When did we give up the definite article?

Pause for breath...

And rant.

What's wrong with the definite article? Those three little letters. You know the ones, you use them every day, hundreds of time, without thinking.

T.H.E.

So what is it about having children that makes them disappear? And from the one word that everyone's using?

"Baby".

Let's listen to baby.
See, there's baby
Shall we change baby?
How's baby's weight?

No. No. No.  The baby.  Your baby.  My baby.  Not baby.

But I stay calm and I don't scream. Because when you're pregnant or have just had a baby everyone thinks you're hormonal and there's nothing worse than being mistaken for an oestrogen-fuelled lunatic when actually you're a grammar-loving pedant.

What I most dislike about pregnancy and birth*

Not labour, or sore hips, or achy backs, or stretch marks, or heartburn, or morning sickness, or insomnia, or getting fat, or sore breasts, or saggy skin, or that strange taste in your mouth, or leaky breasts, or strange spots, or c-section scars, or sweeps, or mastitis, or stirrups, or unsympathetic midwives, or false labour, or elbows in the ribs, or needing the loo every ten minutes, or pelvic floor exercises (or the lack thereof), or not being able to eat brie...

Nope.  None of those.

The thing I most dislike?

Moulting. Still.


*with a caveat that clearly I was incredibly lucky to have easy, uncomplicated pregnancies and deliveries, and much worse things than any of these do, sadly, happen to much nicer people than me.

The birth story

We are five days in.  I am typing this half-lying on the sofa, arms outstretched to the laptop balanced precariously on my knee, while a small, very small, person snuffles into my neck.

It is magic. The sleepless nights, the logistics of managing four under five, the living in a building site are as nothing beside how magical it is to know this little person, who five days ago we hadn't met and couldn't imagine.

Can you tell we're still on a high?

It seems incredible that it is only five days since he was born.  I'm already finding it impossible to imagine a life without him in it, as though he has always been here.

Yet it is only five days.  This time six days ago I was settling down to bed in hospital, believing, irrationally, that I was never going to have this baby, and, more rationally, that I was going to be sent home in the morning, still bleeding, still intermittently contracting, still pregnant.

It was not to be. 

If you are squeamish, uninterested in these sorts of details, or related to me by blood or marriage,  you might want to look away now...

If you're still reading, and haven't read this post, it'll give you the background, but when I woke up in hospital at 3 am last Tuesday I was definitely not in labour, and I was definitely fed up.  My mum had dashed up on Sunday when I was admitted and B sent her off to Tesco's to buy pineapple and curry, while he came in to bring me home, and the girls went to nursery. 

And then the doctor appeared, examined me, and said; "Actually, we've changed our minds, we're going to break your waters.  Have a nice morning, get some lunch and we'll be back at one-ish."

Oh.

We spent the morning sorting out the logistics back at home and walking, just to get some fresh air.  I wish now that I had spent some more time relishing being pregnant, but I didn't and now I can barely remember what it felt like.

2pm.  We are in the labour ward.  I am not contracting, haven't, in fact, since mid-afternoon the day before, but nonetheless, this is happening.  A midwife and doctor are doing unimaginable things with what looks like a knitting needle.  Nothing happens, although they think they've broken through the membranes. We are sent for a long walk.

2.55.  We are back from our walk. We have got very familiar with the loop up and round the hill over the last couple of days.  The views from here are still much nicer than they were in London, and even better, this time the walking seems to have worked.  I am definitely having contractions.

3pm.  Oh.  My waters have definitely broken now.  Ow.  Tens machine. 

3.45. I look at the clock.  This pain is almost unbearable  I've only really been going for an hour.  I can't take much more of this.  I desperately want to be examined, to be told that I'm nearly there, but I know I can't be and I am frightened to be told that I have hours more of this to endure.  I have apparently lost all my colour.  I am made to lie down.  I turn the machine up.

4.10. I ask, somehow, what happens next, and am told that although things seem to be happening quickly, I am probably still a way away, but I will, in due course, feel pressure in my bottom and an urge to push.  I think; "I've been feeling pressure in my bottom.  Don't hope.  Don't hope. Don't say anything.  It can't be."

4.15 (according to my notes). The midwife has gone to the loo.  "I am pushing!".  B is rushing down the corridor, desperately shouting for her.  She runs in, dragging on an apron. Shouting for a colleague.

