Monday 10 December 2012

Baby Parfitt makes an appearance


Arlo Jonathan Parfitt was born nine days early at 11.12am on Monday September 17, weighing 5lbs 15oz and with a full head of magnificent blond hair. He was perfect.

But like my pregnancy, which was a massive surprise to both of us, Arlo’s birth did definitely not go the way we had planned.

On Thursday September 14, 13 days before my due date, I went to the doctor for my 38 week appointment. He took my blood pressure, tested my urine for protein – the usual drill – and everything was fine.

Off I went hoping that I wouldn’t have to see the midwife for my 40 week appointment as I was hoping the baby would arrive before then. Little did I know he would be arriving sooner than we realised.

On the Friday I started to feel a bit peculiar. I had a pain in the top right hand side of my abdomen which was more uncomfortable than anything else and made me feel queasy. I met a friend for lunch in a pub down the road but could barely eat what I had ordered as my appetite was gone.

I remember telling her I felt odd and said that maybe it was my body gearing up for labour.

By the Saturday the pain had worsened and I felt really crap so I spent most of the day on the sofa, apart from having a bath to try and relieve the discomfort, and ended up watching X Factor with a hot water bottle underneath my back.

The baby was still moving around so I wasn’t worried and went to bed. At about 1am on Sunday I woke up absolutely saturated with sweat. It was like I had had a bath in bed, everything was soaking, and I felt like I had a fever.

It is probably at this point that we should have gone to hospital but I decided that I would try and get back to sleep and hopefully I would feel better in the morning.

I woke up on Sunday and felt much better but by lunch time I was worried as I couldn’t feel the baby moving as much. Johnny had gone round to his mum and dad’s for a cup of coffee in the morning and when he got back we decided to call the hospital.

At this point I would like to say that the labour ward at the Royal Sussex County Hospital is amazing and the midwives were always supportive whenever we called with any worries (which we did a couple of times).

They said to come up at about 3.30pm and that they would monitor the baby’s heartbeat.

We decided we would leave the hospital bag I had packed at home as we would only be there for a couple of hours. How wrong we were.

It turned out that Arlo was absolutely fine, however, I wasn’t very well at all, although I didn’t know it at the time.

My blood pressure had been normal throughout pregnancy but on this occasion it was high. The midwife took my blood and this also came back with abnormal results, which included a low blood platelet count.

Within two hours of arriving in hospital they had put a band around my wrist and told me I would not be leaving hospital until my baby had been born.

Johnny went home and got the overnight bag and while he was gone I remember sitting on the gym ball in the room, looking out of the window, watching the flashing lights of the Palace Pier and thinking, ‘I am probably going to meet my baby tomorrow’. It was the most bizarre feeling.

We decided that Johnny should go home and get some sleep that night as Monday was likely to be a long day. Arlo was still breech but I was hoping I could still have the natural birth I wanted.

The night was long and I was extremely uncomfortable. I got up god knows how many times to go to the loo and then at 4.45am I felt something tickling the inside of my thigh, then wetness.

At first I thought I had wet myself but I soon realised that my waters must have broken. It wasn’t a huge gush, just a steady trickle.

I got up and told one of the midwives but it was another hour before anyone came to check on me.

I was pleased my contractions had started on their own because it meant that this baby was ready to be born and he wasn’t going to be brought into the world before he should be. The contractions weren’t too bad, just like having bad period cramps so no need for pain relief, and they were about nine minutes apart.

The midwife examined me and said I was only half a centimetre dilated but that hopefully I would be able to have the natural birth I wanted. She said the midwives on duty were getting excited because they didn’t get to see a natural breech birth very often and they all wanted to be involved.

At about 6.30am I called Johnny. More precisely, between 6.30am and 7am I called Johnny about 20 times until he woke up and answered the phone.

I told him my waters had broken and that I was having contractions. So he showered, had breakfast and made his way up to the hospital.

The midwife had taken more blood at 6am, my blood pressure was still high, and when the doctor came round at about 9am he told me that my platelet count was dangerously low and that I would have to have an emergency caesarean as this was safest for me and the baby. It turns out I was suffering from pre-eclampsia although I didn’t know it at the time.

