A sudden arrival

Well well well, apologies for the delay between posts. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks and we’ve been slightly distracted!

It all started, of course, in the queue at Ikea. With us, nothing is ever simple, but this story really takes the biscuit. Having had some bleeding a couple of weeks earlier, I was warned that it may happen again, and could happen any time any where. Well, it did. We were waiting to organise a wardrobe delivery and suddely found ourselves in the car in a dash to the hospital. Conversation was non-existent as Lask focussed on not crashing the car on the way, and we made it in record time, with only a slight hint of a jumped ‘amber’ light!

I was monitored at the hospital from about 10am til 8pm in the hope that the bleeding would stop. I was permanently attached to a tracer showing the baby’s heartbeat and nil by mouth in case there was a need for ‘emergency intervention’ (never has a cup of crushed ice been a more welcome meal!). Nothing seemed to be getting better as far as I was concerned, but Baba was very happy and showing no signs of distress. Suddenly around 10pm Lask noticed that the heartbeat had stopped coming through on the monitor. Cue minor panic on our part (manageable) followed by minor panic on the faces of the midwives (suddenly not so manageable). They called for a doctor with an ultrasound machine which took as long to start up as a computer running on Windows, and she tried to find the heartbeat. This probably went on for 5 minutes but it felt like about 15 for those of us having a slight freak out…  Suddenly out of nowhere came a little white flicker on the screen and everybody let out a huge sigh of relief when she said ‘there’s your heartbeat’. Turns out that the baby had had a start, probably kicking the placenta and causing a big bleed, and had hidden up in the opposite corner where nobody was looking. Scary times – I’m not too proud to say that when everyone and their machines had left the room Lask and I just grabbed hold of each other and had the biggest blub…..

The doctors had wanted to keep me monitored for another few days to get me to 37 weeks (considered ‘full term’) but given what just happened the  decision was soon made to carry out a c-section the next morning. Just as Lask had stripped off for a night on the super uncomfy roll out ‘partner bed’ they came back in and said ‘actually, no point waiting as you’re not going to get any more comfortable, let’s do it now’. So we gowned up and off we went.

At 1.30am on Monday 14th November 2011 Samuel Jacob Lasky was born. We had the most amazing team of midwives, surgeons and anaesthetists who kept us informed all the way through and really did put us both at ease. Having never had surgery before, the emergency c-section procedure was pretty daunting, very surreal, and add to the mix a pretty violent shaking reaction to the spinal block, I’m not sure I’d want to go there again. That said, if that was what it took to bring out this little man safely I was all for it. Lask was right there beside me the whole way and we both did the ‘it’s a boy’ part together. I can’t put that feeling into words…

As he was born at 36 weeks, Samuel’s lungs were not fully developed and he needed a little help to push the oxygen through. After a little time in the humidicrib I was able to hold him in recovery and Lask then went with him to the NICU where he stayed until the next afternoon. They put a little tube up his nose to help with the oxygen, and a glucose tube in his mouth to keep his sugars up. He had a canula in his hand to get some fluids in, but thankfully it all looked a lot more concerning than it actually was.

I was stuck to my bed for the first 24 hours waiting for the feeling to come back into my legs but once that happened and all my tubes were removed (not so glam), Lask was able to help me hobble to the shower seat (again, not so glam) and start to get my legs walking again. At first I was in a shared room with a lady who had her baby with her and I found that pretty hard when my baby was not there, but they quickly spotted my red eyes and moved me to a single room. As soon as it was possible, I was wheeled down to see Samuel and that was when it all seemed worth it. Man it had been a crazy 24 hours but it was all forgotten right there and then.

We stayed in hospital until the Thursday, taking the early discharge deal they offered in exchange for a couple of midwife visits at home which turned out to be a great decision. The first night on our own without a button to call a midwife when we needed something was pretty overwhelming, but we got past it and have slowly been getting ourselves into a routine since.

Samuel is going well, no after-effects of his early arrival – at least not if his enthusiasm to feed is a key criteria! My recovery has been good, and the doctor is happy with us both. Lask has had the craziest week – the day after Samuel arrived he had to move house. He has truly been a trooper, and I can highly recommend his services as an errand boy for the housebound!! The new house is almost ship-shape, we’ve had our first cooing visitors through, and things are settling down. Phew!!