Category: Spawn

Inigo is off all machines, and has had two successful feeds. I have been moved again, and am downstairs in the children’s ward, where there are sick people, so Inigo has to stay in the nursery.

I am going to try to get some sleep in preparation for my first night of round the clock feeding, Mark has our boy sleeping on his chest upstairs, and I will be called when he needs me.

Thank you everyone for your well wishes, and words of encouragement. It’s working 🙂

We tried breastfeeding again today, and had a much better experience – not there yet, but better. I also had a chance to talk to the midwife that I saw for most of my ante natal visits, she validated everything I was feeling, and encouraged me to go back to the nursery and touch him as much as I like. It’s been a tough 24 hours, but I look forward to every day getting better from now on. Also spoken to the social worker, who says that I am going better than could be expected for somebody who has so much to deal with.

I have been doing pretty well with expressing, this morning I got 70mls, which everyone seems impressed with. Of course I have no idea about what should and shouldn’t be happening, but I overheard one of the doctors saying today that a c section interferes with normal hormone production, and therefore can delay and reduce milk production. Apparently I am very lucky, and supply is not an issue, only demand 🙂 We’ll get there!

The boy is looking delightful – he has been fed breastmilk through a naso gastric tube, about 2mls every hour, and it seems to have improved his skin tone and colour. It’s an almost imperceptible change, and I may be imagining it, but it does make me feel better that he is able to eat, and I am able to provide for him in some small way. It may not be the way he’s supposed to get it, but it’s the best we can have for now, and I am grateful.

Mum had a meeting at the hospital and has spoken to Inigo’s paediatrician – apparently they are hoping to let us go home on the weekend. That is the first official word on timing I have had, and am trying not to get too excited, but the idea that I might be able to see my son without wires, and being able to cuddle him so soon is almost too much to hope for.

Anna Gibson visited again today, and we had such a lovely chat, I am now feeling fortified and ready to deal with whatever tomorrow may bring for our little family. All good things I hope.

We’ve just spent nearly an hour cuddling our son. He is still on oxygen, but they are so happy with his progress that we were allowed to have a cuddle while he was on a nasal cannula instead of the headbox. No pictures – because he needs skin to skin contact, all the pics are a little pornographic.

Of course, the primary reason for the switch in oxygen source was that they wanted to take another x-ray to measure his progress. We’ll have the results of the x-ray later this afternoon, and since I now have internets in my room, I will be able to blog about it as soon as I hear something.

They have started to feed him expressed breastmilk, starting with 2mls an hour. Soon they will be putting in a naso-gastric tube to assist feeding, and we’ll start to increase the amount that he eats. He is currently getting 15ms and hour of I/V fluids, so he needs to be getting about the same amount in breastmilk. We’ve tried a proper feed, but he didn’t take to it straight away, and he became distressed, which lead to his oxygen saturation dropping. We’ll fight that battle another day, and concentrate on keeping him calm, and happy, and healthy. Then we can fatten him up.

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10:20pm

I’ve just been ejected from the nursery. Inigo had an episode of really odd breathing, which the midwife put down to “overstimulation”. I had just changed him after I noticed him starting to wake up, and was sitting quietly stroking his arm, as I have been all day, every day now. I have never seen him do that before, and it was really frightening, and I am damn sure it wasn’t me that caused it. What a bitch. I can’t go back in there now until morning, and she’s gone, or I might strangle her. No more expressing tonight. Fuck.

Brendan Nelson wants to grant same sex couples “equal” rights. But he doesn’t support gay marriage, adoption, or access to IVF. Doesn’t sound equal to me matey.

Inigo has had a good night. Since about 5pm last night, all of his obs have recorded less than 100 breaths per minute, bar one. Normal is 40-60 breaths per minute, and he started out at about 120, so less than 100 is a significant improvement – in my mind at least! He’s also down to less than 50% oxygen, and still getting 100% blood oxygen saturation – the goal is that they can wean him off the oxygen completely, and keep his breathing low. Nobody will speculate how long that will take, but I have been warned that I shouldn’t expect to go home on Monday.

After he is off the oxygen completely, then I will get to start breastfeeding – we can’t go home until breastfeeding is established. Of course, nobody has explained to me what their definition of “established” is, so I’m still in the dark about that.

We haven’t heard from the paediatrician this morning though, so officially we have no word yet. Mum is convinced he is looking much better though, and I’m almost confident enough to say that I think he looks happier too.

