The first week with a newborn
By ella | April 8, 2008
I started this when I came home from the hospital. It’s taken me four weeks to write these few words. Yes, I’m just a little bit busier than I thought I would be.
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Day Zero
I’m moved to the post-natal ward. I can’t feel anything from the waist down which is a blessing judging by the midwives reaction when they look at my perineum, or what’s left of it.
I scoff breakfast even though I’ve just eaten another breakfast on the labour ward. The baby is asleep. Seconds later I fall into a coma which is a mistake because I miss lunch. Have they no idea that a post-partum woman needs food? And lots of it. I raid the kitchen and find my lunch being kept warm. I eat that and then raid the kitchen again. And again. The midwife comes to tell me my baby is awake. I look at her with a mouthful of toast. I would feel more ashamed that I’ve been caught neglecting my baby in favour of food if I wasn’t still so hungry.
The afternoon is filled with visitors. Matthew brings the boys in to meet their new brother but they’re more interested in the presents the baby has brought them. About ten minutes after arriving Ben looks up and with a look of shock and surprise on his face he points and exlaims ‘baby’. I fully expect him to go round to the cot and try and beat him over the head or something but the baby doesn’t register on his radar again. I don’t think he’s expecting the baby to be a permanent addition.
The midwife runs me a bath. I nearly faint when I wash myself and vow not, under any circumstances, to look ‘down there’. The baby is asleep so I fall gratefully into another coma but the midwives have other ideas and wake me in order to stick me full of antibiotics. The anaethesist comes to visit and I have to restrain myself from throwing myself at him and smothering him with hugs and kisses in gratuity for my epidural. Later, the registrar who delivered my baby comes to visit, putting his head round the curtain uncertainly. I smile and he looks just a little bit relieved. He gave me a near-perfect birth, I can just about forgive him for the torture - the incredible torture - he put me through when he broke my waters. Maybe.
Day One
I am ready to go home as soon as the last antibiotics are dripped into me but the midwives are too busy to do the paperwork so I spend the day gazing at my perfect baby and try not to think about how much I miss my other children. I hear the mother across from me sobbing. The curtains are closed but I can’t listen to her crying like that and not see if she’s OK. I spend the next hour with her as she tells me how she and her premature baby were due to go home today until her elder child came down with chickenpox. She’s been in hospital for eight weeks already and now faces another ten days. I can’t say anything to help so I sit with my arm around her. I’ve missed my boys after just three days. I couldn’t fathom weeks without them.
The baby feeds desperately. My milk hasn’t come in and he’s hungry. I’m sore and my nipples are starting to crack and bleed. By the afternoon he’s biting on my nipples in desperation. I ask the midwife for a bottle of formula. I explain that I gave two of my elder children a bottle before my milk came in because they were so big and so hungry. ‘It could stop him breastfeeding,’ the midwife reminds me. I try to reassure her that I will breastfeed exclusively once my milk comes in and it hasn’t been a problem before. She defers to my experience and I realise with horror it is because I have, in her eyes, had So Many Babies. My instincts are right though: the baby gulps half the bottle and falls into a blissful sleep.
We make it home and I sink onto the sofa, sore and tired. But I can’t believe that I’m home the day after giving birth. It’s wonderful.
Day Two
The baby will not sleep. If I put him down he wakes within five minutes, crying. But my milk has come in and he feeds at length. It is agony despite applying Lansinoh religiously. I yelp in pain when he latches on and sit there gripping the sofa cushions. It’s a long, painful, tiring day.
Day Three
I got no sleep last night. Edward spent the night frogging on my chest while I attempted not to fall asleep and smother him. Every time I put him down he woke crying. More feeding pain and the only thing that gets me through it is knowing that the pain doesn’t last for many more days. I wonder if I have the will to last that long.
Day Four
Another night with no sleep and I feel sick with fatigue. The midwife visits and I try to hold it together in front of her. I don’t want her marking me down as having post natal depression. Not if it’s just due to lack of sleep.
