A Good Birth Story #2!

So, lets start at the beginning... I think it is important to document positive birth stories. When you are pregnant you are bombarded by horror stories; from well meaning family, friends, complete strangers etc. as well as on social media and the numerous parenting forums. As a person who is classed as high risk due to a raised BMI there is also the added pressure and guilt of the extra risks you are putting on you and your baby. Before my first son was born I was convinced that I was too fat to have a good birth, I was definitely going to have my own horror story to tell. But if you would like to revisit my previous post 'A Good Birth Story!' you will see that I had an almost textbook labour and birth, with only gas and air, which lasted around 8 hours.

Anyway, I again headed towards my due date drowning in horror stories and guilt; although maybe with a little more faith that I could have an easy labour - if conditions were favourable. Baby was due on 9th September, I had my final consultant review on the 7th. I saw a very thorough and efficient Middle Grade who surprised me with the offer of a sweep that very day. I was slightly horrified as I had not prepared the old vag for public display, I didn't even have a wet wipe with me!! I did however have a wild 3 year old and no responsible adult! So, Casper sat by my head, held my hand and asked appropriate questions ("Where are your pants Mummy?"), the news was good though, my cervix was looking "...very favourable...". Thank goodness for nursing keeping me on my feet and working that cervix hard!

That evening and night I thought I was having stronger Braxton Hicks that normal, but essentially ignored them. They did, however, become stronger and more regular, and at around 2am I got up for a wee and the lovely mucous plug evacuated the building, swiftly followed by some spurts of amniotic fluid. Contractions were still very mild and irregular so I attempted to sleep until I couldn't ignore them, at around 4am I rang the labour ward to inform them about the events of the night and warn them of my previous quick labour. They advised to come in when contractions were regularly 5 mins apart - the usual advice. At 6am I decided we should start to make a move to avoid the morning traffic so I woke the Man, rang my mother to come to sit with Casper.

On arrival at the hospital labour had slowed right down so I felt like a fraud, but they hooked me up to their contraction monitor, took some swabs to check if my waters had really broken (they had!!), established that I was only 3cm dilated,  and brought in every passing doctor they could find - the night doc, the day doc, the consultant and his herd of juniors and a lovely anaesthetist who I used to work with. I had a lovely, and very thorough midwife who was concerned about some mild deceleration of the babies heartbeat around my contraction. No one else was concerned, and it turned out not to be an issue but the consultant wanted me kept on the monitor just in case. This was rather fortuitous because they had been muttering about sending me home, I advised against this due to the speed of arrival of Baby #1. Jokes were made that maybe Baby would be here before the lunch trolley...

At about 10am I asked to be allowed to walk around to try and get things moving. I was granted one hour off the machine as baby seemed to be behaving! So I paced, rocked, lunged and moaned my way through stronger contractions until I had to get back on the bed so I could use the gas and air - it makes me feel like I will fall over so I voluntarily got back on the bed. At 11am the midwife returned and looked pleased that I now appeared to be in active labour she hooked me back up the monitor and suggested another to internal exam to assess how dilated I was. She went to get a senior midwife to assist and to look at the monitor as a fresh pair of eyes (standard practice in midwifery I gather), when she returned at 11.30, she gasped and exclaimed "You're going to have a baby!". I was under the impression that that was what I was there for, so wasn't too shocked. Various trolleys were brought in and a very useless cannula was inserted, and promptly fell out again. The instruction to "...push when I felt I needed to..." was called and I pushed as I had been trying not to for a while due to being on my own! 

At 11.45 (just before lunch at 12!) beautiful Baby Felix was born weighing a healthy 8lb 8.5oz (thank goodness he wasn't late), with everyone looking a bit shocked. I can not describe that feeling when you do that final push and the baby slides out, the relief is like nothing on earth, I'm sure it's why some people get addicted to having babies! And with that, the world's hungriest baby was placed on my chest already sucking his hand to tell me how starving he was, unlike his brother who had to be woken for his first feed. We managed to 'wait for white' (delayed cord clamping) to allow the blood in the cord to flow back into the babies circulation before I had the syntocinon injection to deliver the placenta. Due to my raised BMI and a previous very minor post-partum haemorrhage I was worried they would say I was too high risk to delay getting the placenta out, but both the midwives were really positive and enabled us to see how it went - obviously I had said that if it looked like there was issues then just do what ever needed to be done. I fed Felix while an efficient but obviously non-vagina owning doctor stitched me up, and we waited for our first visitors - Nanny (my Mum) and a very proud Casper!

