Welcome to the world

Firstly if anyone is good at maths you will be able to work out that I am over 40 weeks pregnant.

So…

I would like to proudly introduce Darcy Ray Hurley born on the 5^th December at 8:17am weighing 8lbs 15oz

Words or dance moves cannot express how much I love this baby girl! 

Shall we talk labour…

It all started on the 4^th December and as far as we were concerned we were having a normal Friday. Baby Daddy and I went and bought the Christmas tree, we tested out the baby carrier using a Minnie Mouse cuddly toy, Baby Daddy went to work and I had a nap. During my last bit of sleep for the next 72 hours (if I had known I would of taken full advantage of the napping time) the phone rang which angrily woke me up, after taking a good couple of minutes to get off the sofa as I was the size of a whale I managed to get to the phone for it only to stop ringing. You wouldn’t believe the anger I felt, 38.5 weeks pregnant the size of a whale and finding it very hard to sleep to be woken up by the phone and not get it in time grrrrr! At that point I felt my underwear get heavy with liquid as you can imagine the first thought that went through my mind was “OMG I have wet myself!” I felt my underwear but the liquid could only be described as water.

You watch the big movie blockbusters and expect your waters breaking to be a scene from the movies; the water gushing out of your body, you screaming in pain and obviously being in the most public and inappropriate place possible. Where in fact mine was the opposite; I was home on my own, felt no pain at all and lost barely any water this is why I was no to sure on what had happened. The first thing I did was ring Baby Daddy and explain that I thought my waters had broken he on the other hand thought I had wet myself but was still heading home. I then rung the midwife and again explained that I thought my waters had broke she was also unsure but asked us to come in at 7pm for check-up, considering it was 4pm I was concerned what I would do for 3 hours.   

Baby Daddy got home and we both just sat there wondering what was going on. We finally decided to put on a Christmas movie and decorate the Christmas tree. I had already rung my parents to give them a heads up that they might be going for a late night drive. After what felt like forever and still feeling no pain we took a slow walk to the midwife unit that thankfully was only a 25-minute walk for a pregnant person and 15 minutes for everyone else. After the check-up with the midwife she said that she was 90% sure my waters had broken and booked me in for an induction the following evening if I hadn’t gone into natural labor.

We were walking home when I got my first contraction at 8:10am, it was a tight feeling in my lower abdomen very bearable. By now my parents were on there way and my contractions were an hour apart. At around about midnight my parents arrived and my contractions were 20 minutes apart and still very bearable they were still just period pain like. We all decided to try and get some sleep but trying to sleep when you are in early stages of labor is practically impossible, for the one going through it Baby Daddy managed to fall asleep quite quickly, I just sat there. Within an hour my contractions went from 20 minutes to 5 minutes to 3 minutes apart but still very bearable pain. I rung the hospital and asked if I needed to make my way in, as we are an hour away (the countryside has its disadvantages) they told us to make our way in. I am very thankful that we left when we did because as soon as we got in the car my contractions went to 2 minutes apart and became a lot more painful. I can’t remember most of that journey as my eyes were shut breathing through the pain but I do remember that it was incredibly windy and we had to make an emergency stop, as there was a large branch in the road.         

This is the point where my memory gets a bit hazy as I do go onto inhale a lot of gas and air. When I got to the hospital the lovely midwife Amanda checked me out and said that I was 4cm, which means established labor Yay! Now the following is what Baby Daddy has told me as gas and air is a bit like being drunk, it numbs pain but also strips you of your memory. We got moved into the labor room and I got strapped to a monitor that would check Baby H’s heartbeat and one that was marking my contractions.

I couldn’t of gone through labor without Baby Daddy and my mum by my side, on the left Baby Daddy was holding my hand and supplying me with water as the gas and air and screaming was really making my throat dry and on the right my mum was helping with my breathing and had her hand on my head which I found really soothing. Without all these elements I wouldn’t have got through labor with just gas and air and in 5.5 hours. I can tell you that it hurt like nothing has ever hurt before in my life but I couldn’t quite tell you how much because I honestly cannot remember how much, which is strange I know. The part that hurt most was when she was coming out because as you can imagine certain parts were being stretched like they have never been stretched before.

I remember the midwife told me it was time to push and I really did feel the urge to push, after 35 minutes of pushing she was out yet the next 3 minutes were the hardest 3 minutes in my life.

Darcy had the cord wrapped around her neck she had also pooped and because of these she was in shock. The midwife had pushed the emergency button and quicker than I could say go the room was filled with at least 10 nurses, there were three surrounding Darcy I had new midwifes looking after me, it just seemed everyone had a job to do. Like I said I can’t really remember any of this, thankfully, all I do remember is wondering where my baby was but also being exhausted. My mum and Baby Daddy said it was the worst 3 minutes of their life as all they saw was Baby H come out blue in the body and white in the face. There is a test that midwifes do on newborn babies, which has a score out of 10, anything above 7 is good and Darcy scored 0 in her first minute of life. After 3 minutes she was scoring 9, which is great. Even though Darcy had a very hard start to life she was only in immediate danger and thankfully had no long-term effects. I cannot thank those midwifes and nurses enough for helping my baby girl in those crucial moments. During this time "supposedly" the midwifes removed my placenta and gave me 2 injections, none of this i remember.