Day Five
The baby finally slept a bit last night. That’s the thing about sleep deprivation - just when you think you can’t go on, you get just enough sleep to survive further sleep deprivation, thereby prolonging the agony.
Day Six
I’m a mess today. I can’t stop crying. I’m tired. I have a cracking headache. I miss my dog. I shout at my children. Then I cry some more. Matthew stands back knowing nothing much will help me today. I fall into bed and cry until I fall asleep. But at some ungodly hour, the baby wakes me and I realise gratefully that my headache has gone. I feel less tired and a bit more hopeful about the day to come. As I fall asleep I look at the clock: 04:09. Exactly a week since my son was born. I have survived.
Categories: Babies, Parenting, Daily Life | 11 Comments »
A birth announcement. Finally!
By ella | March 17, 2008
He’s here!
This is Edward, my perfect fourth son, born on Sunday after a 48 hour labour and weighing 8lbs 12 oz.
I’m exhausted but I will post more as soon as I’ve had some sleep. If you don’t hear from me you can assume my bed has swallowed me whole.
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Sorry if you’ve had trouble leaving comments. They should be working again now.
Categories: Babies, Pregnancy | 20 Comments »
Thirty-eight weeks pregnant. And that’s enough.
By ella | March 6, 2008
So tomorrow is Friday. Hmmm, what shall I do?
I know. LET’S GO HAVE A BABY.
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Tomorrow I am being induced because of the diabetes, because the scans say the baby is getting too big.
The registrar two weeks ago reassured me in his lilting Nigerian accent, ‘no need to worry, you can go to forty weeks before we will book you in for induction. Come in for a sweep when you turn forty weeks,’ he said, making a large circle in the air with his hand, ‘and if that doesn’t work we’ll break your waters forty-eight hours later,’ he continued, making a violent jabbing motion. I hoped he reserves those gestures for women who have already given birth and know what the hell those hand motions mean.
The consultant on Monday had other ideas. ‘You need to deliver that baby this week. Can you come in tomorrow?’
‘Er no,’ I said. ‘I have three other children to arrange childcare for.’
My mother is on holiday in South Africa. My sister is away skiing. My best friend is away in London. My other best friend is in Scotland. My neighbours are going to a funeral.
So Matthew will have to look after the children.
And I will be attempting to squeeze something the size of a watermelon out of somewhere very much smaller than a watermelon.
Alone.
Categories: Pregnancy | 17 Comments »
Mothers day
By ella | March 5, 2008
Last Sunday was Mothers’ Day here. It didn’t get off to a good start when Ben woke coughing at 2am and didn’t stop until about 6am. So around 5am I brought him into bed with me in the hope he would settle. Instead this was possibly the most exciting thing I could have done and he spent the next hour kissing my arm over and over and flicking his muslin painfully at me in a form of masochistic love.
By 7am we were both dead to the world so Matthew got up with Harry and William while Ben and I slumbered on. At 10am we finally woke but, even then, Ben was reluctant to get up. He looked up at me, cuddling my arm and reaching up intermittently to stroke my face. After a while Harry and William appeared, offering me breakfast in bed (although that never actually materialised). They jumped on the bed to kiss their pink-cheeked little brother. The baby kicked in my stomach, less with love though I fear, as more likely demanding breakfast. The sun was shining through the blinds, promising another beautiful spring day.
I don’t often stop to think about it, but just then I remembered: I am the luckiest mother alive.
Categories: Not Enough Children | 2 Comments »
Even the house aches with emptiness
By ella | February 21, 2008
‘We can all have breakfast together now,’ I say brightly but my heart aches with emptiness.
Two nights ago I was awake from 2am sitting with my poorly dog.
Last night I was awake from 3am, grieving for her.
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‘Defa doesn’t seem quite herself this evening,’ I say to Matthew as he gets home on Monday. We both look at her. She’s looking at us expectantly, greedily, for food, for something, anything. But he knows better than to contradict me given I seem to have developed a sixth sense about her well-being.
