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2004-11-12 - 9.09pm��previous entry��next entry
Arthur is here!!
Ohhh you cannot imagine how sorry I am to have left you all wondering how things are going for all this time! I had no choice though, as you will see when I write my news in a minute! Thank you all SO much for the wonderful guestbook entries - I was absolutely amazed by how many messages you guys left me when I finally checked in just now!
Okay I don't have loads of time (these days!) so I will have to be real quick and give you a bullet point type of update!
Arthur is here! I am a mummy! We have had a hard hard start, and I that's why I couldn't update till now, but I will tell you about that in a moment. Arthur is the most lovely precious baby ever. I can't believe how much I love him and how besotted I am with him. If he's not in my arms I want to cry (but that could be the hormones!), and whenever I think of his soft little head (the one I've been going on about wanting to nuzzle for ages!) I just get weepy.
Okay where do I start? Homebirth? It did not go as planned, unfortunately (you were right Jennifer). I AM proud of myself though, and everyone keeps on saying how well I did, so that's nice. I can't remember the details very well, and I want to write a proper birth story, so I'll just basically tell you what happened and write a birth story another time (maybe not for a while though, I don't know when I'll have time/energy to sit and do it!).
It's very hard for me to remember times and things, because it all blurs into one big thing. But basically the midwife came round during my labour at about 4pm, and I don't know what time I had written the last diary entry when I was in labour, but she had originally come round at about 10am I think, to assess me. She said then that I was in "pre-labour", and that's when I lost my mucus plug. She came back at 4pm and my contractions were a whooole different ball game by then, coming much more regularly and feeling much more intense. She could tell it was a different story to that morning just by laying a hand on my belly during a contraction. I was using my TENS machine and the pool had been filled I think by then. I could breathe through the contractions well but I did have to stop everything and breathe.
Here's a photo of me around that time, sitting on my birth ball and watching the pool get filled. That's my TENS machine in my hand :)
She stayed with me an little while and eventually I consented to an internal examination so I could know how far my labour had progressed. I was sooo bummed because she said my cervix was soft on one side, but still quite firm on the other, and I was only 1.5cm dilated! Yikes! I was fully effaced though, which was good. So she transferred me to the on-call midwife for the evening (Sue), and she came round at 7 or 8pm� or maybe it was 9ish?? I can�t remember. Anyway some hours later. The pain was a lot more intense by then but I still was able to manage it by breathing. My breathing was having to be more focused though. I didn�t ever think to follow any �taught� breathing things for labour. It was much easier to just do what came naturally. Around that time, the best thing to cope with the pain was by making my lips round and blowing regularly through the contraction. Sometimes a bad one would require someone to put a hand on me and remind me to breathe through it. Otherwise I didn�t like being touched. Here are my other 2 photos of the homebirth, taken around this time. One is obviously me, tired and in pain, heh! The other is me on the sofa with Mummy and Sue, the midwife, being talked through something or other. I can�t remember what. Anyway, here they are:
Anyway Sue was great. She was very respectful of all the things I wrote in my birth plan, and she just sat on the sofa with me and waited, and let me labour. She took my blood pressure on and off (which was well within norms � 120/80ish) and listened to Arthur, who by the way was an absolute STAR throughout all this. He stayed so calm. I�m so proud of him. He is lying in his Moses basket on the bed next to this computer desk, and he�s making the cutest little twitchy movements in his sleep. He�s so precious :)
Anyway I didn�t want to get in the pool till I knew I was at least 5cm dilated, so as not to slow things down, but I didn�t want another internal too soon after the last one � firstly, OH MY WORD it hurt!! I did more writhing around and groaning from that than my labour at that point! And secondly I didn�t want to be disappointed if I had only dilated another cm or so, which I thought was likely since it had only been a few more hours and it was my first baby. Well about an hour later I finally said I wanted to be in the pool and the only way to feel sure about that was to be checked. Or get in and risk it being too early and slowing the labour down. Neil had a nap for an hour or so just before this, and Mummy sat with me (they were both WONDERFUL during it all!). Then Mummy went up for a nap around 10.30pm, but that�s when I had my internal and was proclaimed (with some surprise!) to be 8cm dilated, and my waters had gone. They were bulging at the 4pm internal, but shortly after that I noticed I was feeling trickles occasionally with the stronger contractions. Anyway yeah, they had broken. So Mummy got up again (poor thing!) and I got in the