Hey guys,

How r u all going?
Just wanted to say congrats to everyone on their arrivals, can't believe they all arrived before Christmas!

I'm just jumping on quickly just got Layla down to sleep and NAte is due for his next feed in an hour so I have an hour to chill, hope u all had a nice Christmas we had a wonderful day and basically needed a semi truck to bring all the kids prezzies home!

Nate is going really well, he's 2 weeks old tomorrow it's going so fast! Hes feeding like a champ he feeds every 3-4hours then has some awake time then back to sleep again and I've started to let him stretch his night time sleeps out and the last few nights weve got 8 hours from him which has been great, just like his big sister she was doing 11 hour nights and 3 weeks so I'm pretty happy aout that!

Hope everyone is getting plenty of rest and enjoying the littlies

Hi ladies and bubies,

I've taken it upon myself to start us a thread in the Birth - 6 Months section, called December 2010 Babies! I thought seeing we had all popped (or calved as my dairy farmer friend says) we needed a neew one seeing we are no longer "Due in December".

Life is pretty chaotic here, and it's only the three of us! I certainly have a new appreciation for my mother who had the four of us kids, Dad and her to organize. You mothers with more than one child are amazing, and I sincerely mean that.

Looking forward to continuing our group, I feel like you girls know me better than my friends I see in 'real life' in some ways.

Must go, hopefully Poppy wakes soon otherwise I think my breast is going to explode!

Oh a quick run down on the actual birth.... I woke at 2:30am on Monday to a few minor contractions and started timing them. They were about 15-20 mins apart so I laid on the lounge and dozed in between them keeping an eye on the clock. by about 6am they were down to 10-12 mins apart so I rang my mum who I knew would be awake as DH was sleeping still for work that night and I didn't want to wake him yet. After talking on the phone to mum for half hour, mum told me to get off the phone and wake DH asap because it definatly sounded like the real deal. So I got off and went and woke him telling him not to be alarmed but I think I was going to have the baby today. DH shot out of bed and went into panic mode which gave me a laugh....I had to settle him down and tell him that the contractions were only at 10 mins apart and not to panic too much. DH rang his dad who made it to our place around 7:30am to look after the other kids. by this time the contractions were down to 8 mins and I rang my midwife who told me to come in as soon as I could.....

Arrived at the hospital about 8:45am and the contractions had stalled at 8 mins apart.....midwife did his checks and left us be for a while to make ourselves comfortable and to wait for things to start happening. About 9:30 - after making sure that the other kids were right and people were organised to look after them for the whole day as it looked like I would be in there for a while - the contractions started getting a bit painful so I said that I might hop into the shower for a while. The midwife started getting the bath ready for me as I had planned a water birth this time. all of a sudden the contractions went from 8 mins to 4 mins and then 2 mins just like that so the midwife suggested I hop in the bath. from here I kind of have no idea on times. all i can remember is that i was not really fussed on the bath and ended up back in the shower....and then went over to the bed and told the midwife taht i needed to push. I ended up pushing Alex out in one push even though the midwife was telling me to stop and wait for the next contraction once his head was out...and he only just caught him in time. so from my first contraction was 9.5 hours but only 2.5 hours of what they call active labour. Alex was weighed at 3340kgs (7lb 6oz) and 50cm in length. we sat in the birthing suite for a few hours and had cuddles and our first feed and went home at 4:30pm the same day.

sorry so much for being quick

Evening Ladies,

This will be my last post in this thread as I'll start posting in our Dec 2010 babies thread from now on. As my final post here I thought I'd just let you know how my birth experience was.

Despite knowing I was having a c/section & having had one previously I still viewed the whole birth/delivery date with some trepidation. I'm not particularly keen on needles, operations or anything that involves me being a patient - I think it's a control thing for me.