Push.  Pause.  Pant.   Push.  Pause.  Pant. 

I am very present in the moment, in a way I don't remember with L.  It hurts.  More than I could have possibly imagined or remembered.

Now.

4.29. "Put your hands down". 

I have my baby.  M.  He is warm, and wet, and pink.  He is not crying, but he is snuffling, breathing loudly and noisily.  B is crying and now so is M.  I am in love. 

After L, A and S, comes baby T!

Well, he was worth the wait.

Baby T (actually M but 'T' still amuses me and I've just given birth very fast so I'm entitled to be indulged).

His official time of birth is 4.29 pm. He weighs 7lb 7oz (3.38 kg) and measures (ish, clearly) 51 cm (they didn't tell us that in inches). He has dark hair and blue eyes and looks remarkably like L did.

He is obviously the most perfect baby boy ever to have been born.

What a difference a day makes! (One for the playlist, I feel)

*******************************************

After posting this, I realised that this week's Gallery subject was "I am grateful for...".  This post was obviously not written for the Gallery, but I couldn't miss the opportunity.  Click here to see what everyone else is grateful for.

Not a birth story

I know I said no more "waiting" posts. But then I hadn't planned for this.

It is 4am. I am in hospital. I am still pregnant.

I am bleeding. Not much, and not from, I am told, anywhere worrying ("oh, right, but then where is it coming from?") It started at 3 am on Sunday morning with a big clot (sorry if you're sensitive) and a dash in here. Eight hours and lots of monitoring later we were home, having abandoned the girls with, successively, a neighbour, my brother-in-law and B, once it became obvious that whatever was happening I wasn't having a baby.

Then the same on Monday night. 3 am. Blood. Ring. Dash. This time my mum was there, having left my dad with ten minutes warning and enough pills and ready meals for four days.

And, oh, the welcome pain! Contractions, real contractions, at last, after days of threatening and wondering. I am 4cm dilated. "Your baby will be here by 11.30" says the midwife as she puts in the cannula I need just in case (previous c-s again) and gives me the gas and air.

I will be examined again at 9 and if appropriate my waters will be broken.

It is 10 am. Time has a looser meaning in the NHS. My contractions have stopped. A new midwife will not break my waters because she thinks (the first disagrees) I am not ready. Nor will she give me gel, or a drip, or even another sweep.

I am moved off the labour ward to await a scan to see what is causing the bleeding.

And oh! More pain! I say nothing, willing it to stay, to worsen, to progress. I can't hide my silences every three minutes from B. We say nothing, hope nothing, pretend it's not happening.

Three hours later we are right. It is not happening. I cry. Huge heaving sobs of self-pity and disappointment. B reminds me that all this means is "not today" but I am lost in the irrationality of dashed hope.

I am scanned. All is fine. I am admitted for overnight observation. Others come and go. Off to labour ward and the arrival of their babies. B leaves to relieve my mum.

I wait. I will the pain to return. I sleep. I wake at three again. Sleep is elusive, contractions intermittent and merely uncomfortable.

I will be going home in the morning. I will have my baby, but I will still not have met him. I am, even while knowing how lucky I am, how I will, whatever happens, meet him in the next eight days, how this is merely a delay and a disappointment, fed up.

Soundtrack to our Son.

Did you give birth to music?

I flatly refused the first time. B was keen on the idea. He would be. He likes a constant backdrop of anything from Charles Ives to Charles Aznavour, but I know myself and I realised that in the stress and pain of labour, the wrong song could be fatal to my irritation levels, and there was then a distinct possibility that the cd player might end up being used as an offensive weapon.

So L was born only to the melodious tones of her mother's voice.  Apparently I swore. A lot.

When it came to A and S though, we were firmly told by the surgeon that we really ought to bring in a cd, as otherwise our daughters would be born to magic fm.   Now I don't want to be rude about magic fm which has, after all, brought me hours of cheesy listening pleasure, but it is certainly true to say that it has the shortest playlist of any radio station I've ever listened to and Celine Dion is always on it.  Even I wasn't prepared to have the girls' first auditory experience of the outside world be that horrendous.