pool. Right around that time something changed and things got really really hard. It�s much more blurry for me to describe from here because of how hard it was. The second midwife was called and the delivery pack was opened and prepped, because they thought I would dilate those other 2cm pretty quickly and be ready to push. But an hour went by and then another, and from pretty early on in that time, the contractions became absolutely unbearable. I presumed at first that it was just because I was in transition, or the hardest part of labour with the hardest contractions. The pain was like searing white hot pain in my lower abdomen and lower back, and I was getting more and more pressure-like pain (but PAIN, not just pressure) in my rectum sort of up in there. I was coping with the pain less and less well, and using all sorts of different breathing to help me through � anything that came naturally. Saying �shoosh, shooosh� a lot seemed to be the main thing I did in the hardest part during contractions, but the breathing really wasn�t helping me much anymore. During that last hour or so I started to get very distressed and saying I couldn�t do it, that I couldn�t bear the pain, and I was aware that I was talking very whimpery and whiney all the time. Whenever anyone asked me anything, like did I feel this or that, all I could whimper was, �I don�t knoooow!� I just felt like I didn�t know anything anymore and everything was bewildering and beyond my ability to cope with. I started to snap at people and they thought maybe I was fully dilated because of those transition signs and the fact that I was feeling so much pressure in my rectum. They kept asking if I had an urge to push, and I kept growling/yelling, �I don�t KNOW!!!� One of the midwives kept on getting me to stand so she could listen to Arthur with the Doppler, and I knew how important that was, but it just about drove me out of my TREE. I snapped at everyone! I did start to bear down sometimes when I was shouting at people (who�d have thought, nice little me?!), like at the end of yelling, �I don�t KNOW!� the word �know� would turn into �knowwwwrrrrggghh�! Hehe! So they were encouraged by that and said I should push if I felt the urge. But I didn�t really. In the end I got out of the pool to squat and push, but the pain was unbearable and I couldn�t push past or through it.
They said the only way to really know what was going on would be to do another internal but I didn�t want one, because I said I couldn�t bear the pain. In fact that was the main issue, I just plain could NOT bear the pain. It was getting worse and worse in my back, and they were pressing on it for me � Neil was a star, he pressed my back till it nearly broke from the pressure, hehe! But it was easing the pain less and less as time went on, and I couldn�t cope at all. The LAST thing I wanted to do was transfer to hospital, but they gently suggested it to me because they said they could see the pain was distressing me too much and they wanted to help me go over my options. They said if we transferred then I might even end up delivering in the ambulance rather than having a long painful hospital birth! I was beginning to lose the goal in my mind of having my baby at home, and just longing for something to stop the pain. I ended up saying I wanted to transfer, after they let me think of my options, so they called for an ambulance. I don�t really know what time this was, but I was amazed to find it was after midnight! So Arthur would not be born on November 8th like I had thought. But at least I knew that one way or another it was Arthur�s birthday right then, a few minutes into November 9th. He HAD to come that day.
Well, all of a sudden I hit this big whammy of �ooohhhh I failed at my homebirth!� and that combined with the tiredness and pain and so on, just got too much and I completely lost it. I cried and wailed, and all my breathing attempts turned into higher and higher pitched shrieks of pain and cries that I couldn�t bear it, somebody make it stop, etc :( Man, it did suck. It�s kind of uncomfortable to remember it! I just have NEVER felt anything like this pain, ever ever.
Well the ambulance turned up and 3 paramedics came in to escort me out. Everything became a flurry of activity with people trying to dress me in a nightie or robe or flip flops or something, all of which had me yelling, �Noooo, leave me alooone!!!!� and stuff like that. I had a huge contraction in the front doorway, which I�m now mortified about because it was 1am at least and we live in a quiet cul-de-sac so I know the neighbours heard my indignity! The huge burly paramedic rubbed my back because I was shrieking, �Somebody pleee-eee-ease help my back, oh somebody help help help!!� and yeah. I feel so embarrassed now, but urgh it was the worst pain ever. I don�t really remember everyone else in the situation. I know Neil wasn�t in the ambulance with me because he followed in our car. Mummy and Sue came with me and I was made to lie on a stretcher and yelled at people angrily about how my bump wasn�t supported enough, and with every contraction I was basically just shouting and crying that I couldn�t take the pain and begging for someone to make it go away and press on my back, etc. The nice paramedic rubbed my back and got severely yelled at for rubbing in the wrong place. Everyone was so nice to me. Urgh.
