway, she was very pleased with him because even with bruising he has had no jaundice whatsoever. He has been feeding almost constantly though, so that will have been flushing his system out very well.
He feeds on demand, basically whenever he is awake, hehe! I am working on making sure he has FULL feeds, so if he dozes off after one full side, I still wake him up and offer him the other side. Once he's well and truly stuffed, I let him sleep. He will then typically sleep for a couple of hours, or 2.5 hours even. My policy this time around is to make sure that's the longest he sleeps before I wake him up and feed him again. The idea is that with feeds no further apart than 2.5 hours in the day, he will be well tanked up during the day and eventually begin to space out his night-time feeds by himself. I hope! I have no idea of his nights, none at all! I lay down next to him and nurse him, and we both fall asleep. Next thing I know, he's fussing and I wake up enough to offer him the other breast and fall back to sleep. Fast forward to another moment where I become aware of him fussing, and I glance at the clock and acknowledge the time, offer him the breast and fall back to sleep. When I next wake, I have no recollection of the time I saw on the clock the last time, offer the boy the breast and fall back to sleep. And so it goes on! So I just can't tell you anything at all about his nights. I don't know how often he wakes, how many times each night, how long he feeds for, how much sleep I'm missing or how often my sleep is disturbed. I'm a bit frustrated because I really DO want to know the answers, and I try to be aware of it during the night, but I'm so half asleep that I forget it before morning comes and can't recall it by then! I think I would have to come round enough to physically write down the time each time I wake, to know how the nights are going, but that seems like a big faff so I probably won't get around to that! It's a GOOD way to do it, as it preserves my sleep in the best way possible. Samuel nurses back to sleep right away every time I feed him at night, and often has alert times after feeding during the day, so I am happy to see him being specific in that way about day and night. I don't give him the opportunity to be alert and wakeful in the night mind you! ;) I fall asleep and don't engage him at all. I also don't change his nappy at all, unless he is wet through (not happened yet) or has obviously pooed. Once or twice I have missed a pooey nappy until a couple of hours later because I have just fallen back to sleep and missed it, which I feel bad about!
He did start to get a couple of sore patches when he was first doing lots and lots of breastmilk poo after his meconium cleared out, so I've been using Sudocrem since then and he has no sore or red patches any more, even if he poos frequently. He typically will do 3 or 4 pooey nappies in the space of about 30 minutes, and then nothing for 5 or 6 hours, so that's better than some of my little ones who have just pooed and pooed and pooed around the clock and ended up sore no matter the barrier cream! It never really cleared up until a couple of months later when the frequency of poos calmed down.
Samuel's eyes are grey. They were so dark and murky the first week, and even with good light from the window and him looking directly into it, I still couldn't see any discernable colour to them, just dark murkiness. But this week they have been lightening up just slightly, and I can see that they're dark grey at the moment (no blue at all), and there is a ring around the pupil that I can't describe at the moment, but it could turn into a sort of tan-coloured ring like Benjamin's, I am guessing. Benjamin's are grey with a tan ring, just like mine, and I wonder if Samuel's will be similar. No way to really know this early, but I like guessing! :) They could also turn brown, as Arthur's started out grey too. His eyebrows and eyelashes are starting to "come out" now and so far to me they look light brown, so I think he'll have the same hair colour as Arthur and Benjamin. Nathan's is similar too, but his hair is slightly darker brown than the others, and Matthew's is quite fair - a cross between blonde and light brown. I think Samuel's eyebrows are more brown than Matthew's were though, so I think his colouring will be more like Arthur and Benjamin.
Samuel definitely looks most like Matthew in the face (their noses are almost identical!) but he's also a mix of all of them. It's lovely to see the unique combinations of each child as they arrive! This is probably a good time to post some photos! :) I think Samuel has been asleep nearly 2.5 hours now so I need to wake him up and feed him if he doesn't wake up himself. Here are the latest photos - starting way back on Christmas Eve at 3 days old:
Here is Samuel on Christmas Day in another Christmas outfit! :) Good old eBay! His eyes were still swollen, and his bruising probably peaked from that day. It seemed to really come up. He was looking at the window (he seems to really like looking at any light source, especially natural light, and will stare at it for ages and ages):
I already have a photo of Samuel in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit (which they all wear and get photographed in!) which I posted last entry. But here's another one, just for the records! He was 6 days old here, and really did not fit it any more in the length. He doesn't fit ANY of his newborn (up to 10lbs) sleepsuits now - his feet are restricted by the length as he's such a LONG baby! Neil got the box of 0-3 month clothes out of the loft today and the first load is in the washing machine, so that's a relief! I can't believe we're cracking that box open so soon! Anyway, here is Samuel looking at the window again, in the Mr. Bump sleepsuit! :)
So many people keep on saying how BIG he is, which I guess he is for a brand new baby, but as far as human beings go he is still EVER SO TINY! And that's how he seems to me, he is just soooo teeny tiny in my eyes, almost to the point where I can't understand why people keep on about how big he is, lol! I took a photo of him sleeping on his front with my hand laid gently on his head, just because when I was stroking his little head like that, it struck me again how tiny he was, and so I wanted to capture that to dispel the myth that he's this gigantic baby! ;) He was 6 days old here too:
Here is a series of photos that I took when Samuel was 8 days old, just before the boys' bedtime. Arthur and Matthew came up to see him as they often do at that time of day, and I realised I didn't yet have any photos of the boys with Samuel, except for the one I posted last entry of Benjamin holding him. So I got out my camera, even in the poor light (hence grainy photos), and took a few photos of them. Matthew is very taken with Samuel (just as he was/is with Benjamin, only more so) and is a very calming influence - he gets very serious about him and talks in hushed tones near him, and constantly wants to stroke or kiss him. He strokes his little head or tummy soooo gently and carefully. That's why he's wearing such a serious expression in one of these photos - this is Matthew looking after Samuel and taking the job very seriously. They are both giving him a kiss in the last photo, when it was time for them to go and get ready for bed :)
And lastly, here are 3 photos of Samuel taken when he was 9 days old, on my bed. His one Christmas present was a Very Hungry Caterpillar touchy-feely toy, and he does seem to focus on it and look at it so I put it near him sometimes for him to look at. I put it on the bed and fiddled about with depth of field, wanting to focus on Samuel and make the caterpillar blurry. While I was doing that I managed to catch him starting to smile at me! :) Samuel looked me right in the eye at 7 days old, raised his eyebrows in surprise as though recognising me for the first time, and SMILED! I couldn't believe it because he was only 7 days old, long before babies are apparently "able" to do proper social smiles yet, but I knew it was not wind, and was definitely "social" behaviour. Matthew and Benjamin were my previous earliest smilers at 3 weeks old which was already "early", but 7 days?!! I do know baby smiles by now, after 5 babies, but I still didn't mention it at first in case I was wrong. But he has smiled at me about once or twice a day, every day since, and at Neil a couple of times too. All the occasions were when he was particularly alert, focused on our faces, and being held about 12 inches from our faces as we talked to him. Definitely social smiles! :) I still can't believe he's doing it so early but there we go! In the last photo here, he was just beginning a smile - see how his eyes are so different and all lit up as he switches into his "social" mode?! :) Such a sweet little peanut!
He's fed and asleep curled up on my chest right now. Bliss!!! I will miss it so much tomorrow but at least I can still do it in the evenings and at the weekends! This precious stage is so fleeting and passes WAY too quickly. How I long to slow down time so that I can revel and soak in it all I like! *sigh*
The one sad thing that I have noticed about my sweet little Samuel is that he has undoubtedly got Arthur's curly feet :( I'm soooo sad about it, though my mum reminds me that it's not bad going to only have two out of five with the stupid curly feet gene (okay she didn't call it that, but that's what I think of the darn thing!), considering Neil was one of 3 siblings affected by it out of 4. Ugh. I know it means many rounds of both his little legs in full plaster casts, traipsing back and forth to the hospital with all the kiddies for frequent appointments, night boots that will disturb his sleep, and follow ups FOREVER where the physio struggles to figure out why his feet are not staying straight despite the treatment (ongoing with Arthur, whose feet are still curly and whose next appt is next month). So sad to have to begin it all over again, and to have to see my little baby in plaster casts. His feet don't look as curly as Arthur's did before his first casts, BUT the thing that concerns me is that they also turn in at the ankle, which Arthur's didn't, sort of suspiciously like clubfoot. But, I can flex them into a straight foot position, but they don't have any flexibility beyond that. I will not be hanging around waiting for the Health Visitor to notice and refer him, which is how we did it with Arthur and the physio told me she really should have seen him as a newborn (he was 3 months old before his appt came through). I will be phoning Arthur's physio tomorrow morning, and I'm sure she'll arrange to see Samuel pretty quickly.
