The newborn bubble... What's that?

Hold on to your hats, we're three blog posts in and things are starting to get deep. I'd already planned to do this and it seemed a great follow on to my labour and delivery story. I'll be talking candidly about post-natal mental health and my experience of those first few weeks with a brand new baby. I remember speaking to a friend of mine who was a few months behind me in her motherhood journey, I shared my feelings from that newborn stage with her and she was currently going through the exact same. She's since told me it was that conversation that made her open up to her partner about what she was going through and it made her realise that she wasn't alone. The initial days and weeks with a newborn can completely mess with your mind and it is ABSOLUTELY NOT something to be ashamed of. Lets get stuck in, shall we?

Perfect P on her first day at home

28 hours after giving birth, we were finally discharged from hospital. I still wasn't 100% confident with breastfeeding but she'd had a brilliant feed just before we left and I was feeling hopeful that in a few days we'd have it cracked. In hindsight I definitely think we should've stayed an extra night, but we were itching to get home to be a family and this was my 4th day in hospital, I really didn't fancy a 5th. We got home, placed Penelope down in the living room in her car seat and just looked at eachother and said, "now what?!"
Naturally, she'd done a poo, so we tackled her first 'at home' nappy change. Which went well. Kind of. Whilst nappy free she'd done a wee, all up her back, all over the mat and our living room carpet. I should've taken this as a sign for things to come really, but hey! We press on.
She was soon due a feed and from what I remember, it was pretty successful. That first night, however was when things really went south. I just couldn't get her on the boob properly (or so I thought) as you see, we'd had it ingrained in our minds that a '"good" feed was 20 minutes on each side but P wanted feeding little and often and only fed for 5 minutes at a time. I sat up with her, hand expressing in to her mouth, absolutely convinced I was going to starve her to death. Even after multiple midwives telling me we were doing absolutely perfectly and despite P only losing 2% of her birth weight at her first weigh in (which is incredible), this was something that absolutely consumed me and by day 3 I had thrown in the towel. I'm going to do a dedicated blog post about our breastfeeding journey but this is something I regret hugely, even now at 20 months on.

Poorly Mummy & jaundiced P

I was very lucky that Luke had booked 2 weeks holiday on top of his paternity leave, giving us 4 weeks to settle in to family life together. Let me tell you, it was far from settled. It wasn't the blissful newborn bubble that Instagram makes you think it is. It was brutal. Absolutely, completely and utterly, incomparably brutal.

The first 10 days were a blur of too many visitors, P being constipated from the switch to formula and Luke administering blood-thinning injections as I was still quite poorly post-birth. I lied to plenty of midwives when they asked how I was doing at appointments. "Oh you know, tired, but I'm okay, I'm loving being a mum!" I'd respond.
The reality was, I was as far from okay as I have ever been. I have an extensive history with depression & anxiety and by now my mental health was absolutely spiralling. I hated being a mum and worse, I hated Penelope. Despised her even. Christ, that's absolutely gut wrenching to say, but it's true. I didn't want to be around her, I didn't want to hold her, feed her, just being left in the same room on my own with her sent me in to all kinds of panic. I don't even think I changed her nappy for the first 4 weeks. Luke was struggling too and he was trying to keep himself afloat whilst holding us both together. For a while we literally lived in our bedroom, fuelling ourselves with Red Bull and pink iced ring doughnuts, binge watching The Simpsons or old episodes of Top Gear on Netflix. That was our 'safe space', a distraction from our own minds in between the feeding, burping and nappies. If I didn't have to think about being Mummy then I could pretend I wasn't one, right?

5 days old - 25th August 2018

About 2 weeks in I reached my lowest point: "I hope you die of SIDS tonight, I don't want you to wake up".
I wished my beautiful, perfect, precious 2 week old bundle dead. I couldn't do it, I wasn't cut out to be a mum, I just wanted all this to go away and my life to go back to how it was the previous year. I wanted HER to go away, she'd be better off without me anyway, right? I was the worst mum in the world. Or at least, I felt like the worst mum in the world. What if I just disappeared? Surely Luke and P wouldn't miss me anyway, P deserves a better mummy. Yet, I still lied to everyone around me, I was fine, isn't being a mum the best thing in the world ever ever ever? I didn't tell anyone, instead I bottled it all up, absolutely riddled with guilt and shame, terrified that somebody would find out and take my baby away from me. Wait, isn't that what I wanted?!

