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What I do for a living, and why I don’t talk about it much

November 23, 2018 3 Comments

If you’ve come over from Instagram to read this, you’ll probably know that I’m coming to the end of my second maternity leave with my son, Wilf, who is now 10 months old, and that I’m due to return to work in January. I’ve received a lot of messages over the past few weeks asking what it is that I do for a living, and when I’ve answered – I’m a doctor, training in general practice – I’ve had a few people ask me why I never talk about it, or why it isn’t in my Instagram bio. And I’ve had a couple of messages to the effect of, “it’s a bit odd that you share so much of your day to day life, your family, your home; but you don’t want people to know what you do?”

I get it. I mean, I do choose to share a lot on Instagram, sometimes quite personal insights into my life and how I feel about things, and your career is a big part of your life. One of the beauties of Instagram is that you can find like-minded people, and really feel like you get to know them through their posts and stories. Maybe a couple of those who messaged me felt that they thought they knew me from watching me on Instagram, and now it looked like I’ve been hiding something. But I’m not trying to hide it – not now anyway. It’s just that to me, my work completely unrelated, and separate, from my non-work life, which is what my Instagram account is about.

| So why do you choose to compartmentalise your work life?

Medicine is a vocation. It takes years and years to train, and many doctors live and breathe it. It becomes a huge part of their identity. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that at all, if you’re happy with living like that. I felt like that for a while: I was working full time as a junior doctor in a hospital, sometimes working as much as 90 hours in a week, so that you felt like you were at work more than not. I did actually spend a whole year living in hospital accommodation when I first graduated, so I literally never left. Most of my friends were doctors. My husband was a doctor. My in laws were also doctors. Some evenings Ben and I came home and just talked about work, and I’ve been to dinner parties where it’s 99% ‘medic chat’.

I was finding it all quite stifling, and I felt like I’d lost my personal identity as anything other than ‘doctor me’.

Then I became pregnant with Oscar, and went on maternity leave. That’s also when I joined Instagram, and I started using it ‘properly’. Over the next year or so, I felt like a wall around me broke down, bit by bit, and I found it incredibly liberating. I recognised that I used to be so creative, but that I hadn’t been for the best part of ten years. I went crazy with these long-suppressed creative urges and it felt amazing.

I took photos; all my inspiration came from what I saw on Instagram. It was completely whimsical but I thought it was wonderful. I discovered flatlays. I styled shelves. I didn’t even know shelves could be styled, but other people were doing it, and it made them look pretty lovely. I learned calligraphy. I re-taught myself to knit. I played with flowers and made wreaths. I wrote. I hadn’t written creatively in over 10 years and it all came back to me, slowly, like it was a foreign language that I used to know.

I feel like I started my maternity leave as ‘Hannah the doctor’ – it was very much part of my identity, but I don’t think it represented me very well. I was suppressed creatively. It felt quite all-encompassing. I ended my maternity leave as ‘Hannah’. SO much happier. I felt like me. And I felt like a far more well rounded individual; balanced. Whilst I was at work, I dedicated 100% into my work, as being a doctor is so much more than just a job to pay the bills. But when I left work, I could leave it behind. I didn’t take it home with me. I was a mum, I had a few hobbies that I loved, I had new friends and I came home and chatted to Ben about anything and everything, not work (well, mostly!).

I’ve taken this separation between ‘work me’ and ‘non-work me’ quite literally, as I have chosen to practice under my family name, and live under my married name, and I have chosen to take the title ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Dr’ in my non-work life. I’m proud to be a doctor, don’t get me wrong, but for me, I realised that I didn’t want it to be such an intertwined part of my life and identity. I know some others who feel the opposite, and are happy to carry their ‘Dr’ title publicly, introduce themselves as doctors at parties they attend, and feel that as a vocation it is natural that it is an integral part of their identity. I totally respect and admire that.

| Well, that was a bit of a monologue. Anything else to add?

So, I guess there are a few other reasons that I enjoy to be known as ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Dr’ to anyone other than close friends, and why I avoid talking about my job if I am casually asked.

One is that subconscious (or conscious) assumptions are made by some people, in my experience, when they find out that I am a doctor, and I find that often they are wrong assumptions – so I prefer to avoid them being made. One example of this, is when I was a first time mum with a newborn Oscar. My midwife on the postnatal ward seemed to think that I should know exactly what I was doing, and didn’t offer to help with breastfeeding, and I felt she was quite dismissive when I asked for help – as if there were others more in need of assistance than me.

