RSS feedToday Louise got up and was walking around a little, hard to believe considering she was on the operating table and completely cut open the day before. What a testament to modern medicine.
When Molly was born, I went with her to neonatal, and spent about 40 minutes with her while mum was being stitched up, and then headed back to Louise’s room to find out how she was, but her room was empty and the nurses didn’t know where she was. I found out later that the orderly had pushed her bed into neonatal to see Molly, and I had left just as she arrived. So until today, we hadn’t actually seen Molly at the same time. So today we went together and had nice cuddles. It’s only now that it’s becoming so real.
Louise overdid it a bit though, and ended up around lunchtime with high blood pressure again, and needing a lot of rest. Molly’s other grandmother also came to see her today which was really nice, as she travelled for four hours to do so. Molly’s now met both sides of grandparents. 🙂
As for going forward, tomorrow Louise will hopefully move to the pump, after we’ve spent the last few days hand expressing, and she’ll try to take the day a little more carefully.
Molly is doing great, she did her first little poo today (Louise will probably ask me to remove this bit, so you’re lucky you read it first 🙂 ), and she’s a little jaundiced, but this is fairly normal.
Thanks again to all the people sending their wishes via sms and email etc., we will try to reply in a few weeks, because we’re a little busy right now, so don’t take it personally. We aren’t taking visitors yet outside of close family, because both are trying to get their health up, so please, call me if you want any information, or if you’d like me to send you some photos. Hopefully by the weekend Louise will be up to seeing a few people, but we’re not sure at this point.
Louise rang me this morning (Tuesday) at 7:30am, and said that her blood pressure had spiked overnight, and that they had decided to pull the baby out. I posted a short rather ambiguous blog post to keep family and friends off our backs, and headed off to the hospital.
At 1pm, we were taken to theatre, where Louise was given a spinal and an epidural. 10 minutes after that, the anesthetist told us that there’d be a sucking noise, then a pull, then the baby would pop out quite quickly, at which point we could both look over the screen over Louise’s face and have a quick look.
Luckily I had my A1P running, and at 2:32pm, Molly Claire was born, all 31cm and 2.1Kg (4.6 pounds) of her (which I managed to capture on video). After a quick medical check up due to being 5 weeks premature, Mummy had a quick cuddle, and off we went to neonatal, where she was given a yummy warm 32.4c humidicrib to rest in, and apart from a short visit from some new grandparents later that night, she’s been happily sleeping most of the rest of the day. Louise is also doing very well, and may well be up on her feet by tomorrow, but we’ll see.
It’s been a very long day, and I haven’t even talked about the second flat tyre I got last night. Maybe later… Thank you to everytone who sent messages, they were much appreciated, and we wll get back to you at some point.
Louise’s blood pressure went up over night, but she and baby are still doing well. We think we may hear something later this afternoon.
A medical condition where hypertension arises in pregnancy (pregnancy-induced hypertension) in association with significant amounts of protein in the urine. Because pre-eclampsia refers to a set of symptoms rather than any causative factor, it is established that there are many different causes for the syndrome. It also appears likely that there is a substance or substances from the placenta that may cause endothelial dysfunction in the maternal blood vessels of susceptible women.[1] While blood pressure elevation is the most visible sign of the disease, it involves generalized damage to the maternal endothelium and kidneys and liver, with the release of vasopressive factors only secondary to the original damage.
So much for a boring day. The renal specialist visited again today, and while they now seem to have most of the symptoms in order, Louise’s liver is now starting to show signs of pre-eclampsia. It’s like squeezing a balloon, the more you treat in one area, the more it shows up in others. Anyway, now they’re talking about maybe tomorrow or the next day for a cesar, but we’ve yet to speak to our obstetrician, so we don’t know for sure. Baby continues to do well. Louise is getting a little tense that we’re getting closer and closer to the birth. Tense and excited, it’s a mix of emotions I think.
I’m busy finishing up my end of year, and then I have a jam tonight for Backstreet Stories that I would be in a bit of trouble if I missed, so I’m going to drop in on Louise this afternoon, and then maybe again after the jam depending if anything happens.
Today is probably going to be a boring day. Louise’s blood pressure throughout the night was 130/85, 140/90, 135/85 and 120/70 at midnight, 6am, 7:30am and 8am respectively, which are all pretty good readings. She’s also given a few more blood and other samples for a few research projects into hypertensive pregnancy disorders at the hospital, which is nice.