Well, I got to the hospital at the required time only to be told it look like I was going to be pushed back approx 3hrs . This wasn't good news as I had been fasting from 6.30am and that meant I wasn't going in for surgery until 4ish! My major concern was that I was on insulin for the GD & by 11.30 I was already getting shakey. A BSL was done and surprise surprise it was low, so they decided to hook me up to an IV line & pump some glucose into me. Ok, I could handle that, but what I couldn't handle was the resident doctor's 3 attempts to get a canular (? think I've spelt that wrong) into my vein AND her running commentary on why she was mucking it up all the while leaving the needles in my arm (with blood spilling out all over the bed & my clothes) or manoeuvring it around trying to reinsert it into my vein!!!!!!!! So after a half hour of that pain, success but in a really bad position - anyways the anaesthetists turns up, takes one look at this and says "sorry but I'm going to have to fix that up as i don't like the look of it!) Okkkkkkkk, I look away suck in my breathe with the sting of the local (he's theory is that it's less painful than the big needle) and then I'm told it's done!!! What! Already, YAAAA confidence returns, this is the man sticking the needle in my back and he didn't hurt me getting the canular in my hand.

A midwife comes in as lets me know that I'm now only going to have to wait 45mins longer than the original surgery time, I start to get excited but anxious at the same time, bub starts kicking me like mad. It's as though she knew it was time to join us on the outside and she wanted out. From here everything went pretty well, my B/p dropped while I was on the table and there was a flurry of activity behind me to stablise me (DH told me later that I was starting to slur & mumble and kept closing my eyes to go to sleep - i don't remember that). The delivery itself was pretty quick, except bub had done a somersault and was again breech AND it seemed she got stuck up under my ribs as there was some pretty intense pulling to get her out. So my first view of Grace was her legs up & bottom facing me whilst her head was still in me. She was an incredible shade of purple/blue and I heard not a peep out of her until they gave her the vitamin K shot.

After all the necessary checks were out of the way, they let Grace lie across me for 15-20mins before finishing up and sending me to recovery. I was in recovery for 1.5hrs as again they needed to stablise my b/p, BUT once I was up in my room I was in heaven.

They brought Grace in to me, and gave us skin to skin time together. Ahhhhhh it was perfect , she started to root around and latched on immediately! I didn't expect that as Eliza & I had heaps of issues with latching on and feeding for the first few weeks. After a feed, they left Grace with me for about 4-5 hours, it was magic! I didn't have much skin to skin with Eliza as my family were waiting at the door when I came out of recovery and I think the midwife I had then had a different approach to encouraging skin to skin.

After DH left to drive home, the midwife put Grace in the bassinet and took her to the nursery so I could get some sleep, when they brought her back for a feed, Grace wasn't crying just looking around, once again she latched on straight away and feed beautifully.

After 2 days my milk came in and we started to experience some issues - the engorgement made it difficult for Grace and she grazed both nipples, but we got that sorted out and the little piglet just has to wait until I've expressed some milk, just enough to soften the nipple area for her to latch on to.

I have to say, so far I'm doing ok. I'm a little sore and tired. I'm most affected by Eliza's moods. She's so happy I'm home, but she get anxious and quite upset if I walk out of sight and she really gets upset if I say I can't pick her up (have to wait 2wks before I can carry anything heavier than Grace) but am carrying Grace. Poor Eliza , but that said my darling big girl LOVES, LOVES, LOVES her little sister! If we have visitors (have had 2-3 sets a day since coming home ), she beckons them to Grace's bassinet and says "da come see Gawce) . Today while she was watching a Dorothy DVD and copying the dance moves, she kept looking back at DH (who was nursing Grace) and saying "Grace watch" "I dance for Grace" .

Well, that's my story so far and apologies if it is disjointed, I hope you get the gist of it anyway.

I'll see you all in our new thread!

Take care all

Hey Ladies,

Just wanted to jump in with the other moms-to-be of December :)
Im due with my first little blessing on the 20th of Dec!

Still no idea what I'm having. But did my Glucouse test today the longest hour of my life just setting there..

But baby is doing good and that is all that matters : )

Congrats to everyone else due in Dec. hope all is going well for y'all

-britt

ROFLMAO!