would anyone be surprised if I said we’re *still* here?

19/10/2009·public·171 visits · notify me ?

we are. we have not moved anywhere at all yet. 12 days of being packed and ready to drop everything and go. Suppose I can’t really get much sympathy from a load of pregnant women approaching their due dates though haha!!! Well at least one aspect of the last bit of my pregnancy I’m still getting to experience, fabulous.I did ask the nurses what happens next, what happens if a cot doesn’t become available but they were suitably vague, said they’d just keep phoning every day. I’m trying not to worry about it, they seem confident that a cot will appear, but I’m starting to doubt it a little. One must come available at some point I suppose, bah. Trying not to worry about how the wait will affect Ivy, they don’t want to start feeds until her belly has been sorted really, and my poor little chick seems so hungry. Bless her poor poppet! But with each passing day that she’s not being treated, her going home date is going back, yeah I know we don’t have a ‘going home’ date as such, but it’s still going to delay things. So much for aiming for her due date, it seems really unlikely we’ll be home by the 28th its less than 10 days! Boo.

Ivy is still in ICU, though she has ditched her antibiotics now! Hooray! infection 2 cleared, well done poppet! Not really much to say further than that.

Just this interminable bloody waiting! Starting to send me bonkers I think.

pixiejo · you!
Updated 19/10/2009

Aw bless you Karen!!!

Yeah I must admit to being a teency bit jealous of all those lovely ladies getting to take their babies home when 9 and a half weeks in I still have to ask permission to get a cuddle and don’t get to every day 😦 Aaah our times will come!!! Waiting sucks!

Jo x

pixiejo · you!
Updated 19/10/2009

So much waiting with these babies!!! Hope the next couple of weeks goes quickly for you Antonella!

Until the babies and the cuddles come, chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate!! No point dieting before Xmas after all!! 🙂

Jo x

pixiejo · you!
Updated 21 hours ago

Heard today they’re going to start giving Ivy 0.5mil of milk every 6 hours; more of a tease than food really, bless her! But it’s a start at least 🙂

Antonella, there are crisps if you prefer! 😉 hee!

Jo, you’re right it is a long time, haven’t been able to do a proper shop for a fortnight just in case – amazing how buying little bits to last a couple of days costs so much more! I was thinking of just going to Bristol and plonking my big, fat, post pregnancy bottom down the moment anyone moves an inch to bagsy the space for Ivy. But I know that really all the cots are being taken by babies with more urgent problems and I’d feel awful for them if I did that! So indeed fingers crossed for a quick recovery for some gorgeous little mite to go home with their mum!!! 😀

Hope you’re all well lovelies xxxx

Jo x

The feeding question

5/10/2009·public·173 visits · notify me ?

I am mainly noting all these thoughts here so I can refer back to it when I get questioned on my choices and inevitably when I worry that I have made the wrong decision 🙂

After much discussion with DH we decided that Ivy will be a bottle fed baby. Don’t get me wrong I really, really wanted to breast feed Ivy, same as I really, really wanted to breastfeed Violet but looking at it practically and pragmatically I don’t think it’s going to be the best course of action for us as a family. Yes breastfeeding when we get home would be wonderful and much easier, no sterilising, little Ivy burning off at least 500 of my calories every day, not having to get up and wander about making up bottles in the middle of the night…..but it’s not as simple as that. I so wanted to be the happy hippy mum, and I thought that as my mum had had 6 of us with no troubles and breast fed and cloth bummed us all that I would be able to. I never questioned it to be honest. And well NNU has got to be the least hippy place in the whole damn world!

If I want to breast feed Ivy, then I will need to be there for more than one feed a day, every day once she starts rooting around looking for milk. (which she already is!) Of course I would LOVE to be there all day and night for her, but it’s simply not possible, even if we went back to having Violet babysat a lot, all our babysitters work – some during the day and some at night, either way making them unavailable to look after Violet during the day. And the hospital is too far away to nip back and forth for feeds. Initially I thought, well we can sort that out when I room in just before discharge, and I know that many mums manage just with that. But it didn’t work with Violet, I roomed in for a fortnight trying to get her to breastfeed at every feed and she was having none of it! Not once, and we had lots of help from breastfeeding experts and nurses and everyone, Violet simply was not going to breastfeed. We don’t have the luxury of that amount of time this time, even if DH could get that amount of time off work to look after Violet, we don’t want to use it all before Ivy comes home.

I know it sounds selfish but I don’t want to delay Ivy’s discharge for the sake of feeding in the way Violets was delayed. Violet could have come home nearly a fortnight before she did. If all else is fine then I want Ivy home, obviously!

And most importantly I suppose, my let down reflex has pretty much gone, and as my previous journals attest, my periods are back, 😦 I want to make this decision before my body takes the option away from me, which it looks like it’s going to. It’s certainly exactly how it all happened last time, once the let-down reflex had gone my supply never recovered, not with all the fenugreek in the world! And yes I know that skin to skin contact and attempting to breastfeed can bring it back and do magic things, but that takes me back to the time issue, when?

