Hi D Ho and welcome to my first baby update for our beautiful little girl who will be here on know as “Little Lady” in blog land 🙂 (I think its a nice match with her brothers name of Little Man). We have had an amazing* first week, her birth was a tough, exhausting, wonderful, amazing experience and we were on such a high after wards (and still are really).

*I apologise in advance for the blatant overuse of the work amazing in this post, all I can say is that it really was an amazing day 🙂

She has taken to breastfeeding straight away with no problems. In the labour ward soon after delivery she did the breast crawl and happily fed away for 20 minutes. The breast crawl for those of you who haven’t heard of it before happens when you place a new born baby on their mothers chest straight after birth. Baby will bob along to find Mums nipple and will latch on for their first feed all by themselves – it was absolutely amazing to experience in real life. Even our Doula was amazed at what a great latch Little Girl had straight away and how well she fed.

Once back on the maternity ward the midwives brought tea and toast for all of us (best toast I have ever eaten) and I got to enjoy lots of new born baby snuggles while we all discussed the amazing events of the day. As Little Lady was born at the reasonable time of 6.03PM Daddy was able to stay for a good while afterwards and enjoy time with me and our new little girl  together – unlike when her brother was born. He arrived at 10.28PM but I wasn’t brought back from recovery until 1am. Once I was brought back then poor DH was sent home pretty quickly as it was night time and others were trying to sleep. It was pretty scary to be left on your own with a brand new baby as a first time Mum when you can’t even move in your bed.

Little Lady and I spent our first night in hospital were we co-slept together. The midwives and hospital staff on the maternity ward were great, they checked in every now and again but once they could see that I knew what I was doing they left us alone. Having had a drug free labour also made such a difference, simply being able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom whenever you want was amazing after my last experience, hell, evening being able to get out of bed by myself was amazing.

With Little Man I had an unplanned C Section and we spent 6 nights in hospital as a result. Afterwards I was really unwell and needed blood transfusions, I had a lot of painful wind and stomach problems (do you know you can get wind in strange places like your shoulder after a C Section and some other operations – madness) and I even got a cough which was agony after the operation. It took a good while to get feeding established with Little Man as we were separated for so long at the beginning. Poor Little Man developed bad jaundice ending up in the Special Care Baby Unit for treatment under UV lights. While there they noted that I had been given antibiotics during labour as I had a high temperature (something I wasn’t aware of) and so they needed to give Little Man a course of antibiotics also through a drip meaning we were separated even more and I had to start pumping milk for him in order to continue breastfeeding. It was so hard to see Little Man being poked and prodded for blood tests and drips.

Looking back on it now and comparing their births it amazing to see the difference in not just the birth experience but the recovery after for both baby and I. Little Man and I had both been happy and healthy when we went in for our induction, our only crime was that Little Man was too happy were he was and we were 13 days overdue according to the hospital (although we were only 9 days over due according to the initial hospital dating scan). When babies are born they are given an Apgar score from 0 – 10, this quickly summarises the health of newborn babies based on Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration. Little Man was given a score of 9 out of 10 indicating that he coped with labour quite well and was healthy when first born. This shows that there was no emergency or need to rush for induction – we simply ran out of time however this resulted in a much more traumatic birth and difficult recovery for both of us.

Back to present day and Little Ladies arrival, the next morning I was checked over by a midwife and the paediatrician checked Little Lady. Another person came to do a hearing test for Little Lady  – as she was less than 24 hours old chances were high that she could fail the test due to fluid still being in here ears but thankfully we didn’t have to worry as she passed with flying colours. Finally I got a prescription for some pain relief and then we were free to leave the hospital – 17 hours after Little Lady was born.

DH, Little Man and Granny all came to collect us from the hospital and Little Man got to meet his sister for the first time. We were worried about how he would react to Little Lady but we needed have as he was so good – at first he seemed fascinated by her but scared to touch her but soon enough he was giving her gentle kisses. Once everyone had a chance to meet Little Lady we packed up our bags and headed to our local coffee shop for lunch, everyone was amazed at how new Little Lady was and how quickly we were out. It was such a great feeling to be free from hospital and back with my little family so quickly.

After lunch we headed home for a well deserved nap – all before Little Lady was even 24 hours old. This was just an amazing day, and indeed we have had a great first week – but thats a story for another day.

Thanks for reading – check back soon for Little Ladies week 1 update and birth story!