Father To Be, Or Not To Be

It's my 8 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

We had another addition to the family nearly four years ago. After struggling to conceive the first time the second one came along naturally! Apparently it happens quite a lot, after having successful IVF treatment the body realises what it's supposed to do and getting pregnant again is a lot easier!

Apologies for the delay on this post, we’ve been a little busy recently... :-)

The Wife was monitored overnight on the 25th Feb and again early the following morning for two hours as they kept a check on the Little One. We were told that we would be third on the cesarean list but within an hour we had been bumped to second as they didn’t want to wait for too long and were told that we’d be picked up at 10.30am and taken to theatre.

At 10.40am, after I’d changed into some temporary scrubs we were walking down to theatre getting all nervous for what was about to happen.

Without going into too much gory detail, after a lot of preparation The Wife was opened up and six minutes later the birth of our little one was announced. We were shown the baby so that we could find out the sex for ourselves and not have anyone tell us and I can happily announce that we now have a little baby girl.

Afterwards we found out that the umbilical cord had been wrapped round the baby’s head three times which was maybe one reason why we were getting reduced movement in the days leading up to the birth and would have also made a vaginal delivery extremely difficult.

After a bit of skin to skin contact from The Wife, the Little One was taken away to be measured and cleaned during which time they started the process of stitching The Wife back up again. They later told us that she lost three pints of blood during the procedure and that they had had to extend the cut as the position of the placenta made it difficult to access the baby.

I was able to cut the baby’s cord and eventually got to hold her in my arms for the first time. You couldn’t have wiped the smile from my face if you’d tried!

There was a bit of time for some photo opportunities for us before I was ushered out of theatre, baby in arms, while they continued working on The Wife.

About forty minutes later we were all reunited as she was wheeled out into Recovery and after a short while she was able to feed our little girl for the first time.

We spent the next three nights in hospital as The Wife recovered from the surgery and we got to grips with feeding and caring for our baby, before I was able to bring both of my girls home on the 29th February.

We have spent the last week or so in states of wonder, awe, bemusement, tears, laughter and confusion, but most importantly love. It’s hard to express the amount of love that I feel for this little thing as well as for my wife who had to endure so much, not just over the last nine months, but in the years leading up to this point.

Just had a call from The Wife who has been sent up to the hospital by her midwife.

18/02/16 - 37W3D

Tomorrow we have another appointment with our consultant and we are going to have to make a decision about the impending birth. He has already told us that he’d prefer not go to term, and so we have to decide whether to be induced or got straight for a c-section.

My head's first reaction is to go for c-section. It means that it should be more straight forward, we don’t have to worry about any implications from a regular delivery.

However, choosing not to induce means that we miss out on the 'joys' of labour. I would like The Wife to experience it, not because I'm an evil bastard, but because I would have a role to play as well and would not get to be as involved in the birth if we didn't go through it. She has also indicated that she'd like to experience it.

There is also the high probability that if we go down the induction route there could be a problem and we have to have the c-section anyway. The midwife has indicated that should The Wife be induced then she should demand to be kept in hospital to be monitored and not get sent home to return when contractions are strong.

Both have their drawbacks and potential problems (infections, tearing, healing period, etc) which makes the decision even tougher. Ultimately we have to do what is best for the Little One. If there's any chance that a vaginal delivery may be a concern (and given the history of this pregnancy, that's quite likely!) then we should go for the caesarean.

17/02/16 - 37W2D We're now into the final three weeks of this IVF pregnancy journey and we're both getting a little excited, apprehensive, scared, happy, sad and a million other feelings and emotions all at the same time!

We had a small scare on Friday when The Wife hadn't felt the Little One move for a long time and so we spent four hours up at the hospital until two o'clock in the morning while they ran a few tests. Thankfully all was OK, there was a responsive heartbeat and while there were small movements detected it was just the position of the baby that meant that The Wife wasn't feeling it move.

Phew!

The weekend was spent building the flat-pack nursery furniture and sorting out the bits and pieces of clothing and cleaning products that need to go into there as well. Still can't decide on the best way to lay out the room though, although we have a few months before it actually starts sleeping in there.

05/02/16 - 35W4D

We have made it to another milestone. Today is The Wife's 250th day of being pregnant. Which means that there's only 30 left to go.

Eeek!

I swear that each night she's got home from work she's looked a little bigger. The swollen ankles have returned so evening's are now spent with her feet elevated on some pillows on the sofa. We may have to move it to a position where we can both sit on it and watch TV at the same time because it's also the period when the Little One is most active and I'm missing out on being kicked in the face.

So with a little over 4 weeks to go, assuming that it arrives on time (it won't!), we've finally started to make preparations for it's arrival. The nursery has been painted, the furniture is being delivered next week, we've got some bedding and other small items, we'll be ordering the car seat this weekend, and we picked up the new car to put the seat into last weekend.

As for me, well I'm starting to get a little more nervous every day. It's a huge change coming our way and while I know that we are going to be OK there's always the 'what if' scenario lurking there in the back of my mind. It's been nice to hear people tell me that I'll be a good dad as it's something that I have wanted for a long time.

I've also found that I've been getting a bit emotional recently. Silly things make me sad and while it's not got to the stage where my face is doing its best impression of Niagra Falls, I've found myself just welling up slightly on odd occassions.

One of the reasons for this is that along with all the famous people that have died in the last month, we've also had some family friends or friends of family pass away recently and maybe it's the thought of if anything happened to me now I'd be leaving the Little One alone.

So we’re at 35 weeks today and it’s freaking me out just a little bit that our baby could quite perceivably arrive THIS MONTH!

The Wife’s been off to the midwife this morning and we’ve been recommended to book an appointment to look around the midwife birthing centre. Although our consultant has said that he’d rather we went through the consultant-led department.

Apparently the midwife one is a lot nicer and gives you more options such as water birth, if we decide that’s what we want.

29/01/16 - 34W4D

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks with shopping, NCT classes and the MRI scan and we’re into the last 5 weeks of this pregnancy journey.

The Wife has started getting swolen ankles which she's not happy about. She'd managed not to get any sickness early on in the pregnancy, had missed out on cravings and no she's got fat cankles! Her fingers also got swollen one day and she had to take her rings off but luckily that only lasted a day or two.