News!

Been a while again!

There's been a lot going on in the McEnaney household. The main and most exciting event has been the birth of our first son, Ciaran Harris McEnaney. He is amazing.

The last trimester of pregnancy was pretty horrible in all honesty. Along with the diabetes I had major problems with my pelvis which ended up with me unable to walk without crutches and pelvic supports (and even then it was the slowest, most painful walk ever) and at 35 weeks my blood pressure shot up and I developed proteinuria and fairly severe swelling all associated with the onset of pre eclampsia so I was admitted at 35+5 for steroid injections and sliding scale for diabetic control and had my induction started at 35+6. Some Drs said I had pre eclampsia and others said I was developing it so I'm not quite sure where I lie there but either way it wasn't good.

Labour was interesting. I was hooked up to sliding scale on 1 side, hormone drip on the other, blood pressure cuff, O2 sats monitor, gas and air followed by an epidural, and right at the end another hormone drip. I literally don't think I've ever been hooked up to as many things at once before and I've been hooked up to lots of things. It meant I couldn't be as mobile as I would've liked, but when I tried the gas and air on the birthing ball I nearly fell off! In the end the best place for me was sat upright on the bed.

Another of the "complications" in my notes was that labour progressed very quickly. It was definitely less than 12 hours from arriving in the delivery room to actual delivery. I had the epidural in for 30 minutes before the Dr said I was ready to go and came back with a ventouse. Everyone had figured I was in so much pain because my labour wasn't natural and was being artificially managed, but it turned out I was much further on than they expected and it all got a bit frantic for a while. If I remember correctly the midwives count active labour from 5cm dilated and in my notes 1st stage active labour lasted 1 hour 20 minutes, 2nd stage lasted 20 minutes and 3rd stage 20 seconds (although that was "super actively managed" because my platelets and haemoglobin were rubbish and they thought I'd have a massive bleed without it).

Ciaran was delivered at 36 weeks exactly. 5pm on May 4th 2014.

The week following his birth is 1 I will hopefully forget in time but it's pretty clear in my mind at the moment. Having been moved to the post natal ward at 11pm on the Sunday, we were all set to leave on the Tuesday morning as Ciaran had managed to maintain his blood sugar and temperature for 24 hours but then the midwives noticed he was jaundiced and needed phototherapy. When they started on the lights he dropped his temperature and ended up in NICU to be warmed up and I was more or less ordered by the midwives to go to sleep because I was an exhausted mess. He did eventually come back to be with me on a bilibed (where the lights are below baby and they are in a little bag type thing so they can be covered rather than exposed with the lights above). He was taken off the lights after 2 days but by that stage had lost more weight than they would've liked so we still weren't allowed home until they saw he was gaining weight again. Once we had the all clear from the paediatricians and they had more or less said their goodbyes the midwives started their final checks on me, particularly my blood pressure as it had been a bit of a concern for a day or 2. I couldn't believe it when the result showed 175/100 and 169/104 and I had proteinuria again. The only good thing was my swelling was actually improving by this stage. However, that put a stop to our escape and I was howling. I've been on hypertension medication ever since, but it's been halved already so I'm hopeful when I return to the GP on Thursday that it'll either be reduced again or stopped. That night Ciaran was taken away to SCBU to be warmed up again and once again I was told to make the most of it and go to sleep but I was caught wandering around aimlessly at 5am. My haemoglobin also continued to drop so I had a nice little blood transfusion to try and pep me up a bit and have been on iron tablets ever since.

I can't believe how quickly things went downhill in the end. I was booked in for induction at 37+3 anyway, so wasn't a million miles off the end, but considering I should technically be 38 weeks at the moment it does seem a little bit weird.

So after 8 nights in hospital, 6 of them with Ciaran on the outisde, we were released on day 9 and spent a couple of days at my Mum and Dad's house with regular visits from James's Mum. We returned to Arran middle of last week and are really just trying to get into some sort of routine before James goes back to work tomorrow. It's a real shame his first week of paternity leave was spent in the hospital but Ciaran and I both needed to be there. Once the school summer holiday comes round it'll be good as he gets 6 weeks off to enjoy our boy.