One month old

N was one month old last Friday. In fact she'll be five weeks old tomorrow. D has been off work for Christmas for a little over a week now and we're working well as a team to take care of her. Letting each other nap and get things done when we need to and when there is an opportunity. N and I made it to the health visitor appointment on time for her weigh in. The health visitor is lovely but I did feel like I was being watched like a hawk as I undressed her and dressed her. It was boiling hot in the clinic room and I'd dressed her in a fiddly outfit so I was feeling stressed about it! I'll definitely be picking out the easiest baby-gro for the next appointment! N is still very calm and relaxed. She's a little gem :) Very soft and kissable and described by everyone as 'just perfect'. Her eyes were dark blue when she was born but they are gradually getting lighter now. I think they'll be a grey/blue colour eventually like her Dad's. Her hair is getting a little bit longer in the back and looks like D's when it's wet, indicating that she might have some curls :) Her face has already changed a lot and her cheeks are filling out like mine did when I was a baby! She's getting more alert and needing more stimulation. She loves taking in the world around her. She's continuing to grow out of her newborn clothes but she's still too tiny for the next size up (0-3 months)! People comment on how tiny they think she is but she is growing at around the 50th percentile so she's a good size for her age. She weighed 8lb 11oz at 3 weeks. She does seem to have a smaller head than other babies her age so maybe that's why she appears small. Her neck and legs and grip are already getting stronger. We think we've seen her first proper smiles! The first one was for Daddy, which I admit I was a little jealous about, but I've seen a few myself too :) You can see the smile in her eyes which makes it seem more genuine. They do seem to come more regularly after a feed though so maybe I'm kidding myself and it's just wind! Daddy calls her "squeaps" because she makes a lot of little squeaky noises. I call her Nia-bean and Nia-bug. We tried out a quilted sleep suit on her last week and for the first two nights of wearing it she slept through the night! The first night she slept from 12:30-6:30am and the second night she slept from 11:30-7am. Amazing! We couldn't believe it. It didn't last though, she has been up around 3-4am each night since then. Maybe it was a growth spurt. A friend of mine who has two little ones was stunned as her youngest (9 months) hasn't slept through the night yet. I felt a bit bad telling her!! We've been overwhelmed with gifts and cards and have had regular, but not too frequent, visitors. Oddly we have had very few cards and gifts from our immediate family. Siblings in particular. We're not really bothered as N has so much but to not even get a card is a little weird... I went to a baby resuscitation class at the local children's centre last week which also covered what to do in case of choking. It gave me confidence that I could do my best to take care of N if something like that happened. A scary thought though. We've been preparing for Christmas and putting up the tree was pretty emotional. We have an ornament that my mother-in-law gave us for our first married Christmas which was 16 years ago! Looking at it together and thinking about our journey to N's first Christmas with us got us both welling up. D put it very well - "I didn't realise she was missing until she was here". Physically I'm feeling a LOT better all of a sudden. I definitely feel like I'm healing and that I have bowel control again now which is great! I really hoped to have got this far before Christmas. I had visions of myself still wearing incontinence pants on Christmas Day :( My perineum is still a little swollen and if I think about sex it makes me nervous. I've heard that it can be painful for quite a long time following an episiotomy. I've told D and he is incredibly supportive. He doesn't want to rush me at all. We'll take it slow. I guess the key is not being nervous! We have both been calm about becoming parents and lots of people have commented that our calmness must be rubbing off on N. Calm parents, calm baby. Emotionally, I do feel slightly up and down. Sometimes I don't really feel a bond and feel like I'm not doing enough to bond with her and help her development due to the cycle of feeding, changing, housework. At other times, I'm bursting with love. I've also been adjusting to the change in the dynamic of our little family. I used to be D's favourite girl. Now there are two of us. I know there is still room for me but it's an adjustment. I told D and he was understanding and I've noticed him giving me a little more affection since which has helped :) I've breastfed in public a couple of times now. The first time I was with the antenatal group so we were all at it and in a very baby friendly cafe. I was also dressed appropriately for it. The second and third times as I feeding alone and wearing slightly less modest clothing so found myself feeling more uncomfortable and being worried about exposing myself and getting negative reactions. I managed though! D's mother-in-law is arriving from overseas tomorrow. It'll be great to have her with us until Boxing Day. She is so excited to meet N and I know that she won't interfere with our care of her in any way. I have a great relationship with her. A friend who is going through IVF has just had another failed attempt. I feel awful for her, approaching Christmas in that situation. She had two miscarriages previously, both leading up to Christmas. For me, now being part of a process which is so normal and easy for most people, it's almost hard to remember the struggle that we've had getting here. But I must always remember and not take any of it for granted for a second.

