NaBloPoMo

Musings on a Hospital Stay

Posted by cafebebemama on Nov 30, 2011 in Bebe, Blogger Love, Motherhood, NaBloPoMo | 8 comments

Last week I spent 6 1/2 days in our local hospital in preparation for the delivery of our gorgeous Sam. Until last week, I had never spent any time in hospital other than for the labour/delivery of Ella 3 1/2 years ago. Thankfully, Peterborough City Hospital is only just one year old. The hospital itself is HUGE! I checked in to Maternity Inpatients where they look after pre-labour situations, inductions and post-delivery patients. When I was transported from delivery theatre and recovery back to Maternity Inpatients I ended up slightly car sick thanks to the length of the journey!

I do have to commend Peterborough City Hospital staff, however. My stay in hospital was as pleasant as it could have possibly been. The meals were decent with plenty of gluten-free options and rather yummy puds. The wards were quite large with free televisions (albeit only terrestrial channels) and I can’t fault the cleanliness. When a patient left, within minutes there were several members of the cleaning crew who stripped the bedding, cleaned thoroughly around the bay and left a clean and ready bed in their wake.

In my pre-delivery days, I didn’t cause much trouble for the midwives/staff. Because there wasn’t much wrong with me I was pretty much left on my own which had it’s pros and cons. However, if I needed anything I only had to press my buzzer and someone came very quickly. My stay in the old Peterborough District Hospital was no where near as pleasant, that’s for sure. NHS money has been very well spent in Peterborough City Hospital. I never want to spend any time there again, however, as it’s just not fun to stay in any hospital. Unless it’s The Portland Hospital. I have a feeling it’s pretty fun to stay there.

One of the BEST parts of my stay at hospital was that after leaving recovery, I was transferred back to the Maternity Inpatients ward to fulfill the rest of my stay. Single rooms are available at Peterborough City Hospital (at a cost of £80/day) and I was prepared to pay that to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet. I enquired about that and they informed me that as I had just come out of a planned/emergency c-section, they would want me closest to the midwife station which was not a single room. As I was wheeled into place I found that I was the only person in the 4 bay ward. Another patient was brought in mid-morning on Friday but due to her baby having jaundice, they transferred her and her baby to another ward. I remained the ONLY person in my 4 bed ward for the remainder of my stay! Simply brilliant. I didn’t have to worry about anyone else, feel self-conscious or worry about waking anyone. This was certainly unusual but effectively, I ended up with a “single room” for FREE! Not a bad arrangement.

As I had plenty of time to muse on my hospital stay, I found I learned several things about myself during my 6 1/2 days at Peterborough City Hospital:

• Daytime Telly SUCKS! Particularly daytime terrestrial telly. When you have Freeview channels to distract you can at least count on a bit of music or reality cheese but when your only choices are ITV’s Daybreak, Jeremy Kyle or The Hairy Bikers, television loses its ability to distract pretty quickly. I am pleased to report that I have totally caught up on Neighbours and Home & Away, however. Thank goodness.
• Hospital beds, despite being able to raise and lower, are pretty uncomfortable and the pillows are not terribly sleep-inducing. If you’re spending any length of time in hospital, bring your own pillow. I only thought of this with one day to remain at hospital which was hardly worth it.
• Bring your phone charger! Your mobile will become your lifeline, particularly if you don’t get a lot of visitors. I know some hospitals restrict or even prohibit mobile usage, but if you are permitted, be sure to bring your charger, check your data plan and update any apps and/or music you might find useful and distracting.
• I have been reminded that I am a HORRIBLE beaky-boo! The patient who was in the bay next to me was struggling with gestational diabetes, was not eating and was refusing to take her medication at 34 weeks pregnant. No one came to visit her AT ALL. Any time a midwife and/or social services worker came to visit her to discuss her situation I would become Queen of the Beaky Boos, turn down the volume on my telly and eavesdrop on the conversation. It was far better distraction than the telly, that’s for sure. Wonder if she’s still there??
• I really need to learn how to SHOUT when I am upset, frustrated or fed up. I was so very lonely during my stay with very few visitors which was understandable considering people were working. I felt like I was an after-thought a lot of the time on the ward before we had Sam. I was so quiet and undemanding that I think I was forgotten most of the time. If you want answers to questions, you have to shout. Hospital staff are run off their feet. They don’t have time for much of anything so obviously their priority are the patients who need more attention. If you want to be heard, you have to learn how to SHOUT.

I will be writing up our Birth Story very soon where I will share more about my exceptionally positive and entirely different c-section experience compared to Ella’s. But I wanted to give credit where credit is due. Peterborough City Hospital was a wonderful place in which to be cared for even though I didn’t want to be there. They took good care of me and brought Sam safely into the world. On behalf of myself, my husband and my daughter and son, I would like to thank the staff at Peterborough City Hospital and the NHS.

