Pregnancy and me

We are strong 💪 and brave 👏. Shout out to all mothers! whether you are thinking of it, planning it, expecting it or already are. (biological or adopted, we are all brave!!!)

It isn’t an easy task, it comes with it’s risk (pregnancy) and fun as well as challenges (tantrums) but we never think about the risk or tantrums.

Some women have it so easy or make it seem so easy. However it is not often like that.

I told you I was going to share my life story with you, now here is the first of it.

Prior to having kids, I was told I had ovarian cyst, I had scans and series of blood test. I taught conceiving would be very difficult. When I found out I was pregnant with my first. I was over the moon.

Prior to finding out, I wasn’t planning for a baby. In fact, having a baby or trying to be pregnant wasn’t in my list of things. I went on night out for a friend’s birthday and we all had so much fun that we had to do a repeat a few weeks after.

I never felt sick, I was normal as can be. Planning my wedding away 😃😃(which was a month away). That afternoon my fiancé asked, are you sure you are not pregnant? Refering to my enlarging boobs. My reply was no, I’m taking tablets for those boobs and it is just the tablets working 🙈🙈(you can think it but don’t say it out 😂😂) and I will prove it to you because he had asked a few times before. I went for a pregnancy test with the little packs sold in shops. To my surprise it read positive.

I said to myself that can’t be. It must be faulty. I went back to the shop and bought a twin pack just incase one was faulty and both tested positive 😶.

Didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, jump with joy or cry. But I definitely knew that I would do everything to make it work. I panicked a little, hoping the baby was alright considering recent events (my night out) . I called my doctor who referred me to my local midwives. I shared my news of being pregnant and my recent night outs.

They told me my baby should be alright. At the early stage, the baby doesn’t feed from me. She said, “What you don’t know, won’t harm you”. And yes, she was right, my baby was alright.

Here he is on my first scan: he was helping himself to a drink 😂. If only they do videos and not picture.

I just couldn’t wait to find out the sex of the baby. Second scan confirmed it was a boy 🙌

Goodness I became an instant shopaholic, didn’t miss walking through the kids section and picking something on everything food shopping trip. I had to discipline myself to picking 1 item only each time 🙈.

Am I the only one or did you have the same experience, please share it with me in the comment section.

I got a surprise baby shower and got all the love I never knew revolved around me. I’m till this day grateful for.

Labour

That faithful morning, I start contracting, I called the hospital and informed them. They told me it was early signs of labour, they said I can start making my way to the hospital when my contraction became 5mins apart and last 60secs. I said to myself, that ain’t happening anytime soon. Told my worried husband that he was ok to go to work. My thought was, I’ll be here for a few days and I was meant to see my midwife later that day.

Minutes after my husband left for work, my contractions started becoming more frequent just as the hospital described. I called my husband and he was 45mins away from home. I thought to myself I cant risk it, I live on the 20th floor and can’t call for help from up here. It will be quicker to drive myself and there will surely be a doctor or an experienced person on the road to help if baby started to make his way out.

I drove myself to the hospital. At the hospital they took me to the labour room. They checked my blood pressure which was high and they ran some blood test.

I was pre-eclampsia. I will explain what this means in detail at the end.

Pre-eclampsia meant I was at risk (in my case, my liver function was low), so my baby needed to be delivered ASAP.

However, at this point my contractions had started to reduce. So, I was booked in for induction at St Mary’s hospital in Manchester and was induced later that night to have my baby.

I didn’t actually note how long but it was a long night, and I thought it was still night time until I saw the time of birth stamp which said 2.30pm.

I probably cheated by using epidoral 🙈. I had needles going in and out for different blood test and for a person like me who has stubborn veins that won’t give blood instantly, I just couldn’t cope with the needles as well as labour when my induction started, I tried Gas and Air which didn’t get me anywhere.

I told my midwife I just couldn’t bear anymore pain and they offered other options and I went for the ultimate pain relief – Epidoral. So I cannot tell you about labour pain because mine was the early contractions 🙈. If your experience is different to mine, please share it with me on the comments section 😁.

The moment of panic

My son’s heart rate started reducing, apparently it should increase at every contraction but his was going down instead, I was very determined to have a normal delivery, however, if his head wasn’t out any time soon, it was going to be a cesarean section.

They had to take blood from my baby’s head to constantly check that he was OK, whilst I was pushing to get him out.

Thank goodness! I thought with a breath of relief. His head came forth and I was aided with forceps to push him out which was the happiest moment of my life.

Here he is 😃 our very first selfie 😜

Here is the definition of pre-eclampsia and a link which explains it in more detail. It is something to be aware of, because it can be life threatening, if it is not identified on time. Please share this post to help others learn about it. Thank you for spending your precious time with me. Please follow the blog for more interesting topics 🙂. I will also be sharing my experience with baby no. 2, follow the blog so that you don’t miss it.

“Pre-eclampsia is a condition that affects some pregnant women, usually during the second half of pregnancy (from around 20 weeks) or soon after their baby is delivered.”

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pre-eclampsia/