Compared to my first labour I felt much more in control, and
the pushing stage wasn't such a rush - Casper flew out AT SPEED! Because I got to the hospital earlier I was able to communicate my wishes much better, and the journey in was much more pleasant. It just seemed like the second birth wasn't such a shock to the system; I was up at about by the time Mum arrived (much to her surprise) and we were discharged that evening with feeding already well established. Both labours were a similar length, and I used the same pain relief, but the second one seemed much more gentle and I felt more present and involved in the whole process. Bring on #3 hey??!

Blog Motivation!

I have just noticed that it has been a year since I last wrote a blog post - how blooming awful of me! I do have a tendency to start things and not follow them through, please refer to my thousands of failed diets, countless money making schemes and my son's baby book. But I want to keep this blog alive and so have decided to restart it at a point in my life when I have some big changes happening.

The first and biggest is that I am currently on maternity leave, awaiting (not very patiently) the arrival of our second child. I will use this to inspire posts related to the challenges of increasing our family size and the changing dynamics of becoming a 2 child family - I don't think Casper has any idea of the impact that Hurricane Baby will cause!

Secondly, I have just turned 30. It doesn't seem so bad when I say it quickly! This has made me feel more motivated than ever to sort my life out in regards to my weight. I can not waste another 15 years feeling miserable about my body. I am going to avoid 'dieting' - it is a vicious cycle which inevitably leads to failure for me. I will be focusing on healthy eating, and living a moderate life style. I plan to purchase a fitness tracker with my birthday money and will aim to get moving everyday once the baby is here. I do not expect this to be a quick process, but I will be using the public forum of this blog to document my progress and motivate me to keep going.

Thirdly, I want to make a dent in our household debt with the aim to make us a mortgage-able as possible, and potentially start saving for a wedding... This may not be entirely possible while on mat. leave, but I shall certainly be making an effort! Watch out for some more, rather boring posts regarding this!!

So, let's do this! I hope that at least some of what I write about will be interesting to you, please comment, like, share etc. I will crave human interaction while I'm not working!!! xxx

The Body Cofidence Program - Week 8 & Beyond!

Many apologies for the delay in writing this final post - what can I say? My old laptop died and I had to buy a new one, but here we are all sorted and ready to go!

It has now been a few weeks since I completed The Body Confidence Program and I have had a chance to reflect on how it all went and the changes I have made to my life since finishing it. I reduced by over 30 inches which was so much more than I ever imagined that I would have done so that feels amazing and is a huge motivator to continue the healthy habits that the program teaches you.

I now limit my snacking between meals, and tend to opt for a protein based snack with some fruit/veg. I don't crave sweet things so much, especially after my evening meal as I had been in the habit of eating something sweet every night after dinner; but now I stop eating after my last meal of the day - I could never quite manage to have my last meal at 7pm though! I blame shift work!

I am currently working through a couch to 5K program and feel like I have much more energy and motivation. Before starting the program I had been very lethargic - napping almost everyday that I didn't work when Casper did. Now, unless I am working nights I rarely feel
that I need a nap in the day. I continue to struggle with early nights, but I am working on it...

I dropped a dress size and definitely feel more confident in my own skin - I don't feel like I need to apologise so much for taking up space in the world. I feel less self-destructive and like I deserve to eat well and look after myself properly which are huge mind shifts for me!

Ru-Tee is a force of nature! I am so thankful to her and the time she gave to me. I continue to be inspired be her advice and passion - she has helped me so much to get out of a rut that was ruining my life, relationships and mental health. There is still much to work on both physically and mentally but I feel like I have broken through the barrier that was holding me back.

The Body Confidence Program - Week 6 & 7!

