Amulet
08-15-2003, 02:08 PM
I haven't been on the boards for ages but thought I'd announce the birth of our third child Gaia Flurina, a sister for Ineke Gabrielle(5) and Odhran Fredrick(3).
We moved from Switzerland back to Ireland 8 weeks ago and after a difficult and stressful pregnancy (pnumonia, gastric flu, haemhorragic cystitis) - I don't reccommend moving house/country at 7 months plus! We wanted a home birth but thought no one would take us on that late so opted for one of the maternity hospitals in Cork - 45 mins away (in light traffic), the whole time worried I'd end up having the baby in the car as my last labour was around 30 mins and I was pushing in the lift of the hospital 5 mins after we arrived!! Finally a day past my due date I rang round all the home birth midwives and found Juana, a wonderful Spanish woman who agreed to take us on! It was a bank holiday weekend so we couldn't get the sterile home birthpack until Tuesday - this was Saturday! Well I must have unconciously hung on......Tuesday we got all the gear we needed and I went into labour on Wednesday morning. A friend (also a midwife)picked up the kids at around 10am and stayed until the midwife arrived. This labour was definitely going to take longer, finally got to the moaning stage around 1pm and was shrieking by 3pm - Gaia was born with two violently strong contractions at 3.14, she was blue but yelling strongly.......cord around her neck and over her shoulder but not tight, thank goodness I got her out so fast. Juana gave her oxygen and her signs were good but her face remained very blue, two hours later it was still blue, we called the doctor who sent us into the neonatal unit at the hospital - it was a long journey, nearly an hour with Juana giving Gaia oxygen on the way. The went into an incubator and hooked up to monitors but they showed she was actually fine..........the strength of the contractions and the speed at which she came out, combined with the cord around her neck and the fact she was 9lbs, meant her face had been bruised, all the capillaries burst.........it looked more alarming than it was. After observation over night we were allowed home and she's been doing well ever since. Along with horrendously efficient contractions - it worked in reverse too - I wanted an epidural for the afterpains, so bad I had to moan through them for days, even with a painkiller! I'm a veteran breastfeeder and I still had blood blisters on both sides after 2 days, then a duct she doesn't drain no matter how I place her and now an infection on one side.........its only been 9 days!!!
Still, she's wonderful and her brother and sister are enthralled as are her father and I!!
Amulet
We moved from Switzerland back to Ireland 8 weeks ago and after a difficult and stressful pregnancy (pnumonia, gastric flu, haemhorragic cystitis) - I don't reccommend moving house/country at 7 months plus! We wanted a home birth but thought no one would take us on that late so opted for one of the maternity hospitals in Cork - 45 mins away (in light traffic), the whole time worried I'd end up having the baby in the car as my last labour was around 30 mins and I was pushing in the lift of the hospital 5 mins after we arrived!! Finally a day past my due date I rang round all the home birth midwives and found Juana, a wonderful Spanish woman who agreed to take us on! It was a bank holiday weekend so we couldn't get the sterile home birthpack until Tuesday - this was Saturday! Well I must have unconciously hung on......Tuesday we got all the gear we needed and I went into labour on Wednesday morning. A friend (also a midwife)picked up the kids at around 10am and stayed until the midwife arrived. This labour was definitely going to take longer, finally got to the moaning stage around 1pm and was shrieking by 3pm - Gaia was born with two violently strong contractions at 3.14, she was blue but yelling strongly.......cord around her neck and over her shoulder but not tight, thank goodness I got her out so fast. Juana gave her oxygen and her signs were good but her face remained very blue, two hours later it was still blue, we called the doctor who sent us into the neonatal unit at the hospital - it was a long journey, nearly an hour with Juana giving Gaia oxygen on the way. The went into an incubator and hooked up to monitors but they showed she was actually fine..........the strength of the contractions and the speed at which she came out, combined with the cord around her neck and the fact she was 9lbs, meant her face had been bruised, all the capillaries burst.........it looked more alarming than it was. After observation over night we were allowed home and she's been doing well ever since. Along with horrendously efficient contractions - it worked in reverse too - I wanted an epidural for the afterpains, so bad I had to moan through them for days, even with a painkiller! I'm a veteran breastfeeder and I still had blood blisters on both sides after 2 days, then a duct she doesn't drain no matter how I place her and now an infection on one side.........its only been 9 days!!!
Still, she's wonderful and her brother and sister are enthralled as are her father and I!!
Amulet