Welcome to the World!

Jakson Daniel O'Brien was born on Monday, 11 April, 2011 at 10:59 am.  Jakson weighed in at a healthy 6 pounds + 6 ounces (2.9 kilos) and measured 54 cm long.  Needless to say, he is just gorgeous!  He's so petite and quite lean which was a shocker to us as Robert and I are both chunkers.  But we are both over the moon and eager to show him off to the world!!

Aside from the obvious facts around weight and length, I can also confirm he definitely has my nose, Robert's lips and we think Roberts eyes, although only time will tell as the colour develops.  But he certainly has a gorgeous set of eye lashes that indicate he will take after his father in this area.  Here's a couple of shots of our bundle an hour or so after delivery:

It's a shame that the lead up to and actual delivery was such a crazy ride.  It's also one hell of a long story, so here goes my attempt to recall the important facts of what happened.  Then I am going to promptly put most of them out of my mind forever.  Yes, it was that bad.  Here goes:

Is this labour?
I *think* labour started on Friday evening as I started getting somewhat painful yet irregular contractions.  Nothing to call the hospital about but enough to make us think something was happening.  After a fairly sleepless night on Friday we decided to chill out as much as possible on Saturday and see what transpired.  Rob made us a lovely bit of bbq with meats from our organic butcher (which plays a role in this story) and we just chilled out.  Well by about 8 pm it became obvious that I was going into labour after the 'show' appeared and the contractions started to get quite regular.  I also had a fairly upset stomach and thought it was simply nature taking it's course to clear out my system but again, this will play a role in the story later. 

By about 12 am the contractions were quite regular and anywhere from 8-10 minutes apart so we decided to call the hospital and see what we should do.  The hospital recommended we stay at home until the contractions were closer to 4-5 minutes apart and suggested I take some paracetamol with a hot bath to ease the pain.  Well, after spending 4 hours in the bath, at the ripe old hour of 5 am,  the contractions were now about 5 minutes apart and I was in a fair bit of agony so we decided to call the hospital again and tell them we were coming.  Unfortunately, they asked us to give it another hour, until the contractions were closer to 3 minutes apart and then come in.

The Hospital Experience
We are arrived at the hospital at 1030 am on Saturday morning, ready to find out how things were getting on and praying I was more than 1-2 cm dilated.  Well, we should have known with the NHS that there would be a wait and boy was there...we spent 2 hours in the waiting room just contracting and watching other women contract around us - i honestly thought one woman was going to have her baby on the floor of the waiting room as she was in so much agony.  I think it's fair to say this sets the stage for our hospital experience...

Once we were finally taken to a room to be seen I noticed that my contractions were no longer as regular and no longer <5 minutes apart but back to 10-15 minutes.  I also continued to have a bad stomach...as did Rob...which made us realise this was not a sign of labour but a case of food poisoning from the organic butcher meat!!  So, on top of contractions, I was having stomach cramps and regular visits to the loo.  NOT FUN.  After discussing with the midwife we realised that the food poisioning was likely what kick started my labour and now that it was passing the contractions were becoming less intense and less regular.  Ugh.

So after an initial exam, the midwife was able to confirm that after almost 48 hours of contractions i was a mere 1 cm dilated.  I was livid: 1 bloody cm!!?  In addition, my blood pressure had skyrocketed and was the worst it's ever been so of course, the midwife needed to bring in the doctor to discuss how to proceed.

The Induction
After waiting for another 4 hours the doctor finally came to see us.  I think by this point it's fair to say we were pretty annoyed as we'd been sitting in this room, contracting, with no information, nobody telling us what was going on, just waiting...for hours.  After all this waiting the dr. recommended we start a series of induction tactics to get the ball rolling along with a number of medications to get the blood pressure down.  He was concerned that my blood pressure and protein in my urine were sure signs I had pre-eclampsia and there was no way they were letting me go home without having this baby.  His recommendations to induce were the standard; a "stretch and sweep" accompanied by a drip of cintocin to get things going.  They would then check how dilated I was after 4 hours and reevaluate next steps.  Only problem: the labour ward was so busy that they wouldn't do any of these tactics until later in the evening as the risk was too high.  So they recommended Rob and I 'take a walk' and get something to eat.  Sweet.

The induction was formally initiated somewhere between midnight and 2 am with the "stretch and sweep", a term that will forever be ingrained in my mind as the most invasive and brutal medical technique ever experienced, especially when being done by a man (might be a slight exageration but to me, it was horrible).  For those of you who've had one, you know what i'm talking about.  I felt violated and horribly abused after this procedure but unfortunately, before the night was over, I would experience two more of them at increased levels of invasiveness. 

In addition, I had to get the hormone drip set-up (cintocin) which makes for very painful contractions so I also had to get an epidural, which had always been part of my birth plan.  However, the anesthesiologist was a complete numpty and made it very painful.  I've had an epidural in the states when i broke my ankle so I knew what it was supposed to (not) feel like and I have to say, this was a fairly bad experience.