*sigh*
Other than that, things are going well with my newest little man! When the midwife was packing up to go yesterday, she said (completely deadpan), "See you again later this year?" LOVE THAT, hehe! I answered, "Yeah, probably!" ;) And she said, "Going to be another boy?" And I said, "I should think so! I'm thinking of names already!" - which (shh!) I am! ;) Pretty sure that if God blesses us with another baby it will likely be a boy! And I'm already excited about that - my desire for a daughter, whilst THERE, seems to diminish with each baby that comes. I'm more excited for another sweet baby boy right now, than a baby girl. I love my boys! :)
Okay, that's all for now. I will try to update again soon, and work on my birth story in bits whenever I can. Heather has written loads of notes during my labour and no doubt will give me a copy next time I see her, so that will help me! :)
Monday, December 27, 2010
6 days old - babymooooon! :)
I did not mean to leave it 6 days in these sweet early stages with so much to write about all the time! But oh I am in some sort of babymoony altered state, lol! I am SO incredibly in love with my new tiny, and just busy enjoying him ALL the time, even though I'm not "doing" much with my time. I am following the same plan as last time - stay in bed basically for two whole weeks - or at least for the first week, and then mainly stay in the bedroom for the second week. It means I physically rest completely, and it makes things MUCH easier if I'm well rested and recovered by the time Neil goes back to work (on the 4th of January). The boys come up and "visit" a lot, and Benjamin still has his milky before his nap and bedtime, in my bed. Sometimes Samuel is already breastfeeding, but I'm beginning to feel quite used to tandem nursing - this is my 3rd pair of tandem nurslings! :) Matthew never officially stopped, and maybe last nursed before bed a couple of months ago (for the first time in a couple of months), but he hasn't had any since Samuel was born, or asked. He watches with interest, and enjoys seeing both Samuel and Benjamin feeding together.
My milk started to change from colostrum just under 48 hours after Samuel was born, and took a full day to become the "very much IN!" milk with some engorgement - so I guess he was 3 days old when my milk came in properly. He has been breastfeeding pretty much non-stop since he was born. If he's not breastfeeding, he is asleep, but not really in a predictable pattern like some babies are at this stage - feed, sleep for 2 hours or so, feed, sleep for 2 hours or so, etc. He is starting to sleep longer now that he's getting SO VERY FULL, but I can't predict whether he'll sleep hours or 20 minutes. I think I am probably more attached to this baby than my others - physically, I mean. Right now he is on my bed next to me, sleeping on his front (which I never put him down on) where I put him briefly when I needed to go to the loo. He had been sleeping on my chest so I figured he might stay asleep long enough for me to go to the toilet if I kept him sleeping on his front where he was all warm and toasty. Samuel actually seems to be very happy sleeping on his back (only 2 of my others were) so I am really pleased to go with that! I always get so nervous if the only way they'll sleep is on their tummies!
Anyway, he has stayed asleep longer than the time I needed to go to the loo, so I thought I would make the use of a very rare opportunity when both my hands are free, and update my blog as fast as I can before he wakes and needs at least one of my hands again! ;)
He breastfeeds for quite a long time. Some of my babies have been all done within 5 or 10 minutes for a full feed. Samuel likes his food! ;) He takes his time on one side, and then wants the other, and takes his time with that too. My milk is very plentiful as it usually is by this stage, and he is getting a lot of milk very fast, but perhaps it's because he's such a big baby - he's not choking on it at all (Benjamin didn't either) and he's able to take an awful lot of it before he's officially full. When he's full, he falls asleep on the breast. I burp him sitting up on my lap (soooooo precious with his little doughy cheeks resting on my hand as I hold his chin!!!) and then give him the other breast, and when he falls asleep I simply lift him up onto my chest. I spend my time mostly propped up in bed semi-sitting, with pillows. So if I put him on my chest, he's semi-reclining forwards, and he's upright enough to burp in his sleep. He brings his wind up very easily which I'm thankful for!
Anyway, there we stay until he wakes again and roots, which is often a couple of hours! Sometimes he doesn't fall asleep right away, or else I change his nappy and then he's wide awake. At those times he goes extremely calm and quiet and alert, and just looks into my eyes, or at the contrast of my hair against the walls or the pictures on the walls. I fall so deeply in love with him during these times! I can't describe how precious he is to me, and I feel it SO keenly when he's gazing at me with those tiny newborn peepy eyes, over those soft soft SOFFFT doughy cheeks. The photos (which I'll post in a minute!) just don't do them justice - they look doughy like actual dough, but there's no firmness or resistance to them in reality. They're like butter! Butter, I tell you!! I am just beyond blissdom. I kiss those cheeks too many times a day to count, just for the sheer pleasure of doing so! He's SO adorable. *sigh*
So we spend our days in constant contact - either breastfeeding, or snuggling with him on my chest. At night I lay him next to me in my bed and nurse him side-lying and he goes to sleep, and then so do I. When he wakes later, I nurse him again without moving. I don't change his nappy at night at all unless he has pooed, which he sometimes does once in the night (I'm sure that will increase pretty soon!). About every other feed (or ever feed if I am not too asleep to remember!) I lift him up without moving myself, and sort of drape him over my waist as I lie on my side, so that he's sort of kneeling upright against my tummy, looking over my back. I pat his back and he burps, and then I lay him down next to me again. It's the easiest way to burp a tiny baby at night - no getting up at all! :) I did that with Benjamin and it worked a treat!
Christmas happened somewhere in the blur of rose-tinted hormones - I think it was good?! Was it?! Hehe! I am not noticing much of anything lately! We did the usual presents for the children, but nothing else that we normally do for Christmas. We had no visitors, and we didn't go out. We had planned to do a roast lunch for Christmas but it didn't pan out - it was a lot for Neil to take on by himself, and I will be more able to help if we do the whole Christmas meal thing at a later point - even next weekend as a sort of New Year's celebration maybe? So we had cheese sandwiches with salad for lunch, lol! And pasta with homemade pesto and tomato sauce for dinner. We didn't mind a BIT. The boys were so thrilled with all their gifts and spent the whole day playing vigorously with them all - ohhhh the siren noises would have driven me insane if I'd spent the day downstairs, and they nearly did all the way upstairs too! ;) They got several emergency vehicles which make sirens, and a wooden fire station and road set, with a siren on the station too. I did go downstairs (slowly!) with Samuel first thing in the morning to be there for all the present-opening, which was nice! I think it lasted an hour or so, and I was just feeling grey and exhausted by the time they'd finished. I didn't even feel like I could sit upright, and just took it as a sign that I should be resting in bed still! So I went back up afterwards, and took a nap for a couple of hours with Samuel, and felt better.
I have been so paranoid about that placental lobe since Samuel was born. I just keep thinking, "Where on earth IS it?!" remembering how obvious it was at 2 different scans - one of them only 7 weeks ago! It did not come out, so where is it?! The placenta was examined at the hospital by the doctors with the knowledge that there was a lobe on the scan, and still they conclude that there is no way anything was ever attached to that placenta. It's absolutely complete, with no torn membranes or vessels leading off the main body - nothing missing whatsoever. So strange! If it's God doing something miraculous then I am NOT surprised, but if I take my eyes off Him for a moment then I am worried all the time, wondering if/when I will start to bleed heavily or get an infection.
The midwife came round the day after Samuel's birth to check on us. She felt my tummy and said my womb still seemed "quite high" but was contracted. That was the statement that stayed in my head for the next few days and filled me with anxiety. My womb always always seems to be really well contracted after having a baby, and usually the midwife comments on how contracted down it is already. So it was the first time I'd heard someone say it was still quite high (this midwife hadn't known about my extra lobe) and so it concerned me. By the next day it didn't seem to me any lower (it was maybe an inch below my tummy button) and so I started to get a bit overly anxious and phoned Heather for advice. She had me phone labour ward and ask their advice, and they said that since I was not bleeding heavily or in pain, they were not concerned but that I should arrange for a midwife to visit the next morning. So on Christmas Eve a midwife came round in the morning and felt my tummy - she was so nice about it and really reassuring. It wasn't much lower than before but she said it was fine and in the range they expected at this stage. My bleeding has actually been really light, so that's good. It's like a normal period, and I'm only using regular period pads (med-light flow) and that's all I need right now.
I have been having normal afterpains, especially when breastfeeding, but they've not been so ferocious as last time around. I hope that's okay too... They've pretty much stopped now though. During the day on Christmas Eve I was becoming more and more crampy low down, front and back, and just feeling a bit more sore than usual. I also noticed the night before that, that it was a bit sore to wee. It was MIGHTY sore to wee within the first 12 hours of giving birth, but gradually got less so as time went on. But on the 23rd in the evening it seemed a little more sore. The next day by late afternoon it was almost unbearably painful to wee, and the crampiness was constant. Heather (bless her heart, getting all these worried phone calls from me at Christmas! She was so nice about it!) said I should drink a TON and phone the GP surgery to see if there was anyone still there at closing time on Christmas Eve. I had to be kind of persuasive with the receptionist (are all receptionists like this?! Tsk!) about speaking to a doctor, but a really nice GP came on the phone in the end and I told him my symptoms. He wrote me a prescription for a 3-day course of antibiotics right away and said he would leave it at reception for the next hour before they closed, or if we couldn't get to pick it up in that time, he would WALK to the nearest chemist and leave it there for me in case they were open longer! So nice of him! He was concerned that I get some treatment for a bladder infection quickly since I was so newly postpartum, and it was Christmas the next day.
It was a bit tricky because the only person who could possibly pick up the prescription was Neil, and I was not yet in any sort of state to be left with the little ones even for a short while! They were bouncing off the walls downstairs and being difficult, and Neil was in the middle of cooking sausages for dinner! In the end, he got the sausages out to cool, instructed the boys to behave for me, and went as fast as he could to the surgery to pick up the prescription and get the antibiotics at the chemist. He was gone about 30 or 40 minutes, and it was scary! The boys didn't obey me when I asked them not to do such-and-such, and I felt so weak physically that it made me want to cry. Benjamin climbed onto the windowsill to watch Daddy go, and then couldn't get down so I had to go (very slowly) downstairs and lift him down, which I felt physically quite shaky about. I wasn't feeling too well with my bladder infection by then too, which didn't help.
Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity (!!), Neil came home with my antibiotics - what a star! I only have one left to take tonight and I have finished the course, and I feel SOOOO much better now.