And I finally got an (almost) good night’s sleep. And the world’s best husband just walked in with coffee. Life is looking much brighter today.

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Update – 7pm

The doctors were really happy with his progress today, resp rate was down under 70 for most of the day. Unfortunately, it’s been back up again since, so they aren’t reducing the oxygen again until he can be reviewed by the doctors again tomorrow. All in all, a good day, but with a few scary and uncertain moments with his heart rate dropping very low. We remain alert but not alarmed. He’s had his gastric tube removed at least, and been able to have a bath – so we can finally tell that he has brown hair underneath all the gore!

Yesterday Simone and Andrew visited, and brought various delights from the best of Newtown’s Turkish and Lebanese restaurants. We had a veritable feast, and I was able to eat breakfast and lunch today from the superb leftovers. They also brought a box filled with gorgeous clothing for the boy (I can’t wait to put him in actual clothes!), and Simone has created a custom skincare range for Inigo.

In the bottles are Inigo George Nettle’s “Oh-So-Clean-Feeling Baby Bum Wipe Juice”, “Super Deluxe Baby Bath Elixir” and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Baby Bum Butter”. You’d have to feel pretty special to have a skincare range named for you before you were three days old!

In which Plan C comes into effect, in full detail.  Don’t read on if you’re squeamish – this is my story, as much as I remember 24 hours later.

Wednesday, I had the cleaners come, I visited Miriam and Oscar, I visited Anna and Lara, and then I picked Mark up from work.  It was a pretty full day, and I was so focussed on encouraging Inigo to make his grand entrance, that I wasn’t exactly focussed on how he was doing.

By the time we got home, it was about 10pm, and I sat down with a big bowl of Bravo Lemon Lime Gelato (brand mentioned because it is the stuff of legend), hoping to kick start a bit of activity.  By the time I went to bed an hour or so later, I still hadn’t noticed much in the way of Inigo activity, and I started to get a little concerned.

The next morning, instead of sleeping through the coffee delivery (Mark is a wonderful husband), I woke up, sat up, drank the coffee, and waited for the espresso to pass through the placenta and excite some action.  Two hours and a spa later, I resolved to take myself off to hospital for a check.

I arrived at hospital just before 11am, and was hooked up to a CTG pretty quickly.  The machine found a heartbeat that was racing a bit, and we resolved to watch it for a while to see if it settled while the coffee wore off, and to watch for movement (which was minimal).

After an hour on the machine, the heartrate dipped a bit, which prompted the midwives to consult with a doctor, who decided that the trace was worrying enough that I wouldn’t be leaving hospital without a baby, either by induction or C-section.  I rang Mark, Mum, and the Doula, and told them all to be prepared.

The Doctor did an “internal”.  If you’ve had a baby, you know exactly how unpleasant this is, if you haven’t, I’ll spare you the details.  Suffice it to say that although it was unpleasant for me, Inigo found it really distressing, and his heartrate dipped alarmingly.

The Doctor found that my bits weren’t anywhere near ready for labour, so a C-section was decided upon, a consent form was called for, and things went very Monty Python for a little while.

My blood pressure had dropped, so I was feeling a little woozy, they turned me on my side to relieve the pressure, and both of us started to feel better.

The senior midwife returned, had a chat to the scalpel happy doctor, and convinced her that the surgery could wait at least until Mark arrived!

I handed my mobile to the lovely Leilani (one of the student midwives that has been looking after me) to follow up support people (and mainly to find Mark), as they wheeled me off to an ancient operating theatre.  No complaints about the hospital at all, and the staff have all been beyond compare – but wheeling a frightened woman into an operating theatre that looks like a morgue, and then insisting on sticking needles in her spine before her husband shows up is a little bit mean.  I understand that they were doing their best for me and my baby, but at the time I was a very small scared little person.

Just before the second needle went in, Leilani managed to let me know that Mark was just outside, and would be allowed in as soon as the anaesthetist was done with me.  Soon he was by my side (in a very silly outfit, and I couldn’t feel my toes.  They put up a sheet so I couldn’t see all the action, and I asked them politely only to give me the barest detail about what was going on.