She’s already cleared the decks of her work going forward, which means she’s now free to relax all day. We’ll catch up later this afternoon, after I’ve finished off my month and year end. We’re now just waiting to get to the end of the week.
At 5pm, Louise was 114/78, which is awesome, best she’s been since being in hospital, and at 8pm, she’s 124/82, which is still pretty good. Looks like they’re getting close to stablising everything.
Louise had a nice day today, 3 hours at home playing with Phoebe and finalising a little bit of work stuff she was in the middle of on Thursday when she first went to hospital, and then back to hospital at 5pm for dinner. After a few work phone calls Monday morning, she should be completely free to concentrate on her health.
The doctor came in this morning for a few short minutes, and gave the impression that she’ll probably be in until Thursday at least, at which point they’ll think about what to do next. So the waiting game continues, and probably not much news for the next few days at least.
So they let Louise out for a 3 hour day release, which is great, although that seems to suggest that she’s not coming permanently home any time soon. Last we heard we’ll most likely hit the 35 weeks, which is this coming Friday by their figures, this Thursday by the official method, and we reckon personally about Tuesday, so in theory, Thursday will be 35 and a half weeks. Baby is pretty big, so this also backs this up.
We left the hospital and walked to Louise’s car, which has been locked in the car park since Thursday. I was relaxed about handing over a quite substantial amount of money, even though I still had issues about car park man. So we got in and drove to the boom gate. He gave us a bit of a discount, which was nice, and so unlike him considering I felt like I knew him so well, but it was still expensive. As we drove out, the gravel and dirt turned to concrete, and I felt the car leaning slightly to the right, and then I heard the car parking man yelling at us. What an arse. It was then I realised… we had a flat tyre…
My life is a bit like that, when I have disasters, they tend all come at once. And the last thing I needed right now was the car parking man yelling at me for blocking his exit lane. He came running up and… asked if we needed help, if he could change the tyre for us, or if he could call the NRMA. It turns out, the car parking man aint such an arse after all. Well, maybe just on weeknights…
Louise is still at home, but we’ll be heading back to the hospital in about an hour. We have clothes, washing, cleaning and other bits and pieces, so we don’t need any help at this stage, but we have dozens of offers of help, so the minute we need it, you’ll all be getting a call. Thanks for all your concern.
Finally we have some good news. Louise is going to be allowed home for a few hours today on day release. They’re now starting to openly talk about the three options we knew we’d be up for: inducing now; sending her home; and keeping her in hospital. From the information we’re getting, we’re guessing that most likely baby will stay in for another week, and then most likely they’ll consider inducing. We’ll wait and see…
They took us on a tour of the neonatal unit yesterday afternoon (click on the fundraising link to see the photo), in order to prepare us just in case we needed to deliver baby early. Talk about emotional, Louise and I both had tears in our eyes at various times through the tour.
The unit is both sad and comforting at the same time. Really tiny babies lay in their humidicribs, where they try to reproduce the conditions in the womb as much as possible. It’s layed out like a regular ward, but smaller, and with most of the lights out, so it’s dark, except for the multitude of lights and monitoring displays. In some way’s it’s like a secret hydroponics lab, not that I’d know what one of those looks like. 😉
Babies are continually monitored with those little clip on heart rate monitors attached to their feet, and they are fed by either a canular into the arm, or via a really tiny tube into the mouth and stomach, which is removed after each feeding. Babies are positioned so that they can move and exercise their arms and legs, which helps develop their little muscles.
Yesterday they started giving Louise steroid injections which will help to fast develop baby’s lungs, in case we need to bring it into the world. If we delivered now, baby would go into the neonatal unit for about 5-6 weeks. Luckily at this point we’d be going into the regular section of neonatal, and not the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), because we’re at 34 weeks. Some of the babies in the ICU were around 24 weeks and under 1 Kg in weight, and were smaller than a kitten, yet as cute as punch. Our baby is 2.389 Kg.
The staff seemed fantastic, and each baby had a dedicated nurse, all of whom seemed really nice when we spoke to them. If you’re considering which charity to give to this year, then I’d seriously recommend RPAH, and in particular their neonatal unit. They do an awesome job, but it costs a LOT of money, and we all know how stuffed up our health system is at the moment. Help keep more babies alive and allow them to have future rich and happy lives.