Instead, the husband decided to get out of Christmas lunch with the inlaws and opening/assembling any further craptastic plastic toys by developing pancreatitis and, rather scarily, drivibg himself to the hospital at 7am.  Leaving a certain heavily pregnant wife to deal with Santa present opening, car packing, getting the troops ready and doing the hour long drive to my parents’ place solo.  No mean feat.

I do not apologise for the fact that my children had chocolate and lollies for breakfast, nor for the fact that getting out of the house necessitated a lot of screaming and some tears on my part.

Anyway.

Long story short, mr hissychick’s gallbladder was found to be the cause of the pancreatitis (much, much less scary than the other possible causes), the kids survived and enjoyed Christmas Day blah blah blah fishpaste.

The husband was discharged yesterday morning after a three night stay….and his gallbladder removal surgery scheduled for next Tuesday.  The day before my due date.

Fast forward to today.  I woke at 5:50 am this morning after another totally relaxing late pregnancy night’s sleep (think waking three times between 10 pm and 12 am to go to the toilet, 1 am with night sweats, and everytime I needed to pee or roll over thereafter) and I felt….like I had dropped my bundle.

After a shower and managiing to nick my pink bits when I stupidly decided to give the ladygarden a tidy up sight unseen I sat on the edge of my bed and cried with exhaustion and frustration.  Perhaps it’s was the last of the adrenaline of the last few days leaving my body…but I don’t think it’s that.

Yes people, I’ve reached that point where abject fear of childbirth is outweighed by the desire to feel semi human again.

And it seems Bertramina is sympathetic to my cause.  OB checkup this morning revealed she is well engaged and good to go, with the lovely and calm Dr J reassuring me all was well and that he would be seeing me before the husband’s little surgical jaunt.

My feeling is soon, very soon. 

So on that note I am off to eat fresh pineapple and watch as many episodes of Mad Men as I can.

Until next time….smooches.  Scared smooches.

Where to begin..om Friday the 28th January at around 11:45pm, as I was lying in bed listening to a pregnancy relaxation CD my waters just went pop, everywhere. So it was off to the hospital for monitoring, where it was found that A was doing fine but my contractions hadn’t started. The internal was hell (this is important a bit later in the story). Due to the risk of infection I was told that I wouldn’t have much longer than 24 hours before I would have to be induced. We decided to head to my parents place at about 3am, just 10 minutes from the hospital to see how things progressed rather than stay at the hospital as it was a full house and i didn’t want to have to share a room.

We were back in the hospital on Saturday morning as I had started to have contractions overnight, they seemed to be about 10 minutes apart and I hadn’t slept but when we got to the hopital of course they stopped. Next thing I know I was told that they could just set up the induction drip and I would have my baby by nightfall. IN hindsight, this is where I made a big mistake. Stupid me got all upset about this sudden medical approach to the birth, being tethered to the bed for continouous monitoring rather the active birth I had envisaged. I saw my obstetrician, and he told me that as A seemed to be OK he was happy to wait until Sunday morning before inducing her. So off I went o my parents’s place again.

Over the course of the day the contractions got stronger, and I tried to manage by using a fit ball and dropping to my hands and knees to rock and moan. By Saturday evening, after no sleep and contractions every seven minutes I was again back at Westmead…and yet again the contractions stopped. By that stage I decided that I wasn’t going anywhere no matter what so I was put on the ward and DH stayed with me. I did not get to sleep, waking every six or so minutes in pain and started to get really frightened and felt really under pressure to get things going. The midwives tried to get me to do an internal exam on several occasions but i was like a wildcat and wouldn’t let them anywhere near me.

At about three am, a lovely midwife suggested to me that I could have an epidural so they could do their exam and I could get some sleep, as it was almost 100% certain that I would need to be induced. Next thing I know my OB pops in and says that the anaethetist was there doing another epi if iwanted to seize the opportunity. Before you know it I am prepped and an epi is put in…oh the bliss! I could have married the anaethetist at this stage. Anyway, while the epi took away the pain, it did not take away the distress and I still screamed through the internal, convinced I could feel pain. At this stage it was discovered I was only 3cm dilated.

By this stage I still hadn’t had any > >real sleep since Thursday night. So at around 6am the induction drip was set up and away we went, in > >conjunction with the epi it worked quickly and at 12:30 pm on Sunday I was ready to push. So the epidural was turned off. At first I was OK with the pushing, but it was such hard work when I was just so tired. Then the pain hit with full force and I aboslutely panicked and went out of my head. I tried and tried and treid to keep going, but I was getting nowhere fast. I remember screaming blue murder and thrashing around a lot, but i just felt like i was not there. I kept sobbing about whether A was OK.

At this stage it was decided that enough was enough, So I was given gas and air, the epi was turned right back up and my OB performed a forceps delivery (againI was convinced i could feel pain). A was down so low that it took just a couple of pushes and at 1:45pm her head and shoulders were out, and DH pulled his little girl out into the world 38 hours after it all began. She weighed in at 3.2kg (7 pds) and 53cm (almost 21 inches) long, APGARS were 9 and 9, overall fantastic for a 38 weeker who had been through a long birth process.

I was just in another place for some time as they stitched me up (my OB didn’t do an episotomy and I didn’t tear badly, as I haven’t really had problems with post birth pain in that area), and holding her for the first time just seemed so surreal. All up we were in hospital until Thursday morning, DH stayed with me the > >whole time as we had a double bed. It was the typical stay, every midwife had a different approach to feeding, there was one night nurse who was a nazi when we took A to the nuresry one night just so we could get some rest. it seemed like there was always someone coming into the room to do something…

So all up it was not the birth exeperience i had hoped for, it was bloody well traumatic to be honest and at this stage I feel that A might be an only child. Oh well, I will worry about that later.

After all of that..A is just divine, DH is just absolutely FANTASTIC with her, I don’t know what I would do without his total team based approach to her care and support and committment to me when it comesto feeding, recovering from the birth and my adjusting to motherhood. He really shines as a Dad. I really can’t believe that I am a Mum at last, and to such a beautiful and amazing little girl.

In other words…A was born on 30 January 2005 at 1:45pm, a healthy 38 weeker and simply the most beautiful little bub in the world! I can’t believe it has been seven weeks since my darling little girl was born. We’ve struggled with mastitis, had a very unpleasant enema experience (enough said) and mood swings (mine) and growth spurts (hers) but we’re still here and functioning, and A is still thriving. She has started to smile, which is just so incredible, and although she wakes in the night she is mostly very businesslike about it all thank goodness. Tomorrow is my 29th birthday, it’s amazing that I will be celebrating as a Mum. OK now that really was a cry…