We got to the hospital, I don�t know HOW I made it through the 3 minute journey, honestly! I couldn�t believe how bad the pain was getting. I just wanted an epidural and FAST. That�s all I could think of. I got wheeled to delivery on my stretcher/trolley thing, wailing and screeching all the way � how awful! And once in my room, they told me the anaesthetist was in emergency surgery so I would have to wait. They offered me gas and air (entonox) but I hadn�t wanted to use it incase it made me feel sick or something. But yeah, eventually I used it, and it made no difference whatsoever. I felt completely in despair and begged and cried and shouted and shrieked for someone to take the pain away. When the obstetrician arrived, he wanted to examine me and I said I would not let him do that till I had some proper pain relief because I couldn�t take the pain. He said I HAD some proper pain relief, pointing to the gas and air mouthpiece that I was waving around in my hand. I shouted at him (rather rudely I�m afraid) that it DID NOT WORK!!!! He left abruptly as though he was not taking anything more from me, and I didn�t see him again (thankfully, I didn�t like him!).
Arthur is waking up. I will finish this later and then post it. Hopefully not too long so that I can actually get this update posted and put you all out of your misery! This is turning into a proper birth story isn�t it? Hmmm. Oh well.
Anyway where was I? Okay I need to be quicker with this story. Finally got my epidural after about 45 minutes which felt like a thousand agonising years! It took about 10 or 15 minutes to kick in, after which I just could have kissed the inventor of the things! I still had pain, but none at all in my abdomen or back, only in my groin on top of the rectal pressure feeling. And I could cope with that, even if I had to breathe through it. The NICEST obstetrician lady came in, and she was soooo nice and sympathetic (and pregnant, actually!). She did an internal and found me to be 8cm still, with a big lip of cervix. Another doctor did an internal a bit later because they couldn�t tell which way the baby was presenting. In the end they discovered he had turned to posterior during my labour � can you believe it?!!! He�s been in a perfect position for delivery for like MONTHS, and then 2cm before I�m fully dilated in labour, he goes, �Well, time for a little roll methinks!� What a pickle ;) I love him though.
My contractions were dying off a bit and we had to wait for him to turn. I was exhausted beyond belief, having already missed a night�s sleep, and it being about 4am by this point after 2 days of labour pains. So they gave me 2 hours with a darkened room and gave my mum and Neil some mats and pillows to lie on the floor and get a bit of sleep for themselves. I couldn�t sleep. There was a lady next door crying out and yelling in labour, and I felt soooo empathetic that I was just longing for HER pain to go, so I couldn�t relax! I heard her pushing but I don�t remember what happened with her. Anyway Arthur was doing fine all this time. Then they set up a syntocinon drip to speed my labour up. I also had a lot of ketones in my urine (not good) so they gave me fluids and stuff. I hadn�t eaten anything much the day of my labour, and my fluids were not great by the evening either.
Well by 8am I was contracting more regularly, but I had had to have 3 top ups of the epidural as it wore off around every hour, and the pain got unbearable again. I also developed a fever which was a bit worrying, and it went up quite quickly so I got an IV drip of antibiotics. Fun fun, all these drips in my arm, epidural in my back, strapped permanently to a fetal monitor on my back in bed � absolutely EVERYTHING in the world I ever planned to AVOID during labour! Oh well. I just didn�t care any more. I just wanted it to be over, and to have my baby. I felt sure I wouldn�t be able to dilate fully or push him out, and that I�d end up with a caesarean section. They told me it was a definite possibility that this would be the outcome :(
But at 8.15 the nice nice obstetrician came back and examined me, and said I was fully dilated, and Arthur had turned!!! Yay!! The paracetamol they gave me had brought my temperature down to normal, and although my blood pressure had gone up to 160/90 (yikes!), it wasn�t worrying them for some reason. The day staff took over and I had a lovely midwife and a great student midwife who chatted to me for a while about being a student midwife :) I had been feeling really quite ill and out of it most of the night, but when they told me I was fully dilated and I realised I might be delivering Arthur vaginally after all, it perked me up no end! Also the paracetamol reducing my temperature helped probably.