Another reason is that I like to avoid getting into any political discussions, or be on the receiving end of rants about the NHS, and you’d be surprised how many times I’ve told someone what I do for work, to be met with, “Oh, you know I saw my GP this week and s/he was absolutely dreadful. No help at all!” Or even worse, “Oh, you know my wife/aunt/dog has this terrible cough and we simply can’t get an appointment with our GP, could you take a look?” I’ve found it’s far safer to tell Mr X at the neighbour’s Christmas party that I’m a photographer, or even better, a content creator – they’ll look at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language and move on!

| Well, now we all know. The cat’s out the bag. Are you going to become a medical blogger or something now?

No, no. Definitely not! I’m Hannah Straughan, and I write about family, parenting, our home life, travel, photography, Instagram, knitting, flowers – or whatever I fancy. But there may be some posts in the future, where I will talk about topics such as childbirth choices, or breastfeeding issues, and whilst I will not be issuing any medical advice, they will inevitably take on a slightly different perspective given that I have a medical degree.

So there we go. This wasn’t intended to be any kind of big ‘announcement’; it isn’t, and it wasn’t supposed to be so wordy, but as usual once I started thinking about it all and writing, it kept coming. Please do shoot if you have any thoughts or questions at all!

Hannah x

All images by Melia Melia.

Family, Motherhood, Parenting

My experiences with breastfeeding | Wilf

November 15, 2018 1 Comment

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

A couple of months ago, I shared my breastfeeding experiences with my first son, Oscar. If you missed it, you can read it here. I naively believed that having had an easy breastfeeding journey with Oscar meant that it would be exactly the same for my second child, and whilst overall it’s been a very positive experience, I’ve encountered a few hurdles along the way that took me by surprise.

Whilst Wilf’s birth was a million miles away from Oscar’s, the start of our breast feeding was pretty similar, and felt comfortingly familiar. I had been looking forward to breastfeeding again, and Wilf latched on for a feed about an hour after he was born, and just like Oscar, he spent the majority of the day and night attached to me until my milk came in on day three. I’m aware that one concern of mothers that require a Caesarian birth is that milk takes longer to come in, but evidently that isn’t always the case, as mine took exactly the same time after both births.

Images by Dominique Bader Photography

| The honeymoon period

For the first three or four weeks of his life he existed in that blissful state whereby he would eat peacefully, snuggled against me, and then fall into a ‘milk coma’, soundly sleeping and treating us to a few windy smiles of appreciation. This all changed quite suddenly in the second month of his life, when, unlike Oscar (who found a breastfeed deeply soporific and would nurse to sleep whenever allowed), Wilf started to pull off after a feed, smiling and wide awake, and look around him. This pattern has continued and now at 9 months old Wilf will never nurse to sleep, and even at bedtime I have to finish a feed and put him down in his bed afterwards. Whilst in many ways this is a great thing, I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy being Oscar’s human bed for naps at times! Firstly, the effort to settle them down to sleep is minimal, secondly you get to gaze and cuddle the sleeping angel in your arms and thirdly, I had the perfect excuse to catch up on Instagram or watch something on Netflix, rather than getting on with the enormous pile of laundry, as I was ‘trapped!’

Another, very welcome difference between the boys was Wilf’s frequency of feeding. From quite early on he settled into a pattern of 3-4 hourly feeds, with a longer stretch of 5-6 hours at the beginning of the night, and would simply refuse the breast if he was offered it before he was hungry.

And just as I had relaxed, and began to feel every so slightly smug that I was into the fourth month of exclusively breastfeeding my second child with what felt like very little effort, when, BAM! The problems that would have me convinced that our feeding days were over, started.

| Four month distractibility and breast refusal

Wilf was 15 weeks old and over the course of a few days he became more distractible and fussy when feeding – a totally normal and unavoidable behaviour change for the 4 month mark, and I lamented the end of our quiet, peaceful, feed-anywhere days. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, from around 4 months onwards, any distraction will prove too exciting for your curious little one: you talking, someone else talking, any movement in their field of view – and they will pop off the breast to check it out, leaving your boob hanging out, and if it’s at the start of the feed, with milk spraying out all over you and your baby. Sometimes this popping on and off will happen repeatedly throughout the feed and if you’re out in public, and anything like me, you’ll end up red faced, flustered and soaked in milk. Oscar behaved like this, but being the little milk monster that he was, he would still feed in pretty much any environment, so I assumed that it would be the same with Wilf.

One morning I was out meeting some friends for cake and coffee and Wilf woke up in his pram, so I picked him up to feed him. He latched on, then after a second pulled away and cried. I tried a few times to put him back on, but the same thing happened. A took a deep breath, then picked him up for a cuddle, thinking I’d try again in half an hour. But the same thing happened – he was completely refusing to feed. Now it was about an hour after his usual feeding time, so I thought, I’ll try somewhere quiet. We were in Harrogate, about half an hour away from our home in York, so I walked back to the car and tried again there — the same again, just an angry Wilf shouting at my boob. As I am writing this I realise that it’s not such a big thing, but at the time the feeling of my baby ‘rejecting’ me, and not being able to nourish him – the one thing I’m supposed to be able to do – made me burst into tears.