What a difference a week makes

Posted by cafebebemama on Nov 29, 2011 in Bebe, Blogger Love, Blogging, Motherhood, NaBloPoMo | 13 comments

One week ago today I had spent a night in hospital, having been admitted to the Maternity Inpatients ward at Peterborough City Hospital with a light bleed and “tightenings”. Due to my placenta praevia, the medical professionals didn’t want to take any chances. Unfortunately, they weren’t brilliant at communicating much of anything this to me. The ridiculously-lacking-in-bedside-manner-or-empathy-of-any-kind Consultant visited me on Tuesday morning and told me that they would be keeping me a day or two for monitoring and observation. I later learned, on Wednesday evening that, in fact, they were planning to keep me until my scheduled c-section date of 2 December. Funny how they managed to forget to mention this small detail.

My salvation during my 3 1/2 day stay, prior to our sudden delivery of Sam on Thursday night, was my BlackBerry and Twitter. There was a television in my bay, I had a magazine and a book to read but what got me through the highs and the lows; distracted me and entertained me was Twitter. Thanks to Twitter, I was able to have an personal midwife/doula to ask questions of (thank you @birthaffinity), I was able to maintain my Social Media Maven title for BritMums and I was able to distract myself from the boredom of being in hospital and having very few visitors.

Thanks to my WordPress App on my BlackBerry, I was able to use my thumbs to type out, edit and publish 5 blog posts to keep friends, family members, aquaintances and strangers up to date on our status. Again, this proved to be a real life-line as I had so much encouragement and well-wishes that I really felt special. It was rather novel to be the subject of attention in the Blogging World for a short time!

Today, however, was a slightly different story. I know, due to hormones, I’m a bit on edge. Fragile if you will. I’m tired (although thankfully not catatonic), sore, physically beat up and a bit stressed to be honest. I have continued to blog and tweet and share my thoughts, feelings and opinions as I always have done. This morning, however, for the first time I felt the need to turn off Twitter. I wrote a post last night about our choice to NOT breastfeed with Sam. The post itself was well received and the comments were encouraging and positive. No one cursed our choice or made me feel guilty. Until this morning. It wasn’t even the post that a couple of people commented about either!

Ironically, last night after I published my post, my breasts really started to feel sore. My milk was coming in. By bed time they were very painful and throughout the night continued to hurt and leak some. I really had no clue what to do so as with many things these days, I turned to Twitter. I knew that it might be a tricky question and one of those “TMI” tweets but hedged my bets that Twitter could offer up some advice. I received a couple of tweets that really surprised me and succeeded in making me feel bad about not breastfeeding. I felt like I was “wasting” my milk. I didn’t like feeling that way. I shouldn’t have taken those few tweets to heart so much as I also received quite a few other suggestions about what I could try to alleviate the pain and offering commiseration but I was gobsmacked and disappointed. I’m emotional and naive sometimes, I guess. And today I needed to turn away from the salvation that Twitter had become to me.

So today, I put my phone on charge and mostly ignored it. What had been my lifeline with the virtual world and a source of encouragement and support was not important enough for me today. Instead, I focused on my gorgeous baby Sam. I cuddled him and loved him and spent my time and energy on him. I enjoyed having Mark home with me today. We ate poached eggs on toast for breakfast, tidied Sam’s nursery (a job that went by the wayside when I was stuck in hospital) and talked.

We were visited by the community midwives today who weighed Sam and did routine checks on him (he’s getting on perfectly thank you very much) in addition to the dreaded heel prick test (waaaaaaaa Sam). They also removed my stitches and told me that I looked remarkably well thank you very much! We welcomed Ella home from a day at school, had Toad in the Hole for dinner and only had a few bouts of tears from Ella and from me today. Twitter may take a back seat for a few days. Life’s too short to let silly comments bring you down. I’ll continue to post and share our joys but for this week at least, the most important thing is not my Twitter stream.

Breastfeeding vs Formula: The Result

Posted by cafebebemama on Nov 28, 2011 in Bebe, Blogger Love, Motherhood, NaBloPoMo | 19 comments

As many of you know, we welcomed our newest addition, Bebe Sam, into our family on Thursday night. Throughout this, my second pregnancy, I’ve blogged about all things pregnancy related including my fears and issues with breastfeeding. In “Don’t Judge Me Too Harshly” I debated whether I needed to give breastfeeding a go and had some extremely reassuring comments from readers. So, would you like to know what we decided regarding feeding our Little Sam? I’m sure you’re waiting to know…

Well, if the picture above helps, we’ve chosen bottle/formula feeding. This time around we had prepared for either eventuality by purchasing bottles and a steriliser. I only was missing the formula as my rather impromptu stay in hospital stopped my nesting/shopping. I had studied up on “biological nurturing” and thought that might be my way forward but wasn’t totally sure. Whilst in hospital, twiddling my thumbs for 4 days as I did, I spoke with the midwives to find out if our hospital still provided mums/babies with small bottles of ready-made formula as they had when we were in for Ella’s birth. Due to the WHO initiatives and the guidelines of the NHS, I wasn’t sure if the hospital would even be permitted to dispense formula because they certainly aren’t permitted to promote it. Our hospital, Peterborough City Hospital, still provides formula for their mums/babies but there are plans to change this in the future. So at least, I knew that I didn’t have to bring my own steriliser and bottles to hospital to feed our child if that’s the method we chose.