So B made a playlist.  Weeks of thought went into it, culminating a heated debate of the irrational sort that only a woman 35-weeks pregnant with twins can achieve.  B wanted the Killers.  I refused to have my babies born to the line, "Are we human?"   I still maintain it was the right decision. The first song ended up being Here come the girls (Ernie K Doe, not the Sugababes, although EMI have taken it off YouTube so I can't link to it, sorry), which gave the anaesthetist the giggles, (not such a good thing given he was waving a large needle at my spine at the time) and they were actually born to Aretha (sorry Celine....)

Two and a bit years later, here we are again.  And if baby T* has turned, which we will find out on Friday, then silence and swearing will once again hold sway. But if he hasn't, he'll be coming out of the sunroof, and, on the basis that  Radio Borders is not much better than magic, we'll need a soundtrack.  So far, it goes something like this...

Here comes the "sun"
He ain't heavy, he's my brother
Baby love
Boys, boys, boys (although actually I've just listened to it for the first time since about 1986 and it's awful, so maybe not.  You have been warned).
Mad about the boy

And maybe, optimistically, a new dawn, a new day, a new life... Feeling Good.


My gut instinct (which isn't really in my gut so much as kicking at my ribs) is that he has turned, and so the chances are this list will never be required, but in the meantime I'm going to have fun adding to it...

*T.  To follow on from L, A and S.

My baby is upside down (or should that be the right way up?)

I've got the title of a draft post sitting waiting.  It's called "Too posh to push, or too nice to slice?" and in it I was going to wonder about how this next baby is going to make his appearance into the world.

I've got form for both, after all.

L was born vaginally*, without drugs, intervention or tearing, at 41 weeks and 4 days, after about seven hours of labour (although I've never actually worked out when you start counting from, so it might be more (or less) than that).  B and I were alone for most of it, which I know some women would have hated, but which felt right, and in fact the midwife wasn't in the room until L started crowning, and I panicked (having totally, despite both NHS and NCT ante-natal classes, not at all realised that what I was doing was pushing, and also somehow forgotten that the whole point of the exercise was to get the baby out) and pressed the call button.  She was born, with me on my feet, about two pushes later.  We were home in less than twelve hours.

S and A, on the other hand, were a planned c-section at 36 weeks.  I realise this isn't the norm at all hospitals, but where we were we were flatly told that this was the safest for our babies, due to the added risks of delivering twins with a shared placenta.  I wasn't enormously keen on the idea at first, particularly given the good experience I had with L and the quick recovery, and the fact that I knew it was possible, as my sister-in-law had delivered her girls (also with a shared placenta) vaginally (although she did give herself two black eyes, she pushed so hard), but when the third consultant tells you that yes, they really do think this is the right thing, we went with it.

It was utterly different and equally wonderful.  It was the day after my mum's birthday, so she and my dad came up the night before and cooked us a meal.  We had a glass of champagne and an early night and at 7 a.m. the next morning, with a kiss at L's door as we went past, we headed off to the hospital.  The scariest bit was the epidural, but otherwise I felt nothing worse than as though I was being poked through a very thick blanket.  The girls were born within a minute of each other, and came out screaming. I fed them both in theatre, possibly in specific defiance of the doula who had told me, when I enquired about her helping us after their arrival, that if I had a c-section not only would I not bond with them, but I'd also never be able to breast feed.  On the advice of friends I refused the codeine based painkillers (apparently the resulting constipation is worse than labour) and was up and about the same day, and out of hospital two days after that, although with strict instructions (vociferously enforced by my husband and father-in-law) not to drive or pick up anything heavier than the babies for six weeks.

I am, obviously, incredibly lucky to have had two such great experiences, but when thinking about what I wanted to happen this time (having had a previous c-section, they had assumed I might prefer another), I realised that the practicalities of another operation have to, for me, make aiming for another vaginal delivery the preferred option.  If I can't lift anything heavier than the baby, how am I going to get S and A out of their cots, or into the swings at the park, or push all four of them up to the nursery?  If I can't drive, now that we are no longer within easy reach of public transport, how are we going to get anywhere?  We'd cope, I'm sure we'd cope, but it'd be tricky.

So we'd decided.  We would hope, realising again how lucky we were, for a repeat of L's arrival.  This all depends of course, on the position of my scar.  So we had it checked out:  looks fine, we'll check again at 30 weeks.  Then we were told that the placenta was low:  it'll probably move, we'll check again at 30 weeks.

