i'm glad so many of you liked mae's birth story - it ended up being a bit more lengthy than i'd expected and took ages to write out. i love a good birth story, too, and had the thought today that it would be great to have a place to access a whole bunch of them in one place - great for me to read and a great resource for any pregnant ladies out there looking to get an inkling of what they are in for. and so, i've got a little giveaway incentive to help persuade you all to share your own birth stories: simply leave a comment on this post with a link to your birth story post (or just write your story out in the comments if you don't have a blog) and i'll draw two names to receive one of the two oobee blankee prototypes (prototypes 2 and 3) that i showed a few posts ago. maybe also mention if you like the blue or pink blankee so i can make sure the winners get the appropriate one. i'll draw the names at the end of the month and ship the blankees anywhere in the world so share your stories, folks, i'd love to hear them!
in baby news, things are a bit crazy over here this week. mae is sort of a crier (screamer, really) and has been sleeping less and less the last couple of days. last night i held, rocked and nursed her from 6:15 until about 8:30, shane had her for an hour or so and then she was back to me until about 11:45, back to shane until she finally fell into a solid enough sleep to keep her down at 1:45am, only to have her wake up at 4:30am until 5:30am. she's been pretty grizzly all day so i'm expecting a repeat performance tonight. sigh. we're trying to keep our senses of humour and just get through the days but i'm worried about next week when shane goes back to work and has to get up at 5:00am. the poor guy is going to be a wreck at work... at least my mom arrives next tuesday to take some of the pressure off. grandma is going to be doing a LOT of baby holding!
LinkWithin
I'd love to share but it's old news now.
ReplyDeleteMake the most of the Grandma I say.
Awww, those grizzly days are really testing. I always take solace in what an early childhood nurse told me - that one out of seven days are unsettled... It made it easier to get through the wahhhing! Hopefully she sleeps well tonight so you two can rest up. Also - what about putting one of your worn t-shirts into her bed so she can smell you? And if she keeps on keeping on, have you got a sling you can pop her in? Fingers crossed you get a great night tonight. I'll post my birth stories - you know I love them!
ReplyDeleteoh honey. it's a 'baptism by fire' this new parenting thing ~ hang in there. let me know if there is anything that I can do. food. visit. anything... i remember so well how much crying babies and sleep deprivation hurts. sending you all sleepy settled vibes ;)
ReplyDeleteps: i was thinking about posting my birth story for daisy, but if you're in no rush i think that i will do it for her birthday post...
Oh I wish I had some wise words of wisdom for you - I suffered through the whole thing twice - and I was crap at it both times. Let grandma help and have a sleep.
ReplyDeleteSleep makes it all easier.
I think it is a lovely idea to record their birth stories. I have all three written in a diary. I still love reading it and the children love me reading it to them.
ReplyDeleteI have great labours and I think it is encouraging to share positive stories.
Now you know why the call the book Baby Daze! take it easy.
Here's my first time:
ReplyDeletehttp://house-n-baby.blogspot.com/2008/02/first-time.html
Only took me 4yrs to finally tackle it. I hope to do write the secondborn's before his first birthday this time ;)
Enjoy Grandma!
Mine's a three-parter, so don't worry if you thought yours was long. Background here , part 2 of the background here and actual birth story with gore and stuff here.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the crying. You'll work it out. When my man went back to work he went off to sleep in the spare room until the baby learned to sleep through.
I love birth stories, I couldn't get enough of them when I was pregnant.
ReplyDeleteHope that little Mae finds her sleeping groove soon. The Smurf had some cry-y times too, it's not fun.
I'm sending baby Mae some sleep vibes. Sleep little baby :)
ReplyDeleteGrandma's are great, give in and let her do her thing while you have her.
gosh, i hope Mae calms down for you soon. sorry i can't share my birth story with you, at least, not until late november.
ReplyDeleteHere is our families birth story. Thanks so much for sharing yours with us. We will have another one to share in about 8 weeks. Woohoo!
ReplyDeletehttp://audreyblissful.blogspot.com/2007/05/audrey-kay-smith.html
have you seen the happiest baby on the block dvd or book? this could be a lifesaver for you.