Well, wasn't that paragraph an absolute rollercoaster? I'm crying over here behind my laptop, absolutely heartbroken recalling those awful, awful feelings. I look at P now, as a toddler approaching 2 and I am so overwhelmed with love and pride, she is everything I could've dreamed of and more. I never did seek professional help for how I was feeling when she was tiny and I absolutely should have done. I wouldn't have been judged for being mentally unwell, I'd have been given support to overcome the cloud that was preventing me from being the best mummy I could. See, I never did get that 'newborn bubble', my mental health completely robbed me of it.

5 weeks old - 25th September 2018

So, how did I get through it? To tell you the truth, I don't really know. I just battled with my thoughts and somewhere, my maternal instincts kicked in to keep little P alive. Week 5 rolled around and Luke had to go back to work. I cried, clung on to him and begged him not to leave me with her but we did get in to a routine. I was on auto pilot, doing what I needed to do to get through the days until Luke came home. By week 6 things were improving and I was coming out of the other side. Eventually, I was having more good days than bad. By 6 months I can honestly say that I was enjoying being a mum.

At the time of writing this, Penelope is 20 months old and whilst I do still struggle with my mental health in general, those early thoughts and feelings are a distant memory. She is my little best friend and although she tests me and pushes me to my limits sometimes, I can can truly say I love being a mum, HER mum. It feels like she's been in our lives forever and I wouldn't change her for anything.

Just know, you're never alone and it CAN get better. If you are struggling, post-natal or otherwise, never be ashamed of admitting you need extra support. Reach out to someone you trust, my inbox is open to anyone and everyone who needs someone to talk to. I will also leave some links below to various mental health resources.

MIND
SAMARITANS
MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS
NHS MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

The arrival of Penelope Eleanor Evans

Monday 20th August 2018. To most people it was just a normal Monday, yanno, back to business as usual after the weekend. The weather was in the mid-twenties and Drake was No.1 on the Official Charts. However, this was no ordinary Monday. For that afternoon a squidgy little newborn bundle entered the world and made me a mama. This blog post is all about my labour and delivery and I must warn you, it's a bit of a long one! (Start to finish my labour was 52 hours)! So get comfy, grab a cuppa (or a gin) and enjoy!

First we need to go back to a few days before I gave birth. I was overdue by a few days and had an appointment with my midwife for a stretch and sweep. She did all the usual checks but when she
looked at my notes she noticed that my bump hadn't grown for a few weeks which could indicate that something was wrong with the baby and her growth. The midwife gave me the "it's nothing to worry about" speech, said she'd book me in for a scan at the hospital to make sure everything was okay and then sent me on my way. That afternoon, I got a call from a consultant at the hospital to tell me that because I was already overdue, they weren't going to bother with a scan but book me in for an induction that weekend! WE WERE GOING TO HAVE A BABY!

Arriving at the hospital

We set our alarms for early Saturday morning to ring the hospital and book our time slot, we checked, double checked and triple checked our bags and off we went! After the boring paperwork was done they got my induction underway. I was induced via a pessary with the idea of getting me to dilate to 2cm, just enough to break my waters and get labour going. By 6pm it had worked its magic and the pessary was removed. It was just a waiting game now for a bed on the delivery suite to have my waters broken and have a baby! I was beginning to get uncomfortable but because nothing much else was happening Luke had to go home.