Sure enough, the following morning I find Matthew clearing vomit off what looks like the entire kitchen floor. Later a friend calls, but looking across at the dog I tell her I don’t want to leave Defa and invite her round instead. At lunchtime the vet does what he usually does - an anti-emetic and tells us to bring her back the following evening if she is dehydrated - and I take her home. But she continues to be sick. By the morning she is struggling to get the one step to her water bowl. At the vet’s they admit her and put her on another anti-emetic and as she is now on a drip, some opiate painkillers.
I have learnt to read the tone of voice of the various vets. Tim is relentlessly upbeat and I have learnt - the hard way with Brin - not to trust his optimism. Sarah is more candid but often guarded. But Jane, a locum, admits Defa today and when she calls saying there has been no improvement I can’t tell whether her slightly downbeat tone is normal for her. I feel gloomy and ask her to call me if her condition deteriorates but when I hang up I try to remain optimistic and hope she will be better in the morning.
A couple of hours later and the on-call night vet calls me. ‘It’s bad news about Defa,’ she says and I stupidly think how, if she is deteriorating, I can bundle the children in the car now as they have finished eating and go and see her. ‘She died sometime in the last twenty minutes after surgery closed and me checking on her when I arrived.’
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I am grateful that, in between the acute episodes of pancreatitis, she was in rude health. Even on Monday she was as well as she has ever been, chasing deer, birds, anything that moved, in the field. I am grateful for the love and loyalty she showed me. I am grateful for knowing for the last year that she was terminally ill and I could cherish the moments with her. I am grateful for her dragging me out on those bloody awful early morning walks while the rest of the family had breakfast together in the warm. I am grateful for just knowing her.
But I am indescribably sad that after nine years of near-constant companionship, she died alone, without me, without anyone even in the room with her.
That hurts the most.
Categories: Dog Days | Comments Off
Packing a labor bag
By ella | February 14, 2008
So I’ve been having irregular contractions for a couple of days. But last time round I had the same thing for several weeks before my due date and Ben ended up being fifteen days overdue. Even then he only came out because I was induced. Lazy boy.
So I’m not worried.
But I have packed a labour bag. Just in case.
Categories: Pregnancy | 6 Comments »
Thirty-five weeks pregnant
By ella | February 12, 2008
From behind, you can hardly tell I’m pregnant (until I start to move and then the pregnant waddle gives it away). I carry my babies all out the front and it kills my back. And at thirty-five weeks I am carrying ALOT of baby out front. And I’m hurting.
The last few weeks of pregnancy are vile. But I’m on the home stretch now and I cannot wait to meet my baby. Knowing this is my last pregnancy makes it somehow easier to put up with the awful last few weeks. And even though I worry now and again how I am going to cope once the baby arrives, friends have told me that everything is easier, including the sleep deprivation - particularly the sleep deprivation - when you know it is your last baby. They say you cherish the moments because you know you won’t ever have to go through them again. Okay, well perhaps you don’t cherish the sleepless nights, but I know what they mean. I’m relying on that to get me through SO THEY’D BETTER NOT BE LYING TO ME. That, and finding a wonderful nanny and maternity nurse (even though I don’t bottle feed, I envisage the maternity nurse whisking a well-fed, milky baby away to wind it and deal with the explosive night-time diapers only to return it to me asleep, thereby ensuring that I never have to do more than roll over and offer tit). Oh and I might as well get a super-efficient housekeeper and cook too. You know, while I’m dreaming.
On a more practical note, I’m having what feels like mild cramps tonight. Because 1) Matthew has left for a week in the US 2) I haven’t laundered any baby clothes and 3) I haven’t packed a labour bag.
So this would be just the night to go into labour.