Good news

I started off this week feeling a bit nauseous in the mornings. I thought the morning sickness was coming back for the third trimester! But thankfully it’s passed now, so I don’t know what that was all about. We had our 28 week midwife appointment on Tuesday. She met us at the hospital as I needed to have an Anti-D shot as I’m Rhesus negative and so they do it in a clinical setting in case I were to have a reaction of any kind. We met in one of the birthing rooms of the Birthing Centre (the low risk birth unit). It was very quiet in there – no babies being born. There are three birthing rooms, two of which have a pool. They have birthing balls, beanbags and a birthing stool too. They were decent size rooms although not overly big for moving around in. If there were a few of you in there I imagine it would feel pretty crowded. I asked the midwife what the difference is between the birthing centre rooms and the labour ward as I’m not sure which I want to go with. She said that the labour ward rooms have more emergency equipment in tem and they are a little bigger, there is only one pool available on the labour ward and that it’s generally noisier and you can hear noise coming from the other rooms. My initial thought was that I wanted to be in the low risk birth unit but one of the doctors we spoke to after a scan suggested that it would be better to be in the labour ward in case there is an emergency. Although the two wards are very close to each other, she pointed out that in an emergency there isn’t time and it would be much better to be exactly where you need to be. So, now that thought is in my head I wonder whether we should stick with the labour ward to reduce any anxiety about it. I would prefer to be in a quieter environment though. I just don’t know… Being in the hospital seemed to really be a wakeup call for my OH! I think the reality of me being in labour and in pain was brought home to him. He’s talking about getting his hospital kit ready to go now! Anyway, the 28 week antenatal checks were all fine. My bump was measured for the first time, and although she is at the lower end of the ‘range’ (26 cms I think) the midwife assured me that this was perfectly fine. The heartbeat is still good and strong and at around 140 bpm. All very reassuring. A friend came over to see me on Tuesday night. She had told me early on that she was happy to share her birth story and I took her up on the offer. She was lucky and had a good, quick labour and she described it as not really that bad at all. She used a hypnobirthing CD for a few weeks before hand and she said she thinks that it really helped her to stay calm and that her midwife noticed it too. (Something else for the shopping list then!) She also pointed out that everyone focusses on the labour and birth but that it’s really important to prepare for the baby! She wasn’t aware how regularly the baby would need feeding when hers was born! I think I’ve been preparing myself reasonably well – watching videos about how to change nappies, etc, but it was a good point! Labour is just the beginning after all. I had an appointment with a gynae physio for my back pain on Wednesday morning. She was very kind and tried to be helpful, but I didn’t really come away with any advice to really help the pain. She confirmed that she thinks the pain is related to my scoliosis but there isn’t much we can do about a skeletal problem. She suggested trying some different chairs but they were all designs without back support and I know that good back support is the only thing that really helps me. She also suggested leaning forward onto a cushion at my desk, but I know that leaning forward is really uncomfortable. So all in all, not helpful unfortunately. On the plus side, I feel like I’ve tried all the options and got advice from as many people as I can (2 physios, an acupuncturist, my yoga teacher, friends, family….) and that I’m now at the point where I just need to do the things that I know help keep the pain to a minimum and remember that this isn’t forever! I’ve had the pain for about 8 weeks and I have another 8 weeks at work so I just need to battle on with it. I can cope so much better at home where I’m not seated all day. Bring on maternity leave! On Wednesday afternoon we had our 28 week scan. This is one of the additional growth scans that we were offered purely because we were IVF patients. We’ll have a final one at 35 weeks. The sonographer was really lovely and she clearly loves her job. She explained everything she was looking at really clearly and she was almost as excited about seeing it all as we were. We saw some really detailed pictures of the heart and all of the measurements were spot on. She described the baby as “textbook” which was really lovely to hear. One big surprise is that she’s moved to head down position! She has been lying across my belly with her head under my ribs on my right for weeks and weeks and she must have moved very recently as we definitely felt her head in its usual place in the last day or two. But now her head is down (yay!) and she is lying laterally on my left. So she only needs to move her spine around to the anterior position (spine facing forwards) and she’ll be right where she should be for labour. I was very pleased to hear this! I was slightly worried that she might be getting a bit too comfortable where she was and that I wasn’t helping by spending so much time leaning backwards to help my back. My yoga teacher had said that you need to create a ‘hammock’ by leaning forwards to give the baby space to move around. But it seems like the baby knows exactly what she is doing and hopefully she will stay head down now. I need to have faith in her and my body. #proudmomma Speaking of yoga, I’ve decided that I just need to keep my mouth shut during the chatting time! The teacher was talking about the support that partners can give and how some birthing ‘gurus’ suggest that perhaps men shouldn’t be present as they interfere with things when the mother should be left to focus on it by herself. And that men need to be given practical tasks so that they feel useful. So I asked what kind of tasks they should be given if they shouldn’t be involved too much. I was genuinely just a bit confused about what role they should be given but I don’t think my questioning went over very well for some reason. My question has answered very quickly (“they can make sure you drink regularly”) and then we moved on. I’ve come to the conclusion that the teacher likes the sound of her own voice and isn’t a very good listener. Oh well. I think the yoga itself is beneficial and I’m getting to know the other group members which is really nice. I mentioned the IVF to one of the girls and she was asking me about it. I said that now we are where we are, we feel extremely lucky and the journey of IVF is all starting to feel like a distant memory already! I had ordered a birthing ball and it arrived yesterday. I bought it into work today to try sitting on it instead of my chair (as suggested by the physio) but as I suspected it isn’t helping my back due to the lack of back support. But I will use it to exercise on and during the early stages of labour at home. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that I’ve been working on my birth plan. I used my sister-in-laws plan as a starting point along with a phone app that I have. It’s coming together and I’m hoping that the antenatal classes that we’re starting next month will help answer some of the questions that I’m still not sure about. Getting excited!

