Adventures with Mini Meltdown

Life with a newborn, part 1

After Mini Meltdown’s birth, we spent two days in the hospital getting to grips with the fact we now had a tiny new member of the family. Thankfully Mr Meltdown was able to stay with us (hurrah for fold up beds!) as we did battle with breastfeeding a very sleepy baby, nappy changing, tricky sleepsuit poppers and all the other new things we had to get to grips with. Those two days flew by in a haze of sleep deprivation (who knew babies made such a racket when they sleep?) before we were allowed to go home and start our new lives together.

The next day, my milk came in and so did the tears. The midwife came to visit just as I was sobbing my heart out upstairs in the bathroom. With 40 years of experience behind her, the midwife quickly took in the situation and invited us all to go down to the maternity unit for the day, which we duly did that day and for over a week after that. The unit proved to be a haven for us – we were all looked after by a friendly team of experienced and knowledgeable ladies each day, helped with breastfeeding and expressing, provided with cups of tea and tasty lunches (with a hot pudding!), encouraged to sleep when MM was asleep and had all our questions answered and concerns addressed.

The midwives helped us through when MM was weighed at 5 days old and had lost too much weight since his birth and needed a feeding plan, and again the following week when, having gained some weight, MM had lost weight again and we needed to go to the paediatric A&E to get him checked out. They even kept us ‘on the books’ after the usual 10 day cut off so MM could be weighed on their scales to give us a consistent weight.

On day 15, we spent our last day at the maternity unit before being discharged. We all missed the place and found it strange having to adjust to spending our days at home again but I’ll forever be grateful for the time we were able to spend there and the care and support we received. And even though MM wasn’t born there, he was regarded as an honourary unit baby and provided with many knitted blankets, hats, cardigans and even a teddy bear to remdember them by 🙂

Meeting mummy and daddy

Unfortunately I have a very hazy memory of Mini Meltdown’s birth as I was rather (make that extremely) woozy on pain relief but I do remember looking down and thinking that they were pulling rather hard on his little head in an effort to deliver him (he had a ventouse delivery). They the took him away to give him a quick once over and a clean and then they asked me if I wanted to hold him. I was so away with the fairies I doubted I had the co-ordination to hold him safely so I asked them to give him to his daddy to hold instead. Which turned out to be a good move, as the next ‘hiccup’ we faced was stopping me from bleeding.

While I was happily listening to daddy chatting away to Mini Meltdown (I do remember being proud at what a natural Mr Meltdown was), I was also dimly aware of some activity at the bottom of my bed and someone pressing on my tummy – Mr Meltdown reported later that the doctors had quite a battle to stop the bleeding, which involved a gang of worried-looking medical staff doing their thing and repeatedly changing the absorbant pads placed on the floor to soak up my blood as they filled up……

Eventually, the bleeding was brought under control and about 45 mins after the birth, I was wheeled into recovery and finally met Mini Meltdown. Again I don’t remember the details – drugs do funny things to your perception and memory – but I was able to hold MM for the first time and enjoy some skin to skin contact with him.

Those long years of dreaming about being a mum finally became reality, but for me, there wasn’t a ‘moment’ like you often see in inspirational posts online, when life seems to take on new meaning when you hold your child for the first time. In fact, the after-effects of a difficult labour combined with lots of strong medication, loss of blood, lack of sleep and the whole newness of the experience left me in a surreal dreamlike state that lasted for the next few days.

Welcome to the world…

I had a feeling that Mini Meltdown would arrive early. The pregnancy had been anything but straightforward so I imagined giving birth would involve the unexpected. And it did.

When I was 36 weeks pregnant, Mr Meltdown was due to give a talk to a local history group. In the week running up to the talk, there were some signs that labour wouldn’t be far off (who knew how much mucous makes up a mucous plug?), so Mr Meltdown had a word with the bump to ask him not to arrive until after the talk. And Mini Meltdown obviously took note. Less than 7 hours after the talk had finished, (and less that 24 hours after writing my birth plan) my waters broke!

As my pregnancy was classed as ‘complicated’ because of my blood clot, I had to go to the birthing centre in a hospital about an hour away for the birth, so with bags in the boot, TENs machine in position and waters leaking all over the car seat and soaking into everything I was wearing, we soon set off. By the time we arrived, I was 4cm dilated and officially in active labour, and it seemed things might move quite quickly. Unfortunately that didn’t end up being the case and things quickly went downhill as it turned out Mini Meltdown was coming out ‘back to back’, so had to try to twist himself round as he descended, and my contractions kept tailing off so we weren’t really making much progress.

At a certain point I was given drugs to help kick start the contractions again and get things moving and that’s when things took a scary turn. I didn’t respond well to the extremely strong and painful contractions the drug inuced, and the midwife left the room to get some assistance, at which point Mr Meltdown, who had been studying the monitor, realised that MM’s heartbeat had disappeared (more bonus points for him) and flagged it to the medical student who was also in the room with us . She flew out to get help too and a flurry of people came in to assist, but after a few minutes of trying to get me to move and adjusting the monitor, things didn’t improve, so the midwife hit the alarm.

