I hope everyone had a super fabulous time over Christmas and has so far had a great start to 2015 :)
Apologies for the delay in posting, the last 10 weeks have been an incredibly fun adventure!
Baby (Boy) Malibu was delivered 4 days past my due date on 30th December 2014, weighing 9lb 1oz and measuring 56cm - a giant in baby terms!! Well, certainly in my baby terms anyway. I had envisaged some cute little 7lb something tiny wriggler. How wrong was I!
The labour was not entirely how I had envisaged either, and I ended up on the theatre table after 31 hours of going strong. But I did however get to use the birthing pool like I wanted to, and when the time came to make all of the hard decisions to use interventions I feel like I handled the situation calmly and with confidence. This *may* have had more to do with the copious amount of drugs in my system by that time, coupled with the immense amount of pain that I just wanted to stop - but I'm going with calm and confident! haha :)
I was literally numb from the waist down, and had to wait 12 hours for the drugs to wear off. I remember - vividly - having a room full of visitors the evening after BM was born, and a nurse coming in to announce, rather loudly "Oh my! Look at your catheter! If we don't empty that soon it'll burst!" If I wasn't so dosed up I think I would've died.
Then I had to wait for the feeling to come back into my legs and to attempt to walk again. Only to find out that once upright, sitting back down again was to be the most painful thing since the previous morning.
Then there's the whole breastfeeding debacle. Now I'm not knocking it, I'm a full patron of the whole 'Breast Is Best' campaign, and I wholeheartedly wanted to breastfeed, but as it happens I couldn't. Cue an army of old school forceful midwives trying to nipple cripple me into submission.(This may be a tiny exaggeration, but this is how it is etched into my memory). Now, after being awake for almost 48 hours at this point, and after being through a very long and painful labour, having someone try and assertively coerce my babs into producing anything for BM to consume is not really something I can say I enjoyed.
After managing 3 hours sleep, an injection in my butt and some more nipple crippling, I was told that I could go home. BNF took this to mean that we could pack up and go straight away. This was 24 hours after I had given birth and quite frankly I was in shock. He was packing up around me, and I wasn't even dressed. In fact he took my bag to the car before I even had the chance to retrieve my shoes so I left the hospital in my slippers. In December. We were however home in time to ring in New Years Eve - and BM even timed a feed for us to see midnight and have a smooch. Which I will always remember.
But I was still in shock. And I pretty much stayed that way for ages. For the first 2 week of his life BM had his wide awake spell between midnight and 4am. BNF and I did not know what had hit us! We didn't know how to pacify him, what sent him to sleep, what made him happy, we were all getting to know each other - except he could only communicate with crying, and we were seriously sleep deprived. We tried staying upstairs on the sofa bed, with his moses basket in front of the tele - we have never watched so much news in our lives. And because of the time we were always catching the Australia and Asia business news. Our general knowledge took on a whole new level. Then I was convinced that lullabies would solve the problem. Babies love lullabies right?! So I made a playlist on my iphone and played it the whole night. It didn't work. And BNF was ready to kill me. Apparently nor him or BM love lullabies. I however slept a dream that night!
I can honestly say it probably took me until 6 weeks before I wanted to leave the house. And do you know what I would say to any new mums - don't leave the house until you want to! Don't be pressured into having visitors or people saying they HAVE to see the baby. Sod it, you will never ever have those insane first weeks again. And yeah you might not be able to sit down comfortably, you might not want to wear any "real clothes", you might not want to wash your hair, you might still just want to sit there and cry for no reason - do all of those things!! And don't give two hoots for everyone else who tries to bully you in to their schedule. And if your other half tells you "hmm I think you need to leave the house now" you tell him you will leave the house whenever you god damn want and not a minute before. You and your body have been through one hell of a mission and you take your time before trying to be friends with the real world again. I do genuinely think I suffered from shock after I gave birth to BM. Everything just happens so quickly and you are just left to get on with it - which you have to because that little bubba needs you. And honestly - he doesn't care if you haven't washed your hair or if you're wearing elasticated trousers, he just wants a big cuddle and probably some food.
Fast forward 10 weeks (!!!! How it's been 10 weeks already I have no idea!!!) and BM is sleeping through the night for most nights, BNF is back to work and is fully competent in nappy changing, and I am wearing "real clothes" with clean hair and on a good day - even wearing make up!! haha all jokes aside, life bears some resemblance to normality - whatever that is, and life is good. We could not imagine life now without that little tinker and I cannot wait to watch him grow up into a little handsome man.
Best thing that has ever happened to us.
Now he is screaming down the monitor at me while BNF is transfixed on the footie so excuse me to my normality...
Big kisses
Mx
