This post will start you right from the beginning, starting before our beautiful Averly appeared and how she came into our world.
Like Wesley, Averly was a planned pregnancy and we were ecstatic it didn’t take long to conceive. We wanted our children close together as we both have siblings quite far apart. Even though Luke is so close to his brother, it was something we wanted to do. (Get the nappy and buggy stage out of the way in the beginning). We decided only on two children, mainly for practical reasons - one car and hopefully to be able to comfortably afford days out and holidays when possible! We’ll see about that in the future!
Wesley was born 10lb 11oz, so as you can imagine, the midwives were very careful with my pregnancy with Averly. Additional scans and checks and glucose tests to make sure things were all ok. Even though Wesley was born naturally I didn't think they wanted to risk anything! (Safe to say she was 8lb 6.5oz and shot out like a rocket!)
My pregnancy with Averly was exhausting, maybe because I had a two year old or whether it was because she was a girl! But the last two weeks of her in my tummy I ended up with Sciatica. I will never again underestimate anyone who complains with nerve, back or sciatic pain again. It was excruciating. I coped for a week living off paracetamol which I never do, and then the second week I headed up to the Midwifery Day Unit unable to cope anymore and hoped they’d tell me I was so far dilated and she was going to pop out there and then. But it turned out I was suffering with sciatica but also in slow labour. 1cm down and along way left. From that Monday I continued to contract every evening at tea time for about 2 hours and then it died off. I was going out of my mind.
Thursday was sweep day...hurray! And that got things moving until I had a bath and it all stopped again! More tears were shed. But the next morning we were good to go. We got Nainy (welsh version of Nana!) to come over to spend the day with Wesley, who was super excited and off we went to the local hospital at around 9:30am.
I had my dose of diamorphine to keep me going until the good stuff - the epidural, then it was fairly smooth sailing. Just a waiting game for her arrival. I’ll spare you the details of the gory bits but after a wobble with my epidural at 10cm and requiring more gas and air whilst they triple dosed the epidural which had stopped doing it’s job, Averly was out in about 3 pushes and she was just beautiful. Perfect in every way. So healthy and flawless - that moment is indescribable.
After having our moment gushing over our new addition we sensed a commotion about the placenta. I’d had the injecfion to help speed its escape but I don’t think that had helped. So after a lot of fuss they decided the only option was a trip to theatre for a manual removal with a spinal block. I think it was coming out in pieces and inside out as it was stuck to the uterus - yuk.
So a swift baby pass to Luke, I half concentrated on signing the permission form for the procedure and off I went. Over an hour passed of anxiety of wanting to get back then I’m finally reunited. Very breifly mind - Luke was allowed 5 minutes with us as he helped move all of our belongings to the ward then had to leave. So the ‘new baby moment bubble’ was well and truly popped. I was numb waist down so it was a challenge changing and feeding Averly for the first few hours but we managed with the help from the midwives.
Come the morning I was ready to get the catheter out, cannula out and get washed up. But communication wasn’t great and it turns out they thought that the spinal block meant c-section so were reluctant for me to be mobile (whereas I was itching to move!). Once the confusion was over I was stripped from the tubes and managed to get cleaned up a bit before Wesley came to meet his new baby sister...which was such a perfect moment!
It wasn't until around mid morning that my sciatica made a nasty return. I begged and pleaded with the staff to discharge me so I could at least try to get comfortable at home, with the help of Luke to feed and change Averly.
They allowed it and off we went, a new family as 4, Wesley kept an eye on his new baby sister for the whole journey home, clinging onto his new dinosaur toy which magically appeared from Averly with a balloon when she was born. He was so excited to get her home to show her to Millie and to show her all of his toys and even wanted her to go to bed with her that night. So through the sciatica and post labour aches and pains, it was the most special moment.
I’ll leave you here for this post as you know all about Averly’s arrival and I don’t want to ramble even more than I have done!
Danielle