I'm now (nearly, the consultant is on holiday next week) 30 weeks.  The scar is fine.  The placenta has moved.

But the baby is breech.

They won't try to turn him externally because of the scar (much to my relief, as I've heard lots of anecdotal evidence about how much it hurts and none at all about how it works), and they certainly won't let me try a vaginal delivery for the same reason.

So we're left with waiting, and hoping he'll turn over of his own accord, and me spending a lot of time on all fours wiggling my bottom.  Which if nothing else is amusing B.

But the irritating thing of course, is that I can't stop thinking about it.  Every time I feel a kick or a movement, I'm trying to work out what it is that's poking at me, and to extrapolate from that which way up he is.  And, again of course, it's perfectly possible that at 30 weeks L was also breech, we just never knew.

So we wait.  And wiggle.  And do anything else that anyone else thinks will work....?



*I realise that's quite an in your face sort of word, but I just don't like the implication in saying "natural", that there's something "unnatural" about the way that S and A arrived.  Sorry.

Oh, and I know I've posted that picture of A's arrival several times before, but I just think it's awesome.

Why are more women "choosing" caesarian sections?

Yet another piece in another national newspaper today about "birth choices" and why women are, or aren't, giving birth in accordance with whatever the latest guru/bit of research/NHS funding report says.

And, actually, this time this one didn't really irritate too much. Mostly because Joanna Kavenna, a mother of two herself, acknowledges that each woman's "choice" is personal to her, and based on her history, both medical and emotional, the circumstances she finds herself in, the size and position of her baby and a million other factors, over most of which she has absolutely no control.

But she did get me swearing at this:

Now it seems we have lost confidence in our ability to give birth naturally: today one in four babies is born by caesarean, up from one in 10 in 1990"

Why, why, why, why, why, can't she and any of the other hundreds of people who opine on this subject not see what seems so perfectly obvious to me: this isn't about our confidence in ourselves; women don't choose to have caesarians.  The medical profession chooses for you. Women simply, in the main, do what they are told is best for them and their baby.

Look around at your friends and relations. I bet lots of them will have had, or their partners will have had, caesarians. How many of them actually, prior to the birth of their first baby, decided, with no medical requirement to do so, to have a caesarian?  One?  None?

How many of them, rather, after a 24, or 36, or 58-hour labour, exhausted and frightened, were medically advised that it was necessary; or were told their baby was breech and the hospital didn't have enough midwives with the necessary expertise to deliver a breech baby; or they were (like me) having identical twins and were informed (although it turns out this isn't the policy at all hospitals) that the risks to mother and babies meant a caesarian was the safest option? Pretty much all of them, I suspect.

So why do we say this is about maternal choice?  Why do we use words like "elective" caesarian, when what we mean is "planned" or "medically advised", or even "had an absolutely horrendous time last time, culminating in an emergency operation, followed by weeks of painful recovery, and is understandably terrified to go through it again"? Why does the media label four in ten British women "too posh to push"?

Now, I accept that there may be women who really do have the mythical tummy tuck at the same time, or want to time their birth so it fits in with the release of their latest fitness DVD or whatever, but I don't know any of them, and I'd be pretty surprised if they make up even a thousandth of a percent of the many, many women who have caesarians, on medical advice, and against what they had originally hoped for in this country every year.


So can we please, please, stop beating women up about this?  Why can't we accept that any delivery that results in a healthy mother and healthy baby (or babies) is a successful delivery, whether it costs the NHS more or less and whether it is the one we planned or not?

L is three! A birthday gallery of maternal sins (but mostly pride)

It's Wednesday.  Which means it's time for the Gallery.  But it's also 21st April 2010.  Which means that L, my amazingly wonderful eldest daughter, is three today.

Tara's challenge this week was Seven Deadly Sins. She said she wanted it to be tricky, and she was right.  I had no idea what to do for this one.  B suggested I find a stock picture of George Clooney and call it Lust.  This would have had the advantage of accuracy, but the disadvantage of not actually (sadly) being a picture I had taken.

But then I realised what the date was.  And it all fell into place.