I am trying to console myself with the fact that she has only had my milk for her first 2 months; and there are 3 shelves full of frozen milk at her disposal too. As well as anything else I can get frozen in the meantime. It seems to matter so much right now, and it seemed to matter even more when Violet was tiny, but I realise now Violet’s a toddler, that in the long run, it doesn’t matter! She won’t remember or think badly of me whatever way I feed her, so long as I do. I have just called up for my morning update too, Ivy’s on 2 hourly feeds at the moment and was rooting around for milk this morning, so one of the lovely nurses (in fact the same lady who helped out when I caved and gave Violet a bottle!) offered Ivy a bottle, she had half of her feed from it! Awesome for a first go! I feel so much better that Ivy can get a bit of practice feeding while I’m not there, for even if my visit coincides with her feeds, she is often still sleeping and so it’ll all go down the tube. Who knows how long it would’ve been before she’d have had a shot at boob? So, another babystep closer to home 🙂

Baby’s really do enjoy messing with all your well thought out and laid down plans don’t they? Mine certainly do!

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html

A very quiet Hooray!

I daren’t go for a huge Hooray in case somehow I celebrate too loud and break it… But for the last 2 days ivy has returned to high dependency! It is so much nicer there, they have a radio, comfy chairs and everything! Just don’t quite believe she’s back there, it’s fab but just don’t quite feel comfortable really celebrating it a second time round. Don’t know if it makes sense really. Hmmm. Maybe it’s having our bubble burst once already or maybe it’s meeting other babies and parents. Ivy’s neighbour when she was in hdu last time had been doing really well, there was talk of the ‘h’ word we all wanna hear. And she’s just been transferred via intensive care to a different bigger hospital, it’ll be the third time she’s been. Just awful to go from planning homecoming to having such a leap backwards. My heart goes out to them 😦 ivy is doing really well though! The thing they measure in her blood (crp) has come right down, though not gone yet and she’s now on 4mils of milk an hour! And in clothes! She’s such a wee star! But somehow all going well seems to worry me more. Blah, think I just need much more sleep!!! Anyway hope this makes sense, updating from phone means I can’t proof read… Sorry if it makes no sense at all 🙂

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html

thanks guys!!!!

26/08/2009·public·212 visits · notify me ?

Thanks again for all your messages you lovely ladies you!!I It’s really nice to come on here and share all this with you! cos while everyone in real life is interested, I’m spending as much time trying to sort out babysitting for Violet, which is really making my head hurt! I don’t have enough brain for all this organising-ness! I’m trying to keep up with how you’re all cooking, hopefully things will settle in something more of a rhythm now and I’ll be able to actually read more than a page of the board a day!

Ivy is still doing fabulously, whenever they change her nappy now she has a bit of time off CPAP altogether breathing all by herself, so when we visited last night we got to see her little face for the first time! Hooray! 😀 And I got to change a nappy which was very exciting, I had forgotten how sticky and grim meconium was, it was so nice of her to leave me a present…..Quite a change from changing a 2 year old! And changing a baby in an incubator is like something off the Krypton Factor or Crystal Maze maybe, I’m glad I had so much practice last time with Violet!

And she’s much more awake now she’s off morphine and on caffeine, I suppose that goes without saying really huh? I got a good staring at today, bless her! Her eyes have no colour yet, another thing I’d forgotten about. She is still really rather grumpy, she has the smallest, cutest most pathetic cry I have ever heard. Cuter than kittens. If she has a good day today hopefully we’ll have our first cuddles tonight!!! Super excited! And terrified I’m going to drop her or squash her or something….AND she’s having her first drops of milk today too, just half a mil every 6 hours, barely a droplet really! She seems really hungry though, chewing away the tube down to her stomach (to stop her getting too full of wind with the CPAP) and I swear she’d eat the damp cotton buds we clean her mouth with if she had the strength to get it out of my hand!

Can’t believe we;re here to be honest. This time a fortnight ago I had no idea this was all coming, and then she was so poorly I didn’t even want to contemplate that we may be lucky enough to get here, never mind this quickly! 😀

I’m currently putting off sorting out my wardrobe and stuff, for I am happy, why break the good mood? I have to get rid of all the maternity clothes and other bits and bobs I’d got 😦 I’ve been advised not to have anymore babies so there isnt any point in keeping it for another time. In a way I’m quite sad to find that I fit back into my favourite jeans already (no other trousers tho!), stress is my wardrobe’s friend. Meh, ho hum. I have my 2 beautiful princesses and will have to talk my siblings into providing them with cousins from now on 😀

Anyway I have to go express again. I feel like a cow!

pixiejo · you!
Updated 26/08/2009

HIya hon! It does seem a while away, we;ve been told not to expect Ivy home until around her due date either, certainly Violet only came home 4 days before her due date just hoping it wont be later than that!

And as my hubby said, it’s Septmeber on tuesday (wah where did August go??), and it’s a short month (so he says) and in October there’s Halloween and things to keep us busy, so hopefully it’ll go by quickly! 🙂

Jo x

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html