My blood pressure dropped again, and I began to feel nauseous.  I was given something to raise my blood pressure, which helped for a little while.  Soon my blood pressure dropped again, and I was throwing up violently as I felt Inigo being lifted from my open abdomen, and heard him cry for the first time.  2:18pm, 29/11/07

At which point I became aware that there was an “issue”.  Turns out there were a few issues, and one of them has potentially nasty consequences.  We’ll going to be ok, but it’s been a hard day for our new family.

Inigo had always been a pretty active little guy, hence all our worries about turning him.  And that’s why I was suspicious that he was so quiet on wednesday.  It turns out that his placenta had started to deteriorate, the amniotic fluid had also diminished, and that he’d done a poo into it at some point.  And then his breathing reflex had kicked in before he was out in the world, and he’d inhaled some poo into his lungs.

This happens quite a bit, and the consequences range from a few days on oxygen, to total loss of lung function, and death.  Inigo breathed on his own straight away, so it was pretty likely that his issues were going to be on the more minor side – but we had to wait and see.

I was allowed to see him for about a minute before he was taken off to the special care ward.  Mark went with him, and I was stitched up and wheeled into recovery.  Again the lovely Leilani was there with me, and managed to talk them into letting mum come down to the recovery ward so I didn’t have to be alone.  Which was wonderful, because they kept me there for ages while I waited for the spinal block to wear off enough so that I could feel my toes again.

Finally I was wheeled upstairs and allowed to see Inigo.  He was naked under a heat lamp, with a space helmet over his head delivering oxygen.  He had electrodes and a cannula, and SP02 monitor taped on to him, and he looked like a little alien space man.  And because I was all wired up too, all I could do was hold his little hand and stroke his skinny little rib cage.

I stayed with him for a few hours.  I couldn’t hold him, I couldn’t feed him, I couldn’t even give him a kiss, or change his nappy.  But I did start to feel a bit connected to him, and I have certainly seen lots of uglier babies than this one.

Eventually, I made it to my room at about 7pm.  I still couldn’t really feel my toes, but the pain of the surgery was starting to break through, and the weight of the days events was starting to hit home.

My parents were there, Marks parents were there, so I decided to postpone my meltdown for a little while.  Christine came for a visit, Mum and Dad left, Bev and Ted left and came back with food (thanks!).  Everyone left at around 11pm, and I tried to sleep.

Finally gave up at around 6am when the drugs ran out, and I’ve spent today arguing for more drugs, between visits to the special care nursery, and nursing my wounds.  I have expressed a little milk, which has been given to Inigo via syringe.  I won’t be allowed to feed him until he is off the oxygen, which might be Monday.  Or it might not. 

So apparently my “maternal instincts” are developed enough to have got him through what could have been nasty if I hadn’t acted.  It’s a good feeling.  While the outcome hasn’t been wonderful, it’s a lot better than the alternative, and it does look like we’ll be able to take the little guy home sooner or later.

In the meantime, we were able to convince the special care nurses to let me hold him for a few minutes tonight.  We had a little skin to skin contact, and being able to hold him for the first time brought such a rush of emotion that I can’t possibly write about it without losing the plot completely.

Tonight, I have managed to convince them to give me a sleeping pill, so I am looking forward to not being a raving lunatic tomorrow.

Thanks everyone for your text messages, comments, emails, flowers, phone calls and esoteric vibes.  Everything is appreciated, and I look forward to us both being healthy enough to introduce him to you all.

Except a clean house – that is worth getting excited about!

Our last cleaners sacked us (apparently some people think that having rabbits in the house means too much fur!), so we went back to the old cleaners we had in Denistone. My parents thought they were a bit ineffectual, but I always thought they did a good job of the bathroom and kitchen (they even cleaned the microwave!), and they were cheap! And after the last lot of cleaners wouldn’t shut up, I began to see that Eric and Peter’s lack of English wasn’t such a handicap after all. Plus, I knew I could trust them in the house without me there, so as soon as they arrived today I gave them money and went out – and came home to a gloriously clean house. People, it’s safe to visit us again!

I stopped in Granville at El Jannah and El Sweetie to get supplies for Miriam. She’s still in hospital, and the vegetarian food selection is getting more and more dire. The woman has been through an ordeal, and now has to breastfeed a small person who lost a bit of weight before he was born, so I thought it was reasonable to get her some tasty and nutritious food.

So she doesn’t have to eat that…

So we finally have a decent picture of Oscar, and I got to cuddle him today for the first time. He seems to think I’m not too bad.

I wish he’d tell Inigo that the world isn’t such a bad place, that it’s OK to come out…