Being a Mum is definitely the most demanding, but also the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I frequently find myself exhausted, dishevelled, and covered in sick, longing for an adult conversation, preferably NOT about babies or just a cup of tea drunk while still warm. But then Evelyn will give me her big dopey grin or do some small thing for the first time and I am instantly delighted and enthralled.
I had intended to do a full write up of my "birth story" as the baby magazines would have it, but it was a very long story! The quickish version is that it all started out well, I had many hours in the birthing pool at the lovely midwife led unit, with nothing more than a couple of paracetamol and a small glass of wine for pain relief. However Evelyn was clearly happy where she was so we progressed through having my waters broken, gas and air (wonderful stuff), epidural, oxytocin (the drip used for inductions), attempting to push, attempting a vacuum delivery and finally a C-section. All in all it took about 34 hours, strangely it didn't feel that long at the time although when Fred peeped over the blue screen and said "it's a girl" the few minutes I had to wait to see her myself felt like an eternity. It was all worth it tho when Fred finally brought her over to me, there are no words for that really, and I couldn't quite believe that such a beautiful baby had come from me (I'm open to the suggestion that I may be a little biased)!
The first couple of weeks seem a bit of a blur now, I was pretty incapacitated by the op so Fred did the bulk of the work with me concentrating on the feeding. We had lots of visitors, which we'd been warned could be a bad thing, but actually it was a real saving grace for me as I couldn't really get out of the flat so having a bit of the world come to me was great. I may be the only person who's benefited from the credit crunch - unemployed friends can visit midday, midweek!
Breast feeding took a while to get going and Evelyn was a wee bit jaundiced so we had to "top her up" with expressed milk in a bottle to be sure she was getting enough - well as you'll have seen from the photos she's growing very well now after this initial hurdle and it left us with the bonus that she's just as happy feeding from breast or bottle, very handy that.
I've been improving steadily too and am now out and about most days. No more going to the lab and playing with lasers tho, now it's off to "busy babies" to try and remember nursery rhymes to sing with a room full of other women slightly shocked to realise this is our life now. Or meeting up with the NCT group and turning a quiet, forgotten room in a concert hall into an ad-hoc creche!
Well there is a whole lot more I could say but as time is short and this post isn't I'll leave it there for now, I expect it'll be more photos from Fred next.
Kxxx
12 weeks today!
(obviously this is now how old Evelyn is!)
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