Categories: Pregnancy | 6 Comments »
So, yes, I’ve had to find out what the Glycemic Index is
By ella | February 6, 2008
I’m feeling better than I have been in ages. The crazed, sugar withdrawal days are over and I am feeling better for eating healthily. Who knew?
The nausea has also gone, probably because the massive high blood sugar/low blood sugar swings have gone, cast out with the refined carbs. Who knew? Clearly not me.
In fact the whole family is eating better. We are converts to the GI diet which is good for weight loss but also for diabetics who want to control their blood sugar levels. The children have always eaten healthily, or at least what I considered to be healthily - home cooked, mostly organic, lots of fruit and veg - but looking carefully at what they were eating I can see that their blood sugar would have been swinging fairly wildly throughout the day. Combine that with the natural activity of a four year old boy and a six year boy and there is really no house big enough to contain them. Although I can’t convince the older boys to switch from white bread to granary, I have been able to replace simple carbs with complex carbs, in most cases without them even noticing.
Still, lest I sound too evangelical about our new eating habits I still cannot get a lentil past my lips.
Categories: Healthy Eating | 8 Comments »
Glucose tolerance test and gestational diabetes
By ella | January 25, 2008
Bugger, I can’t reach my water, I think lethargically.
‘Please could you pass me my water?,’ I ask Matthew beseechingly, necessitating him getting up, crossing half the room to pass me my glass which is only centimetres out of my reach. He does so - not for the first time - ungrudgingly, seeing first-hand how overwhelmingly tired I have been and how awful I look.
As I lie there I realise with slow-creeping certainty that this is not normal. I mean, I remember feeling tired before and, sure, I have three small children and a baby in utero that between them don’t let me sleep much but this tiredness and generally feeling crappy is exceptional. My anaemia blood test results came back fine so I telephone and book myself in for a glucose tolerance test even though I will have to call in yet another favour with a friend just so I can spend four hours at the hospital starving and nauseated.
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Last time I went for the gestational diabetes test it was like a day out. Because when you are home all day with small children any kind of break from them takes on a new kind of pleasure. Even if it involves throwing up, fasting and being stuck with needles.
This time the test isn’t so bad. During the long wait I finally get a chance to finish reading Tracy Thompson’s book Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Depression - possibly not the best book to go waving about in a waiting room full of pregnant women - which I have been reading to try and get a handle on how I have been feeling recently. After the second blood test I gratefully gulp down the cup of tea offered and drive into town. I have someone to look after the children for the whole day so I make the most of it by having lunch out and then doing a bit of shopping - an altogether more pleasant experience without my crying, tantrum-laden toddler in tow. It hurts to walk far but I do anyway, remembering that this is probably my last time alone before the baby comes.
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The hospital calls pretty much right away. It’s not the news I wanted to hear, nor really expected despite my semi-obvious symptoms of excessive thirst and tiredness.
The midwife runs through the diet basics: swap simple carbs for complex carbs and refined sugar for natural sugar. I think of my daily diet, which has relied on refined carbs to keep the nausea at bay, and look in the cupboard where I can see nothing complex or natural.
She runs through the risks to me and the baby: early induction is likely because of the risks of a large baby (my babies are already large without gestional diabetes) and to reduce the risk of stillbirth, a 3% risk of stillbirth and 1% risk of the baby dying in the first month, a 50% risk of me developing diabetes in the next 10-15 years.
She invites me for a three hour appointment at the hospital for checks and advice. I think momentarily about declining, the way she makes it sound like I have a choice, and think how Matthew is not going to be thrilled that he must stay home, even though he was due to fly to the States. ‘You’ll be monitored weekly but this is the longest appointment,’ she says, as if that makes the whole thought of weekly trips to the hospital with three small children any better.
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Sugar withdrawal is nasty.
Already tired and depressed, I start to feel even worse. I start to hallucinate about bowls of cereal and milk and a milky, chocolate-covered cappuccino. I scrounge through the cupboards looking for snacks that don’t involve sugar. There’s nothing.