When we were wheeled out of theatre on Thursday following Sam’s safe and positive c-section and installed in Recovery, I was asked by my midwife, which method of feeding I had chosen. I glanced at Mark, took a deep breath and said, “Well, we’re not totally sure but we may be formula feeding. Sorry.” The midwive then surprised the bejesus out of me by saying “Don’t you dare be sorry! That’s absolutely fine! You do what you need to do. I’m so sick of the guilt that is placed on new mums.” What a different message that was! Here I was expecting to have to defend my decision and apologise for the choice and I was being told by the midwife that whatever I chose was perfectly acceptable. How very refreshing.

We did have some skin-to-skin time, Sam and I and he did start to root around on my chest. The midwife asked if I wanted to try to breastfeed and I thought it might be an idea just to see what might happen. But then the grabbing of the boobs and shoving them into his mouth began and I wasn’t strong enough to shout, “Stoppit!” Sam was getting a bit upset and I was having flashbacks and I knew, that was it. My decision was made. Formula was the way forward. After giving Sam his first 20ml of formula I knew it was the right decision for us. He sucked it straight down and was happy, content and drunk. Sorted. Decided. Happy. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Due to our decision to formula feed, we had no badgering by lactation consultants or midwives or anyone. We were left to feel confident about our decision and celebrate going forward. None of the midwives passed judgement and almost all of them reiterated that they regretted the guilt that mums feel with regards to the breast versus bottle debate. This was, again, very refreshing and encouraging. I know the debate, been sucked into it myself but we have made the decision that is right for us, for our family and for our mental health. I know I could persevere and work hard to make breastfeeding work for us. My milk, today, has come in. Ow. I’m sure people will curse me and our decision. So be it. For us, this works.  Mark can, and does, take part in the feeding process which aids in his bond with Sam and gives me a break. Sam is healthy, thriving and enjoying his feeds. Yes, it’s a faff preparing bottles, sterilising, waiting whilst Sam is shouting but it’s what we’ve chosen and are happy and confident about it.

For us, formula/bottle feeding has won. I admire women who make breastfeeding work for them and applaud their perseverance and success. I just wish that everyone could do the same for whichever method of feeding a family chooses as no one needs to have any more pressure placed on them in this great adventure called parenting.

Silent Sunday 27 November, 2011

Posted by cafebebemama on Nov 27, 2011 in Bebe, Blogger Love, Little Miss Adventures, NaBloPoMo, Silent Sunday | 15 comments

Saturday is Caption Day- Sam I Am!

Posted by cafebebemama on Nov 26, 2011 in Bebe, Blogger Love, Little Miss Adventures, Motherhood, NaBloPoMo | 16 comments

Sam’s First Saturday is Caption Day! What does this photo say to you??

Welcome to the World Sam

Posted by cafebebemama on Nov 25, 2011 in Bebe, Blogger Love, Little Miss Adventures, Motherhood, NaBloPoMo | 38 comments

Ella introduces Sam

Welcome to the world Sam (Samuel) David!

Bebe has become Sam! After 4 days in hospital, Sam decided that he would rather be a November bebe than a December bebe. So at 9:04pm on Thursday 24 November, Sam came to join the Cafe Bebe family through semi-planned c-section. Sam weighed 7lbs 15oz and passed his Apgar tests with flying colours. It appears Sam was ready to be welcomed into this world after all!

Sam is being an amazing Bebe, is very chilled out and making Mummy’s job much easier. Ella is THRILLED about her “Baby Sam” even though she always insisted that Sam was a girl. Ella got to meet Sam tonight for the first time. Ella gave Sam a Fisher Price seahorse to keep him company in his cot while Sam gave Ella a funky new lava lamp to decorate her new Big Girl Room. They are both thrilled with their respective gifts.

Mummy tolerated the planned c-section FAR better than Ella’s and in fact had an exceptionally positive experience this time around. A full report will follow soon.

In the meantime, the whole of the Cafe Bebe family are chuffed to bits and can’t wait to begin life as a family of four! Stay tuned for more news soon! Welcome to the world Sam! We’re so happy to finally meet you!