15th September: The day our life changed forever

Introducing Calvin Oliver Smith. Born 15th September 2009, 6:06pm. Weight 3.235kg. Length 49cm. 

So, here's the story of how our little man came into the world. At 4:30am my waters broke. I had actually got up to tell the dogs to stop barking, when my waters broke halfway down the hall!! Luckily, i didn't get the sudden 'gush' that lots of people get, it was just a trickle. Anyway, by 5:30 we were in hospital, but ironically, after all those weeks of contractions, i didn't go into labour!! They let me go for a couple of hours, as the OB was due to come into the hospital at 7:30. When he came in, they started me on the inducing hormones. I was 4cm by 10am and started on the gas and by lunchtime we decided that i neeeded an epidural. Once i got the epidural, i was able to have a sleep, which was great to prepare me for the afternoon that we had ahead of us. 

At about 3pm they started me pushing, and unfortunately i had a window on my right side which made it quite painful for me. After 2 hours of pushing, they decided to try the vacuum on our little guy, and that was unsuccessful too. They suspected that he was posterior (his head facing the ceiling, rather than the floor, like it should), but they couldn't quite tell because he had so much hair!! Anyway, after trying the vacuum for about half an hour, it was decided forceps wouldn't work so we went for an emergency cesarian. Here he is when he came out - his first photo:

While they were stitching me up, and monitoring my recovery, they took Jeremy and Calvin away to cut the cord, weigh and measure him. 

I was in recovery for about an hour, and Calvin spent the whole time with his hands in his mouth, wanting to be fed!! Once i was back with him, he was straight into it - it was amazing how naturally breastfeeding came to both of us straight away.

Very proud parents!!

More Contractions....

Well, Jeremy was on roster on Friday, and he spent most of it with me in the hospital. I was having really close contractions early in the morning (from about 5:30am) but then they fizzled out again, going back to about 5-10 minutes apart. So at about lunch time we decided to go into the hospital to be check out - to find out exactly what was going on. 

They hooked me up to 2 monitors - one to record the baby's heartbeat and one to record my contractions. Then they told me they would be back in 15 minutes or so. 2 hours later, they returned apologising profusely as they had 3 deliveries in the time i was in there!! We of course knew this as we heard each and every one of them!! So after 2 hours of sitting being completely bored (we ended up playing hang man on my iphone...) they came in and told me that everything looked normal for very early labour, and they wanted to give me an internal. The internal revealed that baby is very far down - his head right in my pelvis, but my cervix was no where near ready to begin dialating. 

So the bottom line is that i'm going to have to endure through these contractions for a lot longer - probably a couple of weeks. I'm doing all i can - trying to stay active, taking lots of raspberry leaf, all that sort of thing. Just got to wait. Poor baby is well and truely ready to come out and his mumma is letting him down :( We're booked in to see the OB again this Wednesday, so i'm going to see if there is anything he can do, because i'm so incredibly uncomfortable - especially at night!!

On another note, we decided to get out of the house yesterday and do something that's been on our 'to do' list for a while now!! We went and walked across the seacliff bridge up at coalcliff/stanwell park. All 4 of us - Jeremy, the dogs and myself - really enjoyed the walk and the fresh air. It was just perfect weather for it too!!

Well, i'm off to hang the washing out and make some lamb and feta parcels for lunch now.

Confessions of a BAD BLOGGER!!

Well it's been AGES since i've blogged. I just haven't really been in the mood. I'm now 38 weeks pregnant, and i'm SO over it. I've been over it for ages, i know, but i'm now really struggling to sleep and do simple everyday tasks, like even hanging the washing out.

We had a pretty exciting weekend last weekend. On Friday morning i went into labour - i was having contractions very spuratically - between 2 and 15 minutes apart. Mid-afternoon i decided to call the hospital, and they told me to have a bath, so i did. This stopped the contractions! I went back into labour later that night, and was able to sleep really well that night. I got up Saturday morning, and went back into labour quite quickly. The contractions were now 2 to 5 minutes apart, so i told Jeremy that i was going to have a shower, then we were going to hospital. Once again, the contractions stopped when i got in the shower! Crazy! After that, the contractions were very spuratic again for the rest of the weekend, and have been on and off since then.

We're going to see the OB this afternoon, so it will be interesting to see what he says.

I've been very slow in the scrapping department lately. Here's what i've done recently:

Here's a double LO i did about our changing kitchen - the last big change that needed to happen, which was tiling our floor. I've got a picture below of the full double, then each side. I've used some of the yummy new Pink Paisley papers available at ScrapBoutique - my last little task as a celebrity designer there!

So, i haven't been doing much scrapping because i've been doing a lot of laying on the couch!! This means that i've done LOTS of knitting and crochet lately - plus even some cross-stitch!! All for baby of course. I finished a cute little jacket for baby (3 months) recently, but i haven't photographed it yet, so i'll pop it up when i've done that. So now i'm knitting a cute little jacket for him at 9 months - it's the first item i've ever knitted all in one piece, so it's quite an exciting knit for me! 

I'm also doing a crochet blanket to match his room - i've done 3 of 6 squares now, just starting on the 4th square. It's looking fab. I plan to make it 6 squares large for now, but i'm going to keep adding to it as i've got a total of 400g of the wool to do it in!! (ordered from bendigo of course). 

Plus, i'm working on a little cross-stitch for baby - a cute little Anchor kit with a baby bear asleep, and i'll put the name, DOB, weight etc. on it when he comes. It's looking pretty good so far. Very nearly finished it (as far as i can before bubs comes!!)

So, basically i'm just playing the waiting game at the moment. Trying to distract myself as best as possible during each day. Finding it very hard to trust the Lord with his good and perfect plan for us and our baby, especially with so many random contractions. He'll come when he's good and ready.