ReplyDeletethe first few weeks were pretty bad for us - baby wanted to eat about every HOUR and i couldn't get any sleep.
when i did get to sleep i was sitting a chair nursing him and it was very uncomfortable.
my baby still nurses often but now i'm able to nurse laying down and can sleep a lot better.
anyhoo - good luck and hang in there!
i'm going to type my birth story out today, before i forget the details forever......
Ok- here's part 1 of Rowan's birth story: http://shaunasbabyblog.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E2E70502E4852F46!314.entry
ReplyDeleteAnd here's part2:
http://shaunasbabyblog.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E2E70502E4852F46!315.entry
It's great that your mom is getting to visit so soon and I bet you she'll love just holding Mae for hours. I had to have a little talk with my mom when Rowan was born 'cause she had a tendency to not share the baby.
As for the crying and sleeplessness, even though it may not seem like it right now just tell yourself that it's temporary (because it is). Time goes SO fast.
Enjoy!
Shauna
Not mad keen to put my stories on my blog, might put my male readers off their food LOL. I'll post here for you instead. (I'm past the oobee blankee stage but do have a pregnant SIL ;) )
ReplyDeleteAt 42 weeks, after my umpteenth stretch and sweep (and just escaping a chemical induction with slight dilation), I spent the next few hours in early labour. By about 6.45PM, N started to get antsy about getting to the hospital. By then contractions had been five minutes apart for almost 2 hours but they were still only 20 seconds long and quite manageable. But I agreed to go in then for the sake of peace.
About an hour after we got to the hospital, things had progressed and the contractions were long and strong. I asked the midwife to run a bath for me. She thought it was probably too early but I disagreed. By the time I got into the bath at about 8.30, I was only a few contractions off transition. Once M decided to get things moving, there was no more mucking around! Luckily for me I had an older more experienced midwife who agreed to stay on shift so I could stay in the bath (which they are not meant to do). Mind you by then I don’t think I could have gotten out to save my life. Just as I got to the point of thinking that I couldn’t take any more and started to lose mental focus, I felt the first glimmer of an urge to push. I knew it was only a couple of contractions to pushing time and that gave me the impetus to refocus. Sure enough, within a couple of contractions I started to push, then my waters broke. I moved into a squat and the midwife guided me through breathing her out rather than pushing. The change was incredible, with so much less effort, I made so much more progress and it only took three contractions and I was bringing my baby out of the water and onto my chest. It was only three and a quarter hours since we had arrived at the hospital.
I was absolutely stunned at my first sight of M. My first shock was seeing lots of dark hair. I only ever expected another bald blondie! My next shock was when I checked to see what flavour we had. For some reason, although I had no intuition as to what we were having, I was completely stunned to see she was a girl. IN fact I checked twice. Then when N asked me what we had I checked a third time before answering! The final shock was that my so called 2 weeks overdue bundle was not only tiny (7 pounds is tiny for our family) but completely coated in thick sticky vernix like a premmie! The midwives were astounded by that too.
I woke up fit as a fiddle this morning after two and a half hours sleep. The recovery from no drugs is remarkable compared to having an epidural with J. I would not have even thought I was impaired the next day after having him but compared to the way I felt this morning I was a zombie. An intact perineum helps too, another benefit of the water birth and a small baby!
So after all the trauma of the past few days wondering whether she would ever agree to emerge, whether I would be in the birth centre, whether I would have to deal with escalating intervention due to a chemical induction and every other stress her late appearance caused, I ended up having the exact birth I always dreamed of achieving. What’s more, it was more perfect than I had pictured because it gave me my beautiful, petite, dark haired baby girl who I love more than life itself. She has brought instant understanding of exactly what people mean when they say that their heart stretches to encompass each new child.
J is somewhere between enamoured with his baby sister and furiously jealous. Poor kid, he’ll adapt. I didn’t think we’d see the jealousy until we got home but it was instant. C’est la vie.
I'll have to go hunting for J's story. I'm sure it's knocking around somewhere!
Found the other one! Dating back to 2003: )
ReplyDeleteI woke up last Sunday morning very wet but thinking it probably wasn't my waters breaking as it was odourless. I rang the hospital and they told me to ring them back in 2 hours and tell them what was going on. I rang them back in 2 hours and told them I was still extremely leaky but didn't think it was my waters still. They told me to come in so they could check it out. About 3 minutes after I got off the phone, I had my first contraction. This was about 11am. I told N to finish the gardening he was doing and also insisted we finish painting the kitchen table before we left. The contractions began at 5 minutes apart but I wasn't feeling rushed.