When we arrived home I tool him up to our bedroom, closed the curtains, and in the cool, dark, quiet room he latched on and guzzled away, hungrily, as I took a deep sigh of relief.

This pattern of complete breast refusal when there were too many distractions and external stimuli continued, so I took to feeding him immediately after waking in a dark, quiet room, and avoided going out for the whole day, and this seemed to solve the issue.

Then, about a week later, I was putting Wilf to bed: his usual routine of bath, massage, get into a fresh sleepsuit, breastfeed and then put down in his Snuzpod. He seemed sleepy and settled, but when I tried to feed him he pulled his head away crying, and the more I tried the angrier he became, his face turning red and his little fists tightly curled. Eventually, in tears I gave up and handed him to Ben. I defrosted some milk and he chugged it hungrily, finishing the entire bottle and falling asleep with those little sharp intakes of breath that kids make after they’ve been sobbing. I sat down, pumping to relieve the pressure of the dinner that Wilf had politely declined, and felt a pit of dread that this was his way of saying, “thanks, but I’m done”.

Thankfully, through that night and the following day he fed well at the breast, but every evening for a week, at bedtime, the same story replayed and we would give him a bottle of expressed milk, and I would pump. After a week or so of this pattern I had recovered from my initial, overly-emotional reaction of feeling rejected, and decided that it was probably a good thing if Ben took over one feed a day. And perhaps Wilf sensed my calmness on that evening, as he decided that one week of nursing strikes were enough for him, and he has resumed his bedtime breastfeed ever since.

| Milk blisters and nipple vasoconstriction

Shortly after Wilf’s distractible feeding started, I developed pain in my left nipple that was worst during a feed, but also there on and off when not feeding. Initially I couldn’t work out what was causing the pain, but one day I saw what looked like a tiny white blister on the end of my nipple. I googled this and quickly found the answer – a milk blister. How had I managed to be 4 months into my second child, and only just hearing now that this existed?! It’s where a thin layer of skin forms over one of the tiny holes that milk come out from your nipple, causing a blister of milk and pain on feeding. It can also lead to blocked ducts and mastitis if it’s not resolved quickly.

I read that a gentle way of treating it is with hot compresses and salt water, but ultimately the blister needs to be gently removed so that milk can flow again, which is what I did. Unfortunately, what this left was effectively a wound which was incredibly sore in itself, and felt similar to the cracked nipples you experience in the first few days of feeding. I applied plenty of Lansinoh cream, but I was still getting pain, both during and in between feeds. At best I could distract myself from the discomfort, and at worst the pain during feeding brought tears to my eyes. I had another look to see why the pain was so bad, and I found that on occasions my nipple looked completely white in colour, as if the blood had drained from it. A quick bit of reading answered my worries again – nipple vasoconstriction – this time something I had heard about before. It’s when the tiny blood vessels in your nipple constrict, preventing blood from getting in temporarily, so that it turns pale and is very painful. It’s similar to a condition called Raynaud’s, where your fingers turn white and painful in cold weather, but it can also be caused by damage to the nipple, which is what was causing it in my case.

The milk blister/cracked nipple/nipple vasoconstriction created a vicious cycle and all in all it didn’t totally resolve for about 6 weeks. Thankfully, after being close to thinking that the pain wouldn’t stop, and I’d have to stop breastfeeding, thing eventually settled down.

Image by Dominique Bader Photography

| Illness and low milk supply

Back in September, predictably coinciding with the new school term, when there are heaps of bugs being shared around, all four of us were struck down with a nasty sickness virus. First Ben had high fevers and nausea, then Wilf, and then finally Oscar and I got the full gastroenteritis whammy. Not nice. Whilst Ben juggled Wilf and followed Oscar around the house with a sick bowl, I took to my bed, trying hard to keep hydrated with sips of water but struggling to keep anything down. Ben delivered Wilf to me for his breastfeed, but I was shocked (and quite upset) to find that, for the first time ever, I had nothing. No let-down, no swallowing sounds from Wilf. He lost interest and I had to give him back to Ben, to offer him a bottle.

I won’t lie, I was really worried that this would be the end of things before I was ready to stop, but I persevered in offering Wilf the breast regularly, and trying to eat and drink something myself. Forty-eight hours of illness, not eating and being dehydrated resulted in my supply plummeting, and it took a good 7-10 days to recover, after I was feeling better.

Since then, I’m relieved to report that breastfeeding has returned to being uneventful and enjoyable. As I write Wilf is 9 months old and we are still happily exclusively breastfeeding, in addition to a solid food diet that we started at 6 months.

| When will you stop breastfeeding?

