amby'sjournal

May is going to be an awesome month.

First, we’re going on holiday to Turkey. Staying here: Paloma Grida Village.

Then I’m going to the NCT (National Childbirth Trust) conference, and Ina May Gaskin is speaking! Can’t wait for that, I will be flying down with Maia to England for it.

Then the day after we’re back from that is Maia’s first birthday.

Then at some point after that my best friend will be visiting from Holland.

Could it get any better?

Cora and Maia play see-saw

Maia getting on all fours, ready to crawl

Maia shuffling along the floor

I’m going to try and make this a more regular thing, but we’ll see how that goes.

Maia’s 8 months old now, gosh, hard to believe that. She’s on the verge of crawling, I feel. She’s started mostly sleeping through the night, still having ‘milkies’ several times a day (long may it continue!). I’ve been reading an interesting book called Breastfeeding Older Children, I recommend it so far.

We’ve moved into a lovely house, a 4 bedroom bungalow with a huge living room and kitchen. The kitchen has a big farmhouse style pine table with 6 chairs, and an American style fridge freezer, and there’s still plenty of room. I hope we never have to move.

Cora is in Primary school now and Calvin is in nursery. I’m actually considering home schooling them though, which came as a shock to me let alone anyone else. I’m still thinking it through.

I can’t believe I haven’t updated in that long, oops. She’s doing really well, we have been through the mill a bit with her but all is sorted now! She’s starting to sit up for a few seconds and she seems to be growing like crazy.

Here she is a couple of weeks ago, asleep on my back in a Hoppediz wrap:

Maia Chloe Jasmine was born at 2:33am on Sunday 17th May. I was having contractions all day but nothing too serious. Between about 7 and 8pm they started to get more intense, about 10pm my friend Charlie came over and I began to need hip pressure during contractions. At midnight I called the midwives, and we began to get the pool up. When the midwives got here contractions were about 3 minutes apart, 45 seconds long. They pretty much stayed that way throughout from this point, just got more intense.

I got in the pool at some point, really not sure when but I’d guess about 1:30am. Shortly after getting in the pool my waters broke, which they hadn’t done with my first 2 until 10cm practically. I eventually felt the urge to push but it was different to the last 2 times, because it came on very gradually over several contractions. I felt her start to crown and put my hand down and it felt very squishy and bumpy. I then said “Is she breech?!” and felt like everyone ignored me! There was an air of disbelief. I then felt her legs be born and felt her body to be sure, and yes she was indeed frank breech. One arm was born and Tracy (MW) pulled the other arm free. We waited a few minutes for the next contraction and her head was born. She had the cord wrapped tightly twice around her neck and was slow to breathe so the midwives clamped the cord and gave her some oxygen. I knew she was fine so wasn’t worried about anything.

It was an amazing experience, and I have to say I am SO glad I declined the internal exam I was offered when the midwives arrived! If they’d discovered she was breech they would have wanted me to transfer to hospital. God was really watching out for us, several midwives had felt my belly in the previous weeks and all of them thought she was head down. If they’d realised, I would have had to fight to even be supported for a vaginal delivery let alone a home water birth!

So she was my surprise breech home waterbirth. She’s 5lbs 6oz and 21″ long!

A few minutes old

3 kids!

A few hours later

Proud big brother

Proud big sister

Sweet baby Maia

My baby girl turned 5 yesterday. I wanted to share some pics of her through the years. I’ll try to get yesterday’s pics up later.

Newborn:

A few months:

1 year old!

15 months:

2 years!

3 years:

4 years:

It wasn’t my normal midwife, because she got held up with something. The other one was quite “wham bam thank you ma’am” but I had both kids so it was nice to get out of there quickly.

My blood pressure was OK (although still high for me but they’re not worried), Maia’s heart beat was fine, and she said she’s in a good position. I can tell she’s head down but she regularly changes direction. She likes to lay with her back along the front right hand side, but I tend to sleep more on that side so I think that’s why. I need to pump up my birthing ball so I can start using it.

I go back in 2 weeks (they only see you every 2 weeks here until due date then it’s weekly). I will be 37+3 then and they will go on call for my home birth at 38 weeks, wowowow! I can’t believe in a few weeks I’ll be due.

[IMG]http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/ambyuk/35w.jpg[/IMG]