Saturday 11:52 am

In the midst of a small window where I'm awake enough to compose coherent sentences of bananas and fish, I figured I should post something . . .

Xander spent most of the last few days here with us, with regular visits to the nicu for things like help with breastfeeding, help with breastfeeding, and help with breastfeeding (seeing a pattern yet?). He's been well behaved and quiet, but he's been having issues latching to the nipple properly, and Sandra's had some issues helping him to latch. That said he's been having regular feeds from the breast, and happily eating from the bottle.

Later, at 9:20pm

We were moved to the postnatal ward this afternoon, where Sandra's been getting more assistance with feeding Xander, and more assistance with him in general - the postnatal ward is set up to deal with new parents, in a way the antenatal war isn't. Sandra's having more success feeding him now, and he's been discharged so we're completely responsible for him. It's rather nice, and we're coping pretty well, now that Sandra's more confident with the feeding. We're also getting better at other aspects of this parenthood thing, like settling him and dressing him. I just changed his clothes and wrapped him, and when he didn't want to settle I used my finger as a dummy - after a few minutes he was sleeping happily and I could (carefully) pull my finger out.

Before that moment I couldn't imagine putting my finger in a baby's mouth, let alone use it as a dummy - I've always found sticky things icky, so the idea wouldn't have occurred to me. But it was totally natural and not icky at all.

So yeah, things are settling down and I think they're looking good for the future.

A couple of things that I'm currently thinking of: spending a while in hospital is a quick sharp lesson in basic hygiene - I've washed my hands more often and more thoroughly than ever before on my life, and I've been constantly bombarded by hygiene related messages and dictums. To go onto the nicu you have to take off all jewelery and was your hands and forearms; one time I was asked to wear a facemask because of my cold. Unfortunately, the constant hand washing has resulted in extremely dry skin on my hands - so dry it's cracking and bleeding. I'm goingg to have to use some of Sandra's udder cream to make them less painful.

On the other hand being here has been really valuable. Being able to find a midwife and get a fairly authoritative answer to any questions, and help dealing with any problems, is really great.

Thursday 1:20 am

Almost too tired to post anything.

Alexander Henry Douglas Fowler was born at 23:08 on the 25th of August 2010, weighing 3740g and 40-something centimeters in length . . . And stuff. There's other stats about him, I'm sure, but I can't remember them. I'm sure they're written down somewhere.

Sandra's on morphine to deal with the caesarian pain, which seems to be harder to deal with than contractions. Possibly because of the nitrous, which seems to have been very effective.

Xander isn't with us because of the morphine Sandra got - it meant that he came out drugged, and had a little difficulty establishing breathing on his own. He was perfectly healthy otherwise, but the initial problems meant he had to go to a neonatal care unit for the night.

Unfortunately that meant Sandra hasn't been able to see him yet aside from right after he was pulled out, covered in blood and vernix. If he's okay in a few hours they may bring him down so she can see him - maybe even try feeding him.

So, I guess that means the labour part of the blog is done . . .

Wedmesday 10:53 pm

So, she's at 8cm dilation, but his head isn't fully past the brim of the pelvis (words from Ayesha - blame her for any errors ;-). So, they're doing a c-section. I'm waiting to be allowed in.

Wednesday 10:43 pm

Waiting is a bitch.

Wednesday 10:24 pm

I get to wear scrubs!

Sandra's in the or with Susie, I'm waiting outside to be called in. no idea what's happening aside from ghe gist of it.

Xander is fine, Susie reckons the cord is being constricted and that's what's causing the decelerations. I don't know what that means as far as c-section vs. vaginal vs. whatever, but I figure Susie knows . . .

All I can do o is wait.

Wednesday 5:14 pm

So, Sandra got the epidural and she's now happy in painless land.

The epidural was interesting, and rather quicker than I expected. It may have been helped by the fact Sandra was high on nitrous, though . . .

She's now happy, though the twin indignities of flatulence and a catheter are happening as I write this . . .

And in a nice bonus, we may not even have to pay for it!

Wednesday 3:41 pm

Well, Sandra's been back on nitrous for a few hours, since it's been far more effective than the morphine. Unfortunately she hasn't made any progress, so what they're talking about is giving her an epidural and upping the syntosin a whole lot more to try and get things moving . . .

The epidural is so that they can raise the syntosin to levels that would be unbearably painful otherwise. Not sure how I feel about that . . .