I would love to continue to feed Wilf until his first birthday, as I did for Oscar, but now that I have got this far I am happy to go with the flow for as long as it is working for both of us. I have always wanted to feed my boys into their second year (this didn’t pan out with Oscar as nursing came to a natural end when he was 13 months old), but I have a feeling that Wilf will have different ideas! One positive I can report, is that after over five months of being unable to feed Wilf anywhere other than at home, in a dark, quiet room, his distractibility has slightly settled down and I can now feed him in the light (!), although if there is someone else in the room he will still pop off to see what they are up to. Such a nosy little bear!

I get a lot of messages related to breastfeeding over on my Instagram account – questions and requests for advice and support, which I love to be able to offer. It’s inspired me to write a comprehensive breastfeeding support/problem troubleshooting post, so do keep your eyes out for it if you are interested.

Hannah x

Last two images by Melia Melia Photography

Family, Interiors, Lifestyle, Motherhood, Parenting, Photography

A room tour | Our bedroom and a baby corner for Wilf

October 5, 2018 1 Comment

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

From time to time, I post a photo of our home interior to my Instagram, and although it’s not the main theme of my account, I always get a lovely response from them. I love interior design, although since we started our family it’s taken a bit of a backseat as an hobby simply due to lack of free time. I’ve been asked a number of times to share some interiors-themed blog posts and I thought it was about time I did!

I’m starting off with a room tour of the master bedroom in our home – our bedroom – which, incidentally is my favourite room in the house. I’ve very much taken inspiration from the light and simplicity of Scandi interiors, and as a result, it’s such a calm and peaceful space, perfect for a bedroom. As Wilf shares our bedroom, I created a baby corner for him so that we could change and dress him easily, as the only other bedroom on this floor of the house is Oscar’s.

| Our Home

We’ve been in our house in York for almost five years now. It’s the first house that Ben and I have owned, and after being in rented accommodation for the best part of ten years, I was so excited to be able to call this place our home and be free to decorate it as we pleased. It’s a Victorian terraced house, built in 1890 and its set over three floors (all original, no attic conversion). The only modernisation was a small extension to the back of the house, where our kitchen is now, and we love the the house has retained lots of original features – including servant bells!! – and has gorgeous high ceilings on the ground floor.

We lived in our house for two years before we had our first child, Oscar, and during that time (my pre-Instagram days!), interiors turned into a hobby of mine, and I would scour Pinterest and interior magazines for inspiration. We didn’t need to make any major changes to the house when we moved in, but over the course of about a year we gradually re-did each room in the house, with some just needing the walls repainting, and others needing floor to ceiling renovation. We did pretty much all of this ourselves, and we often spent a weekend tackling a room – I actually really enjoyed it!

| The Master Bedroom

I’ve linked some of the products you can see in the images, and I’ve explained what we did to the room to get to this point. Scroll right to the bottom to see the ‘before’ images I dug out of the room!

Linen ring sling from Mezaya Baby

This is the dress I changed into, to dance in on the evening of our wedding. It’s from Virgos Lounge. I didn’t plan to showcase it, I just hung it up here on a whim and it’s stayed there ever since. I love to see it – it reminds me of the most wonderful day of my life.

The mirror was a find at Homesense. Belly basket and Monstera plant both from IKEA.

These photos were taken just a few days before Wilf arrived – I was about 39 weeks pregnant here. I look enormous!

Our bed is a solid Oak four-poster from Get Laid Beds. I umm-ed and ahh-ed for ages about which bed to buy, it felt like a big decision as it’s so important to buy a good bed, plus as Ben is 6 foot 7 inches tall we had decided to get a bespoke bed made extra long (his feet hang off the end of normal-length beds, and that’s no way to live!) so our choice felt a bit more ‘final’ as it would be harder to sell on if we changed our mind. I liked the look of minimal, simple beds but I did want a bit of a statement too – then I found this design and I fell in love. I wondered for a while if it would look a bit extravagant to have a four-poster, but we went for it and I’ve never looked back. I love it. The beds start at extremely reasonably prices, but we invested a little more to get solid Oak. Of course, one of the main reasons we went for this company was that they offered bespoke-sized beds, and from memory, this was only a small extra cost. I’d highly recommend them.

The Ottoman is from John Lewis – see a similar one here. I keep all of our spare bed linen in it – so useful!

The picture rail is from IKEA and Wilf’s bedside crib pictured here is the Snuzpod, which we have used for both boys and is one of my absolute favourite must-have baby items.

Who else is a fan of Ewan the Sheep? Our boys both love him!

These two photos, above and below, are the only two I took on a different day – you can tell as there is a tiny sleeping Wilf wrapped up on the bed! These are poorer quality photos as I just took them on my iPhone, but I wanted to show off the bedside crib in the position we had it for the first six months of Wilf’s life, attached to our bed with the side down in the co-sleeping position, and also the lovely forest print and frame which are both from Desenio.

