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Ellis enjoying the massage.

Health visitors seem to come in two moulds. They are either evil devil’s spawn or nice people. I have seen one of each kind since Ellis arrived. The nice health visitor who has been coming round and helping me with breastfeeding has suggested a massage class she is running. It’s free which is awesome. I’ve never run into so much free stuff before. It’s great being a stay at home mum! I also get to use the massage oil I never used on my perineum. Ellis doesn’t seem to mind one little bit.

Ellis on his birth day

Ellis arrived on July 28^th,one week and a day late, at 5.37pm in a birthing pool. I was not expecting that, but it was actually very nice.  For those of a nervous disposition, what follows is a full and honest report of the birth and there’s a pic of me and him in the birthing pool….. just in case you are squeamish. You have been warned! The hypnobirthing worked like a charm.  I listened to the CDs and did my homework and I used the technique for the membrane sweep I had on the Saturday – just put the relaxation CD on and when I was suitably relaxed let the midwife get on with it. She was very impressed and said she wished everyone was as relaxed as I was.

Then when the surges started at 6.45am a couple of days later I pottered about sorting stuff out and cleaning (what a cliché!) until things got too regular to allow me to do anything else. So I used the hypnobirthing again as it got more painful and it was amazing. I was calm, relaxed and ready for the birth.  I used my mobile phone to type in the times of the surges which helped me keep track of how things were going. At round 1pm things started to get a bit strong and a bit closer together so I called my other half to come home from work. He arrived at 2pm (I was ready to kill him because I couldn’t get the tens machine on) and as the surges were around 3-4 minutes apart we called the hospital. They said come in but don’t rush. We strapped on the tens machine and piled into the car. At the time they were still building the shopping mall in the centre of town so I remember getting stuck in traffic and clinging onto the dashboard growling as men in yellow vests sauntered by. I got to hospital at about 3pm. By the time we got there I was really getting ready to have the baby. I remember being on all fours in the waiting room making deliberately low noises like we practiced in yoga and asking Simon to “Go and find somewhere for me to have this baby”. They took one look at me, booked me into a room and I handed over the birth plan. It turns out I was in transition.

I had an internal exam lying on my back which showed I was 6cm dilated and was the most painful bit of the whole experience! The midwife noticed I had mentioned a water birth if I possible and I was whisked off to the pool. I got in there at around 4pm and it was very welcome, July 28^th was the hottest day of the year. I kept listening to the hypnotic suggestions and my husband was good at giving me lots of positive affirmations. I remember my mind running through all the affirmations on the CD during the surges and I never once felt I couldn’t cope. I didn’t ask for pain relief until I had been in the pool a while. When I did finally ask the midwife said no!  Apparently I was doing fine on my own. She did relent eventually and I had gas and air which is great stuff. Seriously it was fantastic.

Our little man just after he arrived

Things progressed pretty quickly after that and I don’t really remember much. I was asked if I wanted to feel the sack as my waters had not broken and I distinctly remember saying “No, why would I want to feel that?” Then they broke and his head was there and then Ellis was in the water, with the midwife scrabbling around trying to catch him. He was a slippery little fellow! He weighed 8lb 14oz and had all the requisite fingers and toes

I was the one in a state – I had a second degree tear that the midwife couldn’t find the end of so I had to go into theatre and have an epidural so they could fix me. Again I used the hypnobirthing to stay calm and relax. Ellis stayed with his daddy and got rid of all the meconium onto daddy’s arms and front – a situation that left daddy looking like James Herriot after a particularly intrusive bovine incident and forced a paternal clothes change. It seemed fair at the time.  All in all it was a good birth, all over in 10 hours or so and nothing I couldn’t cope with – I wish everyone’s could be like that. I have to say thanks to Nerissa for the lessons in pregnancy yoga with low birth noises and Maria for the hypnobirthing lessons. Both made it a wonderful, less scary and easier thing than I ever imagined.

And now it begins……

monitors - good or evil?

We have been given a set of baby monitors by a colleague of him indoors and I have mixed feelings about them.  Even now, before the little one is born, I am scared of the possibility of cot death. We are getting a new mattress for the cot and I’ve got one for the moses basket. We will be following all the guidelines for the baby sleeping in our room for the first six months and to be honest I think co-sleeping might be a good thing, at least they are right there with you, but I guess that has to be balanced with the increased risk of rolling onto them. I think you would have to be pretty tired or dead drunk for that to happen. I mean, how tired can you get with a new baby? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I saw Billy Connolly doing stand up once where he talked about their baby monitor. He said they would put the baby to bed and you would hear them making all the usual baby noises and then suddenly it would go absolutely silent. It was as if the baby was holding it’s breath. He would then start to worry about the baby and as the silence continued the panic would rise and he’d get up and go towards the door to go upstairs but as soon as he got across the room they’d burble and the panic would be over. This would go on all evening but apparently the panic goes on for a lifetime! He tells it much better, if anyone knows of a link to the bit I’d love to know so I can add it here, it is very funny.

To cope with this parental paranoia the manufacturers have now come up with ubermonitors. They are mats that you put under the sleeping baby that can tell if your baby is breathing or not. This then fires a signal to a monitor which alerts the parents. Now I love the idea of this, but I also can see that it’s a noose around your neck. I can imagine parents getting web cams and setting them up as well as this monitor to make sure their baby is alive and breathing. They are clearly the same parents who hide webcams in teddies to spy on the nanny! It just feeds the paranoia but provides some peace of mind at the same time. The dilemma – if you did lose your baby to cot death and you didn’t have the monitor would you spend a lifetime regretting not buying it?

The information surrounding cot death is a bit of a nightmare for me. How many blankets? What if I use too many blankets? What if the room is the wrong temperature? Do I need a mattress made of natural materials? Will having a mattress covered with that material with silver in it to ward off germs be safer? What if I fall asleep with my baby on the sofa? (Highly likely it would seem.) No wonder parents to be look shellshocked half the time, all these questions and no real answers from the scientists. People dropping bombs of information into your brain and there is no way to evaluate it properly.

I think I’m going to stick with my traditional reused ears only baby monitor and keep everything crossed that I’m doing right.

More info on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome here.