The midwife came again today and did Samuel's heel prick test (sniffle! He was such a good boy even though he needed TWO heel pricks because he didn't bleed enough from the first one!), and weighed him. He weighs 9lbs 1.5oz today so has lost about 5% of his birth weight, which is normal. His meconium ALL passed in one great poo-a-thon yesterday (8 poos in one day!!!) and today he is passing small mustardy-yellow breastmilk poos so he's cleared out nicely! :) Also she felt my tummy and my womb is really well contracted down, which was very reassuring to hear! It's only an inch or two above my pubic bone now and she does not think anything can possibly be retained in there. I hope she's right!
Samuel is awake and starting to cry so I'm going to stop this for now and breastfeed my sweetie-peadle! :)
Back again to finish off, but one-handed now as my lil treasure is on my chest sleeping, and I'm cuddling him to me with my left arm :)
Here are the first 4 photos of Samuel (the ones I've already posted at Facebook) - we could not find either of the cameras after he was born, and it was 36 hours before Neil found them in the car! I was a bit sad to have no photos of his first 24 hours or so :( But never mind. Here is the first photo of Samuel at about 40-or-so hours old, doing what he did most at that time - rooting on his hands! :)
Two days old (see how swollen his eyes are from the birth?! And the CHEEKS I was talking about earlier!):
Cuddle with Daddy at 2 days old:
Benjamin holding Samuel for the first time - sooooo precious! I have had comments about them looking the same size in this photo, but I promise it's all just a camera angle thing! I know he's over 9lbs but he really is just sooo teeny tiny all the same - MUCH smaller than Benjamin, and especially his little head! I am not sure why his head looks so big here! I will have to take a side-by-side photo of them so you can see what a huge size difference there actually is!
Here's a little video clip I took of Samuel at 2 days old, really just to make a record of his sweet little snuffly, rooty, reflexy self for me to look back on - this sweet stage passes too fast!
Here's my little manny at 3 days old on Christmas Eve. He looked so like a little Christmas present when I lay him down for a moment, dressed in his Christmas sleepsuit, that I couldn't resist a photo! :)
He is, without a doubt, the MOST wonderful Christmas present I have ever (or probably WILL ever) receive! I'm so thankful that he's here, and that I have five (!!!!) precious children. Five! I keep being freshly astounded that this statistic applies to ME! It's so surreal somehow. I have to keep saying it out loud, "I have FIVE children!" and then again for, "I have FIVE sons!!" because wow, that's a lot of sons - how blessed am I?! Not many women these days can say they have five sons. It takes my breath away sometimes when I think about it properly. I just can't believe I actually have five children. FIVE children. How perfectly wonderful! Now the only thing more wonderful than five children would be six children! But that's for another entry at another time, I guess! ;)
I'll try to update again soon. I have more photos taken in the last couple of days but no chance yet to upload them, and of course I have much more that I could waffle on about! But I think that's the main stuff updated about, so it's a good start! :) Thanks for all the lovely comments and congratulations! xxx
My milk started to change from colostrum just under 48 hours after Samuel was born, and took a full day to become the "very much IN!" milk with some engorgement - so I guess he was 3 days old when my milk came in properly. He has been breastfeeding pretty much non-stop since he was born. If he's not breastfeeding, he is asleep, but not really in a predictable pattern like some babies are at this stage - feed, sleep for 2 hours or so, feed, sleep for 2 hours or so, etc. He is starting to sleep longer now that he's getting SO VERY FULL, but I can't predict whether he'll sleep hours or 20 minutes. I think I am probably more attached to this baby than my others - physically, I mean. Right now he is on my bed next to me, sleeping on his front (which I never put him down on) where I put him briefly when I needed to go to the loo. He had been sleeping on my chest so I figured he might stay asleep long enough for me to go to the toilet if I kept him sleeping on his front where he was all warm and toasty. Samuel actually seems to be very happy sleeping on his back (only 2 of my others were) so I am really pleased to go with that! I always get so nervous if the only way they'll sleep is on their tummies!
Anyway, he has stayed asleep longer than the time I needed to go to the loo, so I thought I would make the use of a very rare opportunity when both my hands are free, and update my blog as fast as I can before he wakes and needs at least one of my hands again! ;)
He breastfeeds for quite a long time. Some of my babies have been all done within 5 or 10 minutes for a full feed. Samuel likes his food! ;) He takes his time on one side, and then wants the other, and takes his time with that too. My milk is very plentiful as it usually is by this stage, and he is getting a lot of milk very fast, but perhaps it's because he's such a big baby - he's not choking on it at all (Benjamin didn't either) and he's able to take an awful lot of it before he's officially full. When he's full, he falls asleep on the breast. I burp him sitting up on my lap (soooooo precious with his little doughy cheeks resting on my hand as I hold his chin!!!) and then give him the other breast, and when he falls asleep I simply lift him up onto my chest. I spend my time mostly propped up in bed semi-sitting, with pillows. So if I put him on my chest, he's semi-reclining forwards, and he's upright enough to burp in his sleep. He brings his wind up very easily which I'm thankful for!
Anyway, there we stay until he wakes again and roots, which is often a couple of hours! Sometimes he doesn't fall asleep right away, or else I change his nappy and then he's wide awake. At those times he goes extremely calm and quiet and alert, and just looks into my eyes, or at the contrast of my hair against the walls or the pictures on the walls. I fall so deeply in love with him during these times! I can't describe how precious he is to me, and I feel it SO keenly when he's gazing at me with those tiny newborn peepy eyes, over those soft soft SOFFFT doughy cheeks. The photos (which I'll post in a minute!) just don't do them justice - they look doughy like actual dough, but there's no firmness or resistance to them in reality. They're like butter! Butter, I tell you!! I am just beyond blissdom. I kiss those cheeks too many times a day to count, just for the sheer pleasure of doing so! He's SO adorable. *sigh*
So we spend our days in constant contact - either breastfeeding, or snuggling with him on my chest. At night I lay him next to me in my bed and nurse him side-lying and he goes to sleep, and then so do I. When he wakes later, I nurse him again without moving. I don't change his nappy at night at all unless he has pooed, which he sometimes does once in the night (I'm sure that will increase pretty soon!). About every other feed (or ever feed if I am not too asleep to remember!) I lift him up without moving myself, and sort of drape him over my waist as I lie on my side, so that he's sort of kneeling upright against my tummy, looking over my back. I pat his back and he burps, and then I lay him down next to me again. It's the easiest way to burp a tiny baby at night - no getting up at all! :) I did that with Benjamin and it worked a treat!
Christmas happened somewhere in the blur of rose-tinted hormones - I think it was good?! Was it?! Hehe! I am not noticing much of anything lately! We did the usual presents for the children, but nothing else that we normally do for Christmas. We had no visitors, and we didn't go out. We had planned to do a roast lunch for Christmas but it didn't pan out - it was a lot for Neil to take on by himself, and I will be more able to help if we do the whole Christmas meal thing at a later point - even next weekend as a sort of New Year's celebration maybe? So we had cheese sandwiches with salad for lunch, lol! And pasta with homemade pesto and tomato sauce for dinner. We didn't mind a BIT. The boys were so thrilled with all their gifts and spent the whole day playing vigorously with them all - ohhhh the siren noises would have driven me insane if I'd spent the day downstairs, and they nearly did all the way upstairs too! ;) They got several emergency vehicles which make sirens, and a wooden fire station and road set, with a siren on the station too. I did go downstairs (slowly!) with Samuel first thing in the morning to be there for all the present-opening, which was nice! I think it lasted an hour or so, and I was just feeling grey and exhausted by the time they'd finished. I didn't even feel like I could sit upright, and just took it as a sign that I should be resting in bed still! So I went back up afterwards, and took a nap for a couple of hours with Samuel, and felt better.
I have been so paranoid about that placental lobe since Samuel was born. I just keep thinking, "Where on earth IS it?!" remembering how obvious it was at 2 different scans - one of them only 7 weeks ago! It did not come out, so where is it?! The placenta was examined at the hospital by the doctors with the knowledge that there was a lobe on the scan, and still they conclude that there is no way anything was ever attached to that placenta. It's absolutely complete, with no torn membranes or vessels leading off the main body - nothing missing whatsoever. So strange! If it's God doing something miraculous then I am NOT surprised, but if I take my eyes off Him for a moment then I am worried all the time, wondering if/when I will start to bleed heavily or get an infection.
The midwife came round the day after Samuel's birth to check on us. She felt my tummy and said my womb still seemed "quite high" but was contracted. That was the statement that stayed in my head for the next few days and filled me with anxiety. My womb always always seems to be really well contracted after having a baby, and usually the midwife comments on how contracted down it is already. So it was the first time I'd heard someone say it was still quite high (this midwife hadn't known about my extra lobe) and so it concerned me. By the next day it didn't seem to me any lower (it was maybe an inch below my tummy button) and so I started to get a bit overly anxious and phoned Heather for advice. She had me phone labour ward and ask their advice, and they said that since I was not bleeding heavily or in pain, they were not concerned but that I should arrange for a midwife to visit the next morning. So on Christmas Eve a midwife came round in the morning and felt my tummy - she was so nice about it and really reassuring. It wasn't much lower than before but she said it was fine and in the range they expected at this stage. My bleeding has actually been really light, so that's good. It's like a normal period, and I'm only using regular period pads (med-light flow) and that's all I need right now.