I didn�t have an urge to push so they gave me an hour from when I was fully dilated, just resting and letting the contractions bring the baby down a bit, and then said I would need to start pushing at 9.50am. So I did! I was anxious that I would have no energy or strength to push him out, but I just kept pushing, 3 pushes to every contraction, as long as I could hold them, right down into my bottom like I was passing a MASSIVE bowel movement, and just took a huge breath between each one till the contraction was over. I was really encouraged when I could feel him moving down. The first hour of pushing was not that obviously productive though. I pushed the whole time lying on my left side, as it was the most restful way to do it, and I tried to doze between contractions to conserve my energy. After the first hour the midwife lifted my upper leg way up in the air when I pushed and that helped loooads. I could feel the pressure changing as he came down, and it started to hurt in a sort of searing way as his head came down. People started saying they could see the top of his head, and that was just so wonderful to hear that I nearly cried and bawled, but I managed not to because I knew there wasn�t time or energy to spare for bawling about my baby�s head being visible! I needed to get him out, so I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. They were so encouraging to me, they kept telling me how fantastic I was doing, and how my pushing was so great, and how unusual it was that I was pushing so effectively on my first baby with an epidural in situ. I was proud of myself, I have to say I was surprised that my pushing was working so well for some reason!
Anyway, they let me feel his head in there, and it was like a squishy little fruit, with all the skin scrunched up because of how squeezed his head was in the birth canal! I am thrilled that I was the first to touch him in this way. They told me he had lots of black hair, which was another surprise! Neil was holding my leg by this point and Mummy was next to him so both of them could encourage me and also watch Arthur being born. The midwives got sterile (!) and unpacked the delivery stuff. I still hadn�t felt an urge to push, although the momentum was easy enough to follow after the first push with each contraction, so I could quite easily follow it with another push and another. Neil was fantastic, he kept telling me what he could see, and that really urged me on to keep pushing. It hurt a fair bit as he got near to crowning, but I didn�t get that ring of fire that everyone talks about. It just felt a bit hurty and stretched, that�s all. They said I was nearly there, and they would ask me not to push in a minute so they could deliver his head. Neil told me Arthur�s forehead was nearly out, and that he could see the top of his ear � it was amazing commentary! I wish I�d seen it though, but yeah, I was rather involved at the time! Then they said, �Don�t push, don�t push!� and that�s the ONLY time in my whole labour when I became absolutely overwhelmed with the urge to push! Hehe! I�m so difficult! So I was telling them I had to push, but I managed not to, and my womb actually eased his head out gently without anyone needing to do anything. I couldn�t feel the difference when his head was out though, which I had expected as a huge relief and a big difference from when he was crowning. Neil was going to cut the cord but they found it was wrapped around Arthur�s neck so tightly that they had no choice but to cut it before his body could be delivered. The only way I knew that his head was out was that they told me the cord was round his neck. Delivering his shoulders was uncomfortable, and then all of a sudden I felt the rest of him leave my body! It was amazing. We had arranged to have him put up on my tummy, and I looked down, and there he was being lifted up over me, this little person � perfect skin tone by the way, he was pink all over. His Apgar scores were 9, 10 and 10. As he was put onto my chest he let out his first cry � a tiny high-pitched squeak that finally gave way into a raspy cry. It was the most lovely sound I ever heard :)
I snuggled with him while they tried to deliver my placenta � they had to give me the injection to bring it on rather than the physiological third stage that I�d wanted, because you apparently have to if you have had syntocinon to speed up labour earlier on. Anyway it didn�t work, and I still hadn�t delivered the placenta after half an hour, so they put me back on the syntocinon drip. They applied cord traction and everything � basically every that I hadn�t wanted! Eventually the obstetrician came in and did an examination to find out where the placenta was, and with some considerable effort (!), she got it out. They were getting worried that I�d have to go into theatre for manual removal otherwise. Anyway that was a relief! I wanted to try feeding Arthur but they said the placenta was a far greater priority at that time, so I had to wait till 45 minutes after the birth. He wasn�t interested really, he just licked and nuzzled a bit, which is fine. But they wrote it in my notes as, �First feed attempted � not interested� Tsk. I had a second degree tear (which I was surprised at, since I didn�t notice/feel a thing!) so the very cheerful consultant came in and stitched me up, which went fine. My estimated blood loss was 400mls, so not the smallest amount. I am waiting on my blood test results for anaemia, because I am soooo pale at the moment. I know there�s pale and pale, but I am just this weird creamy colour all over, even my fingers, and I have never looked like that, so I feel fairly sure I am anaemic. I need to take iron supplements if I am, so I�ve started on those today at the midwife�s recommendation.
