Introducing Amelia Katie Manley

On 18th May 2013 at 2.11am we welcome into the world our mini Manley weighing an impressive 7lb13oz. I thought she would be smaller considering I'd been ill but she obviously got all that she needed, which is great. 

It was a long and difficult labour, I was induced early due to sickness so she obviously wasn't ready to come out into the world. Induction started on Tuesday afternoon and by Friday morning we thought we'd have to give in and have an emergency C-Section as my body wasn't responding enough. However, overnight on Thursday my body changed it's mind and on Friday my waters were reachable and broken. The idea is that this starts off contractions, however, again my body had other ideas and refused to respond. It was decided I would have a drip of hormones to speed things up and I spent the day being forced into labour. I very quickly needed an epidural, as expected, as I had no strength left in me after months of sickness. Finally by 12pm I was at the pushing stage but this time Amelia had different ideas and decided to get stuck. By 2am I needed help so with the help of a vorteuse she arrived at 2.11am. 

I had a temperature during labour so Amelia had to be checked very quickly to make sure she was ok. She also had a kind of rasping noise which apparently was a respiratory problem. She was given to Gary for skin to skin contact to see if that helped, unfortunately it didn't so she had to go upstairs and be checked over in the baby unit. Apparently the rasping stopped once she was in the heat but she was given a check over and a dose of antibiotics. She had to continue on the antibiotics for 48 hours meanwhile they checked her bloods. Unfortunately she had an infection marker in her blood that was much higher than normal, this meant that she then had to have a 5 day course of antibiotics instead. They were worried about how high it was and there was talk about a lumbar puncture but fortunately the levels went down and that risk was diverted. From these blood tests, and her colour, it was also determined that she was jaundice so then had to spend around 24 hours in the light box to reduce this. Finally by Tuesday we were told that she was improving and if the blood tests came back ok we would be allowed to go home a little early and miss the final dose of antibiotics, which meant we could go home on Wednesday not Thursday. Wednesday after lunch we were told that everything was fine, all levels were reducing and they were happy for us to leave, hooray!! 

Little Manley

As for me, I was exhausted after 2 hours of trying to push her out. After this I had a bleed, I don't really know what happened but I lost a fair bit of blood and was surrounded by a team of people trying to patch me up and stop it. I was pumped full of drugs to contract my uterus and given a painful massage. It was a bit scary as we didn't really know what was happening but after a while they got it all under control and I was told it was all fine. I threw up after this which really upset me because I thought it would all be over, but we were told it was the drugs. After this I felt pretty awful and out of it and I ended up sleeping for a few hours. When I came to I felt much much better and was in a calmer room with Gary, Mia and my mum. At last I was able to hold her and get a cuddle and find out what had happened to her. After this I felt great, no longer sick and able to eat. I felt tired but thought this was really due to the complete lack of sleep I'd had in the previous week. However, I had iron levels test and it turns out they were very low, I needed to have a blood transfusion of 2 units over the space of 5 hours. Once I'd had this I felt a load better, I couldn't believe there was a better!! At this point I was fit and would have been discharged if Mia was OK. Turns out my iron levels are still low and I'm on iron tablets to bring it up. Now I'm also on antibiotics for a UTI but I basically feel full of energy. 

So how are we now? We are both home and settling into life at home. It's nice to be able to get out and about as well. We've managed a trip to Brighton for some shopping and a trip to the doctors to register. We had a lovely photo session yesterday, in which Mia refused to sleep, but hopefully we got some lovely photos. I'm back in my pre-pregnancy jeans, ok so they were big before but still, I managed an hour or so at the allotment earlier by myself getting lots done. I could have done more but decided to come back home to Amelia and not completely wear myself out. I have a gorgeous daughter, who is mostly very easy. She sleeps through the night just waking up for feeds and settles very easily. Except when the camera is pointing at her! I don't feel sick any more and mentally feel back on track. We are now looking forward to the future together as a family and I'm looking forward to adding lots of lovely bits and pieces to this blog :)

Daddy and MM