They finally called Baby Daddy over to look at her in the crib so we all knew that she was out of danger. Eventually they put her in my arms and that was it I exploded with love for her and I knew at that moment that I would never let her be in danger ever again. Here are a few photos of those first few hours.

Baby Mumma xx 

25 Weeks

25 Weeks

Is anyone else finding it tough to sleep?

I have always been one of those people that could shut their eyes be asleep within minutes and then not wake up for 6-8 hours, whereas Baby Daddy takes ages to fall asleep and then can stir by the smallest of sounds.

Since being pregnant I am having a lot of trouble sleeping and it is getting on my nerves. I know people say that it is your body training you for when the baby comes but in my opinion I should be able to sleep now so when baby H does turn up I’m all well rested and ready to go. But no I am up at least twice a night to go to the toilet and now indigestion has kicked in so when I am trying to sleep I am lying there with terrible heart burn and indigestion plus my bump is constantly in the way. Why body why?!

I know my bump is in fact my beautiful baby but gosh it is getting in my way when I sleep. The weight of the bump and gravity do not bode well for sleeping, I can no longer sleep on my back as it hurts my spine too much and lying on my side means I topple over from the weight of my bump. I have had to start sleeping with a pillow underneath by bump to keep me straight and take the weight off the bump. This helps until I switch sides because in a semi-conscious state I have to remember take the pillow over with me to the other side. 

One night I must have been on one side for too long as the baby was lying on a certain nerve at the top of my left leg which caused the whole leg to go dead which was fun when I got up for my mandatory wee at 3am. After walking up and down the hallway to make the pins and needles go I had a numbing pain at the top of my left leg and groin which didn’t help when I was trying to fall back asleep.

I can walk in the pitch black from my side of the bed, around the bed through the corridor and into the bathroom without hurting myself, impressive right? Thinking about the positives.

The worst thing about not sleeping great at night is how tired I am throughout the day, I wake up in the morning tired and only get more tired throughout the day so by 6pm I am shattered and could go to bed. 

Let’s just hope all this ‘training’ does indeed help when Baby H gets here maybe I should start getting Baby Daddy up as well?

22 Weeks

Lets talk symptoms…

A few of the symptoms I have felt are;

-       Tiredness

-       Extreme Emotion

-       Lack of appetite

-       Gagging

-       Nausea

-       Generally feeling low and deflated

-       Full Bladder!

The first thing I want to make apparent is that I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was 12 weeks. This meant that I was trying to find reasons for my symptoms which obviously looking back now was all because I was pregnant and some of the excuses may of contributed but were not the only reason.

Lets start with tiredness; March to June is the busiest months at my work and probably the worst months to fall pregnant. We were very busy and I was working a lot of overtime, which I thought explained the tiredness. I was knackered, one weekend I was only awake for about 8 hours over the 48-hour period and that was only because Baby Daddy woke me up to eat. I didn’t start to feel tired until Easter time, which meant I would have been 4-6 weeks, don’t worry though the tiredness stopped at about 18 weeks. Baby Daddy and I noticed a sudden difference in my fatigue and since then I have had a lot more energy to get up and do things. I have struggled to keep my eyes open some days, I do not know what it is going to be like once Baby H gets here, they do say its your body going into training.

I have never cried so much in my life than I have done in the past 22 weeks. I have cried at adverts and sometimes I don’t even know why I was crying. Again we put this down to being stressed and unhappy at work it seemed to be the best excuse for most of the symptoms I was having.

I will talk about gagging, nausea and lack of appetite in one paragraph as I do feel they all go hand-in-hand. About 3 weeks before I found out I was pregnant a nasty bug was going around the office and of course I caught it. For a week I was bed ridden; I couldn’t eat, I had swollen tonsils, diarrhea, vomiting, think about anything you could have, and I had it. Even though this only lasted a week I thought that my pregnancy symptoms, which obviously continued after the bug, was my body still just getting over the sickness. I have a very good gag reflex normally, not many things could make me wretch, my sister on the other hand only has to smell something bad and will gag for 5 minutes. A good friend at work who also had the horror bug was saying that she was still gagging even though we were both better, to me this made sense to why I was gagging. I can officially say that gagging is horrific! If you are someone who suffers from a short gag reflex I feel your pain and do not know how you live your life as everything was making me gag. When I say everything I mean I was gagging at everything! A few of the most memorable and weird things were; walking into a warm room, walking through a swarm of midges and people talking about number 2’s. Due to all the gagging this is what made me be sick the handful of times that I did, it was only when I couldn’t breath through it, or control it that I threw up, thankfully.

