I've made a few new friends on Twitter since the arrival of Louie, all of which are new mums too and at times have been a great support when I have a baby query. Its amazing how sometimes someone who is technically a stranger can be the voice of reason in a time of need. Having read some of the blogs about their experiences I have been mustering up the motivation and emotional strength to write my own. I suppose watching One Born Every Minute last night has kind of re-awoken some things I put to the back of my mind. Timings in this are an estimation - the whole experience is a bit of a blur that has been blocked out of my mind!
Finding out
My pregnancy itself was fine however 2 days after we found out we were expecting, the company I worked for went into administration due to being carelessly run by someone with a need for spending money when they shouldn't (that in itself is another story). Our excitement was very short lived. We had planned this baby, knowing we could afford to bring it up comfortably and ensure it had everything it needed, but being told that I could be made redundant at any point suddenly made everything seem not so great. I was only 5-6 weeks pregnant so couldn't say anything either, so I had to keep quiet and go with the flow at work. Luckily for me I didn't suffer with morning sickness or anything that would mean me taking time off work, I generally felt quite ill in the evening, nausea usually and I didn't really cook or eat much - poor Ste! Aside from work being bought by another company and relocating to Skipton, resulting in a 100 mile round trip for me, there were no actual issues with my pregnancy. I took all my years holidays in one go and started my Maternity Leave after they'd run out so had plenty of time to chill out and enjoy being pregnant.
Baby Louie at 20 Weeks - at this point we didn't know he was a boy :)
Clearly you are too comfortable!
Due date was 1st August and although I apparently didn't look too big, I really was! I felt uncomfortable and wasn't getting much sleep. In the picture below I had 2 weeks left until due date.
You can imagine that after 2 sweeps and 12 days overdue when I arrived at the hospital to be induced I wasn't exactly a happy camper! Me and Steven got there at 9am (later followed by my Mum) and I was taken to the Maternity Ward of RLI and popped into a private room. It was a good thing we were in a private room as Ste started balancing the cardboard bowl things you use to go to the toilet on his head - at least this gave me an insight into how he would cope with the birth.
Late morning they popped a pessary in to see if that would start anything happening. Aside from the odd twinge here and there nothing really hurt until late afternoon, I was in the hospital canteen with my Mum as Steven had gone home for something to eat. The pain was like a more intense period pain, 'Finally something is happening!' I thought, so we headed back to the ward to get one of the midwives to examine me...only about 1.5cm dilated. I can remember thinking that my Midwife who examined me at the sweep said I was 2cm....this certainly did me no good for motivation. At that point in went another pessary, this was around 7pm and Mum had left. Me and Ste sat in the room listening to the radio and it was then that I realised Ste would have to go home and I'd be left on my own. I started to get upset about this and panic but the Midwives said that if anything started they'd contact him straight away. He left at 9pm.
I can't quite recall much from the night apart from being very uncomfortable (the second pessary was obviously doing something) and having to keep asking when I could have some pain killers. I was woken up by a lot of noise coming from the room next to me around 1am and then when I popped to the toilet at 4am I bumped into a woman bleeding heavily looking quite distressed. This was the woman from the room next door to me, something was clearly wrong as she'd only arrived a few hours earlier and shouldn't have been bleeding.
Morning eventually came after my night of broken sleep and Ste arrived promptly at 8am. I don't think I'd ever been so happy to see his face and have a cuddle. That night felt like the longest night of my life....little did I know. The Midwife popped in at 9am to do an external examination and said I was 3cm dilated and that they might be able to break my waters, they would just get the doctor to check, which he did and it was a yes. I was due to be taken down at 10am to delivery so I called Mum who arrived just before, but an emergency took priority (the woman from the next room) so they were going to try and get me down to delivery as soon as possible, it wasn't until 4pm that I eventually got taken down and throughout the day I have continued to have pains from the pessary but I wasn't dilating at all...oh the joys!
Hook me up to that drip!
My mum is a Sonographer so babies are kind of her thing which is one of the reasons why I wanted her around. She had a medical knowledge that neither Ste or I did and would be able to explain things if I didn't understand. She is also very focused and calm when she needs to be so would be able to tell me to shut up if I was being unreasonable...which I frequently am and often need telling! A Midwife called Claire was looking after me and began to try to break my waters. I was surprised at how I didn't actually feel anything when this happened. I always thought I'd feel some kind of twinge or pain, but no, nothing at all. Apparently barely any water came out despite the fact that a Midwife up on the ward described my bump as 'squishy' and said I'd be 'sure to gush' - charming! Claire asked if it was OK if she tried again as she thought they may not have broken properly, I obviously said Yes, didn't want to be hanging round here any longer than I needed to be! Again, no water, so they assumed all was OK and proceeded to attach various cannulas into my hands and hook me up to a drip, by this point it was about 5pm.
After about 40 minutes the pain started to kick in but at least now I knew that something really was happening. Claire explained that because I was being induced the drip brought contractions on very quickly, with very little break between and it would most likely be painful - she wasn't kidding. The gas and air soon canister soon became my new best friend and it was a friendship that would nearly see me through to the bitter end...nearly! The following few hours were what I expected a standard induction delivery to be like and Claire, who was due to finish her shift at 9:30pm, continued to reassure me that this baby would arrive before her shift ended...it did not, but I thought she was being fairly optimistic but her positivity kept me going none-the-less.