So I give you L's gallery.  Or the sins I have committed, do commit, and will continue to commit for love of my daughter:


GLUTTONY

These are L's cakes.  We are postponing the actual party until Sunday, when B can be there, but clearly a birthday isn't a birthday without cake, so we are taking these along to our Songs and Stories group later on today.  I'm not entirely convinced by the home made Iced Gem look, but it was the best I could do with the rubbish piping nozzle I had.

Which leads me on to

ENVY

My friend K has a proper piping nozzle.  I want it.  In fact, if I'd been better prepared, I'm sure I could have borrowed it.  But I wasn't, because of

SLOTH

I have been woefully under-prepared for today.  I've known it was coming up (if had forgotten, L would certainly have reminded me), but I've sort of lost track of what date it is, and so it has slightly taken me by surprise and I ended up doing everything at the last minute. I'm not sure if that's laziness, but the state I let my kitchen get into, at about 9 pm last night, mid-way through 67 fairy cakes and one t-shirt certainly is.

The 67 fairy cakes may seem an oddly precise number, but was how many the mixture made. Probably would have been about 70, but I was eating it with a spoon.

Which probably should take me back to gluttony.  But that's not the sin I'm most guilty of today.  Today, I'm all about

PRIDE

I am so proud.

I am proud of my slightly odd cakes.

I am proud of the stripy t-shirt with her name and the three on it in flowery fabric which I also made yesterday evening.  Even if it's not the best one I've ever done, and I'm concerned that it may not hold together as the t-shirt is too stretchy and the fabric not at all...

I am proud that I actually managed to tidy up the kitchen before I went to bed.

I am proud of the things that matter too:

I am so proud that this time three years ago I was 10 days overdue and not even in labour.  And that by 11.52 pm I had brought a whole new person into the world and was holding my incredible daughter in my arms.  To be scrupulously  honest, I don't think I actually knew she was my daughter until the wee small hours of three years ago tomorrow.  They assumed we knew she was a girl, and we forgot to ask.

I am really proud that I did that all drug-free, stitch-free and mostly midwife free (she was out of the room until L was actually arriving. I panicked at that point - I think I'd forgotten I was having a baby - and thought I was having prolapsed uterus (apologies if you're reading this over breakfast).  The irony is I don't actually know what a prolapsed uterus is.  I'm not so proud of that bit.)

I am proud to have survived not just labour, but also exploding nappies, colic, sleepless nights, trips to South Africa, New York and France, tantrums, the arrival of two little sisters, potty training,  fights, strops and three weeks (and counting) of "why-eee?".

I am proud that B and I have produced this amazing person (does that count as lust?) and that she is a combination of all that is best in both of us.

I am proud of L.  The person that she is and will become. I am proud that she is 94cm tall and 25 kilos in weight.  That she has that intermediate British hair that can only be described as "mouse". That her best human friend is M, and her best inanimate friend is Mummy Sheep.  That she knows to say sorry, and please, and thank you.   That she likes painting, and reading, and dressing up.  That she has a wicked sense of humour.  That she loves singing.  That she's fascinated by pictures of herself.  That she loves her sisters (most of the time). That she wants (and is getting) a scooter for her birthday,  and that despite all my attempts to lure her with a bike she has stuck to her guns.   That she is determined to the point of bloody-mindedness.   That she knows all her letters and spelled her name, unasked, for the health visitor yesterday when we went to say goodbye.  That she makes friends everywhere we go.  That she is entirely happy with who she is.

Happy Birthday, my wonderful girl. xxxx

The Gallery - Ugly?

This is ugly.

I have shown this picture to people who have recoiled in horror.   This is an act of extreme violence.  Grievous bodily harm.  A gross, and potentially fatal, assault on my body.

There is blood.  There is screaming.  One might assume there is pain.

There is my belly looking like a butcher's off-cut.

But there is also A.

Is this ugly?

*****************************************************

See the rest of this week's hideous offerings in The Gallery here

Songs and Stories (and Haiti)

Firstly, thanks to Brit in Bosnia for tagging me for this one. I love your story and you've certainly got me thinking...

The thing is, I'm not one of those people who has a soundtrack to my life.  Words are more my thing; B does the music. I do the words.  Ironic really that we met singing, but it's true to say that I can only remember a tune if I remember the words first.  No words, no tune.  When B and I were first going out he gave me some cds of music that he loved, among them Beethoven Violin Concerto and Rachmaninov Second Symphony.  Despite coming from a classical, rather than pop-loving, family, I'd never heard either of them before.