Round 3 begins

We met with the consultant a few weeks ago and he threw something at us that we weren't expecting. We were planning on using our two frozen embryos for this next cycle and paying for it ourselves. If we aren't successful this third time, we were planning to have a fourth full cycle with egg collection using the funding that we are still entitled to. Well, the consultant suggested that some couples like to hang onto their frozen embryos - as they won't lose quality - to turn to after they have done all the egg collection cycles that they want to do. It maybe that the frozen embryos as used to try for a sibling. We thought about it for a few days and decided that, at this stage, we will feel very lucky to have one baby let alone trying to plan for an IVF sibling! We want to make life as easy as possible for ourselves so decided to go ahead as planned and use the frosties this time. Prior to meeting with the nurse for our planning visit, I was looking forward to a shorter cycle with drugs that I'm familiar with and knowing what to expect. But we met with the nurse this week and she had a little surprise for me. One of the drugs that is used after the embryo transfer (progesterone) has previously been a pessary which was fine. But now, a new form of the drug is available which is a daily injection. This is thought to be more effective as it gets straight into your blood stream. The downside is that it's an injection into your ass muscle. A bigger needle and help from husband required. Yuck. The nurse proceded to tell me NOT to read about this on the forums and that the couples she has spoken to say that the actual injection isn't that painful, it's the soreness afterwards that's more of an issue. We shall see! There just always seems to be something new and unexpected with IVF! Just when you think you know what's coming... Being at the clinic again got me down. I was depressed to be thinking about beginning another cycle and the emotional rollercoaster beginning once again. Each Christmas I think, 'maybe next Christmas there will be a baby, or a baby on the way'. Approaching another Christmas with neither is sad. However, the run up to Christmas has been fun and enjoyable so far and we have champagne cocktails planned for Christmas Day :)