Welcome to Harrison Donald Tomecek, born 5.8.14.

So besides my pre-scheduled design team post it's been a bit quite here on my blog. Regular followers will probably have been able to guess why: I gave birth! Even though my due date was 20.8.14, little Harrison didn't want to wait and was born on 5.8.14.

 

 

My waters broke around 4pm on 4.8.14 however I was not experiencing any contractions. After calling the hospital and confirming I had likely had my waters brake, I drove myself into hospital still partially expecting them to tell me I had wet myself when I got there and have them send me home. :) Instead, they set me up in a birthing suite and said I should settle in for the night. I tried to contact Ben to update him, however the battery on his phone had gone flat so I didn't get a hold of him for another hour. He did sound sufficiently guilty over the phone once I did speak with him.

 

At 8.30pm the on-call OB came to see me as contractions still had not started. We decided to wait overnight to see if things would progress naturally. By 11pm I had been having severe back pain for a while and decided to ask the midwife for some pain medication. She performed an examination and discovered I was actually 7cm dilated! Unfortunately, we didn't progress too much further during the course of the rest of the night. My OB saw me around 8am Tuesday morning and determine I was 9cm dilated however baby's head had not descended. He went to perform another induction and returned at 10am. We discovered I was fully dilated however baby hadn't moved and appeared to be stuck on the 'spines'. Dr Bopp advised me of my options, however given Harrison was starting to show signs of distress we chose to proceed with an emergency C-section delivery and he was born at 11.15am (19 hours after my waters broke).

 

 We spent five days in hospital recovering and were hopeful of a smooth transition to home when discharged on 10.8.14. Unfortunately, I developed a serious case of mastitis and was re-admitted to hospital on 11.8.14. We needed to stay in for three nights for the IV antibiotics to kick in and were discharged on 14.8.14. We then had another flair up within 36 hours, which we are currently managing at home with the assistance of our GP. The blood work has indicated the second bout is more intense than the first, however luckily it didn't come with the fever the first bout did.

 

 In addition, Harrison does not sleep well during the night resulting in me achieving three hours sleep per night on average since his birth. There is limited opportunity to catch up in this during the day due to the feeling/expressing schedule we are using to treat the mastitis. Harrison is also struggling with latching during feeding so he has not put on any weight since initially being discharged from hospital. We have another check up tomorrow with a midwife and I have my fingers crossed he will have gained some weight. It will probably continue to be pretty quiet around here until we can get all the health dramas worked out and settle into a new routine.

 

Photos of little Harrison from 8.8.14, 11.8.14, 13.8.14 and 24.8.14.