Madam has landed. You'll forgive my lack of posts in the last week, we've been a little preoccupied around Chez Gabs.
Things didn't go quite as planned. We had hoped for a tranquil water birth, no pain relief except the soothing warmth of the pool... that was before my waters broke and 24 hours passed without major happening. After 24 hours, for those of you not in the know, the risk of infection precludes water birth and I wasn't allowed in. Fair enough, we're flexible, so we adjusted and moved on mentally to a natural non-pool birth, with the addition of a cannula in the back of my left hand to push IV antibiotics (which took three tries and eventually a doctor to insert, but we won't go into detail on that one).
That was, of course, until they decided things weren't moving as quickly as they would like, and took advantage of said cannula to drip syntocin into my unsuspecting body. Apparently I'm ridiculously sensitive to syntocin, because not only did things kick off, they kicked off a little too hard. Think six contractions in ten minutes. We won't go into detail there either, we'll just say that after an hour of fighting it, Himself finally managed to talk me into having an epidural.
Let's take advantage of the moment to take a little side trip down "How awesome is Himself" Lane, shall we? I honestly don't know what I would have done if he hadn't been there. "Rock" doesn't quite cover it. He was there to literally and figuratively hold my hand (and at one point, my feet) for every single second of the entire process, and toward the end when I was quite simply falling apart from the combination of not having slept in three days and a not quite effective epidural, he kept me sane. Join me in a round of applause for the greatness of Himself.
Did you clap? Yeah, I meant it literally. Thanks for humouring me.
We also ended up with a ventouse delivery and an episiotomy, but the less said about that the better. Suffice it to say, she's here and she's absolutely perfect. I'm assured it's not just my natural predilection for my own offspring that leads me to feel this way, apparently she's an uncommonly attractive and pleasant child. Don't believe me? See below.
How could you not bask in the glory of such adorable features? Go on, take a second to bask, I'll wait.
I find myself just staring at her. The TV has barely been on in the last week, she has reduced a houseful of adults into cooing idiots, and I do mean a houseful. *lol* My mother arrived on Saturday, and Himself's mother and her husband came up for the day, then on Sunday we had Himself's sister and her husband, then on Monday we had an old friend of mine who was over from Australia with his wife and son and... well, you get my drift. We've had a busy time of it. Unfortunately the madre could only stay a week and has to go home today, but the grandmadre is on her way over sometime midweek so we'll have another Texan presence in the house for a little while (lucky, lucky Himself). *grin*
Anyway, it's all true. You don't realise you can love a tiny person so immediately and in such an all consuming way until you've physically forced one out of your body. Yeah, it hurt, and yeah, pregnancy totally sucked for me, but look what I got out of it! She's simply... well, perfect.
Things didn't go quite as planned. We had hoped for a tranquil water birth, no pain relief except the soothing warmth of the pool... that was before my waters broke and 24 hours passed without major happening. After 24 hours, for those of you not in the know, the risk of infection precludes water birth and I wasn't allowed in. Fair enough, we're flexible, so we adjusted and moved on mentally to a natural non-pool birth, with the addition of a cannula in the back of my left hand to push IV antibiotics (which took three tries and eventually a doctor to insert, but we won't go into detail on that one).
That was, of course, until they decided things weren't moving as quickly as they would like, and took advantage of said cannula to drip syntocin into my unsuspecting body. Apparently I'm ridiculously sensitive to syntocin, because not only did things kick off, they kicked off a little too hard. Think six contractions in ten minutes. We won't go into detail there either, we'll just say that after an hour of fighting it, Himself finally managed to talk me into having an epidural.
Let's take advantage of the moment to take a little side trip down "How awesome is Himself" Lane, shall we? I honestly don't know what I would have done if he hadn't been there. "Rock" doesn't quite cover it. He was there to literally and figuratively hold my hand (and at one point, my feet) for every single second of the entire process, and toward the end when I was quite simply falling apart from the combination of not having slept in three days and a not quite effective epidural, he kept me sane. Join me in a round of applause for the greatness of Himself.
Did you clap? Yeah, I meant it literally. Thanks for humouring me.
We also ended up with a ventouse delivery and an episiotomy, but the less said about that the better. Suffice it to say, she's here and she's absolutely perfect. I'm assured it's not just my natural predilection for my own offspring that leads me to feel this way, apparently she's an uncommonly attractive and pleasant child. Don't believe me? See below.
How could you not bask in the glory of such adorable features? Go on, take a second to bask, I'll wait.
I find myself just staring at her. The TV has barely been on in the last week, she has reduced a houseful of adults into cooing idiots, and I do mean a houseful. *lol* My mother arrived on Saturday, and Himself's mother and her husband came up for the day, then on Sunday we had Himself's sister and her husband, then on Monday we had an old friend of mine who was over from Australia with his wife and son and... well, you get my drift. We've had a busy time of it. Unfortunately the madre could only stay a week and has to go home today, but the grandmadre is on her way over sometime midweek so we'll have another Texan presence in the house for a little while (lucky, lucky Himself). *grin*
Anyway, it's all true. You don't realise you can love a tiny person so immediately and in such an all consuming way until you've physically forced one out of your body. Yeah, it hurt, and yeah, pregnancy totally sucked for me, but look what I got out of it! She's simply... well, perfect.
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