I go out to the grocery store and wander up and down the nut aisle. I come away with a basket full of wholemeal bread, brown rice, nuts and chickpeas, feeling virtuous but uninspired.
I’m already the environmentalist. Now I’m the lentil-loving hippie too.
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The recipes in my GI diet recipe books don’t look too bad. It’s a wake-up call for my diet, I think. It’s a warning system that I am susceptible to late-onset diabetes. I have a chance to change my ways now. Before it’s too late.
I try not to think about chocolate cake.
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And so now I will be having a baby in six weeks, instead of ten weeks. As I have to be induced, at least I don’t have to wait until I am fifteen days overdue like last time. Because being fifteen days overdue with a big baby was so much fun.
Six weeks. I’d better get on and order the poor thing a mattress. And a chocolate cake for me for the moment the baby arrives.
Categories: Pregnancy | 6 Comments »
Seven months pregnant
By ella | January 10, 2008
I catch sight of two dark streaks on the car window only to realise with horror that they are big black stripes under my eyes. As I peer more closely at myself, I realise how bloated I look by this pregnancy, how tired, fed-up. Shocked by what I see, I wonder if I scare animals and small children with how awful I look.
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As most pregnant mothers will testify, you reach a point in the pregnancy where the baby becomes less hard work to look after outside the womb than inside.
I have reached that point.
I still have ten weeks to go. (Maybe twelve if I go as overdue as I am expecting to.)
I am huge.
I am exhausted, more in a physical sense than in a sleep-deprived sense but a two year old toddler waking for an hour or more every night wanting to practice his chatting skills and a baby that wants to practice gymnastics in my stomach at regular intervals through the night may be making me more sleep-deprived than I realise (the big black war paint markings under my eyes being the tell-tale sign).
Worst of all I am, I think, depressed.
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Everything in life is ticking along nicely. But I am not doing well.
It has crept up on me - an insidious, uninivited visitor over the holidays - coinciding with the Seasonal Affective Disorder that comes yearly during these dark, wintery days. My SAD lightbox shoots its sunshine rays at me every morning but it ain’t fooling my mind and it’s fighting a losing battle with the dark clouds inside my head.
For the first time I am beginning to wonder how I am going to cope with daily life when the new baby comes. I’m not sure if this is contributing to the depression or a symptom of it.
Every day is a struggle, mostly because the me-time I have is spent resting because I am so exhausted. I reach the end of the day and I feel not only have I achieved nothing of any consequence but I am just as tired as ever. I’m not sure if this is contributing to the depression or a symptom of it.
On the one hand, like a prickly hedgehog I want to go into hibernation, or failing that, curl up in a ball with my sharp spines protecting me from unwanted visitors. On the other, I desperately engage the grocery delivery man in conversation because it may be the only adult conversation I will see today.
I need treatment but I am frightened to take anti-depressants while pregnant, even though I know that research has shown that by not getting treatment I risk the psychological well-being of my other children. How’s that for mother-guilt? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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I am resigned to the fact that I will probably take anti-depressants for much of the rest of my life. Certainly while I have small children. Why have more children if they make you unhappy? a worried friend asked. Well, it’s not the children that make me unhappy but the life it entails. More affordable, flexible childcare would help, as would opportunities for mothers to get back on a flexible career ladder. Still, the friend asked, why have more children if the life makes you unhappy? She has a point.
At our last book club meeting a friend said to me wistfully, you’re so lucky. I know how much she wants a second child. It isn’t going to happen. I am lucky. I am grateful. I know that, but it doesn’t stop me feeling like I do.
I was talking about this with a friend before Christmas. She has four small children, admittedly two of whom are in school and one in nursery, but still, she has a workload. How do you manage? I asked, seeking reassurance that I, too, can manage. Mother’s little helper, she confided.
Sometimes those who look like they have it all are the ones who, underneath, are struggling the most.
Categories: Pregnancy, Post-Partum Depression | 10 Comments »