This is the little changing and feeding corner I created for Wilf, and it proved so useful. I cleared a few drawers in this chest, which was bought from Debenhams online, for Wilf’s nappies and wipes, muslins and sleep suits. I bought a changing basket from OlliElla, after seeing lots of gorgeous nursery inspiration on Instagram with the same basket – I love it!

The cloud mobile is from The White Company, the round mirror is from H&M, the little animal prints are from Sarah and Bendrix, the moon print is from Land and Furrow, and the bespoke calligraphy is by Ffion McKeown. It’s a quote from the book Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de St Exupery and it says: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essential est invisible pour les yeux.” – “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The grey and blush muslin blanket is from Baby Mori and the pull along duck is from Sarah and Bendrix.

Our brown leather chair is from Laura Ashley and the leather pouf was a find in a market in Morocco. It was a perfect breastfeeding spot – I spent many hours sat here nursing and gazing and Wilf’s perfect little face.

On the chair is my hospital bag packed and ready to go (actually not a prop for the photo believe it or not, I’d just packed it that morning!). It’s a leather changing bag from Josefina and I couldn’t love it more. It’s got a removable inner with lots of compartments so that you can keep all of your baby bits separate, and it attaches to a pushchair with gold button hardware. best of all, it’s so elegant and chic, and doesn’t look at all like a baby changing bag. I’ll carry on using it for years to come as a weekend going-away bag, and it also makes a perfect camera bag, with all its compartments. Josefina offers monogramming, and I opted for the gold, of course. This bag was generously gifted to me by the brand, but I wasn’t asked to review it here – I just adore it!

The cream bobble rug is from Le Flair Vintage.

The sweet soft toy whale is from H&M.

Our treasured Birthday Letters journal is from The Simple Stories, Oscar and Wilf have one each. The idea is that you write a letter to your child every year on their birthday, and then eventually it will be a gift to them.

You can find the rabbit night light here, the wooden stacking kitten is also from Sarah and Bendrix, the little toy camera is from Twig Creative and the milestone cards are by Cheryl Rawlings. The tiny moccs are from a past collaboration between Rebecca Kiff (Rebecca Raynham) and Monkey and Mole. The magnetic wooden animals in the photo below are actually Oscar’s and they too are from Sarah and Bendrix. It’s my go-to shop for gifts for my friends’ kids – the toys are sweet, simple and provoke imagination and play, plus I know that their parents will also love them as they look so beautiful.

Please let me know if there’s anything I haven’t mentioned and you’d like to know where I found it.

| The ‘Before’

Now, it wouldn’t be a room tour without some ‘before’ shots, would it? I wasn’t sure that I had any, but I managed to dig these out!

The first thing we did when we moved in was to deconstruct the enormous IKEA wardrobe that covered the entirety of one wall and took up a ridiculous amount of space. I’m all for storage space, but I really did not want to encourage my inner hoarder with this expanse of space, plus it had super ugly gloss doors. When we removed it we found two alcoves hidden behind, and although they’re small it was completely dead space! We put the IKEA wardrobe pieces on Gumtree for free collection, and amazingly someone took the lot off our hands.

Removing the wardrobe revealed painted wallpaper that was peeling and coming away in parts, so we steamed the rest off. Unfortunately a few pieces of plaster also came away, and Ben insisted on doing the plastering himself. He’d never done it before but he watched a couple of Youtube videos and I must say he did a pretty good job!

The carpet was in a really sorry state – very worn in parts and lots of stains. It had to go. We had intended to replace it with a new carpet, but the we removed it we found the house’s original floorboards beneath it. They were painted black, not in the best condition and as it’s such a old house the floor is far from flat, but we wanted to see if we could restore them, so Ben hired a professional floor sander and spent a whole weekend working on them. There was dust everywhere! I’m not sure if he would have taken the job on if he’d actually known how much work it would be, but I was very grateful – it looked amazing.

This photo shows the nearly finished room – we treated the floor with an oil to waterproof and protect it, but it brought out the yellow/orange tones of the wood (pine? Probably – I’m not sure!), and I wasn’t keen on the colour, so I applied a lime tinted varnish, which really helped.

I painted the walls – they are Sail White matt emulsion by Crown and the skirting is just cheap as chips Brilliant White wood paint. The walls needed three coats to look really uniform, which was a faff. After having done this, I used Farrow and Ball paint on two of the other rooms and they only needed two coats. I think cheaper paint is a false economy as it takes more paint and more time to achieve the same job!

So there we have it! Please do comment below if you have any questions, and if you’d like to see more posts like this I would love to know.