It had probably started when I started to feel ill on Friday, which just goes to show how quickly you can go from being perfectly healthy to not very well at all.

More blood was taken and an hour later another doctor came in and told me I would have to have a caesarean under general anaesthetic. He said my low platelet count would affect the way my blood was clotting and that it was too risky for me to be awake during the procedure as if I was to have a heavy bleed they wouldn’t be able to put me under in time to save my life, and I would most likely bleed to death.

I’d never had an operation under a GA before and I was frightened. Within three quarters of an hour of being given this news I had been bumped up to the top of the list and was being taken to theatre.

Johnny was given scrubs to wear and although staff came in to wheel me to the operating theatre I asked if I could walk there as I knew I would be bed bound for a while afterwards.

I climbed on to the operating table and Johnny gave me a kiss and told me he loved me before being taken into the room next door. He wasn’t allowed to stay there while I was under a GA.

Another midwife called Cindy, who had started her shift that morning and was really lovely, asked me if I was ok and kept me calm. I think she could see how scared I was and I was desperately trying not to cry.

All I could think was that I was going to go to sleep in a minute and there was a chance I might never wake up, I might never meet my baby and I might never see Johnny again.

Poor Johnny on the other hand was sat in the recovery room on his own worried sick about the both of us.

The anaesthetist, who was also a lovely chap, talked me through what was happening and I remember talking about our honeymoon as I went under. I also remember trying to fight it as I really didn’t want to go to sleep.

About 20 minutes after the operation had begun, a doctor brought our son through to Johnny. He then had to wait another 50 minutes before I came out.

He said he could hear the couple who had been in the operating theatre before me, who were behind another curtain in the recovery room, cooing over their baby, but other than that he doesn’t remember much else apart from the anaesthetist coming in to tell him I was fine.

On the one hand he had his newborn son in his arms, but on the other his wife was still in the operating theatre undergoing major surgery.

I came into recovery at about midday. Johnny said the first thing I did was ask if Arlo was ok, then I asked if he was ok.

Sadly, I was so groggy from anaesthetic and morphine I don’t remember much about the day Arlo was born. There are pictures but I don’t remember them being taken.

The hospital notes said I breastfed him at 12.20pm (my son was an hour old before I met him for the first time) but I don’t remember doing this at all.

What I do remember is having a very sore throat and asking Johnny how much he weighed over and over again. I kept asking the nurse the same question about the drugs I was being given as I couldn’t remember the answer to anything.
 
I do remember telling me that Arlo had a squashed nose from where he'd been squidged up inside me but that it would right itself in a couple of days.

Johnny rang his family and mine to tell them the news, I also texted friends to let them know Arlo had been born, but I don’t remember doing that either.

I also felt like I couldn’t breathe, which was down to the morphine, so I was given oxygen. I was offered liquid morphine as pain relief if I wanted it after that but refused as it had made me feel so crap.

Fortunately I have a high pain threshold so just stuck to codeine and paracetamol in the days after my op.

We were taken back up to labour ward and the staff had put another bed in the room so Johnny could stay with me. They don’t normally do this but I was so ill I couldn’t do anything for Arlo apart from hold him. He was three days old before I changed his nappy for the first time, or dressed him. Johnny had to do it all.

I also struggled to feed him so he was cup fed with formula so that he got something until I was strong enough to get him to latch on properly.

This meant it took longer for my milk to come in and I subsequently spent every three hours in the breastfeeding room on the postnatal ward, for two days, attached to a breast pump expressing as much as possible to get my milk to come in.

On Tuesday morning the drugs line was taken out of my arm and my catheter was removed so I could get up and have a shower.

I stood under the water and although I was sore I felt really weak and just not right at all. I got dressed and then when I stood up my hearing went and everything sounded like I was under water. I also had spots in front of my eyes and thought I was going to faint.

I told Flo, the midwife looking after me that day, and she went to check on my blood which had been taken that morning. Five minutes later there was a hive of activity in the room.

I was told I would have to have the catheter reinserted and another line put in as I needed to be on a magnesium drip for 24 hours.