Apologies for missing a week - what can I say? My organisational skills are below par! I have had two good weeks though and this post is all about positivity to balance out last weeks miserableness; I reduced by 3 inches in week 5 and 4.25 inches in week 6 which gives me a total reduction so far of 29.5 inches!!! This is absolutely incredible and here are the good things I have noticed and positive changes I have made while on the program:

• Clothes that were previously tight and uncomfortable are now looser and much more comfortable.
• I have voluntarily exercised at last once a week, sometimes two, for the last few weeks. I aim to increase to three sessions a week but this is already such an improvement on before and highlights the increase in my energy levels.
• I rarely crave sweet things and often pick nuts and fruit as a snack even on treat days!
• I am now happy to eat the last meal of the day and then not eat again until the morning - I had got in the habit of always having something sweet after dinner and then picking at snack food until bedtime.

I have two weeks left on the program so I need to stay focused and keep going all the way to the end. I plan to get back to using the meal planner as I have been making up my own meals from the food list, My main goal now though is to actually be nice to myself and be proud of what I have achieved without letting my negative internal dialogue win and set me on my usual self destructive dieting cycle!

The Body Confidence Program - Week 5.

I had a much better week than I expected and lost 5.25 inches, giving me a total reduction of 22.25 inches at the halfway point. I am obviously delighted by this but I am also feeling a bit low this week for these reasons:

1. I have lost more inches than the program promises but I certainly haven't lost any dress sizes. My clothes feel like they fit better but I am not going to fit in a smaller size any time soon.
2. I don't feel any different,no one has said that I look any different and I can't see much difference in the pics I took to compare with the start. I guess I just set unrealistic expectations for how I would look by the time I had lost 16 inches.
3. The number on the scales hasn't changed at all. I know that Ru-Tee doesn't like you to weigh yourself until the end of the 8 weeks but it is a hard habit to break for me - I have managed to limit myself to one weigh a week though which is a great improvement. I was just hoping to have lost actual weight by now, especially as I have 8 stone to lose, there is no way that I will drop dress sizes without losing weight.

So all in all I am going into week 5 feeling very unmotivated - I will need to sort my head out, and quickly if I am to avoid throwing away my good work up to this point.

(Apologies for no pics - technical issues I'm afraid!)

The Body Confidence Program - Week 4

Week 3 has been my most difficult on the program so far. I have returned to work and got a dental abscess which has greatly reduced the types of food I could eat- anything cold was too much for my already sensitive teeth. I picked at off plan foods on everyday because I wasn't sticking to the eating every 4 hours rule so my blood sugars were fluctuating and I was drawn to easy, sugary foods. But, after saying all that I still reduced by 3 inches! My total after 3 weeks is 17 inches so I am looking at week 4 as a new week, no more rubbish excuses.

I am becoming a little disheartened that even though I have reduced by the 16 inches the program promises I am not feeling any different. I am definitely not 2 dress sizes smaller, I suspect this is because I am much bigger than the average program user so have much more to lose. I think I will do an interim before and after picture at the end of week 4 to try and spot the differences.

I have purchased a treadmill - or a run-miller as Casper calls it! I have started the couch to 5k program using an app on my phone and it hasn't been too awful so far...so it is all positive and I must have more energy because I wouldn't have managed to motivate myself to even try a few weeks ago.

The Body Confidence Program- Week 3

So, this post is rather late because of night shifts and dental abscesses! But at the end of week 2 I have reduced by 10 inches!!! TEN FREAKING INCHES! Understandably I am very pleased, but I am getting impatient that my clothes don't really feel any different yet, but as The Man keeps telling me - just keep going, it's all going in the right direction.

I have been enjoying the food and am even eating tomatoes - I have hated tomatoes my whole life! I have struggled more to be really strict with the rules which is an ongoing pattern with me and diets, so I need to try really hard to keep my head in the game going in to week 3.

My other goal this week was to get more exercise in to my life. So Casper and I have been on some lovely walks when it has been sunny and I have purchased a treadmill for rainy days. I have noticed that my energy levels have been improving but I am unsure if this is because I have been on annual leave so haven't worked a night shift for two weeks....

I am back to work this week so I will have to up my organisation game to ensure I stick to the meal plan and don't slip back into bad habits. Wish me luck!