Watching OBEM tonight has made me want to share Emmy’s birth story with you. They say you never forget but the pain goes away – well that is completely true.
Those of you following this Blog will know it wasn’t an easy journey to actually have Emmy – I suffered 3 miscarriages before her which were very painful and took over a lot of my life for a while.
Upon finding out I was pregnant with Emmy I was immediately put under consultant led care, started taking 75mg aspirin from day 1 until 36 weeks and had continuous scans – 9 in total (these were at 7 weeks, 9 weeks, 12 weeks, 15 weeks, 20 weeks, 24 weeks, 28 weeks, 32 weeks and 38 weeks)
Here are our 12 and 20 week scan pictures (these were the routine scans, all the rest were done by my consultant):
We found out at our 20 week scan we were having a girl – Paul was ill with the Flu so didn’t come to the scan so afterwards I went to Mothercare and brought a pink T-Shirt and wore it lying over my bump when I got home.
Here are my last 2 bump pictures before she was born – I was huge!!
(left 31 weeks, right Xmas day 2009)
Emmy was actually due on January 24th 2010 whoever only 5% of babies are actually born on their due dates and Emmy was determined to be just like me and arrive very late. While waiting I went into cleaning mode and had to clean everything – which actually ended in disaster when at 9 months pregnant I decided I had to steam clean the floors (like you do!) during which my steam cleaner decided to blow up on me, exploding in my face scolding my hand and face badly, I had to call Paul home from work – which wasn’t easy as it had been heavily snowing and he was out on a survey (his dad is an Architect). We then had to spend 3 hrs in a & e – and I had to promise NEVER to use that steam cleaner again and to rest for the remainder of the pregnancy, which I tried to.
On 2nd Feb my contractions finally started around 10pm coming every 6 minutes, so I settled in for a long haul, sending Paul off to bed at some point a few hours later, I bounced on the birthing ball for a while before heading to bed for some sleep – around 3am it was getting worse so I ran bath which helped for a bit before I couldn’t bear it any longer and called the Labour ward at 6am – we headed in and arrived around 7am, to find out that yes I was contracting (that I already knew) and was only a little over 1 cm, I was given another sweep, some pain killers and sent home.
I continued contracting every 4-5 minutes all day but managed a little sleep and spent most of the day in pain or bouncing on my ball. I called back around 5pm in agony and was told No I wasn’t contracting at all by a very young midwife – well I knew I was as had been hooked up to a machine that morning, so got very cross and hung up on her!! and continued bouncing and walking around.
I sent Paul to bed around 10pm and jumped in the bath again which helped, I then got into bed for a little while to see if that would help and my waters broke almost immediately (lucky I had a towel down).
At midnight we arrived at the Birthing unit and were shown to my room which was lovely, it was a huge room, with a rocking chair, birthing pool, 2 beds, TV, en-suite and tea & coffee making facilities – I must have stayed there for around 30 minutes before they decided I was far to swollen to stay and had to go to the actual labour ward – I was not happy.
That’s where I stayed ALL day – I was 3 Cm’s dilated upon arrival, I had an epidural around 5am and slept wonderfully and then throughout the day was hooked up to 2 drips to help speed up my labour. Upon examination at 4pm I was still only 3 Cm’s and the word’s c-section were mutted by staff, a massive step away from my planned water birth. At 4.45pm I was only 4 Cm’s dilated and was told I had another hour before they started to plan for a c-section. Well at 5.35pm Emmy went into distress and her heart beat was dropping so I was told it would HAVE to be a c-section, I called my parents and told then I would be off to theatre soon – I had no idea how soon and at 6.19pm Emmy was born via EMCS – very healthy and huge!!
While she was being cleaned up, weighed and dressed by Daddy I was being given a Blood Transfusion as I lost too much blood, I was then stitched up and taken to recovery, given Morphine and my precious baby girl.
Emily Jean Nicholas born 6.19pm 4th February 2010 8lbs 13oz
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oh! i love that photo of her lying in the ward cot with her little arm up – i have similar pics of my two like that :
i am so pleased for your that darling Emmy brought you so much happiness after such awfully sad losses (hug)
shame you didnt have the natural birth you had hoped for, but alls well that ends well
thanks so much for linking up to Flashback Friday x x
Won't be long and she will be writting funees – i'm saving them – there may be a few coming soon.The scans are reassuring – I looking forward to more 😉
It is hideous going through the miscarriages and uncertainty. The only good thing that results from it is the opportunity to have all those reassuring scans – I think I must have had at least 10 scans and each one put me back in a good place for a while. Thanks for linking up – rotten to go through all that labour and end in a C section, but she is beautiful. Just got to get her writing funees now 😉