I have been having normal afterpains, especially when breastfeeding, but they've not been so ferocious as last time around. I hope that's okay too... They've pretty much stopped now though. During the day on Christmas Eve I was becoming more and more crampy low down, front and back, and just feeling a bit more sore than usual. I also noticed the night before that, that it was a bit sore to wee. It was MIGHTY sore to wee within the first 12 hours of giving birth, but gradually got less so as time went on. But on the 23rd in the evening it seemed a little more sore. The next day by late afternoon it was almost unbearably painful to wee, and the crampiness was constant. Heather (bless her heart, getting all these worried phone calls from me at Christmas! She was so nice about it!) said I should drink a TON and phone the GP surgery to see if there was anyone still there at closing time on Christmas Eve. I had to be kind of persuasive with the receptionist (are all receptionists like this?! Tsk!) about speaking to a doctor, but a really nice GP came on the phone in the end and I told him my symptoms. He wrote me a prescription for a 3-day course of antibiotics right away and said he would leave it at reception for the next hour before they closed, or if we couldn't get to pick it up in that time, he would WALK to the nearest chemist and leave it there for me in case they were open longer! So nice of him! He was concerned that I get some treatment for a bladder infection quickly since I was so newly postpartum, and it was Christmas the next day.
It was a bit tricky because the only person who could possibly pick up the prescription was Neil, and I was not yet in any sort of state to be left with the little ones even for a short while! They were bouncing off the walls downstairs and being difficult, and Neil was in the middle of cooking sausages for dinner! In the end, he got the sausages out to cool, instructed the boys to behave for me, and went as fast as he could to the surgery to pick up the prescription and get the antibiotics at the chemist. He was gone about 30 or 40 minutes, and it was scary! The boys didn't obey me when I asked them not to do such-and-such, and I felt so weak physically that it made me want to cry. Benjamin climbed onto the windowsill to watch Daddy go, and then couldn't get down so I had to go (very slowly) downstairs and lift him down, which I felt physically quite shaky about. I wasn't feeling too well with my bladder infection by then too, which didn't help.
Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity (!!), Neil came home with my antibiotics - what a star! I only have one left to take tonight and I have finished the course, and I feel SOOOO much better now.
The midwife came again today and did Samuel's heel prick test (sniffle! He was such a good boy even though he needed TWO heel pricks because he didn't bleed enough from the first one!), and weighed him. He weighs 9lbs 1.5oz today so has lost about 5% of his birth weight, which is normal. His meconium ALL passed in one great poo-a-thon yesterday (8 poos in one day!!!) and today he is passing small mustardy-yellow breastmilk poos so he's cleared out nicely! :) Also she felt my tummy and my womb is really well contracted down, which was very reassuring to hear! It's only an inch or two above my pubic bone now and she does not think anything can possibly be retained in there. I hope she's right!
Samuel is awake and starting to cry so I'm going to stop this for now and breastfeed my sweetie-peadle! :)
Back again to finish off, but one-handed now as my lil treasure is on my chest sleeping, and I'm cuddling him to me with my left arm :)
Here are the first 4 photos of Samuel (the ones I've already posted at Facebook) - we could not find either of the cameras after he was born, and it was 36 hours before Neil found them in the car! I was a bit sad to have no photos of his first 24 hours or so :( But never mind. Here is the first photo of Samuel at about 40-or-so hours old, doing what he did most at that time - rooting on his hands! :)
Two days old (see how swollen his eyes are from the birth?! And the CHEEKS I was talking about earlier!):
Cuddle with Daddy at 2 days old:
Benjamin holding Samuel for the first time - sooooo precious! I have had comments about them looking the same size in this photo, but I promise it's all just a camera angle thing! I know he's over 9lbs but he really is just sooo teeny tiny all the same - MUCH smaller than Benjamin, and especially his little head! I am not sure why his head looks so big here! I will have to take a side-by-side photo of them so you can see what a huge size difference there actually is!
Here's a little video clip I took of Samuel at 2 days old, really just to make a record of his sweet little snuffly, rooty, reflexy self for me to look back on - this sweet stage passes too fast!
Here's my little manny at 3 days old on Christmas Eve. He looked so like a little Christmas present when I lay him down for a moment, dressed in his Christmas sleepsuit, that I couldn't resist a photo! :)
He is, without a doubt, the MOST wonderful Christmas present I have ever (or probably WILL ever) receive! I'm so thankful that he's here, and that I have five (!!!!) precious children. Five! I keep being freshly astounded that this statistic applies to ME! It's so surreal somehow. I have to keep saying it out loud, "I have FIVE children!" and then again for, "I have FIVE sons!!" because wow, that's a lot of sons - how blessed am I?! Not many women these days can say they have five sons. It takes my breath away sometimes when I think about it properly. I just can't believe I actually have five children. FIVE children. How perfectly wonderful! Now the only thing more wonderful than five children would be six children! But that's for another entry at another time, I guess! ;)
I'll try to update again soon. I have more photos taken in the last couple of days but no chance yet to upload them, and of course I have much more that I could waffle on about! But I think that's the main stuff updated about, so it's a good start! :) Thanks for all the lovely comments and congratulations! xxx
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Samuel is here!!
Yay, the sweep worked! :D I had a rotten night's sleep due to various things, but was not actually having proper contractions that felt like the real thing until this morning around 6.30am. I felt sick, anxious and shaky all night and had horrible sharp IBS pain which stopped me getting comfy in bed, and which also kept me going to the loo all night. I just felt so rough with it and was anxious about the nausea, even though I knew it was all a good sign! I continued to lose the bloody show all night too. Benjamin cried for me until after 3am, and Neil and I just couldn't console him, even though I breastfed him whenever I could, so we didn't get any sleep until after 3am. He seemed so anxious and kept sobbing "I gaaare!" (I'm scared) and pointing randomly at everything like he didn't know what was scaring him. My heart just about broke for him because I knew that he KNEW something was going on - something big and incomprehensible - but he was too little to be able to make any sense of it and he was just so insecure and unhappy :( I remember Arthur being that way when I was in labour with Matthew.
Eventually he went to sleep on Neil's chest while Neil sat propped up in bed in the boys' room, and did sleep until 6.20am. For the first time he did not want milky on getting up. He just wanted to go downstairs, but he remained extremely sensitive all day right up until bedtime tonight, crying hysterically if Neil left the room, and wanting to be held a lot. I felt so sad for him, my poor little lovey!
After I woke up at around that time, my first thought was that nothing was happening AGAIN, because here I was waking up in the morning yet again and had not been woken up by contractions or anything. Within moments of sitting up in bed, however, I had a strong contraction - very different in tone from the ones in the evening and here and there through the night, and painful low down at the front and in mygroin, like period cramps only sharp. After 2 more in the next 10 minutes or so, I phoned Heather and when she said, "Hello?!" in an excited tone, I just said, "Would you mind coming over?"
I am wanting to write as much detail of my birth story as possible, as SOON as possible this time, so I guess this is the very start of it. But I am tired now from giving birth today, and Samuel is asleep on my chest as I recline in my bed (got to love giving birth at home!! :) ) so I'm typing with one hand looking sideways off the bed to my laptop screen, and can't keep that up for long. I'll try to add to the story as I go along when I get chance, and then eventually I'll compile it all into a proper birth story (and cut out paragraphs like this one!).
For now let me just give the announcement stats and things!
Samuel Robert was born at 1.41pm, in my bed with my much-prayed-for lovely midwife, Mandi there to deliver him (she also delivered Benjamin) - who knew she was on one of her 2 random days-a-week shifts today?! God did, that's who! :)
I'll have to check my notes to see how long my stages of labour were, but I was not yet in "established" labour when Mandi arrived at 9-something. I refused internal examinations so nobody ever checked me to see how far dilated I was at which times. Second stage and transition were horribly horrible beyond description with no pain relief, but I'm not sure of the lengths of time. Mandi tried helping me control the second stage better this time to avoid a tear, so it took longer. I had to give a little push, then blow 3 times, and repeat until the contraction ended. That was the hardest thing EVER and I lost it lots of times saying I couldn't do it. If I started to push then I couldn't stop without great throat-aching effort, and when I did the 3 blows the pain was overwhelming. BRILLIANT news was that I did not do any wailing or screaming as a result - I can't tell you how happy I was about that! :)
My waters broke a few minutes before he was born, while I was pushing his head down. No meconium in the waters this time, yay! :) He was lifted onto me screaming a raspy STRONG cry, and has been extremely vocal since! He especially hated being weighed, measured and checked over (and his Vit K injection!) a bit later - he has a pretty loud cry for a brand new fresh-from-the-womb baby! I did not let them take him to do those things until after his first breastfeed - he stayed skin-to-skin until then. I offered him the breast right away, as was my instinct since he was screaming even skin-to-skin and I guess I wanted to soothe him, but Heather said he wouldn't likely be interested in the first hour. After about 30 minutes though, he began pushing himself about on my chest with his little feet, and located my left breast quickly. I helped him latch on, and he nursed for about 40 minutes straight!!!! I had a surprise as well, for the first time with one of my babies, he was gulping and swallowing most of that time (at birth!!!) at a fast rate, as though my milk was in. Heather said that this time I must have more milk left from still breastfeeding Benjamin than I usually do. So that brand new baby boy got a good tummyful of breast milk (it is mostly colostrum though, all the same, but there just seems to be lots of it!). His tummy was making busy groany squelchy noises and he stopped now and then to let out a few HUGE burps, lol!
I did manage to get a 2nd degree tear anyway, and needed stitches, but it was apparently not as long a tear as previous ones, even though it was just as deep. Mandi did a great job with the stitches and, much as I absolutely HATE having stitches done there, I was waaaay calmer this time and it seemed less painful than other times. They have not bothered me one bit since, and I did take paracetamol for the afterpains before they were done, but right now those have been worn off for a good couple of hours and I am not in any pain. The afterpains are sore but very manageable this time (so far!).