Sunday morning rolled around after a night of approximately 0 hours sleep, things had really started to get quite painful and by 4am I was having regular contractions, about 4 in every 10 minutes but they just weren't lasting long enough yet. Luke graced me with his presence at about 9:30am (he slept in, alright for some, eh?!) and I was given some codeine to help with the pain, which triggered what I like to call 'Vomit Armageddon'. I was spewing ALL DAY in to these grey cardboard trays, so much so that Luke was shown where to collect fresh trays and how to dispose of the, um, used ones, as the nurses and midwives had MUCH better things to be getting on with than transporting my stomach bile/orange isotonic drink concoction across the ward every 10 minutes. I was offered a bath around lunchtime which helped loads, I even fell asleep for half an hour or so, making me feel at least a little bit more human and at 5pm I had an anti-nausea injection with the hopes of getting at least some fluid and pain relief down me. Overnight, things really began to ramp up, they do say that induced labours can be more painful and that coupled with the fact the baby had decided to go back to back, was absolutely unbearable. I couldn't stand up, let alone walk. The only way I can describe it is if someone plunges a red hot knife in to your back and twists it round and round, tightening up every part of your lower torso. In the early hours of the morning I had another bath and Luke begged the midwife to give me some stronger pain relief so she agreed to examine me and take it from there. HALLELUJAH! I was at the magic 4cm (if you've ever had a baby then you know), they just wanted my contractions to be a little closer together but they said I could *finally* be transferred across to the delivery suite!

At around 8am on Monday morning, we were carted off to the delivery suite and this is where things get a little hazy and complicated. I was quite poorly at this point, my heart rate was off the scale and I was very dehydrated, so I was immediately hooked up to various drips and according to our family WhatsApp chat, I was given gas & air by 10 past 9. Things weren't looking great with the baby either, her heart rate was dipping and her movements were no longer registering on the monitors. Medical professionals are very good at making you think everything's okay when everything is very much not okay but there was lots of hush-hush conversations and doctors coming in for second opinions. The baby was getting distressed and we needed to get her out ASAP. All the while I was blissfully unaware, absolutely off my tits on gas & air and morphine, sat on a commode with my eyes blinking out of sync, trying to tell the midwife that I was feeling pressure to push but all I could get out was "did you know that Alaska is an American State but it's not in America". Gas & air - 10/10 would do it again, ha! The midwife also tried to deny me an epidural, but after 2 days in labour I wasn't having any of it and I shouted at her (sorry) and it's safe to say I got my epidural. I couldn't get comfy though as I was constantly moved from side to side and back again, they had to keep moving me to try and get the baby to move. They clipped a heart rate monitor to her head to keep a close eye on her but time was starting to run out.

Eventually, a doctor with an entourage of students came in to examine me a final time. He confirmed that I was at the all important 10cm and gave the go-ahead to start pushing. The midwife did some "practice" pushes with me to see if I could move the baby enough to have a vaginal delivery or if I needed a Caesarean to get her out safely and Luke thought this was a REALLY good time to go for a wee. Luckily I was able to have a natural delivery with "help"... aka the dreaded forceps and episiotomy route.

Penelope Eleanor Evans - 20.08.18 - 15:06 - 7lb 5oz

Luke made it back just as the surgeon came in and I was having my feet hoisted in to stirrups. I don't know how long I was pushing for but Penelope Eleanor Evans made her dramatic appearance in to the world at 6 minutes past 3 in the afternoon. She needed a little help to cry at first but she was here, she was safe, she was ours and she was absolutely perfect.

Welcome to my NEW BLOG!

What's cookin' good lookin'? Let me introduce myself, I'm Rebecca (mostly Becca, sometimes Bec, never Becky). I'm a Yorkshire girl, a 22 year old toddler mama with a love for all things colourful and I've decided to have a crack at this blogging business.

Why, you may ask (you're probably not), have I decided to start a blog? WELL! I've been thinking about it for a while, I enjoy writing so I wanted to have a place to jot down all my musings and document the trials and tribulations of motherhood. Besides, what better time to start when you're on lockdown in the midst of a global pandemic? (More about that to follow at some point I'm sure).

I'm a size 20 gal and all about self love so expect to see lots of body positive content and 'mum style' posts - I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to midi dresses! There'll be plenty of toddler life posts, real life mummin' and dabbles in beauty. I'll also be sharing my struggles with mental health, I think it's so important to be open about it to try and break down those stigmas. To be honest, there'll just be a bit of everything - my life, recommendations, whatever tickles my pickle!

That's it from me for now. A big warm fuzzy welcome to you! If you wish to connect with me on social media, you can find me on Instagram: @becisnotonfire and Twitter: @_becisnotonfire. Catch you soon! x