We left home about 3 hours later and went to the hospital. By the time we got there the contractions were 3 minutes apart and they went to 2 minutes apart shortly after that. It was my Ob's weekend off so the stand in OB eventually turned. By this time, contractions had been 2 minutes apart for just over 3 hours, we were hoping this meant much dilation. However, it turned out we were only at 2 cm. After another hour of this, I was exhausted and my legs started to collapse underneath me and I was still only 3cm. We started to worry about the baby getting distressed by me being so exhausted so we decided that an epidural was in order. I knew I was in a bad way when I agreed to this without worry because I am terrified of the thought of an epidural. The pain of the contractions didn't bother me but the exhaustion of not getting a break in between them was.
Do about half an hour later I was lying back having a rest in perfect comfort watching tv. N had to race home twice. Once to drop our dogs off at his brother's and once to pick up the charger for the camera which had decided to go flat. By the time he got back with the phone charger I wasn't looking so happy. The Ob had just told me that I was finally fully dilated but bubs head was still way above my pelvis and if we couldn't get it down I was going to have to have a caesar. He also said the baby had turned posterior (which I had already figured from the back pain before the epidural)
He decided to give me 20 minutes on a syntocinon drip to intensify the contractions and see if that helped. Fortunately it did help and got bubs moving down a little but it still took the combined efforts of much pushing on my behalf and a ventouse to get him out. Once his head was down he turned anterior of his own accord. Feeling his head come out with no pain was the strangest sensation!!
As the Ob pulled his body out and placed him on me I saw he was a boy and could not stop smiling and crying for ages. N bawled his eyes out and we were generally all very soppy, messy and overwhelmingly happy. And only a small graze with a couple of stitches for me. He scored 9 & 9 on his AGPAR and weighed 3.775kg. He was 51cm long with a head circumference of 34cm. He did not have a single blemish on him.
The little angel is already in a wonderful routine of 5 major feeds between 7am and 11pm with another at 3am. The bonding experience is the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. Truly amazing.
Well that's our story. Not what I had hoped for but a wonderful experience all the same. Sorry its a little rushed but all the time his current schedule will spare me!! Time to go get him ready for the 10am nipple assault. He committed atrocities on the right nipple in hospital and its having a hard time healing.
I never wrote Son #3's story on my blog, but Son #2's is here (note Telfair in the comments section talking about her "far off" day!)
ReplyDeleteSon #1's story, which features line dancing, my porn name, and much berating of the husband, is here.
Excellent idea to collect them all in one spot!
I'm going to try and keep it brief on your blog...Arthur made his appearance 10 days early, thank the lord as he weighed over 4 kilos. I awoke in the middle of the night as the gushing of waters nearly drowned me in our bed. Ran around leaking everywhere in a mad panic. Rang the hospital and then contractions started straight away. Headed to the hospital within the hour, they were rude and said what are you doing here? Then they had a peek and led us to the birthing suite. We had a friend who's a natropath along with us. Highly recommend homeopathy and massage. Swore the hospital down and had an amazing birthing experience, drug free and all within 4.5 hours. The big negative was 5 weeks later I ended up in hospital for 5 days due to retained 'product' with the nastiest and very serious infection in my innards...but I won't go into that.
ReplyDeleteComing out of lurkdom because I love birth stories too and enjoyed yours the other day. Here is a link to all three of mine: 1 hospital birth, 1 unassisted homebirth, and 1 assisted homebirth. Due with #4 in January ;)
ReplyDeletehttp://balancingeverything.com/birth-stories/
I have two birth stories..
ReplyDeletenumber 1 : week overdue, induced, long labour, every intervention imaginable, distresed baby, emergency c-section, beautiful baby boy!
number 2 : This one is much more interesting.
One week before my due date I started having strong barxton hicks contractions on a Thursday night. These went on for a few hours about 5-7 mins apart and because of my previous c-section I went in to the hospital just to be checked. A Midwife examined me and found that I my cervix was thinning but not dilated at all so I was sent home and told to come back if the contractions got closer together.
The contractions stayed the same all night and were just bad enough that I couldn't sleep.