It doesn't help that Sandra is falling asleep between contractions, so she wakes up to them rather than being able to prepare - the nitrous takes a bit to kick in, so she really needs to start breathing it five or ten seconds before the contraction starts for it to be most effective. As it is it makes things bearable, but it would probably be more effective if she was awake to manage it better.

Wednesday 12:52 pm

Well, the nitrous is helping, but not enough at the moment, and she's not far enough along to have an epidural, so they're considering morphine.

Make that demanding morphine. Sandra, that is - the nursing staff demanding morphine would be a bit odd . . .

On top of that the ctg isn't registering her contractions, so we're going to have to time them manually. A lovely progression of events.

Wednesday 11:46 am

Sandra's started on the nitrous, and seems to be enjoying it . . . though I'm a little worried that she'll go a bit overboard and feel ill. In the antenatal classes the reckoned that was the biggest issue with people using nitrous, and that misuse was the reason people had bad experiences.

She's also had a foetal scalp monitor put in to track the baby's heart rate - they use a doppler mike normally, same as the little ones that midwives use and you can get pretty easily, but if they need to keep monitoring they'll use a more permanent option that directly measures heart rate via a probe that attaches to the baby's head. Since they're inducing her they need to keep her monitored, and she's dilated enough that they can get at his head.

She's not dilating all that fast, but at least the contractions are strong and coming at a good rate (good is four or less strong contractions in ten minutes). Though they seem to be coming a bit fast now - six in ten, so they may need to change things . . .

Probably another exam some time soonish, then discuss with Susie.

Wednesday 9:29 am

Bonnie's visiting, and they're busy trashing the whole birth thing. I'm not sure how else they expect to get rid of the parasites . . .

Maybe they don't consider a caesarian a me thod of giving birth?

Wednesday 9:06 am

There was a small issue with the line delivering the syntocin (yes, it's spelled that way, sorry to have gotten it wrong before, Sandra), but after replacing it everything's behaving. And now Sandra's started having strong contractions again! Yey!

Not that she'll agree that it's yey worthy . . .

Wednesday 8:50 am

By the way, she's apparently around 1cm dilation, and 80-90% effaced. Which Susie was quite happy with, so we're both happy with it. Or something.

Wednesday 8:06 am

So Sandra's being induced now - they've put in the iv line, and they're nearly ready to start running cyntocin through it. We had the tiniest of breakfasts (a bowl of cereal for Sandra and a couple of slices of cold dry white toast for me - they didn't have any butter, let alone vegemite, the bastards),  some coffee, and now Sandra's gone nil-by-mouth . . .

She's changed her mind about the pain relief stuff - she's gone from wanting an epidural as a last resort to probably having one not too long after she hits 3cm dilation . . . Which is fine, but I'm a little uncomfortable with it, since the epidural is a fairly big thing . . . Also, very expensive! (yes, I know that's a bad thing to be thinking about at a time like this, but it's hard not to when you know it'll cost $1500)

Anyway, they're giving her iv antibiotics (using a nifteh spring loaded syringe) and once that's done the cyntocin.

Susie just showed up. Sandra likes to call her a tiny little ninja - I love that description.

She seems quite happy with everything, and reckons we could wait another 24 hours before inducing, but she figured Sandra would be too impatient for that . . . In any case, the whole thing seems to be going well.

Tuesday 11:02 pm

I just had a really nerdy thought. When Xander is finally born, I'd collect half a dozen NMEA strings from my gps to record the exact time and place it happened. About as nerdy as it's possible to get, but maybe a little cool, too . . .

I doubt it'd be practical, though. Unless there was an app to handle it . . .

Tuesday 10:27 pm

Sandra just got drugged. She seems to be enjoying it . . .

She just got her first actual exam, and it showed that she's making some progress, but not much - her cervix isn't yet  fully effaced, but it's getting there. The fact that she's been at it for 16 hours now is a little problematic, though.

Because she's still got a way to go before she's in full labour they've given her some morphine and an anti-nausea drug, to make her sleep and not have a problem with pain (unless she does progress to full labour).

I'm staying here overnight (though I'll have to go home some time tomorrow to feed the animals), but for now I can be the dedicated husband ;-)

By the way, to any midwives reading this, please please PLEASE tell your patients what's going on. We had been waiting all day to know what was happening, and we only just got some information from the midwife who did the exam now. If someone had said hours ago that they had experience with how effective the TENS machine was, so they weren't just ignoring  us because Sandra was coping with the pain well due to the TENS, we'd have had rather more realistic expectations. Well, I would have - dunno about my drugged-up love.

Anyway, things are on hold now for the night - more to come in the morning.