Long story about the placenta but I had a managed 3rd stage with the injection given and cord cut a couple of minutes after Samuel was born. Mandi was careful and gentle helping the placenta out and we were all absolutely dumbstruck to discover a complete, smooth and untorn circular placenta with 100% intact membranes and no possible location on it where a lobe or its attaching membranes could possibly have ever been. I was anxious and suspicious about it, wondering if they'd just somehow missed it anyway (it was present at 2 scans after all!!) and I still hd it inside me. Mandi spent a good while sitting on the bed with me and showing me my placenta in detail, stretching out all the membranes carefully to show me that they were all intact and there was nowhere that any other vessels or membranes to an extra lobe could have been attached. She phoned the hospital to be sure and they said to bring the placenta in to have the doctors check it to confirm that there's nowhere a lobe could have been attached to it, so that's what she did when she left me. If it's really really true, then it's nothing short of miraculous. Amazing! I still feel vaguely suspicious, but all seems to check out fine. I did not have a lot of blood loss really in general, and my uterus is well contracted as it should be if it's not retaining anything. My lochia since then has been normal, but I'm keeping an eye on it, and for things like fever or feeling unwell, as the midwife explained to me.
Mandi booked me an appointment for a midwife (hopefully Kerry!) to come round tomorrow to do the first day postnatal check on us, and also for one of the GPs from our surgery to come out and do the newborn check on Samuel, since he was born at home and therefore didn't get one in the hospital. Heather stayed until 7pm - what a star! She asked if I wanted her to stay or go around 4.30pm and I asked if she would mind staying (she didn't mind at all) because Neil was so busy with all the boys that I felt like I would be on my own a bit if I needed anything, if she went home. She read stories to the boys and played Duplo with them, and sat with me while they ate, and brought me food and drink and so on. She helped me position myself in the bed various times to breastfeed. Tomorrow she's coming back late morning for a few hours, just to be with me and maybe read a couple of stories to the boys, but the nicest thing is that she has offered to wrap any of the boys Christmas presents that are not yet wrapped while she's here, so as to save us the stress of getting that done in the few days left before Christmas! She's WONDERFUL!!! :)
Oh I almost forgot - Samuel weighed in at NINE POUNDS AND NINE OUNCES!!!!!! What in the wide world!!! I thought it was a major deal for me when I produced an 8lb 11oz Benjamin, but 9lbs 9oz?!?! I am literally in disbelief over it. For hours I just sat in bed saying occasionally, "NINE pounds and NINE ounces?!?!" I just couldn't believe it, haha! I'm so petite in build and well, yikes. I did not ever imagine making a baby that big (or birthing one, lol!)! Mandi was so apologetic that I tore despite her coaching me gently to avoid tearing, but when she learned his weight she said it made her feel better about it, haha! ;) Samuel is also my longest baby by far (although they never measured Benjamin's length so I don't know what he was) - FIFTY NINE centimetres!!!! To compare, the usual average is 50-52cm, and Matthew at 41 weeks was FORTY nine centimetres - 10cm shorter than Samuel!! Yikers! I wish I knew what that was in inches but Samuel is squeaking and stirring (sooooooo cute) so I need to feed him and don't have time to google. He is so precious, and looks to me amazingly like Matthew did as a newborn (except his cheeks are so soft and chubby, lol!). He is a mix of all the boys, and looks like Samuel and nobody else (just like they all have!), but I think he is most like Matthew, which is a first since Matthew himself was born! :)
I will update soon! Thanks so much for the messages and comments - I appreciate you all routing for me soooo much! xxx
Eventually he went to sleep on Neil's chest while Neil sat propped up in bed in the boys' room, and did sleep until 6.20am. For the first time he did not want milky on getting up. He just wanted to go downstairs, but he remained extremely sensitive all day right up until bedtime tonight, crying hysterically if Neil left the room, and wanting to be held a lot. I felt so sad for him, my poor little lovey!
After I woke up at around that time, my first thought was that nothing was happening AGAIN, because here I was waking up in the morning yet again and had not been woken up by contractions or anything. Within moments of sitting up in bed, however, I had a strong contraction - very different in tone from the ones in the evening and here and there through the night, and painful low down at the front and in mygroin, like period cramps only sharp. After 2 more in the next 10 minutes or so, I phoned Heather and when she said, "Hello?!" in an excited tone, I just said, "Would you mind coming over?"
I am wanting to write as much detail of my birth story as possible, as SOON as possible this time, so I guess this is the very start of it. But I am tired now from giving birth today, and Samuel is asleep on my chest as I recline in my bed (got to love giving birth at home!! :) ) so I'm typing with one hand looking sideways off the bed to my laptop screen, and can't keep that up for long. I'll try to add to the story as I go along when I get chance, and then eventually I'll compile it all into a proper birth story (and cut out paragraphs like this one!).
For now let me just give the announcement stats and things!
Samuel Robert was born at 1.41pm, in my bed with my much-prayed-for lovely midwife, Mandi there to deliver him (she also delivered Benjamin) - who knew she was on one of her 2 random days-a-week shifts today?! God did, that's who! :)
I'll have to check my notes to see how long my stages of labour were, but I was not yet in "established" labour when Mandi arrived at 9-something. I refused internal examinations so nobody ever checked me to see how far dilated I was at which times. Second stage and transition were horribly horrible beyond description with no pain relief, but I'm not sure of the lengths of time. Mandi tried helping me control the second stage better this time to avoid a tear, so it took longer. I had to give a little push, then blow 3 times, and repeat until the contraction ended. That was the hardest thing EVER and I lost it lots of times saying I couldn't do it. If I started to push then I couldn't stop without great throat-aching effort, and when I did the 3 blows the pain was overwhelming. BRILLIANT news was that I did not do any wailing or screaming as a result - I can't tell you how happy I was about that! :)
My waters broke a few minutes before he was born, while I was pushing his head down. No meconium in the waters this time, yay! :) He was lifted onto me screaming a raspy STRONG cry, and has been extremely vocal since! He especially hated being weighed, measured and checked over (and his Vit K injection!) a bit later - he has a pretty loud cry for a brand new fresh-from-the-womb baby! I did not let them take him to do those things until after his first breastfeed - he stayed skin-to-skin until then. I offered him the breast right away, as was my instinct since he was screaming even skin-to-skin and I guess I wanted to soothe him, but Heather said he wouldn't likely be interested in the first hour. After about 30 minutes though, he began pushing himself about on my chest with his little feet, and located my left breast quickly. I helped him latch on, and he nursed for about 40 minutes straight!!!! I had a surprise as well, for the first time with one of my babies, he was gulping and swallowing most of that time (at birth!!!) at a fast rate, as though my milk was in. Heather said that this time I must have more milk left from still breastfeeding Benjamin than I usually do. So that brand new baby boy got a good tummyful of breast milk (it is mostly colostrum though, all the same, but there just seems to be lots of it!). His tummy was making busy groany squelchy noises and he stopped now and then to let out a few HUGE burps, lol!
I did manage to get a 2nd degree tear anyway, and needed stitches, but it was apparently not as long a tear as previous ones, even though it was just as deep. Mandi did a great job with the stitches and, much as I absolutely HATE having stitches done there, I was waaaay calmer this time and it seemed less painful than other times. They have not bothered me one bit since, and I did take paracetamol for the afterpains before they were done, but right now those have been worn off for a good couple of hours and I am not in any pain. The afterpains are sore but very manageable this time (so far!).
Long story about the placenta but I had a managed 3rd stage with the injection given and cord cut a couple of minutes after Samuel was born. Mandi was careful and gentle helping the placenta out and we were all absolutely dumbstruck to discover a complete, smooth and untorn circular placenta with 100% intact membranes and no possible location on it where a lobe or its attaching membranes could possibly have ever been. I was anxious and suspicious about it, wondering if they'd just somehow missed it anyway (it was present at 2 scans after all!!) and I still hd it inside me. Mandi spent a good while sitting on the bed with me and showing me my placenta in detail, stretching out all the membranes carefully to show me that they were all intact and there was nowhere that any other vessels or membranes to an extra lobe could have been attached. She phoned the hospital to be sure and they said to bring the placenta in to have the doctors check it to confirm that there's nowhere a lobe could have been attached to it, so that's what she did when she left me. If it's really really true, then it's nothing short of miraculous. Amazing! I still feel vaguely suspicious, but all seems to check out fine. I did not have a lot of blood loss really in general, and my uterus is well contracted as it should be if it's not retaining anything. My lochia since then has been normal, but I'm keeping an eye on it, and for things like fever or feeling unwell, as the midwife explained to me.