Oh yes, so Arthur Cameron was born at 11.28am on Tuesday 9th November 2004!! He weighed a whopping (for our families!) 8lbs 1.5oz (that�s 1 point 5, not 15!), and measured 51cm long. He is rhesus negative :) They tested his cord blood. I�m so glad, but man, neither of us needed all those anti-D injections during pregnancy. Oh well, better safe than sorry. I am curious to know whether this means Neil is more likely to be rh negative, or whether Arthur just happens to be a 1 in 4 baby having inherited it from me.
What else can I tell you? Arthur is absolutely gorgeous. He is so calm and placid and perfect. He looks just like his daddy, and I am so surprised and thrilled because I am absolutely enraptured with how he looks. He is beautiful. He has lots of very dark brown hair � an inch long all over! And it�s spikey, not curly. He eyes are a dark murky colour, so I don�t know what they�ll be eventually. He looks soooo cute when he has his eyes open, they are such cute little peepers! I couldn�t wait till his first bath, because his hair was so gooey with birth fluids, and I knew it would be soft and fluffy and absolutely irresistible against a cheek or hand once it was washed!
Anyway, so that�s Arthur�s birth! I guess I have written the birth story after all! I will probably copy and paste out of this entry for the birth story link on the left (when I get around to that). I have so much more to tell you, but this is so long and I want to post some photos of Arthur for you to see!
Basically what has happened since then hasn�t been that ideal. They said I had to stay in overnight the first night, which I wasn�t thrilled about but oh well. I had an hour or two of sleep that night as we were trying to �establish� Arthur on the breast, and you know how completely crap hospital staff can be with breastfeeding. They want to pick up your breast and your baby and ram the two together. Urgh. I swore I would never let anyone do that to me, but darn it, I did. I was just so tired, and they were confusing me and saying I couldn�t go home until he demonstrated that he would feed properly. I can�t believe I just let them. Next day he wasn�t feeding. He was vomiting mucus a lot, but the paediatrician said it was normal and quite common for babies to have a gutful of mucus which they end up needing to vomit for the first couple of days, and that can hinder feeding at first or something. I hated it when he vomited � it was real vomiting and he got quite distressed, my poor love. I didn�t want to be left alone with him the first few hours after it started, because I felt like I couldn�t cope and I wanted someone else to take care of him when he was sick, but by the next morning I was fine with it and just picked him and up and patted his back to help him bring the stuff up, and told him, �Good boy� all the time.