Hannah x

Family, Motherhood, Parenting

My experiences with breastfeeding | Oscar

September 2, 2018 2 Comments

I wanted to use this space to reflect on my breastfeeding journeys with both boys, as a kind of journal entry for myself to read in years to come, but also because I think if there’s one thing that we can do to promote breastfeeding to those who haven’t considered it, or those who tried it and found it difficult, it’s to talk about it more. Be open and honest. Because in retrospect, I was completely naive about the reality of breastfeeding before I had Oscar; some aspects are talked about in antenatal classes but there’s a whole world of information that you just just don’t come across until you’re experiencing it yourself, and then your knee-jerk reaction is to think that you’re the only one to feel like you do.

Breastfeeding, and everything related to it, is fully laden with emotion. Guilt, self-doubt, uncertainty, feelings of failure – and add to this the fact that your body is awash with hormones that leave you in tears for absolutely no reason at all. Even if you have an easy ride, it is still really hard at the start, and I think simply knowing that is completely normal in advance is what I needed (and what I think a lot of other new mothers need) as a way of reassurance that if you grit your teeth now, it will get easier.

[Just to add, before I go on, that for some breastfeeding is incredibly challenging, for various reasons, and depending on your situation and feelings, gritting your teeth and continuing is not always the best option.]

If you’ve read my birth story with Oscar, you’ll have seen that Oscar was placed on my chest immediately after he was born and latched on and started suckling when he was about 20 minutes old. I didn’t really know what I was doing but he certainly seemed to, and for that I feel incredibly lucky. We stayed in that position, skin to skin, and suckling on and off for about 2 1/2 hours. In the first three days Oscar easily spent more hours feeding, day and night, than not, and he preferred to sleep with a nipple in his mouth! We spent one night in hospital, and the next morning the midwife asked me how many times I’d fed him overnight. I looked at her, confused, and answered, “erm, continuously?”

Although Oscar’s latch seemed to be fine, with all of that suckling I suffered with the obligatory sore, cracked nipples that leaves you wincing and curling your toes in pain at every feed, despite religious use of Lansinoh lanolin nipple cream. I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t experienced this in the first few days of breastfeeding! For me, it was worst between about day 3 and day 7, and by 2 weeks I found breastfeeding completely pain-free.

My milk came in somewhere between day 3 and day 4, and I was shocked to wake up to huge, hard painful breasts that looked stuck-on – like I’d had a boob job! I had a really strong let down, which I could feel as a tingling sensation soon after starting a feed, and I could hear Oscar gulping away frantically. I soon realised that he’d decided that my flow was a bit too much to handle, and would let excess milk dribble out of the corner of his mouth, all over my clothes. After that I always had to tuck a muslin in my bra at the start of a feed, to avoid walking around with a wet patch on my top all day! I also quickly learned that I needed to wear breast pads day and night, and at night that meant wearing a sleep bra to hold them in place.

Oscar put on weight beautifully, and as breastfeeding was going so well, from about 2 weeks old I started giving him a bottle of expressed breast milk to give me a little break – we continued to do this about once a week to keep him used to the idea of a bottle. The only problem was that I couldn’t go longer than 3 or 4 hours between feeds before my breasts became painfully engorged; I think this began as a result of Oscar wanting to feed so frequently (he seemed to ‘graze’ – a little feed every 1-2 hours, and only ever from one side at a time), but in turn I would offer him milk very frequently to ease my discomfort. This was one of the main issues I found with breastfeeding Oscar – it was SO frequent. He rooted and cried for milk every 2 hours, day and night, for the first 6 months, and I obliged. I was absolutely and utterly exhausted, to the point that I cried and I have huge blanks in my memory of that time, through mind-numbing tiredness, but I never considered giving up – and I want to make a point of saying that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr, I really didn’t want to quit – I loved breastfeeding so much. Every single time I nursed it was me and him, in a bubble of oxytocin, and all was right with the world. It was an addictive feeling and those frequent moments of bonding and togetherness are what kept me from resenting him for allowing me painfully little sleep.

The other breastfeeding-related issue that I suffered from recurrently was blocked ducts/mastitis, which I’m sure was as a result of my overproduction and tendency to engorgement. On three occasions I had the full whack of symptoms – high fever, flu-like symptoms and an exquisitely tender breast with a wedge-shaped firm, hot, red patch that was agony to feed from. On each occasion, I managed to get away without antibiotics as the symptoms began to improve after about 48 hours of feeding to drain the breast, paracetamol and bed rest. I’ve gone on to suffer with this recurrently with Wilf; I seem to be prone to it.

After the early days, breastfeeding Oscar was very straightforward, he would never say no if I offered him a feed and I sometimes used my ‘magic trick’ simply to pacify him if he was upset.