Mandi booked me an appointment for a midwife (hopefully Kerry!) to come round tomorrow to do the first day postnatal check on us, and also for one of the GPs from our surgery to come out and do the newborn check on Samuel, since he was born at home and therefore didn't get one in the hospital. Heather stayed until 7pm - what a star! She asked if I wanted her to stay or go around 4.30pm and I asked if she would mind staying (she didn't mind at all) because Neil was so busy with all the boys that I felt like I would be on my own a bit if I needed anything, if she went home. She read stories to the boys and played Duplo with them, and sat with me while they ate, and brought me food and drink and so on. She helped me position myself in the bed various times to breastfeed. Tomorrow she's coming back late morning for a few hours, just to be with me and maybe read a couple of stories to the boys, but the nicest thing is that she has offered to wrap any of the boys Christmas presents that are not yet wrapped while she's here, so as to save us the stress of getting that done in the few days left before Christmas! She's WONDERFUL!!! :)
Oh I almost forgot - Samuel weighed in at NINE POUNDS AND NINE OUNCES!!!!!! What in the wide world!!! I thought it was a major deal for me when I produced an 8lb 11oz Benjamin, but 9lbs 9oz?!?! I am literally in disbelief over it. For hours I just sat in bed saying occasionally, "NINE pounds and NINE ounces?!?!" I just couldn't believe it, haha! I'm so petite in build and well, yikes. I did not ever imagine making a baby that big (or birthing one, lol!)! Mandi was so apologetic that I tore despite her coaching me gently to avoid tearing, but when she learned his weight she said it made her feel better about it, haha! ;) Samuel is also my longest baby by far (although they never measured Benjamin's length so I don't know what he was) - FIFTY NINE centimetres!!!! To compare, the usual average is 50-52cm, and Matthew at 41 weeks was FORTY nine centimetres - 10cm shorter than Samuel!! Yikers! I wish I knew what that was in inches but Samuel is squeaking and stirring (sooooooo cute) so I need to feed him and don't have time to google. He is so precious, and looks to me amazingly like Matthew did as a newborn (except his cheeks are so soft and chubby, lol!). He is a mix of all the boys, and looks like Samuel and nobody else (just like they all have!), but I think he is most like Matthew, which is a first since Matthew himself was born! :)
I will update soon! Thanks so much for the messages and comments - I appreciate you all routing for me soooo much! xxx
Monday, December 20, 2010
41 weeks today!
Well here I am at 41 weeks pregnant! By this time with Matthew's pregnancy, he was born, so this is officially my longest gestation ever!
Today I had my 41-week midwife appointment (having woken with no contractions once again). Oh but last night at about midnight, I went to the loo and when I wiped I found enough mucus plug to definitely call it a "show", but it wasn't the more exciting "bloody show" at all. Just goop of the same type I've been having here and there, but more of it. I also had some uncomfortable/somewhat painful Braxton Hicks through the evening, but other than that nothing, and in the morning all was quiet again. After I breastfed Benjamin at 5.30am or something crazy, I went back to sleep, and when I woke it was 9.45am!!! When I went downstairs to find out what was going on, Neil told me he decided to stay home again, mainly because of the show and the midwife appointment. His work are fine about it. The only thing about it is the fact that he doesn't have many more paid days off that he's eligible for, and he hasn't started paternity leave yet, so that will mostly be unpaid. But never mind, I guess! I was soooo glad and thankful that he was home today.
Heather came over at about 2pm. She brought homemade chocolate cake - how the boys LOVE Heather, hehe! After we ate that, we went upstairs to chat so that the boys wouldn't distract us too much (we did try it downstairs first but it was not going smoothly!). We talked about the options that might come up during the midwife appointment and how I felt about each one. Then about an hour later, Kerry (the midwife who was at Benjamin's birth and who was also in my brother's class at school!) turned up to do my appointment. She was brilliant, really sensitive and professional. She asked me what my thoughts were on everything, and then we discussed it all. I wondered about induction (since we had to discuss it today) BEFORE Christmas, and she said that might be an option, but that they might also allow me to wait till after Christmas, since the usual time for induction at my hospital is 40 weeks and 11 days or 40 weeks and 12 days, and that would be Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. She said she'd find out for me and ring me later.
My blood pressure was 130/77 which she said was fine but which seem REALLY high for me! Still, I'm 41 weeks pregnant so I guess that has a little to do with it?! I've had my b/p go up a little at the very end with more than one of my other pregnancies, without it being abnormal or worrisome. My urine was fine. She felt my tummy - Samuel got the hiccups just as she was arriving for the appointment and didn't stop until she'd nearly finished, hehe! He's still head down and anterior, which I'm so glad about! I don't think this particular baby has ever been found to be posterior at a midwife appointment, which is unlike several of his brothers! ;) I'm happy about that too. His head is only 2/5 palpable above my pubic bone, so he is engaged! Yay! Kerry's doppler battery had died during the day so she got out her Pinard stethoscope (I have one of those!) and used that instead. For some reason I LOVED that! Old-fashioned midwifery and its tools - love it! She heard his heartrate at 140bpm.
After that we discussed a sweep, well, I just said yes please as soon as she mentioned one, lol! And there I was saying I wouldn't be having one of those only a few weeks ago! ;) I know it's an "intervention" but honestly I'd much prefer that to the type that I'll have to go into hospital for in a short while if nothing else happens! If it works that's great, and I'll take it.
So she checked my cervix while she was at it, and said it was soft and stretchy (good news!), 2cm dilated, and still 1cm thick. I haven't had any contractions as such to press Samuel's head onto it to thin it out, so that's not too surprising. She told me that because my cervix is already soft and dilated, they would not have to bother with the Prostin gel to induce me, if it came to that, because my cervix was already doing what the Prostin gel is supposed to do. I'm dilated enough for them to break my waters, which is what the next stage would be before the IV induction process. So that's good too.
The sweep was ever so quick, which she said was due to it being easy to do with the soft/stretchy-ness, but quite painful. Kerry said she gave it a good tug, so hopefully things would kick off! ;) Within 10 minutes (we were still discussing things and she was writing my notes) I started to feel ever so crampy like a period, and if I had a Braxton Hicks it really hurt in the small of my back. I didn't mention that at all because I knew it was DAFT to think it could take effect so quickly! It's supposed to be a "within 24 hours or so" thing! I did ask how soon it COULD take effect, but she didn't really have an answer for me - just that it would be within 24 hours or so if it happened. She booked an appointment for her to come back on Wednesday this week and do another sweep if the first one hasn't worked.
After she went, I asked Heather about the crampiness, and she was enthusiastic about it. She said it CAN happen within the first hour of a sweep, so I shouldn't brush off the crampiness or sore BHs as nothing at all. Obviously the sweep itself can make you just sore and crampy, and then all fade away if it doesn't take effect, so you can't be too sure!
Heather chatted with me for a while longer, and then went downstairs saying I should have some time to just chill out and relax, while she played with the boys! They were longing to play with her and just spend some time with her, and Neil was starting to cook sausages for dinner. So I relaxed and prayed through my prayers about the birth, and checked my messages online. Heather stayed for an hour playing with the boys and their wooden train track, and I could hear that they were SO thrilled and having a lovely time with her! After Kerry phoned, I went downstairs, as I was having some sore Braxton Hicks and generally felt very uncomfortable and crampy, and if Samuel moved even slightly it felt like sharp needles in my cervix (my poor cervix!). Heather got her things together and went home because she said it seemed like she might need to come back later! She left her slippers behind! But never mind, she said she won't need to bring any when she comes "later"! :)
So we ate and bathed the boys and got them ready for bed. All the while I was just so sore! Mainly feeling kind of hurty around my cervix inside, and also periody crampy in my low tummy and back, which also felt very tight. Any time Samuel moved it was sore, and I had Braxton Hicks here and there which hurt in the small of my back too. As soon as the boys were in bed, I went to the toilet, and found a PROPER bloody show! :) More mucus plug than before, and quite well pink/brown stained. I phoned Heather straight away because I was doubtful about it being an exciting enough discovery, as I'd had a sweep a few hours before. I felt like it could easily just be some blood from the aggravation to my cervix itself rather than to do with labour coming. Heather reminded me (I'd forgotten already!) that Kerry said blood is one thing - and if there's frank blood and more than a little of it, I should go in to hospital to be checked, because that wouldn't be normal - but if it's mucus with blood in it, that's the plug and not just an annoyed cervix. So that was encouraging I guess! I still stayed kind of guarded about whether it was worth getting my hopes up over though.
Heather asked me to phone again before I went to bed to give her an update. So this evening I have sat in bed and mainly just watched episodes of The Duggars on YouTube, and relaxed as best I could. I phoned my mum to keep her posted, and that's it really. I have continued to feel really sore and uncomfy all evening, especially with any movement from Samuel. I have had parts of the evening where I'd be getting BHs quite a bit, and then an hour with nothing much at all, or the ones I would get would be painless, as though my soreness from the actual sweep was calming down. Every time I went to the loo I would have a little bit more blood-stained mucus plug, but not much.
Between 10 and 10.30pm I decided to open another window on my browser and use Contraction Master to time my Braxton Hicks, painless or not, just to see if there was any sort of pattern to report to Heather when I phoned her before bed. I think I charted 7 or 8 contractions over that time, and they WERE more regular than I thought, coming about every 4 minutes, with a 3 and a 7 thrown in there too. They were also all lasting about 40-45 seconds, with one only 25 seconds and another just over a minute long. Many were not painful though, and those that hurt were just sore in a sharp way low down at the front and in what I presume to be my cervical area, so that could just be the sweep I presume?
Anyway, I also started to feel kind of queasy and just a bit anxious about the upcoming event, if it was going to be happening, I mean REALLY happening (!!) soon. Right before I phoned Heather I went to the toilet for a last check on the show to be able to give her the latest news, and found a LOT of it, this time quite heavily RED blood-stained (and some brown). It wasn't bleeding as such though, it was all part of the mucus (sorry for all this TMI! I just want it for my own records!). So THAT really did get me thinking that things were starting off, or would be very soon.
Right away after that I felt queasier than ever and also needed to empty my bowels - another promising sign I guess! ;) I also felt quite shaky. I phoned Heather and she said, "Excellent!" with great enthusiasm to everything I reported, even the queasy/shaky thing!! I said it was NOT excellent to be feeling queasy and shaky, but she said it was a good good sign. I suddenly felt (and still do!) very nervous and apprehensive about the night ahead. I don't know if I'll go into labour during the night but it's a strong possibility. While I have been typing this (it's midnight now), I have had a lot of Braxton Hicks that have hurt very sharply low down at the front of my bump, and that's kind of suspicious to me, sweep or not. Plus the very obvious bloody show... Even with a sweep, the fact that I just lost some redder show makes me think it's not just left over from a previously annoyed cervix. A bloody show is a good indicator that labour is less than 24 hours away. In my own experience, I have only had 2 proper shows for my 4 labours, and both times the bloody shows were followed by labour contractions within 6 hours or less.