Okay so feeding didn�t get satisfactorily �established� at all that day, and I ended up having to express colostrum by hand into a 1ml syringe, and feeding it to him that way. I could express fine, but it was upsetting me. Arthur would get frantically upset and scream at the breast, and all sorts of different people would keep shoving my nipple in his mouth and I could see how he hated that and how it frustrated him. I feel so angry towards the stupid people who didn�t have a clue about real successful breastfeeding, who did that to me and Arthur. I am annoyed that I laid there and let them. I was soooo tired out, I can�t explain. I also was not eating well at all and felt generally crappy. He got less vomity but the feeding still didn�t get going too well. He would latch on but it was so painful that eventually my nipples started to blister, so um, HELLO?! Obviously something wasn�t being done right, even though they were all saying how he looked like he was latched on fine, etc. I know that if it hurts like that, something is wrong, no matter what they say. Even some of them were �breastfeeding experts� and they didn�t seem to have a clue about that either. I got so upset. They wouldn�t let me go home the next night either, and I got a roommate that night which meant I hardly got any sleep yet again. My parents, grandparents and my brother and Sarah came to visit me the second day which was nice. They are all so thrilled with Arthur and so proud of me :)
By day 3 in hospital they said I could go home � Arthur was given a clean bill of health and so was I, and I forced myself through painful feeds to demonstrate actual feeding � not that he was actually FEEDING, he wasn�t even swallowing really. It was more like he was using the nipple like a pacifier, but I had already told the hospital that I wanted to go home and I had a good breastfeeding counsellor ready and waiting to help me there. In the end it turned out that we couldn�t get in touch with her for the whole time I was in hospital, which drove me frantic with frustration and despair that we might never get the help we needed with feeding. I was so upset that we were having problems because of how I really know my stuff on breastfeeding and I had hoped (and expected I suppose) that it would all work out fine. I was devastated that my precious baby boy could not find sustenance from me, for whatever reason. On day 3 I spent much of the day sitting in my hospital bed sobbing and crying and refusing my meals and basically wailing at the staff that I wanted to go hoooome. I know it sounds silly. But I was beyond miserable, I felt like the whole world was ending and that I couldn�t feel more unhappy about anything ever. I know hormones were kicking in at this point though! They did let me go, but not till the afternoon, and I was inconsolable sobbing and crying till then, even knowing I was going home later.
When we got home I felt overwhelmed with anxiety and trepidation about being home on our own with a baby who I couldn�t feed or satisfy, and who cried with hunger all the time and looked awfully dry in the mouth. I was suddenly scared that he was in danger or something because I couldn�t look after him. He woke and cried and I couldn�t feed him, infact the more I tried, the less colostrum I produced, until my nipples were completely bone dry even after hand-expressing. I cried until I was nearly sick for 3 hours, and poor Neil tried his best to console me, and phoned endless breastfeeding helplines which all gave not-that-useful advice. Arthur cried and cried and fretted and looked so miserable and bewildered, and I loved him so much that it hurt, and I felt utterly responsible for this precious little person�s pain. His voice got drier and hoarser, and eventually we fed him some boiled, cooled water from the syringe. Neil bought me a breast pump but that did nothing to get any colostrum out of me. Ohhh it was so awful. I am choking up just remembering it and writing about it.
Anyway this was last night. We eventually got through to our breastfeeding lady and we took Arthur to her house at 10.30pm, where she showed us a couple of short videos about breastfeeding and watched me try to latch Arthur onto the breast. She asked if he had been forced to the breast before, and I said yes, for basically my whole hospital stay. See, now he won�t latch on at ALL. He panics and fights it and screams if he�s put to the breast. I hate that stupid hospital. Also she thought my nipple pain might be caused by thrush. Arthur doesn�t have any symptoms but he needs treating as well. Neil is out buying the relevant treatments for us both. She told us to have Arthur spend as much time as possible skin-to-skin with me, and to offer him the breast a lot. She said to express colostrum and feed it to him with a syringe in the meantime, and helped me remember how to express it again. She said to try taking a bath with him in the morning when I�d had some sleep (I was feeling so sick and ill with exhaustion by this point � about midnight after 3 or 4 nights with no or very little sleep, and having given birth!). She said that a bath would help him reconnect with me in a womby sort of way, and if I laid him on my belly and kept him covered with water, he would find my breast all by himself and latch on. We watched it happen on a video � it was so lovely!
