Officially a person!

First Bath!

I've been a bit afraid of bathing her, not in case I drop her and drown her, but she has had such dry skin I didn't want to make it any worse. I'm sure she'll look back at this video in horror - how embarassing - but I think it's adorable.

Are they supposed to be this strong?

You can't really tell from the photo, but she's pushing up and properly supporting herself!

Poorly-eye baby (and Flail gets a name)

Since she was born she has had a goopy eye. It had been getting steadily worse, and the hospital took a swab before discharging her. By 9pmish last night there was full on oozy green ick, and it looked so red and swollen. She was distraught and wouldn't stop crying, I was distraught and wouldn't stop crying so off we went to the walk in clinic and got the last appointment of the day. At the clinic you fill in a form with name, so there she is, Orna Alice. The screening nurse pronounced it Or-neigh, and I was a bit afraid to correct her in case we were the ones saying it wrong. Unsurprisingly, given the sticky green nature of the eye she has an infection, and has to have drops for 5 days. By the time we got out, the chemist at the clinic had closed, so we asked where the nearest 24 hour one was, and were told "just up the road". Cue Mike trying the door of two chemists "just" up the road with all their lights on but locked doors, then at the very end of the very long road we find one that is actually open.

She seems a lot happier now with the eye drops, and how cute are her monkey shoes?

An Orn is Born

(I'm cheating slightly, writing this nearly 2 months after it happened).

Orna burst screaming into the world at 3:55 am (ish - it was an analogue clock). Things had all been a bit dramatic just before, but I'll start at the beginning.

On the 11th, at around 9:30 pm I was chatting to a couple of "hamster" friends, and mentioned I'd been getting the odd irregular niggles. I assumed these were Braxton-Hicks, as I'd had nothing before and they really weren't that bad. I went to bed around midnight, and about 1 am I realised that they were really getting quite sore, and went to the loo to discover the (terrifying) bloody show. It was finally happening, but I didn't really believe it as I was so sure the baby was holding on until induction. Over the next day I spent as much time as possible bouncing away on my birthing ball, and a fair bit of time lying whining on the floor about how much it hurt. At 6ish, I phoned the hospital to say it hurt, contractions were about 5 mins apart and lasting about a minute. They told me to phone back at 3 mins apart and a minute and a half. It just got more painful, to the level where some of them had me in tears, so I made Mike phone in the hope that they'd take pity on a poor bloke and tell us to come in. They seemed reluctant, but we went anyway.
Got to the hospital around 8 pm, and sat in the waiting room for 3 hours. 3 HOURS! There were lots of incredibly annoying screaming women (this seemed to be the way to be seen quicker). Eventually I was taken to a triage room and hooked up to a foetal heartbeat monitor. After 15 mins or so they examined and said I wasn't in labour (then what the bloody hell was all the pain about?), and that I should go home and come back in the morning to be induced. I whined a bit more, pointed out the drops the heart rate monitor had picked up and they offered me some pethidine for the pain. At our NCT antenatal classes, we'd been told pethedine was a bit like being as drunk as you could imagine. I didn't fancy from what I'd read it as it did travel through the placenta and affect the baby, and after 6 months of vomiting wasn't keen on throwing up more, but I was in so much pain I went for it. It was rubbish - the room span a bit when I got up to go to the loo, and I managed 30 mins of sleep but woke up in just as much pain. After this, my timings start to get a bit confused. I kept getting up to go to the loo, and was put back on the monitor after a while and the heart rate drops were still there. At some point I annouced to Mike that I thought I'd wet the bed (classy!), the monitor kept freaking me out as the baby moved and the heart rate vanished. Somehow it got to 3 am, and I was starting to get very apologetic about how much I was whining and crying, but was quite insistant that the midwife have a look and see how things were going. She did have a look, and then suddenly it was all systems go (8 cm), I was handed the gas and air, she went to find another midwife, the heart rate drops were taken seriously and a doctor appeared. She went in with a crochet hook (I assume there is some medical name for this) to break my waters and speed things up to find that they'd vanished (so I hadn't wet myself) almost without a trace. I now think that part of the tiny bump was having nearly no amniotic fluid! They then put a heart rate monitoring clip on the baby's head (and stuck it to my leg with a sticky pad that wouldn't wash off for a fortight, despite my best efforts), and started telling me to move onto my side and so on to help settle the baby's heart beat - a much trickier operation than you would expect when you're in agony (bye bye nice mobile birth I'd hoped for!). I also wasn't at all in the mood for any of the nice labour massage we'd been shown at antenatal classes, I'd have been happy if no one ever touched me again.

 Once I got onto my side, I pointed out that it felt rather a lot like I needed to push, again they seemed a bit surprised, had a peek and yes, it was time. Lots more flapping about the heart rate, a rush to grab stirrups and I was ungraciously helped into them and told to start pushing. Definitely an odd experience, like having the biggest poo you can imagine. It really felt like there was no chance that a baby was going to come out, and I heard the awful words "I think we need to cut" from the doctor, and the midwife saying no, and the next thing I knew there was an anesthetic injection and a snip. Out pops the head (complete with cord around the neck), then a paediatrician hovering at the door waiting to take her away (in the triage rooms, there are no resus facilities!), one more big push and fllrrrpppp, out comes the body like an octopus and a wail goes up. Cord quickly snipped, baby looked fine and was handed to me. No big surprise, she turns out to be a girl who looks rather surprised. An undignified hour follows, with stitches, the question "Do you normally bleed this much when cut?", baby weighed (2940g), dressed and popped into a cot, a bath is run for me then we're left to get on with it. Weird.

It's all gone a bit John Hurt!

Flail baby is wriggly...