I still feel sick and yucky, but less shaky since Neil prayed with me. Now that I've updated here, I'm going to try to sleep. I am REALLY tired so I hope I'll be able to. Right now I don't have any significant contractions to keep me awake, but I have to say that is kind of changing as I type this entry - things are getting uncomfortable enough so that I think it would distract me as I try to lie still in the dark with no distractions and fall asleep. See - right now I have a contraction going on that just plain HURTS low down. It's searing and sore. But I'm good at staying in denial in early labour, haha! I keep putting it down to any manner of things until it's REALLY obvious that I'm in proper labour (long after the midwife was here last time!). So I don't know. But Heather says I can ring her any time during the night if my waters break, I feel like things are getting going, I have a concern or question that needs addressing now and can't wait, or I just can't sleep and wish Heather was here! :) She said she can happily sleep on the sofa if nothing much is happening and I'm trying to sleep, and if everything has stopped by the morning she'll just go home again - no big deal! Did I mention I love my doula?
So I have my phone (well, Neil's - I don't actually have one!) charging by the bed, because Heather likes to be texted in the night rather than phoned - she sleeps through the ring but not the text sound apparently, and it disturbs her family less obviously. I might still wake up in the morning and said, "Oh. I'm still here!" but she doesn't think so. I am not sure. I still think I could wake up with nothing happening in the morning, because it's just gone on so long with nothing happening even with the odd "sign" here and there, so I'm losing confidence in these things!
Samuel is wiggling right now and it's a sore as anything on my cervix when he does, almost too much to bear, so I'm going to go to the toilet one last time and then to bed, and hope for some sleep. And that I don't get queasier or start throwing up! I'm still so scared of doing that. I feel better that I did though. I'm just nervous!!! I really don't want to go through labour and birth tonight! Or at all, suddenly! But I know I have to eventually, and it'll be SO worth it! I'm a bit scared about the placenta being delivered and what might happen with it, after the baby is born... But I just have to pray and give it all to God, and trust Him. There's nothing else I can do. I think I also feel a bit weirdly insecure because it's dark and night time and that just doesn't feel as "settled" to me to be feeling sore or yucky as when it's day time. I am just like that, I guess. I would probably feel more secure in the day time. It snowed again this evening, another inch or two, so hopefully that won't slow down anyone coming to attend me if things move really fast! I would NOT want to be without a midwife this time, given that my placenta might possibly cause me issues within a short time after giving birth.
In case it DOES happen tonight, and I don't get chance to update again before it does, please please pray that God will be close to me and keep me safe and without fear. And that labour will be quick and manageable somehow! And that the placenta just plops on out with its lobe and all, and not much bleeding. Thank you so much in advance for your prayers! It means ever so much to me! xxx
Today I had my 41-week midwife appointment (having woken with no contractions once again). Oh but last night at about midnight, I went to the loo and when I wiped I found enough mucus plug to definitely call it a "show", but it wasn't the more exciting "bloody show" at all. Just goop of the same type I've been having here and there, but more of it. I also had some uncomfortable/somewhat painful Braxton Hicks through the evening, but other than that nothing, and in the morning all was quiet again. After I breastfed Benjamin at 5.30am or something crazy, I went back to sleep, and when I woke it was 9.45am!!! When I went downstairs to find out what was going on, Neil told me he decided to stay home again, mainly because of the show and the midwife appointment. His work are fine about it. The only thing about it is the fact that he doesn't have many more paid days off that he's eligible for, and he hasn't started paternity leave yet, so that will mostly be unpaid. But never mind, I guess! I was soooo glad and thankful that he was home today.
Heather came over at about 2pm. She brought homemade chocolate cake - how the boys LOVE Heather, hehe! After we ate that, we went upstairs to chat so that the boys wouldn't distract us too much (we did try it downstairs first but it was not going smoothly!). We talked about the options that might come up during the midwife appointment and how I felt about each one. Then about an hour later, Kerry (the midwife who was at Benjamin's birth and who was also in my brother's class at school!) turned up to do my appointment. She was brilliant, really sensitive and professional. She asked me what my thoughts were on everything, and then we discussed it all. I wondered about induction (since we had to discuss it today) BEFORE Christmas, and she said that might be an option, but that they might also allow me to wait till after Christmas, since the usual time for induction at my hospital is 40 weeks and 11 days or 40 weeks and 12 days, and that would be Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. She said she'd find out for me and ring me later.
My blood pressure was 130/77 which she said was fine but which seem REALLY high for me! Still, I'm 41 weeks pregnant so I guess that has a little to do with it?! I've had my b/p go up a little at the very end with more than one of my other pregnancies, without it being abnormal or worrisome. My urine was fine. She felt my tummy - Samuel got the hiccups just as she was arriving for the appointment and didn't stop until she'd nearly finished, hehe! He's still head down and anterior, which I'm so glad about! I don't think this particular baby has ever been found to be posterior at a midwife appointment, which is unlike several of his brothers! ;) I'm happy about that too. His head is only 2/5 palpable above my pubic bone, so he is engaged! Yay! Kerry's doppler battery had died during the day so she got out her Pinard stethoscope (I have one of those!) and used that instead. For some reason I LOVED that! Old-fashioned midwifery and its tools - love it! She heard his heartrate at 140bpm.
After that we discussed a sweep, well, I just said yes please as soon as she mentioned one, lol! And there I was saying I wouldn't be having one of those only a few weeks ago! ;) I know it's an "intervention" but honestly I'd much prefer that to the type that I'll have to go into hospital for in a short while if nothing else happens! If it works that's great, and I'll take it.
So she checked my cervix while she was at it, and said it was soft and stretchy (good news!), 2cm dilated, and still 1cm thick. I haven't had any contractions as such to press Samuel's head onto it to thin it out, so that's not too surprising. She told me that because my cervix is already soft and dilated, they would not have to bother with the Prostin gel to induce me, if it came to that, because my cervix was already doing what the Prostin gel is supposed to do. I'm dilated enough for them to break my waters, which is what the next stage would be before the IV induction process. So that's good too.
The sweep was ever so quick, which she said was due to it being easy to do with the soft/stretchy-ness, but quite painful. Kerry said she gave it a good tug, so hopefully things would kick off! ;) Within 10 minutes (we were still discussing things and she was writing my notes) I started to feel ever so crampy like a period, and if I had a Braxton Hicks it really hurt in the small of my back. I didn't mention that at all because I knew it was DAFT to think it could take effect so quickly! It's supposed to be a "within 24 hours or so" thing! I did ask how soon it COULD take effect, but she didn't really have an answer for me - just that it would be within 24 hours or so if it happened. She booked an appointment for her to come back on Wednesday this week and do another sweep if the first one hasn't worked.
After she went, I asked Heather about the crampiness, and she was enthusiastic about it. She said it CAN happen within the first hour of a sweep, so I shouldn't brush off the crampiness or sore BHs as nothing at all. Obviously the sweep itself can make you just sore and crampy, and then all fade away if it doesn't take effect, so you can't be too sure!
Heather chatted with me for a while longer, and then went downstairs saying I should have some time to just chill out and relax, while she played with the boys! They were longing to play with her and just spend some time with her, and Neil was starting to cook sausages for dinner. So I relaxed and prayed through my prayers about the birth, and checked my messages online. Heather stayed for an hour playing with the boys and their wooden train track, and I could hear that they were SO thrilled and having a lovely time with her! After Kerry phoned, I went downstairs, as I was having some sore Braxton Hicks and generally felt very uncomfortable and crampy, and if Samuel moved even slightly it felt like sharp needles in my cervix (my poor cervix!). Heather got her things together and went home because she said it seemed like she might need to come back later! She left her slippers behind! But never mind, she said she won't need to bring any when she comes "later"! :)
So we ate and bathed the boys and got them ready for bed. All the while I was just so sore! Mainly feeling kind of hurty around my cervix inside, and also periody crampy in my low tummy and back, which also felt very tight. Any time Samuel moved it was sore, and I had Braxton Hicks here and there which hurt in the small of my back too. As soon as the boys were in bed, I went to the toilet, and found a PROPER bloody show! :) More mucus plug than before, and quite well pink/brown stained. I phoned Heather straight away because I was doubtful about it being an exciting enough discovery, as I'd had a sweep a few hours before. I felt like it could easily just be some blood from the aggravation to my cervix itself rather than to do with labour coming. Heather reminded me (I'd forgotten already!) that Kerry said blood is one thing - and if there's frank blood and more than a little of it, I should go in to hospital to be checked, because that wouldn't be normal - but if it's mucus with blood in it, that's the plug and not just an annoyed cervix. So that was encouraging I guess! I still stayed kind of guarded about whether it was worth getting my hopes up over though.
Heather asked me to phone again before I went to bed to give her an update. So this evening I have sat in bed and mainly just watched episodes of The Duggars on YouTube, and relaxed as best I could. I phoned my mum to keep her posted, and that's it really. I have continued to feel really sore and uncomfy all evening, especially with any movement from Samuel. I have had parts of the evening where I'd be getting BHs quite a bit, and then an hour with nothing much at all, or the ones I would get would be painless, as though my soreness from the actual sweep was calming down. Every time I went to the loo I would have a little bit more blood-stained mucus plug, but not much.