At 9:30pm we got a new Midwife, Michelle, who was just as lovely as Claire thankfully, that was the one good thing about the whole labour experience, the excellent staff at RLI. At 10pm after about 3 canisters of gas I gave up and requested an epidural which I was quite disappointed in myself for but the pain was so intense and there were no breaks between contractions so I didn't even get time to recover. I can remember inhaling so much gas that my hearing went a bit funny, I felt very spaced out and couldn't even respond when Ste asked me a question, I think that's when I realised that it was a bit too much for me. The epidural arrived within minutes and once it was all in I suddenly felt a feeling of calm run through my body and I turned from being a spaced out grumpy person to a more tranquil pleasant person to be around. I think at this point I was only about 5cm dilated - not far enough to be denied an epidural but too far to see the light at the end of the tunnel! The relief was slightly short lived as I soon realised that I could still feel my contractions through the epidural but they were no where near as bad as what they were before.
Into the night
Basically throughout the night I only progressed to 6cm and got stuck there for a very long time. Whilst all this was happening the tachometer thing that was monitoring my contractions broke and Michelle had to feel for each and every one of them and note them down, the poor bloody woman didn't even get to leave for a wee! Somewhere in the middle of the night a doctor came to examine me and confirmed that there wasn't much progress and uttered the words "I'll come back and see how you're doing in 4 hours"....4 hours?!? Surely this baby should have arrived by then? Exhausted and still in pain I looked over to my Mum (and Ste who was snoozing on the floor under some coats) and tears rolled down my cheeks. I'd kept my cool I think throughout the whole process to this point, but it was now that I just felt like giving up, I didn't see an end to it all and had been in the delivery suite for over 12 hours now with very little progress. I think after that my drip got turned up a bit and a few hours later Michelle and the Matron in charge called for the Consultant to come and get involved.
Surely not much longer now?
I had now been at the hospital for nearly 2 days, I was considering redirecting my post! At 8am, before the Consultant arrived, the doctor examined me and said I was between 7cm and 8cm, so we were getting there slowly, and he suggested trying to push to see if that would help me dilate a bit more. This made me feel a bit better as this was kind of the next stage of the process, however I was completely shattered as I hadn't slept so I wasn't in the best of moods. Claire, the midwife from when I arrived, clocked back on for her next shift at 8:30am and was very surprised when she walked in to see that I was still here and without a baby! That next hour seemed to pass quickly and when a new face appeared in my room at 9am ready for business I thought things were going to pick up. This new chap was the Consultant, Mr Mahendren, and he quickly examined me and announced that the baby was back to back and stuck which would explain why it wasn't for coming and why I wasn't dilating. The baby's head wasn't applying pressure in the right place to make me dilate and the widest part of the head was trying to come out which is bigger than 10cm. No wonder I could still feel the pain. He instructed the midwives to attach something to the baby's head to monitor its heart beat and asked me to continue to push for another hour in hope that the baby would turn itself natural under the pressure and be able to be delivered. I knew then that an hour of pushing wasn't normal for a delivery, let alone the previous hour as well. I was well and truly exhausted now and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open.
That hour passed and still no baby. In came the consultant with some paper work for me to sign and he explained that we were going to have to go to emergency theatre. The on call staff had been paged and were all en route. He explained that he was going to try a procedure using Kielland's Rotational Forceps which was tricky but he was confident that he'd be able to turn the baby with the forceps and deliver it - failing that they would have to do a C-Section, he just needed me to consent. I didn't even read the paperwork I just signed and Steven was taken away to put on his medical scrubs. I looked at Mum, she'd gone quite pale by this point, I think her medical knowledge had kicked in but she wasn't for talking about it, she remained quite silent and teary until I left for theatre around 10:15am.
My bed was wheeled through the corridors to theatre and everything was just a daze now. Steven was next to me all dressed in scrubs and there were lots of bodies bustling around. The anaesthetist told me she'd topped up my epidural and also pumped me full of morphine in case the procedure didn't work and they had to do a section. My legs were propped up, a towel/cloth was pinned over the lower half of my body to cover up what they were up to and they began. Luckily for me I couldn't feel or see a thing, Steven on the other hand said he could see a lot of blood on the floor, which later resulted in me being very anaemic, with a blood level of 7.1 and living off iron tablets for many weeks.
The consultant told me he had got the forceps in an had hold of baby's head and shoulders and they were going to try and rotate it but could only try this 3 times and if it wouldn't budge by then they would have to do a section straight away. I remember feeling very nervous and anxious at this point. The first two attempts didn't work but on the third they finally rotated baby and then the told me I needed to push, they pulled and at 11:23am our baby was born. Steven whispered to me "It's a boy". He struggled to breath when he was delivered and was described to be 'grunting' so the Paediatrician was called to examine him but he was given the all clear and after I'd been stitched up all 3 of us headed back to the delivery suite.
Louie Steven Armer weighed a healthy 8lb 4oz and after 2 sweeps, 2 pessaries, 3 canisters of gas, an epidural, an episiotomy, Kiellands forcep delivery and 2 very long days at the hospital our lovely little man was here safe and sound!
Someone asked me the other day when I was having the next one.........ha!
On a warm, summer's day in June, I made my way with my 36wk bump, Bec and baby Jennifer in tow to Gary Hill's studio. He is currently based in Kirkham, near Preston, which wasnt too far to travel. I had previously emailed Gary to see what kind of shoot we could do, I wanted something tasteful but I still wanted bump on show. He reassured me that all the photographs would be tasteful and we would only do what I felt comfortable with so I took a bag of suitable underwear, vest tops and some baby bits we'd already bought bump and thought I'd see how I felt on the day.
A couple of months passed but I kept in touch with Gary, who I now consider a buddy of mine, and just before Christmas I decided that it would be nice to get some pictures of all 3 of us so once again I called upon Gary's services. Ste, myself and a 2 1/2 month old Louie set off back to his studio to do a family photoshoot. We took some photos of all 3 of us, Ste and Louie, me and Louie and some of the little guy on his own - plenty of variety to choose from and all of them were stunning.