I had developed a life-threatening complication, a variant of pre-eclampsia, called HELLP Syndrome. Although it is dangerous, women who get it don’t usually feel that ill and although I felt unwell, I didn’t feel horrific.

It’s a good job I’m not afraid of needles because it took the doctor five attempts to get a line into me. She tried the backs of both hands (one of them twice), just above my wrist and then inside my arm where the elbow joint is before getting it in properly.

Meanwhile, there were several people setting up equipment and prodding and poking me to check how I was reacting to certain things.

I was told I would have to have a big dose of magnesium over five minutes before the drip went in. This was to stop me from having convulsions that would’ve put me into a coma and resulted in death.

Flo said I would feel like I was having hot flashes but I can honestly say it was the worst sensation I have ever felt in my life.

The only way I can describe it, is it was like being on fire but from the inside. I felt like if I’d opened my mouth I would have been able to breathe out roaring hot flames.

The only way I got through it was by describing what I could feel to Johnny and telling him I felt peculiar over and over again. It was awful.

The next 24 hours were spent attached to the drip, which tissued during the early hours of the morning, causing a huge lump in my arm where the magnesium had gone into the tissue under the skin rather than into my vein, so it had to be reinserted.

I was also on hourly observations for 24 hours which involved my blood pressure being taken, my urine being tested and my reflexes had also been affected by the HELLP Syndrome (this meant someone coming in and hitting various parts of my body with a rubber hammer every hour, and it usually took several attempts for them to get a reaction).

During the day I decided to look up HELLP Syndrome on the internet as I didn’t really understand what was wrong with me. It probably wasn’t the best idea as the first thing I read was that it had a 25% mortality rate. I remember turning to Johnny and telling him that I was actually more poorly than we had both realised.

Once again, Johnny had to do everything for Arlo because I could do nothing but hold him and try to feed him.

If I ever needed proof that my husband loved me this was it. He saw me at my very worst and he didn’t leave my side. I do not know what I would’ve done without him.

We eventually moved down to postnatal ward on Wednesday evening. Johnny wasn’t allowed to stay there and when he had to go at 9pm every day I hated it.

Arlo, who I thought was looking a bit yellow, was checked over by the paediatrician on the Thursday and found to have jaundice, so had to spend 36 hours having phototherapy which involved him lying on a small blue sunbed type contraption in his cot.

Although the staff are amazing and you get as much help as you need, postnatal ward is not a fun place to be. There are four women per room, which means babies are crying at all times of the day and night and you get no sleep.

Everyone in my room had had a caesarean. The woman next to me called the midwives at all times of the day and night, refusing to do anything for her own child, and a woman opposite me spent most of the time screaming about how much pain she was in. I’m probably going to sound terrible now, but my tolerance for people who’d had caesareans had diminished somewhat by this point considering what I had been through.

Yes, it is painful. Yes, you are sore and uncomfortable. But, in my opinion, it is by no means excruciating. I have always been of the mindset that if you dwell on pain and think that it is going to hurt then you make things so much worse for yourself. I tend to just get on with things and deal with it as I find it’s the best way of coping.

I couldn’t change what had, or was happening to me, so I went with it as I knew it wouldn’t last forever.

By Friday, not being able to go home was really getting to me and I ended up having a bit of a cry on Johnny and then on the phone to my mum. Not only that, you know that when the best choice on the hospital food menu that day is turkey lasagne (two words that should never be put together), it is time to go home.

Fortunately, both Arlo and I were well enough to leave by the Saturday and a week after arriving in hospital we both went home.

Arlo is now 12 weeks old exactly and so much has happened in that time.

I have written several blogs, including this one, in my head so many times but finding the time to get it all down is so hard. I started this one two weeks ago and have only just got around to finishing it.

I want to be able to write about all his little milestones before I forget. Like the fact that over the past week he has discovered his arms and hands are attached to him and we frequently catch him just staring at them. You can almost see his little brain working it all out. It’s lovely to watch.

But I am going to try and put the last 12 weeks into another blog which I hope won’t take me another 12 weeks to post.

I can honestly say that being a mother is the hardest thing I have ever done, but also the best, and I cannot imagine my life without my beautiful little boy.Hospital

No comments:

Post a Comment