Between 10 and 10.30pm I decided to open another window on my browser and use Contraction Master to time my Braxton Hicks, painless or not, just to see if there was any sort of pattern to report to Heather when I phoned her before bed. I think I charted 7 or 8 contractions over that time, and they WERE more regular than I thought, coming about every 4 minutes, with a 3 and a 7 thrown in there too. They were also all lasting about 40-45 seconds, with one only 25 seconds and another just over a minute long. Many were not painful though, and those that hurt were just sore in a sharp way low down at the front and in what I presume to be my cervical area, so that could just be the sweep I presume?
Anyway, I also started to feel kind of queasy and just a bit anxious about the upcoming event, if it was going to be happening, I mean REALLY happening (!!) soon. Right before I phoned Heather I went to the toilet for a last check on the show to be able to give her the latest news, and found a LOT of it, this time quite heavily RED blood-stained (and some brown). It wasn't bleeding as such though, it was all part of the mucus (sorry for all this TMI! I just want it for my own records!). So THAT really did get me thinking that things were starting off, or would be very soon.
Right away after that I felt queasier than ever and also needed to empty my bowels - another promising sign I guess! ;) I also felt quite shaky. I phoned Heather and she said, "Excellent!" with great enthusiasm to everything I reported, even the queasy/shaky thing!! I said it was NOT excellent to be feeling queasy and shaky, but she said it was a good good sign. I suddenly felt (and still do!) very nervous and apprehensive about the night ahead. I don't know if I'll go into labour during the night but it's a strong possibility. While I have been typing this (it's midnight now), I have had a lot of Braxton Hicks that have hurt very sharply low down at the front of my bump, and that's kind of suspicious to me, sweep or not. Plus the very obvious bloody show... Even with a sweep, the fact that I just lost some redder show makes me think it's not just left over from a previously annoyed cervix. A bloody show is a good indicator that labour is less than 24 hours away. In my own experience, I have only had 2 proper shows for my 4 labours, and both times the bloody shows were followed by labour contractions within 6 hours or less.
I still feel sick and yucky, but less shaky since Neil prayed with me. Now that I've updated here, I'm going to try to sleep. I am REALLY tired so I hope I'll be able to. Right now I don't have any significant contractions to keep me awake, but I have to say that is kind of changing as I type this entry - things are getting uncomfortable enough so that I think it would distract me as I try to lie still in the dark with no distractions and fall asleep. See - right now I have a contraction going on that just plain HURTS low down. It's searing and sore. But I'm good at staying in denial in early labour, haha! I keep putting it down to any manner of things until it's REALLY obvious that I'm in proper labour (long after the midwife was here last time!). So I don't know. But Heather says I can ring her any time during the night if my waters break, I feel like things are getting going, I have a concern or question that needs addressing now and can't wait, or I just can't sleep and wish Heather was here! :) She said she can happily sleep on the sofa if nothing much is happening and I'm trying to sleep, and if everything has stopped by the morning she'll just go home again - no big deal! Did I mention I love my doula?
So I have my phone (well, Neil's - I don't actually have one!) charging by the bed, because Heather likes to be texted in the night rather than phoned - she sleeps through the ring but not the text sound apparently, and it disturbs her family less obviously. I might still wake up in the morning and said, "Oh. I'm still here!" but she doesn't think so. I am not sure. I still think I could wake up with nothing happening in the morning, because it's just gone on so long with nothing happening even with the odd "sign" here and there, so I'm losing confidence in these things!
Samuel is wiggling right now and it's a sore as anything on my cervix when he does, almost too much to bear, so I'm going to go to the toilet one last time and then to bed, and hope for some sleep. And that I don't get queasier or start throwing up! I'm still so scared of doing that. I feel better that I did though. I'm just nervous!!! I really don't want to go through labour and birth tonight! Or at all, suddenly! But I know I have to eventually, and it'll be SO worth it! I'm a bit scared about the placenta being delivered and what might happen with it, after the baby is born... But I just have to pray and give it all to God, and trust Him. There's nothing else I can do. I think I also feel a bit weirdly insecure because it's dark and night time and that just doesn't feel as "settled" to me to be feeling sore or yucky as when it's day time. I am just like that, I guess. I would probably feel more secure in the day time. It snowed again this evening, another inch or two, so hopefully that won't slow down anyone coming to attend me if things move really fast! I would NOT want to be without a midwife this time, given that my placenta might possibly cause me issues within a short time after giving birth.
In case it DOES happen tonight, and I don't get chance to update again before it does, please please pray that God will be close to me and keep me safe and without fear. And that labour will be quick and manageable somehow! And that the placenta just plops on out with its lobe and all, and not much bleeding. Thank you so much in advance for your prayers! It means ever so much to me! xxx
Sunday, December 19, 2010
40 weeks and 6 days...
Yes, ANOTHER update! *sigh*
I'm updating early tonight (it's only 6pm and the boys are eating beans on toast at the mo so I have a couple of minutes), because I think we will just relax with a movie again tonight and it will be nicer to be able to just go to bed relaxed afterwards instead of feeling the need to come online and update my blog about all things baby/pregnancy-related!
Tomorrow is, of course, the big 41 Weeks milestone that I do not want to reach! If I wake up tomorrow with as little going on in my womb as today (and all the previous days!) then it will be a record for me. Matthew was born at exactly 41 weeks - my latest birth - but I was having contractions any time I woke in the night, and had them from getting up in the morning too.
This morning we did do the parsnips suggestion, and nothing seems to have resulted from that yet. I have lost some mucus plug since (more than previous times, but nothing to get excited about) but I figured that could be just down to the parsnips and not much else? My back is achy and sore all the time, but we also went out today to the park for a family walk in the lovely snow! We didn't go out for long as it took FOREVER to get all the boys dressed up in snow gear, and the sun sets so early that we lost the light after about 40 minutes and had to come home. I didn't do much actual walking because it is just too painful with my Pelvic Girdle Pain. I wore my harness/belt thingy for the walk which helped I think. I'm sore though!
Soooo, tomorrow I have a midwife appointment anytime from 3pm at home. Heather is coming over at 2.30pm so we can chat about what the appointment might hold. I am pretty sure I'll have a sweep at the appointment, but I'm not sure what else will come up. Neil will go to work, so I'm not looking forward to that, as it will be a hard and exhausting day with the boys and no lie-in (another reason to update now instead of LATE tonight!). They are being really difficult at the moment, but then I guess that's to be expected with all that's going on, and the fact that you could cut the tension in the air with a knife - everyone is so focused on the baby coming and he's just... NOT coming! We're not really making a thing of it in front of the boys, but we can't help that it's just out there anyway, and the boys are well aware that he "should" be here by now. Arthur is asking impatiently EVERY DAY if it's time for the doctors to give me the special medicine to make my tummy start to squeeze Samuel out yet! ;) He's bored of waiting, but if there's any sign that I might be going to have him that day (like Thursday morning) he behaves like he's not actually dealing with it all that well, even though he's eager as well. Poor boys! *sigh*
Well, I haven't got much else to report. The boys are down from the table and at least 2 or 3 are crying and hyper about something and I hear Neil trying to deal with it all, so I will go and help him! Back as soon as there's news. Or just the usual update tomorrow evening I suppose. The 20th. I never thought I'd get to the 20s! Come on Samuel, pleeeeease?!
I'm updating early tonight (it's only 6pm and the boys are eating beans on toast at the mo so I have a couple of minutes), because I think we will just relax with a movie again tonight and it will be nicer to be able to just go to bed relaxed afterwards instead of feeling the need to come online and update my blog about all things baby/pregnancy-related!
Tomorrow is, of course, the big 41 Weeks milestone that I do not want to reach! If I wake up tomorrow with as little going on in my womb as today (and all the previous days!) then it will be a record for me. Matthew was born at exactly 41 weeks - my latest birth - but I was having contractions any time I woke in the night, and had them from getting up in the morning too.
This morning we did do the parsnips suggestion, and nothing seems to have resulted from that yet. I have lost some mucus plug since (more than previous times, but nothing to get excited about) but I figured that could be just down to the parsnips and not much else? My back is achy and sore all the time, but we also went out today to the park for a family walk in the lovely snow! We didn't go out for long as it took FOREVER to get all the boys dressed up in snow gear, and the sun sets so early that we lost the light after about 40 minutes and had to come home. I didn't do much actual walking because it is just too painful with my Pelvic Girdle Pain. I wore my harness/belt thingy for the walk which helped I think. I'm sore though!
Soooo, tomorrow I have a midwife appointment anytime from 3pm at home. Heather is coming over at 2.30pm so we can chat about what the appointment might hold. I am pretty sure I'll have a sweep at the appointment, but I'm not sure what else will come up. Neil will go to work, so I'm not looking forward to that, as it will be a hard and exhausting day with the boys and no lie-in (another reason to update now instead of LATE tonight!). They are being really difficult at the moment, but then I guess that's to be expected with all that's going on, and the fact that you could cut the tension in the air with a knife - everyone is so focused on the baby coming and he's just... NOT coming! We're not really making a thing of it in front of the boys, but we can't help that it's just out there anyway, and the boys are well aware that he "should" be here by now. Arthur is asking impatiently EVERY DAY if it's time for the doctors to give me the special medicine to make my tummy start to squeeze Samuel out yet! ;) He's bored of waiting, but if there's any sign that I might be going to have him that day (like Thursday morning) he behaves like he's not actually dealing with it all that well, even though he's eager as well. Poor boys! *sigh*
Well, I haven't got much else to report. The boys are down from the table and at least 2 or 3 are crying and hyper about something and I hear Neil trying to deal with it all, so I will go and help him! Back as soon as there's news. Or just the usual update tomorrow evening I suppose. The 20th. I never thought I'd get to the 20s! Come on Samuel, pleeeeease?!
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