I don’t really remember any of what followed with any clarity but when the alarm was pressed even more people cane flooding in and MM and I were rushed into theatre for an emergency c-section. Thankfully, the situation stabilised and MM’s heartbeat came back so the c-section wasn’t necessary – we were wheeled back into the delivery room, much to Mr Meltdown’s relief, and labour continued.

The drug to encourage the contractions was gradullay reintroduced and the process started again. Because of the anti-coagulant I had to inject during my pregnancy, I wasn’t able to haave an epidural within 24 hours of the last injection, so could only use gas and air and diamorphine for pain relief for most of the labour, which wasn’t really fun. At a certain point, I was desperately asking for a caesarean but I was told if I could hang on for an hour and a half (when the 24 hours would be up) I could then have an epidural. With that in mind, and taking on board Mr Meltdown’s concern about me having a caesarean and the risk of bleeding while taking blood thinners, I agreed to hold off the caesarean and keep at it until I could have my epidural. Unfortunately for me, an hour and a half later, I still couldn’t have an epidural as the anaesthetist was doing an emergency procedure down in the A&E 😦

After 17 long hours, and despite the complications, we did eventually get to the pushing stage and I was supported by two amazing midwives who helped me bring MM closer to the world. True to form, that stage didn’t go entirely to plan either, as MM still wasn’t quite in the right position and wasn’t presenting the way he ideally should, so he couldn’t make his entrance without assistance. Cue a second trip into theatre for a spinal injection (the anaesthetist was now free!) and a ventouse delivery, where MM was ‘helped’ into the world with a suction cup on his head. It was a bit of a struggle (and involved an episiotomy for me), but finally MM gave up his cosy slumber and entered the world.

The power of pregnancy

When I did eventually become pregnant, it turned out my body was pretty good at pregnancy. Probably rather too good at it in fact, as all my pregnancy symptoms were turned up to the max.

I first noticed it with my first blood test. With IVF treatment you have a blood test to see if it’s been successful, rather than waiting to do a conventional urine pregnancy test, but when the crucial time came, they couldn’t get any blood out of me. At all. It took 3 different nurses 5 attempts to get blood and they only managed it after I’d drunk lots of water and orange juice and a nurse sedationist tried a vein in my forearm that isn’t usually used. Apparently, in early pregnancy you can become dehydrated as your fluids are diverted to support the growing baby, and my body certainly didn’t want to waste fluid on me!!!

Then came the sickness. When I was 6 weeks pregnant, I started to feel nauseous pretty much all the time. By 7 weeks I began being sick throughout the day. And at 8 weeks, having spent a week trying not to get out of bed (moving made the sickness worse), I ended up in A&E with a blood clot in my leg. Apparently, your clotting ability increases during pregnancy to help prevent you losing too much blood during labour, and my body had quickly taken it’s new responsiblities seriously, sending coagulation into overdrive and producing a DVT (deep vein thrombosis).

Thankfully we caught it early (points to Mr Meltdown!) but it meant I needed to inject an anti-coagulant throughout my whole pregnancy and for 6 weeks afterwards (just a few weeks to go!) and became a ‘complicated’ pregnancy from that point onwards.

The drama wasn’t over though. The 12 week blood tests suggested Mini Meltdown’s placenta might not be working as effectively as normal, so I then had to start taking aspirn too, and have extra scans to monitor MM’s growth. At 15 and 16 weeks I had some bleeding that resulted in a couple of stays in hospital for monitoring, before it was concluded that it was probably caused by a low lying placenta and made worse by the anti-coagulant I was taking. Then at 27 weeks, the first of the extra scans to check MM was not underweight revealed he was in fact a very big baby (on the 90th percentile) so I then needed to be tested for pregnancy diabetes. Thankfully, my test came back normal, much to Mr Meltdown’s surprise, as he was sure I’d add that to my pregnancy conditions collection…..

A few other curve balls came our way too, and they all led me to assume that when it came to giving birth, the labour and delivery wouldn’t be straightforward either. And I was right.

Made with lots of love and clever science

Mini Meltdown is an IVF baby, made with lots of love and some very clever science, thanks to the very clever people at the fertility clinic.

Mr Meltdown and I had been trying for a baby for over a year when we were referred to the clinic. After various appointments and tests, it was concluded that there wasn’t any biological reason we couldn’t have a baby, it just wasn’t happening for us, so the next step was to try IVF.

We were incredibly lucky to be successful on the first attempt. We kept being told that it only takes one fertilised egg to make a baby but we knew the odds were still against us – we were given a 40% chance of success when the one mature fertilised egg we had was implanted in me, and we had no ‘spares’ to try again if it didn’t work. Remarkably though, the egg settled in and our baby began to grow.

The smoothness of the treatment was not replicated by the pregnancy though, which was anything but straightforward….

So how do babies work?

As a new mum, I’m on a steep learning curve, getting to grips with all the new thoughts, feelings, sensations, anxieties and responsibilities that come with looking after a tiny newborn baby.

It’s all very new and a bit overwhelming at times so I’m hoping that writing about our experiences will help me to process everything that’s happening as well as recording our adventures and reminding us how far we’ve come.

And it’s worth starting at the beginning, because we have been on a bit of a journey to get to this point…