**Side note ‘Morning Sickness’ is bull it should be called ‘All Day Sickness’ it does not just happen in the morning do not be fooled!**

Along side the gagging I continuously felt nauseas, for a good 6 weeks. To help this I ate the most; plain, boring, tasteless food you could think of. I had rice and corn cakes coming out of my ears, none of the fancy flavours literally plain maybe lightly salted. I ate these for breakfast and lunch for 6 weeks, this is what seemed to settle my stomach and help the sick feeling. Another food that I felt helped was mints, I would suck on them through-out the day to keep my stomach occupied and from building up the acid which was causing the nausea. Due to the nauseas feeling I completely lost my appetite and within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy I lost quite a bit of weight obviously I didn’t know I was pregnant so was not looking out for myself in the way the books say you should. Thankfully at about 19 weeks I found my appetite; which I am very happy about, the one downfall is I cannot eat as much as I used to. I can now only eat half a pizza!

Before finding out I was pregnant I was feeling very low. I couldn’t 100% explain everything I was feeling and I was getting upset and frustrated. The day I had my doctors appointment I was expecting to be written off work and given anti-depressants that is how low I felt. I am not embarrassed about how low and depressed I felt at the beginning as my body was changing and preparing in ways that I can never understand or explain. Maybe if I had found out earlier I would of understood why I was feeling the way I was and could of helped myself through it better, instead I didn’t want to get out of bed, do the things I enjoy doing or some days even talk to people. The moment I did find out I was pregnant the doctor made sense of all the symptoms and I did instantly feel better as I had answers to why I felt terrible.

The last symptom I am going to talk about is one that I think will last until this little rascal is in the world and that is my bladder! I can honestly say I think I have gone to toilet more in the past 22 weeks than I have in a year. When I am awake I wee 3 times an hour, honestly. I am one of those people who can sleep through a thunderstorm but since being pregnant I wake up at least 3 times a night to wee, which can be very frustrating. One positive I can walk from our bedroom to the toilet in the pitch black.

I hope that hearing about my symptoms will help you feel less strange as I would of felt a lot better to know that I wasn’t the only one who could fill a pool with urine within a day. I would love to hear about the symptoms you guys had/have as I do feel everyone is different and we should all help each other through this confusing time in our bodies lives.   

Baby Mumma xx

21 Weeks

Hello, welcome to the first blog post from ‘Mother knows best?’ (please notice the question mark) I shall start by giving you a little more information about myself; I am 23 years old and pregnant for the first time. Does anyone else feel this becomes the only way to describe yourself? I have forgotten how to describe myself other than being with child. A few more details… Baby Daddy and I have been together for 7 years even though Baby H was not planned they are more than a happy mistake. We live in a little town in England, 3.5 hours away from our family in the Big City (London).

I wanted to start this blog not to give advice as personally I am tired of people telling me what I can and can’t do but to hopefully help some of you who maybe are in the same situation as me and feeling the same way so you don’t feel too alone and we can laugh and joke about all the different stories. The second reason for starting this blog is so that baby daddy and I can look back and remember all the good and bad times before baby H comes into this world.

I shall start at the beginning how all good tales start…

I felt like crap! I was very busy at work, tired, poorly you name it and I felt it. I woke up one Friday morning and instantly had a panic attack (not fun!) I rang my dad as I do in any situation that I need help and he told me the first thing I needed to get sorted was my health so the same day I walked down to the doctors and booked an appointment for the Monday.

On the 18^th May I sat in the doctors office telling him all the symptoms I was having and how low I felt and he was staring back at me with the most how stupid can you be look. Once I had finished my long list he calmy said “I am pretty sure that you are pregnant” you can imagine my shock! The first thought in my head was that I haven’t missed a period….(I know ladies scary right.) I took a test and there it was ‘Pregnant 3+ Weeks’. Baby Daddy came home that day and when I showed him the test he froze and hugged me for what felt like 10 minutes he eventually said that this was the best news and he was very happy, phew!

So that was it. The doctor estimated we were 8 weeks pregnant because I hadn’t missed a period he just went one back, little did he know. 4 weeks later when it came to having our first scan and they put the gel on my stomach and turned on the screen the lady said “Oh, they are a little bigger than we thought” Baby Daddy and I looked at each other looked at the lady and both said “What does that mean?” The lady responded, “You are not 12 weeks actually you are 17 weeks” 17 weeks what!? How could I of been pregnant for so long and not notice?

Now we are 21 weeks, over half way and cannot wait to meet the little nugget. I have plenty more stories to tell but not till next week, so I hope you all have a lovely week and I will see you at 22 weeks.

Baby Mumma xx