The next day I had a doctors appointment already booked anyway so I went along to that, the doctor knew that I had been in the hopspital the night before. I was still having the mild contractions, but now they were 10-20 mins apart. The doctor said that because I wsa still a week from my due date, it was probably just a false labour.
When I got home, the contractions stopped alltogether and I was so relieved. I figured they were just practice after all. I had some lunch and a little nap.
Just before 4pm my back started to ache continuously. I decided to have a shower to see if that would help. I wasn't having any contractions. When I got out of the shower BAM! I had my first real contraction. They were now comming 3 mins apart and very painful. It took me an hour to get dressed between these contractions!
My husband had no idea what was happening, he was on the couch with our son watching a movie. I think i was in denial that I was really in labour. I thought I would just see if they got worse, perhaps this was jsut a false alarm again. At about 5pm I said to my husband that I was in quite a bit of pain, so he called the hospital and they said I sould come in. We called my parents to come and look after my son, It took about 20 mins for them to arrive. In this time The contactions got so bad I was screaming like crazy. My poor son was such a trooper, running to get me tissues. Then my waters broke, so I had to get changed.
Mum and Dad arrived to find me in a state of extreme pain! We jumped in the car, and luckily we are only a few mins from the hospital because I was starting to feel the pressure in my bum.
We went straight into the labour room and I was put on the monitor. Eveything was ok. The contractions were very close together. The doctor arrived and examined me and said the head was right there.. time to push. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how painful it was either. No drugs, no time.
3 pushes and our daughter Juliet Eve was born at 6.08pm on the 6th June, 2008...Just 20 mins after arriving at the hospital!
I never could have guessed that I would have two births so far different..
I love this sharing, this celebrating, this acknowledgment of a bloody hard job bloody well done! Go girls. Here's mine.
ReplyDeletehttp://essentialthingrag.blogspot.com/2008/08/baby-born-story.html
you've read mine, but for anyone else wanting to read a few, there are some on my blog: www.minimeez.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteBx
www.renovateanddecorate.blogspot.com
www.minimeez.blogspot.com
Congratulations - hope you are managing to get a little sleep. Definitely make as much use of Grandma as possible - I wish we had parents that lived closer :(
ReplyDeletehttp://lilbitbrit.blogspot.com/2008/08/remembering-with-joy-birth-at-forty.html
ReplyDeleteLil Bit Brit. Remembering with joy birth at forty.
she is beautiful. congrats!
ReplyDeleteOur first daughter was a very easy baby, so peaceful and so when our second was born at the start of last year and cried, a lot, I didn't know what to do or what to think. Honestly, Leila cried 12 hours a day for the first 3 months, every single day. We had a lot of nights like yours and it was so completely exhausting I could never do it again. I had mild pnd and went to a support group a couple of times and I would say if she continues and it's getting to you - don't hesitate to seek support. I don't know you or your personality but I tend to manage and so does my husband - I have to be really bad before I ask for help and I asked for help.
ReplyDeleteI didn't meant for this to be negative though, it's certainly not to detract in any way from the gorgeousness of Mae, but for me now I know how hard crying can be.
re baby news: just keep on saying to yourselves that everything is a stage/phase and you will get through it! (re the screaming)
ReplyDeletere birth story: #1. 24 hours of labour...emergency Cesarean in the end, removal of ovarian cysts whilst open! Lots of fun!
#2: booked in, less painful less arduous, a less tired mummy.
both healthy babies at the end of the day.
My sister in law just had her first and it never ceases to amaze me how remarkable the female body is and just how amazing we woman folk are regardless of how we give birth.
Mine's a bit nasty, so only read it if you're feeling brave!
ReplyDeletehttp://jorth.blogspot.com/2006/06/birth-story.html
I've just completed mine, you did so well, you should be so proud. I was a total wuss! :)
ReplyDeleteHere's the link http://missiekrissie.blogspot.com/2008/08/look-out-birth-story.html
Mae is beautiful, I know the whole feeding thing is so hard, no one ever tell you that beforehand! You're doing well though, just keep plodding along and I swear it gets so much easier!
Sweetie, I am so late responding, various reasons.
ReplyDeleteCan I just tell you, many years ago I had a baby that sounds just like yours. She had trouble sleeping etc. She is now 23 and a constant joy.
Hang in there.