I sat down this morning to give an update on what has happened with our family planning journey over the past 4 years… but I found a half-written post from 9 months after our son was born so I thought I’d stretch my brain back a few years and start there! The next post will give re-cap of the past 4 years and then we’ll start talking about where we’re currently at 😉

So here it is…

The Day G5 Arrived

It has been just over 9 months since I last wrote a post on my blog! It’s pretty safe to say I’ve been focusing most of my time on the little guy since he arrived (and the past 9 months have flown by quicker than I could have imagined!)

Remembering back to the weeks before our little guy arrived, there was a fair bit of discussion around about whether he was “too big” and I was presented with a few options including early induction and caesarean.

I wasn’t really keen on making a decision until I absolutely had to, partially because I wasn’t sure of the accuracy of the scans and wanted to know more about what the risks involved were when it came to the size issue.

I ended up requesting another scan and going in for additional check-ups to see if the little guy was starting to engage on his own.

The final scan showed that he had grown considerably again and there was some concern that his stomach measurements were larger than his head measurements. I had quite a long discussion with my OB about what that meant and what our options were.

He outlined that some of the concerns included possible risk of shoulder dystocia (where the shoulders get stuck during delivery) and that he suspected I would likely need an assisted delivery and/or worst-case emergency caesarean.

We had been through so much already that our main focus at that stage was to prioritise the safe arrival of our baby over anything else.

Given that it looked like the birth may end in an emergency c-section anyway, we opted to book one in for 39 weeks and 4 days (pretty much full term).

On the 3^rd of September 2018 (can you believe it was almost 4 years ago!?) we headed to the hospital at 6am to be admitted.

Finally, at around 8:30, it was our turn to head to the theatre (second on the list for that day!)

I was really nervous about having an epidural. It probably sounds silly, but I get really bad hayfever and I sneeze a lot so I kept having this crazy thought that I might accidently sneeze while the needle was going in and cause myself to have some sort of lower-body paralysis… I didn’t mentioned this to my anaesthetist, but I just said, I’m going to close my eyes while you do this because I don’t want to see the needle… he jokingly responded that he would keep his eyes closed too.

Anyway, the epidural was fine, the needle didn’t hurt and then I couldn’t feel anything after that anyway… haha!

Pretty soon after that I was up on the table and it was time to deliver the baby.

I was actually pretty shocked at just how difficult it was to deliver the baby via c-section. There was SO MUCH pushing and pulling to actually get him out. There was the anaesthetist at my stomach pushing, and what felt like 3 people on the other side pulling, while Sam was holding my shoulders because my whole body was sliding down the table due to the force (and obviously I couldn’t do anything because I was numb from the waist down).

At last, at 9:15am the OB held our baby up over the cover and we were able to see him! He had arrived safely, was fine and healthy, which luckily meant I didn’t have to take my eyes off him for the entire time we were in the hospital.

After 3 years and 4 miscarriages it was such a relief to see our healthy baby finally arrive!

(Just as a side note too – for anyone who may be having a c-section and is worried out the recovery. Despite all that pushing and pulling I mentioned, I had hardly any pain following the procedure and stopped taking pain killers the third day!)

I did think that all my pregnancy anxiety would disappear once the baby arrived and was healthy, but… I’ve got to say, I think I felt anxious any time my eyes weren’t on him for at least the 2 years… I’m not so bad now, but I still rarely let my eyes leave him for more than a few moments.

Our journey certainly hasn’t ended there… I will pop up another post to give a quick run-through over what happened over the 4 years following (I just didn’t blog all that much because I was so besotted, spending as much time as humanly possible hanging out with my little dude) and I might even start blogging again about where we are at now (I just can’t make any promises as to the regularity of it, because my time will always be prioritised to my family )