My OH (who was 33w+6) woke up last Tuesday morning suffering with some bleeding. We got her up the hospital straight away and they checked her out, but couldn’t find anything obvious; baby was fine and so was the gf. It was looking like they’d send her home the next day, 24h after the bleeding had stopped.
I went home at 9pm to get some shuteye but at 11pm the gf text to say her waters had broken! By 4am she’d started contracting, but these were short-lived. Due to her recent bleed and for the safety of the baby, the decision was made to induce her. This happened at around 3pm and despite the gf being absolutely shattered as she’d been awake for 36hrs, labour itself went pretty smoothly (easy for me to say haha!) and she managed the whole thing on a couple of cocodamol and and gas & air.
So at 23:40 on 31st January (exactly 6 weeks early) we welcomed our beautiful little daughter Elsie into the world, weighing 4lb 9oz:
She’s down in the Special Care Baby Unit at the moment. It was initially really scary seeing her hooked up to all those machines, but she’s been making some really good progress the last few days..she’s such a little fighter! The only things left attached now are a feeding tube into her tummy and the heart rate monitor, so she’s looking much more like a normal baby. The main issue has been jaundice and she’s been cooking under a load of lamps to try and fix this, but they turned them off last night so *hopefully* this is now resolved, but we’ll see today.
The gf’s milk supply is starting to come in now, and Elsie is certainly wanting to feed as she’s been showing all the trademark signs, but at this stage she may not be able to co-ordinate herself properly to make it work. It’ll come in time though, and they reckon she’ll be in for a couple of weeks anyway.
In the meantime we’re just enjoying having her in our lives and having skin to skin time..she loves cuddling up on daddy’s chest and it’s amazing to see her opening her eyes when she hears my voice..it’s such a special feeling and I still can’t stop welling up every time I think of her