Apart from the time I played them in a concert series in Cambridge and Paris about four years previously.  A fact I only remembered when B found the concert programme a month or so after he gave me the cds. Oops.

So you'll see, I don't have a soundtrack to my life.  I don't associate particular songs or pieces of music with particular events.  So thinking about this meme has really got me racking my brains.

Should it be the first song I remember hearing on the radio - Super Trouper.  As I say, my parents are classical music people (why did they think you had to be one or the other? I'm certainly not) and we just didn't have pop music at home.  So I heard this in someone else's car on the school run.  Our dog at the time was called Trooper.  Aged 7 that was all it took to be my favourite song.  The dog must have died about 20 years ago, but Abba still reminds me.

Or perhaps the first album I bought.  Kylie. Before she was cool.  Or maybe not. Or Take on me, which is just an awesome song and reminds me of my brother and the time I went to see him sing at a concert in Egham and got on a train to Esher instead.  It turns out they're not the same place.

Or the songs that plot my relationship with B.  We met in 2002.  The first piece of music we sang together as a couple was Bach's St John Passion.  We had the chorale, In Meines Herzens Grunde, at our wedding.  But that was years into the future. In 2002 we went out for about six months and I fell irrevocably in love, before he had a moment of madness and dumped me. Fool.  Have forgiven him now, just, but at the time it felt like my life was over.  I remember days of weeping; the only time in my life I genuinely couldn't eat.  It was the Summer of 2003 and anyone reading this will be thinking "Oh yes, that was really hot".  Was it?  I don't remember.  There is a blank in my memory of about five months.  The only thing I do remember is this song.  B had bought the album just before we split up, and I played this obsessively; sitting in the dark by the stereo. Me and Nina, crying.  Love me or leave me and let me be lonely.  I'd rather be lonely than happy with somebody else.  I meant it.

Fortunately I didn't have to. He came to his senses, did the necessary grovelling and we got back together.  During the interregnum I'd bought my own flat and B came and helped me warm it.  I remember a long night of sex, drugs (if alcohol counts) and renaissance polyphony...Oh, and the Proclaimers.

Reader, I married him.  And the songs that go with the stories now are mostly to do with my girls.  Build me up Buttercup, because it's a happy song and I can't not smile when I hear it.  And because Buttercup's a happy name that we gave to our firstborn.  Yes, she really is L K Buttercup C...

Or more baby-related songs:  A&S were born by elective (consultant enforced) c-section.  We were firmly told that we needed to bring in our own cd if we didn't want the girls to be born to Magic fm (could have been fine, could have been Celine Dion (not linking that one on a point of principle)).  The last two weeks of my pregnancy, while I fussed about whether the builders would be finished in time, B was composing the perfect playlist.  I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or scared when the anaesthetist got the giggles when our cd opened with Here Come the Girls...  They were actually born to (You make me feel like a) Natural Woman, but it's Here Come the Girls that I'll always associate with their arrival.

But maybe it should be the song, with no story, that for me sums up B and me, and our family and how I feel about it all.  And it's the Proclaimers.  B is Scottish and it's a legal requirement that you can't be born north of Berwick and not be a Proclaimers fan.    I'm not Scottish and before I met him I'd have gone "yeah, yeah, 500 hundred miles, whatever".  But the thing is after nearly five years of marriage and three children, the sleep deprivation has got to me and I've realised he's right.  They're good. Very good.  And if we got married again, I'd have this as our first dance...

That's it.  Over to you:

Potty Mummy (and/or Footballers Knees) - to give you something else to think about other than whether your stuff is all going to arrive in one piece (or not, if it's the last thing you feel like doing!)
I'm a Mommy get me out of here
And three bloggers who were new to me this week and whose writings I have very much enjoyed reading
Crystal Jigsaw
Naomi de la Torre
Notes to Self, plus two (and the need for Red Shoes)

******************************************************

It feels all wrong to be going from recounting the ease and comfort that is (and has been) my life (in which the most difficult thing I've done in the last few hours is to find all those links on YouTube) to talking about Haiti, but then that's precisely why we must talk about Haiti. The people there need us not to forget them.  You know why.  Please help, either through the Bloggers for Haiti justgiving page, or through the DEC.

Thank you.