We continued exclusively breastfeeding until I went back to work at 9 1/2 months. I breastfed him morning and night, and on my days off work, but at nursery he would have cows milk in a bottle. Around his first birthday, he started to pull off me after his bedtime breastfeed and look around expectantly for more, whereas before this he would nurse to sleep every single evening. I offered a bottle of cows milk, which he accepted. After that, I would offer more milk in a bottle after his breastfeed, and most of the time he would want it, and eventually I felt that my supply was pretty low and not filling his tummy for bedtime as much as he would like. One night, when he was about 14 months old, he pushed me away in favour of the bottle, and that was that.

I don’t remember our last feed, and thinking about it now makes me feel a bit emotional. I would have definitely continued to nurse him for longer, but I feel like he made the decision to stop, and other than my feeling a little sad that it was all over, it was painless.

So there we are – what I always thought was an uneventful breastfeeding experience with Oscar and yet I still found over a thousand words to say about it! Wilf, on the other hand, was a completely different story, and I’ll be sharing that next week. I’d love to hear from you – did any of this ring true for you? Did you have a hard/easy ride with breastfeeding? Do leave a comment below.

Hannah x

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Vlog | Wilf’s birth and first days

May 14, 2018 2 Comments

I’ve been completely blown away by the amazing response I’ve had to posting the not-so-perfect birth story of Wilf. If you haven’t seen it, you can catch up here and here. It’s real and honest, it still feels raw to me and I had to push aside that silly part of me that only wants to share the rose-tinted bits of motherhood. As a result, lots of people got in touch through emails, comments and DMs on Instagram to say that the story had really helped them cope with their birth that didn’t go totally to plan, and made them feel a bit more OK knowing that they definitely weren’t alone in that, and also that it’s absolutely fine to have a little (or big) cry, shout or vent about not getting the birth experience that you hoped for.

Childbirth is arguably one of the hardest things a woman goes through in her whole life, and whilst even the most straightforward, complication-free birth may be physically demanding and painful, it’s the complicated births that come with emotional pain that is much harder to recover from and forget. And whilst some might feel that if they’ve required intervention or had a surgical delivery that they’ve ‘failed’ in some way, really the opposite is true. Whatever happened in your birth story, you are strong, amazing, and brilliant.

So without further ado, here is a vlog of Wilf’s birth and first few days – I hope you enjoy watching it.

I know that I say it all the time, but your comments and messages on my blog and Instagram posts are absolutely what this is all about for me, I love hearing your take on things and if anything I’ve written about has helped you in some way – so THANK YOU.

Hannah x

Last three images by Dominique Bader

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Wilfred Hector George | A birth story (part two)

April 30, 2018 7 Comments

Newborn baby with mum after caesarian section

This is the second part to Wilf’s Birth story. If you haven’t read the first part yet, you can see it here.

There were a few plus sides to having a planned Caesarian which I could be happy about, now that the decision was made – firstly, childcare: being able to plan for someone to look after Oscar on the day of the surgery. Also, not having to wait so long, as with Oscar I went nearly two weeks overdue and I was tearing my hair out with impatience. As someone who likes to plan ahead, having a birth date felt freeing, and I did relax somewhat; but it also felt a little bit surreal and deflating, as if a little bit of the magic (nervous anticipation) had been taken out. I was also terrified about the idea of the surgery, having never had an operation in my life. I not-so-secretly hoped that I would go into labour early, and progress so quickly that by the time I made it into hospital the baby would be nearly delivered, so I could have a normal delivery; but with Oscar arriving late I just knew in my heart that this was not going to happen.

The other nice bit of having a planned birth date was that I really, truly soaked every last bit of our family of three up, knowing that we only had a few days left. I had lots of cuddles and one-on-one time with Oscar, took lots of photos and on the night before the surgery we went out for an early dinner, just the three of us: it was perfect. I felt like I was as ready as I ever would be for our family to go through the huge change that was about to happen.

Wilf’s birthday

On the morning of the 2nd January we got up at 6am. It was one of the very few mornings that Ben and I were both up before Oscar, who is an early waker. I wasn’t allowed to eat any breakfast (I don’t think I could stomach any anyway), so I checked my bag one last time, folding the tiny little baby vests again and popping in a little bunny toy to match the one we took to the hospital when I had Oscar. Oscar’s childminder arrived; one of his absolute favourite people from his nursery – his face lit up when he saw her and we knew that we could relax, knowing that he would have a wonderful, fun-packed day with her. I felt too nervous and overwhelmed to get emotional about saying goodbye to Oscar, and in any case he was so thrilled to have Grace all to himself that when we wanted a hug, he looked at us as if to say, “so are you guys leaving or what?!”

