Wednesday 5 January 2011

The new baby

Little M came along nearly a week over due. After a minor drama with freezing fog and an ambulance ride, she was born completely uneventfully after a 2 hour 15 min labour. We spent 7 hours in hospital, 6 hours of those were just waiting for the baby checks to be done, and then we came home in time to meet the big sister (Little I) and have a Chinese.

To be truthful, I didn't really connect with this pregnancy. The day after we decided to try for another baby I got a promotion at work. We gambled and decided that because I was over 30, the chances of conceiving first time were under 15%. If I was pregnant we'd go with it. If I wasn't, we'd put the baby thing off for a bit longer. I knew before I even took a test that I was pregnant. The rest of the 9 months was just too busy to really think about a new baby. There was also a question mark over the viability of my chosen place for birth. I wanted to stay at home but a scan at 35 weeks suggested that  a c-section would be needed. After talking to a consultant, I managed to avoid that option (which really did horrify me, I've never even broken a bone let alone under gone major surgery!). Various events meant that by 40 weeks +2 days, it looked like I could have a home birth again and suddenly I began to feel connected to the fact that I was going to have a baby but by this point I just wanted the pregnancy to be over. Little I had been 2 weeks early and going over due was a very miserable experience. I was never ill or at risk but it was miserable.

The morning I went into labour the weather was BAD. Freezing fog. So to cut a long story short, just in case something did go wrong, they took me into hospital in an ambulance. I was fine, the baby was fine but in the modern NHS the risk assessment is king.

Saying that - even though my partner nearly missed the birth due to no parking at the maternity unit - less than on hour after me arriving at the hospital I had my second daughter with no complications what so ever. And, I have to say, the view was worth the unwanted trip!


Of course the baby was worth it too and from now on, you'll have to excuse the poorly hidden excuse to post loads of pictures of my baby!

There are many differences between my two girls. The first one is that little M is dark haired. Little I is ginger and always has been so everyone has been surprised to see that little M is different. She was also nearly a pound heavier at birth.

We mainly planned for another baby to give little I someone to play with and also to help her learn how to share toys and attention. Little I is a born performer and craves attention! So how the two girls met and got used to each other was very important to me and one of the reasons I wanted to stay at home to have the baby. The grand parents had picked little I up from nursery and brought her home when we arrived back at about 7pm. The next photo is little I's face when she first saw her sister.

She loved M immediately and would over love her given the chance!

M is only 2 weeks old but it feels like she's been here forever. She's a very calm and settled baby, cries even less than her sister did when she was little, and fits into our family perfectly.

She managed to arrive 5 days before Christmas so it feels like an age since she arrived but I think that's more because so much has happened between then and now.


I still feel a bit sad for little I, people react differently to her now and she's having to be a lot calmer than she would have been 2 weeks ago. I'm also a little sad that this is my baby making days over. We've decided that 2 children are enough for us and logically, I know this is the right thing for our family, but it's still sad to think that this is the last time I'll be taking photos of our own tiny baby.

She's more wakeful now and I've been planning her social life this morning. Music, swimming, massage! But it also saddens me that because of my new job, I'll be going back to work when she's 8 months old when I had longer off with her sister. I feel like she's losing out already but then I remember that poor little I just had me and her dad to play with where as little M has 'the big sister' too.

All this said - a new born is tiring and a new born with an overly excited toddler over Christmas is doubly tiring. Time for a nap.

1 comment:

  1. Blimey you did well with labour time!

    Lovely photos. That last picture looks identical to the one of Daddy and Little I when she was that size!

    ReplyDelete