Jovi Lee

Being due on the 28th April, I was counting down the days until our baby was due to be born. Realistically I knew that hardly any babies are actually born on their due dates ... but still!

So the 28th came and went and we had a final antenatel appointment with the midwives on the following Tuesday. DH's birthday was on the 1st May and we were thinking that bub might show up then, but didn't so we had to go to our final appointment.

Checkup went well and they did an internal exam. To my surprise I was 1cm dilated and fully effaced. The midwife said that she could have broken my waters quite easily then and there but wanted to see if I would go naturally. But just in case, we were sent over to the maternity ward for a CTG and she also had to check when they could induce me if necessary.

Our local hospital is ridiculously busy baby wise. Normally they will let you go to 10 days over here, but the following Monday they had twins to deliver and there was something else scheduled on the Tuesday and they didn't want to let me go to the Wednesday, so they ended up booking us in for an induction first thing Friday morning.

So all the bags were packed but were just sitting in the baby's room when I got a telephone call Thursday morning about 10:15am. I had just gone back to bed when I heard the phone ringing and thought I'd better answer it ... if it was one of our parents and we didn't answer they would start to panic.

So I answered it and it was one of the midwives from the hospital stating that they had something come up on the Friday which could only be done that day and that they probably wouldn't be able to induce me then ... would we mind coming in that day to have our baby. Of course I didn't mind! I couldn't wait to meet our little baby. So she asked us to be there by 12.

I ran down the hall and started babbling to DH who was half alseep. "We have to go! The car's not packed, I have to recheck our bags, have a shower and get ready ... move move move!"

So we arrived on time and they checked me over again to see how I was going. They moved me to a delivery room and broke my waters right on 12 noon. They put me on the drip at 12:10 and no more than 5 minutes later my contractions started coming every 2 minutes.

The water breaking was really gross. I had no idea there would be so much and constantly! DH kept following me around with a towel ... lol

They weren't as bad as I thought and although I realised that they would probably get worse, I was coping really well.

I lasted until about 4:30-5pm before I asked for some pain relief. Had a go at the gas, but after a couple of sucks on that I realised that if I kept going I was going to throw up big time. They offered me pethadine but explained that it wouldn't really take the pain away at all.

With bubby being EXTREMELY posterior and my back giving me excruciating pain (worse than the actual contractions themselves!), I just asked for an epidural. They checked me over while they waited for the dr to arrive and said that I was only 5cm dilated and that an epi would be perfectly fine.

It took them so long to get the epi in ... about an hour almost ... apparently my back space was really long so they had to send people up stairs to get a longer needle. In the end it only just reached the space and didn't completely work properly. It worked down the right side of my body and took away alot of the back pain though which was what worried me the most. The contractions I could actually tolerate.

As we had had problems with the CTG machine in previous attempts (baby kept moving and machine constantly lost the signal), they were going to place a monitor straight on bub's head. So an hour roughly after they last checked me, they checked me again and I was fully dilated so I started pushing.

Jovi Lee was born at 6:45 pm on the 4th May 2006. Intially we were told that she was 6 pound 2 ounces however the midwife thought that this was a bit light for the baby she was holding so DH and the midwife went to another room somewhere and re-weighed her. She was 7 pound 1 ounce (3202 grams), which was definitely a more realistic weight.

She was 53 cm long with head 34 cm.

As soon as I saw her it was unbelieveable. She was born with hair for one thing. We thought she'd be bald however Mum eventually found a picture of me after I was born and she had my hair (I'm adopted and by the time my parents picked me up I had little hair and what I did have was white so you couldn't see it anyway).

She has my mouth and chin and DH's eyes. She's just so gorgeous.

One thing I can definitely recommend to first time (and even 2nd, 3rd etc time mums) if listen to the midwife when you're pushing. I'd been watching HEAPS of shows on Austar to do with babies (much to DH's disgust ... he's so glad I'm not watching them as much now ... lol) and I wanted to make sure that the experience went as smoothly as possible.

I made sure that I pushed when I was told to push and breathed when I was told to breathe ... imagining everything stretching and giving it time to do so. Needless to say I didn't tear, didn't require an episitomy (sp?) and only had mild bruising (which I recovered from after just a couple of days).

I'll definitely be going back again for more babies ... no question!

So now we're home, Jovi is doing really well. she did have jaundice and although she had lost more than the 10% before were discharged, they still let us home. She's now finally over her birth weight thankfully ... eats like a trojan.

She's a really good sleeper too and only wakes once during the night for a feed.

She's smiling already ... and no its no wind ... lol ... even the community nurse said she was smiling when she visited on Tuesday.

She loves her daddy and he's often the only one who can get her to sleep at night with some gentle rocking and some music ... OUR music (her favourity seems to be "Live").

She makes a lot of noises during her sleep especially when she's stretching and carrying on ... such a cutie.

We feel very lucky to have been blessed which such a good baby.

Anyway ... that's our story.

Congratulations & thanks for sharing!

Congratulations on the birth of little Jovi Lee! :babygirl:

What a beautiful story! I love how positive you are about the whole experience. It sounds like you can't wait to do it all over again! :D

Thank you so much for sharing, your story is really inspiring :clap:

Love
Goldilocks
-xxxooo-

What a great story. Congratulations again to you both.

Lovely story! Hope you can post a piccie of your cutie sometime :)

What an awesome birth story - thanks so much - I feel a bit calmer about stuff myself now - I've been watching heaps of discovery health channel programs on births too - you have the right attitude!

brilliant story

Em.

I wanted to post a pic but under "Posting Rules" it says I can't post attachments.

Does anyone know how to change this??

You will probably have to set up a web page for her. babies online do them for free and it is not hard to do.

Congrats on your gorgeous girl!
What a great story.

what a beautiful birth story!!! You must be so proud!!

CONGRATS!!

Congratulations. What a lovely birth story... :0

What a lovely birth story. Thank you for sharing and congratulations. :)