I spilled water on my laptop and have therefore been unable to blog for ages. This still isnt fixed so need to blog when i come somewhere with a pc i can use. At my parents' today. A lovely sunny day and here i am inside doing bloggings!
Charlotte's sleeping still leaves much to be desired. She didnt go to sleep until 3.30am last night. Sometimes she makes up for it in the day.Sometimes she doesnt. Whichever way it goes she wants to be fed really very often indeed. I thought it was the 3 week growth spurt but that seems to be not the case as it is now nearly 4 weeks and it has been going on for some time!
Starting to allow people to come round to visit now.BUt they have to be friendly souls who are happy to help out with the meals/ tea/ coffee etc as no matter how good my intentions are i am not quite up to providing an efficient service yet! Thanks Lisa for your help and understanding the other day- we might never have eaten otherwise! Going to Mum's is still the best though as she makes lovely meals for me not only to eat here but to take back to put in my freezer (I wont let Simon not shut the door properly again so i lose all my carefully prepared meals!). She (rightly, i'm sure) thinks that i need to eat well as i am still eating for two effectively. I do make it a priority but that doesnt mean that i am always able to conjure something up as much from scratch as i would ordinarily like. Let's hope that ability returns when she is out of her nasty first few weeks!
So we are both v jaded and have asked both the mums over at some point to do the 9-12 slot at night so Simon can get some rest (he usually does it until she needs feeding so I can get some rest ahead of the rest of the night which I do as he has to go to work....). We wouldnt be getting through this time without our mums.
I have been asked whether I am going to do the birth story. I need to look back at what I ahve already said as I thought I ahd done that already! And I am not quite clever enough to link it separately so those who arent interested dont have to see it. BUt it will be nice for Charlotte to see in times to come apart from anything else...
Since delivering Charlotte I have had this horrendous rash all over my body which itches like crazy. Apparently it is the most common pregnancy-related rash and it has some fancy name summarised by PUPP or something. BUt it is horrendous and as I am breastfeeding I cant take anything for it. It takes 7 weeks to go apparently.
Apart from that I survived my first day on my own OK. Alex (my friend who has recently moved in v near me - fantastic!) cooked me a lovely lunch and I spent the day at her gorgeous new house. Apart from locking us out after our walk- thankfully I am breastfeeding- the day passed by smoothly enough! A nice man offered to climb a ladder and get in through the open upstairs windows so the day was not such a huge disaster as it could have been! Simon had missed C lots so was keen to attend to all her non-feeding needs when he got in so it was quite an easy day for me!
Spending today with my mum-in-law as it is her birthday... also thinking of going to cranial osteopathy appointment later on...
Apologies. Amazing how quickly time goes. We had been having problems with Charlotte's body clock ie she can sleep for long stretches but never at night. Last night seemed to be better so we wiwll see how it goes...
Midwife forgot to discharge us so we have both midwife and health visitor coming today!
Both grannies been ever so helpful with cooking us meals etc which we have really appreciated.
Simon back to work tomorrow! oh dear- not looking forward! but life looks much rosier today after several hours sleep i must admit...
we have had sleep on 3 out of the 8 nights Charlotte has been with us so far! oh dear! not doing so well. last night was terrible- she got to sleep at 4am and only because simon took her for a drive on the M25! but she is feeding really well and generally very cute and adorable. i will put photos on here sometime i promise !
i am gradualy beginning to feel more like a human being again although after a night of no sleep i have taken a few steps back again
after such a major event it is hard to know what to write really ! our days are taken up with very mundane things at the moment. i couldnt even go out for my walk today as the doctor was calling round. simon enjoys that time each day with our daughter. he is such a brilliant father and i am very proud of him...
Well i guess you have all figured out the reason for the absence of posts. I would like to announce the arrival of a baby girl. She is called Charlotte Daisy Florence and she is gorgeous! She arrived at 11.15pm on Thursday 28 July.
The labour was induced in the end. The gel worked first time thankfully so I spent a long night getting to 3 cms dilated on a night ward on my own having to keep the noise down. That was far from acceptable. But otherwise the care I received was nothing less than brilliant. I accepted that once I had gone down the intervention route I was on the slippery slope already. The next stage was to break my waters but I was going to be rigged up to a monitor. I couldnt say no really without losing all the relationship with my midwife. So I did what I had practically vowed I would never do and had an epidural! Yes it did slow down labour- wasnt fully dilated until 9pm that night and yes it did make pushing harder (had to have an epis and van touse (sp??) delivery in the end). But without being able to move around during the contractions I knew I wasnt going to be able to get through the day and be able to push anyway- having had no sleep the night before. Anyway I dont regret my decision one little bit to be honest. Charlotte is happy and healthy and we decided we didnt want to take the risk of her going over 42 weeks. And we had the additional weekend to get used to having her!
We had a pretty rough time with her until my milk came in but now she seems much more easily satisfied and we have had two good nights in a row so far. Midwife pleased with her progress and GP called in for a home visit yesterday and pleased with the progress of C generally and my stitches...
Simon is being brilliant in his 2 weeks' paternity leave. What am I going to do when he goes back to work?! Get the mums round more I suspect!
Anyway more blogs to follow in due course but I had wanted this to be updated earlier but it really has been quite manic and awful and tiring and we are feeling much more like human beings today...