So we came home. I felt like being sick on the way home but I wasn�t. I was just so exhausted. I have had that feeling several times today as well, and it�s really not nice. I am still not eating right but it�s hard to fit food in when Arthur is so hungry and I�m crying a lot and I feel sick or am trying to sleep or feed or express at other times. Once home, I tried expressing milk for Arthur to have overnight, but nothing, absolutely nothing came. Hilary (the breastfeeding lady) had said not to worry if nothing came, and that if we were worried about Arthur�s hydration we could give him a little boiled cooled water, but he would not die of starvation over one night � we should just persevere and try not to get anxious about it. She said it would come and things would be okay eventually if we persevered. Well with Arthur crying for food and me dry as a bone, I just couldn�t bear it a moment longer and Neil went out to buy formula :( I can�t tell you how bad that felt, even though I don�t have a thing about other people formula-feeding their babies � it�s just a �standard� I guess, that I must have set for myself. I never wanted Arthur to have anything but my milk. No formula. Nothing, just my milk. And I couldn�t even meet his most basic of needs. This precious little boy of mine. It was the most awful feeling ever, and I have not cried so much in�. well, ages. He ended up falling asleep sucking my finger while Neil was out buying formula, and I slept the night (well, from 2.30-3.30am and 5-6am) with Arthur in my arms on the sofa � him wearing just a nappy and a wrap, and me wearing just bottoms. Skin-to-skin was gorgeous! I could stay next to Arthur like that forever. I love being that close to him, it feels so perfectly right. I love how soft his skin is and his hair against my skin. He is perfect. I just can�t tell you.
Well whenever he woke he seemed perfectly happy just sucking my finger to go back to sleep, so we didn�t feed him all night. That sounds/feels so bad. But I had my hopes pinned on that bath this morning. We took the bath, but he hated it and screamed throughout. I phoned Hilary in tears to say that nothing had worked, my breasts hurt, my milk STILL hadn�t come in, and we�d broken down and bought some formula that we didn�t want to give him, so what should we do? She said to rest my breasts today and wait for the milk to come in. She said if it was stressing us out that he wasn�t getting any food, just give him formula while we wait. But not to feed him with a bottle. So we have fed him formula today. We cup-fed him once, and used a suck/syringe feed the other times. For that, I put my finger in his mouth in the way that Hilary showed me to teach him the correct position to suck on the breast properly, and Neil slowly puts the milk in at the side of my finger while Arthur sucks. If he stops, Neil stops putting the milk in, until he starts again. It�s a relief to see him get some nourishment, as he hasn�t had a wet or dirty nappy since yesterday, which is worrying us a lot. The midwife visited today and said not to worry about the nappy just yet � she is sure that he will produce a wet and dirty nappy by the end of today if he�s had formula today. I hope so.
It breaks my heart to see him so contented and sleepy after a nice meal of formula, when it�s something I feel *I* should be providing for him, and I can�t give him that satisfaction. It absolutely destroys me inside, and I don�t know what to do about that. I just hope and pray my milk comes in soon and that my nipples recover from whatever is bothering them (they are terribly sore now, even without the feeding or expressing), and that Arthur will be happy to try the breast again soon. I am supposed to keep offering him the breast, but I feel so confused now that I just don�t know how. I�ve had so much conflicting advice, and the only thing that screams at me when I try feeding him at the breast is the terrible pain from whatever is wrong with my nipples. The midwife said it did sound like thrush since they are now painful at the slightest touch, even from clothing, and without recent feeding to make them sensitive or sore.
Anyway. Arthur is waking up again for another feed, and Neil just got home with the shopping so I will go. I have more I wanted to write about how this all feels and how beautiful my boy is, but I will leave you with a few photos instead, and try to update again very soon with more thoughts and progress reports!
Here is a photo of me and Arthur, taken yesterday (2 days old). Yeah I am that tired! And anaemic, I�m not normally that pale. Isn�t Arthur cute?! Isn�t he tiny?!!
Okay, here�s a set of photos of Neil burping Arthur. I just can�t get over how cute Arthur�s face is when he is held in that burping position � his little cheeks are soooo chubby and soft, and his eyes are so dark and peepy! Anyway, here is my Arthur with his daddy. First one is just him and Daddy. Then there�s three taken after his first formula feed, with a tea towel over his clothes to be burped. He falls asleep while he�s being burped at the end of a feed (hence the complete zonk-out photo!):
I hope that satisfies everyone�s cravings for news and photos! Such a long entry! I will update again tomorrow if I have the energy. I hope things will be going better then, but whatever happens, I can not get over how blessed I am � how blessed Neil and I are. We just keep looking at Arthur as we�re doing things with him (we feed him together, burp him together, everything is done together while Neil is off work for 2 weeks), and then look at each other and just read each other�s looks, which say, �I can�t believe he�s ours. I can�t believe this is happening. I can�t believe we are this blessed.� It�s so wonderful. I don�t have any more words to express how amazing it is. Thank you Lord, with all my heart.
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