[copied in from the old livejournal and backdated]
...there was me,
my husband (Josh), 5 cats (Sanguine, Graymalkin, Darkness, Ghost and
Itti Bitti Kitti), a dog (Fenrir) and some number of fish (was 2 algae
eaters and 3 goldfish but they've been breeding). For anyone who cares
I'm 24 (was 23 when Tiny was born) and Josh is 26 turning 27 this year.
Then there was "the accident".
We
use natural family planning coz I hate drugs. I was also at the time
working on a massive uni project pulling 20hr shifts, and got myself a
fever. I didn't notice and when I took my temperature it was high, so
we avoided sex. Three days later we got happy and guess what, my body
temperature had gone up for real so we had perfect conditions for
conception. It took remarkably quickly.
The pregnancy went along
extremely smoothly and easily compared to what I've heard and read
(aside from the three false alarms we had which led me to believe that
Tiny would be born on a Thursday), I just liked complaining for the sake
of complaining about how inconvenient it was coz I couldn't train and
suddenly everyone started handling me like fine china that would break
if breathed on :) If I hadn't been so preoccupied with the uni project
(which I managed to get deferred to 2nd semester this year) and
reorganising our wedding (which we moved 6 months forward to have before
Tao was born ... so I was 6 months pregnant on our wedding day :) I
might have started this off as a pregnancy journal. Obviously that
didn't happen.
Birth according to the hospital took 6.5 hours.
The pushing phase took 38 minutes which explains why it hurt so bloody
much. I'd read enough birth horror stories as well as joyous birth
experiences. I think I missed out on the whole happy peaceful birth
thing. The day before Tiny was born we were out skating. Or rather
Josh and his friend Yaser were out skating, I was taking photos. We had
Rar (the dog) with us. I noticed Rar limping a couple of times but he
didn't seem terribly interested in letting us check his paws for
injuries so we figured whatever it was wasn't that bad. After dropping
the dog home we went back to Yaser's to play PS2 games. We got home
about 1am or something like that, and the dog was limping severely. We
checked his paws and realised that three of his four paws had torn pads,
poor puppy, and resolved to take him to the vet tomorrow.
I
joked that I would go into labour tomorrow because we had to take the
dog to the vet. As I would be 9 days early we doubted that would
happen.
Well guess what my waters broke at 4am. We took our time
getting as ready as we could (though we still managed to forget a few
things) and when we left we included a side trip to see my aunty who
lived down the road and asked her to check in on the dog when she had a
moment, leaving her the spare keys. We trekked to the hospital and
after an internal exam got told I was 2cm dilated and paper thin. We
had the option of going home and coming back again or just staying at
the hospital (it was Woodside in East Freo by the way). As much as
going home and soaking in a hot bath appealed to me we decided to stay
coz a) I doubted if that happened that we'd make it back to the hospital
and Josh wasn't keen on the whole homebirth idea especially if he had
to do an emergency birth assistance) and b) the car trip had been
extremely uncomfortable.
The next time they checked (I don't know
how long, I spent most of it alternately walking around and curled up
in bed coz both methods alternately eased the contraction pains) I was
4cm dilated, they decided I was "labouring nicely" and we got moved from
the waiting ward to one of the labour wards.
I refused epidural
and pethidine shots on the grounds that I have an aversion to spinal
taps and I don't like needles. The TENS machine did nothing except
annoy me and I ended up taking the nitrous oxide even though it gave me
the most horrendous headspins and made me extremely angry at no one for
no reason. The midwives kept asking if I felt like pushing and
eventually I said yes (when I finally recognised what they were talking
about when I felt it strongly for the first time) and they seemed quite
shocked that I had gone from 4 to 10cm in an hour.
The pushing is
not something I ever want to repeat again, though if Josh accidentally
knocks me up again it's mostly comforting to know that I can do it. I
ditched the nitrous oxide too coz it was distracting.
I touched
the top of his head when he was almost out, I managed to see his head
emerge (Josh had a better view of the whole process than I did), and
when it was finally close to the end I watched his body glide out in
half a push. Took a few million it felt like to get his big head out.
He only cried enough to prove he was good at breathing, then went quiet
and looked around. The midwives wrapped him up in a blanket and put him
in my arms. He had an awesome conehead from his trip down the birth
canal and he smelled something like mouldy cheese. We stared at each
other in awe and fascination. I loved him from that moment. Josh
looked like he was going to cry. Tao had a bit of a drink and passed
out.
A beautiful little baby boy.
Important stats:
Birth date: 30/12/04 (guess what, it was a Thursday :P)
Birth time: 1:23pm
Birthplace: Woodside Hospital, East Fremantle, Western Austalia
Birth weight: 3.080kg
Birth length: 50cm
Head Circumference: 33cm
Tiny
is now 2 months old. Had the brilliant idea to start a journal
documenting our parenting misadventures and so I don't completely bore
my friends to death constantly bragging about my baby ;) So. Here it
is.