So all in all, after three stretch and sweeps, including two attempts to break my water + a painful epidural and constant baby monitoring they noticed that Jakson's heartbeat was dropping consistently every time they did something to me.  It also started dropping when I stood up or even remained on my back so i spent the next couple of hours propped up on my left side wondering what the hell was gonna happen...enter plan for c-section.

Emergency C-Section
So obviously, all the stress of the stretch and sweeps along with the aggressiveness of the doctors to move things along created a fair bit of distress for baby boo.  Ultimately, a decision was made to do an emergency c-section and get him out as soon as possible.  Thank god b/c as they wheeled me into the operating theatre they noticed the meconium - coming out of me!!  This accelerated the need to get little boo out ASAP and good thing they did - when they removed him he was literally covered in shit, head to toe.  So more emergency procedures to get the meconium out of him, which involved tubes down his nose and throat and lots of checks to make sure he was completely clean of any potential sources of infection.  Luckily, he was ok and was able to come back to recovery with us. 

The Aftermath
After an hour in recovery, I was wheeled to the post-natal ward where I would spend the next 24 hours.  Now all you American's out there will appreciate this as I did not have a private room as you would in the states but instead was placed in a large room with a number of other women and their new bundles, separated by curtains.  Not only was there NO privacy but it was SO loud.  All the babies were crying, most of the women had their large and extended families with them visiting and it was a constant flow of people in/out of the ward.  So while I lay in bed trying to forget what had happened over the past 12 hours and focus on my gorgeous little boo, I had all sorts of commotion going on around me.

I also started to notice that Jakson was very lethargic, not crying much and just not responding.  Well come to find out, all the drugs they were pumping into me to control my blood pressure were having an effect on him: he was drugged up!  Ugh!  So poor Boo spent the first hours of his life in a 'come down' from the drugs.  Poor Boo :(  Thank god he's ok now, aside from a scratch on his head that we think was a result of one of the attempts to break my water.  I wish I could sue those bastards!

My first night in the post-natal ward was pretty scary and surreal and since it was a 'ward' they did not allow Robert to stay with me.  So I was left to fend for myself and Boo alone on our first night and I couldn't even get out of bed!  So every time i wanted to comfort or hold him i had to ring the bell for the nurse to get him out of his cot and hand him over to me.  This stress combined with the level of noise prevented me from getting any sleep as all the crying by the babies was just unbearable.  Even with ear plugs I was unable to tune out the noise from the babies crying all around me.  So you start to notice: Friday NO sleep, Saturday NO sleep, Sunday NO sleep and now Monday...NO SLEEP!!  I was exhausted by the time we went home!

Luckily, the second night was a bit better as i had been on a waiting list for a private room from the very beginning (despite a cost of £250/night) and was able to move to this room for some privacy and Rob could stay with me.  This was much better and allowed us to get into the swing of things with a newborn.  Here is Jakson and I on night two in our private room:

Heading Home
After what seemed like an eternity of waiting and anticipating, we were finally able to take Jakson home on Wednesday, 13th April around noon.  It was a surreal experience and super exciting to load him up into his car seat and make the move from the hospital to home. 

As I've had a c-section I can't do much beyond picking Jakson up so the last few days have been exciting, challenging, frustrating, emotional, fantastic and just completely mental.  Luckily, in the UK they have the community midwives who visit you at home after the birth.  I've had two visits in the last 4 days - and she's back again on Monday.  They've been able to support me in my attempts to breastfeed and also give us a lot of support on all those pesky questions you have as first time parents.  Things like: 'is it normal if he does this' or 'what do you do when...' can easily be answered in the comfort of our own home.  The midwife also removed my stitches today and I can confirm I'm healing well, tho she did have to remind me to eat, rest and not do anything as i've just had major surgery. 

Luckily this is somewhat possible as Rob's family is simply amazing.  I don't know how we would have gotten through the last week without them!  They've done everything from make us meals to clean the flat (thanks, Clare!!!) and bring us pressies (we like pressies).  They've picked up shopping and just made themselves available for any support we need.  This has been such a significant source of help for us, especially after my c-section, I don't know what we would have done without them. 

So now it's time to start focusing on our little boo.  He's truly amazing, we just sit and watch him every day and think how lucky we are.  It has come with it's challenges, as expected, but they were/are all so worth it.  We are still figuring out the sleeping thing, the breastfeeding thing, etc, etc.  And what is so unanticipated is that he's so diddy that none of his clothes fit him!  Such a wee little bah, as Nana Rose would say.

Here are a few pics from the last two, totally mental, days:

I love this photo!  Rob looks gorgeous and Jakson is so tiny!!



After a feed...he pretty much zonks out.  Good sign!

Catching zzzzz's any way we can these days.



A cozy Jakson



Showing off my new little boo.



My beautiful boys!!