Conveniently, we live a short walk from the hospital, so we set off (waddled) over on foot. It was dark and cold outside, the pavements were wet, and the roads were eerily quiet. I felt sick with nerves pretty much from the moment I woke that morning until the moment that Wilf was handed to me; I’m not really sure why, as I knew I was in good hands and that we would both be absolutely fine, but I really was dreading the whole thing and a big part of me wanted to run away in the opposite direction. Once we were in the hospital, on went the very fetching backless gown and anti-thrombosis stockings, and before I had a chance to plan my great escape we were being walked through to the operating theatre on the labour ward. My anaesthetist was someone that Ben and I both know, as Ben works with him, which was both reassuring and also a bit odd. I was still shaking with nerves as a cannula was placed in my hand and the spinal injection was done; I was a little worried about them being painful (a bit silly, in comparison with the pain of labour) but they weren’t at all. Within seconds of the spinal injection going in my legs suddenly felt very warm and heavy, and all the blood rushed from my head. I was laid down on the table and felt incredibly vulnerable; completely at the mercy of the medical professionals around me. Although the whole thing was quick, calm, controlled and pain-free for me, and I am so grateful to everyone who looked after me so well, I personally really disliked the whole experience.

I was irrationally worried about feeling pain during the surgery, so I asked the anaesthetist to check to see if I was numb before making any cuts, to which he replied, “well, they’ve already started, so I guess it must be working!” I started shivering uncontrollably, even though I didn’t feel cold. A side effect of the medication, Ben told me. All of a sudden, I heard a single cry. It was such a beautiful sound and it made me cry out with happiness. I thought Wilf must be delivered, but actually his head wasn’t even fully out – just his mouth, and he simply couldn’t wait to let us know he was there! Ben asked me if he could leave my side to watch Wilf being delivered, and I said, “Sure… But video it so I can see too!” We hadn’t planned to do that, but I love that we have a video of the whole thing for us to remember. I’ll spare you from that video though, as it’s pretty gory! We were also not very surprised to see that after Wilf’s head had been delivered, his shoulders remained pretty well stuck in me, and took a lot of coercing to get out, even though the surgeon had given me a bigger than usual incision in anticipation of this. He was another little sumo baby, like Oscar!

I had asked for Wilf to be given to me straight away, without being cleaned, weighed or having a nappy put on, as he would be if it had been normal delivery. I was met with a bit of resistance from the midwife (it’s not what they ‘usually do’) but I insisted, and apart from a minute of delayed cord clamping time, he was placed straight on my chest, skin-to-skin. The rest of the surgery took about 20 minutes but I really didn’t care how long they took, now that I had Wilf with me.

I was wheeled round to the postnatal ward and had a blissful first hour with Wilf: all the nerves had finally melted away, I had no pain whatsoever, and Wilf latched on to my breast like a total pro after about half an hour of skin-to-skin. I wish that was the end of the drama, but unfortunately it was not. One of the health care assistants came to change my sheets, and on lifting up the blanket covering my legs, she was faced with a pool of blood. I couldn’t feel anything as my legs were still numb from the spinal, so I hadn’t been aware of anything untoward. There was a moment of panic and a flurry of doctors and midwives, and I had to go back to the labour ward for intravenous fluids, a hormone drip and closer observation, but thankfully the bleeding settled down. I lost one and a quarter litres of blood due to my uterus not being fully contracted, and unsurprisingly I felt a bit waffy for a good couple of weeks after that! After all the drama, we realised that Wilf hadn’t yet been weighed! Six hours after he was born, he was finally weighed and came in at 8lb 15oz – this was after quite a number of wet nappies, so was probably a bit less than his actual birth weight. Considering Oscar had two whole weeks more of growing inside me than Wilf, it’s safe to say that he would have been a lot bigger if we had waited for a normal delivery!

Our surgeon came to see me on the ward after the birth to see how I was, but also to deliver a message: that in his opinion, I would have run into trouble if I had tried for a normal delivery, and that he felt we had made the right decision. As someone with years of experience in obstetrics, and someone who is a strong advocate of normal delivery himself unless there is a good medical reason against it, I really trusted his opinion. And of course, after the not-so-wonderful experience of having a Caesarian section, it was a relief to hear that.

The recovery

I spent two nights in hospital and found the recovery MUCH harder than with Oscar. I was very tearful in the days and weeks afterwards due to the pain of the wound, as well as the normal postpartum emotions. Doing pretty much anything was painful for the first few days, I couldn’t walk normally until about three weeks, and it was probably 6 weeks before I felt I could pick up Oscar comfortably (although I definitely did so earlier than this, and then suffered afterwards). If there was one positive point about the harder recovery of a Caesarian when compared to a normal delivery, it was that I was forced to slow down, do less and stay at home. As someone who gets impatient and likes to push myself, I think I really needed this to prevent me from doing too much too early, and I am SO grateful, looking back, that I spent so much time resting, recovering, cuddling and nursing Wilf most of the day and night, and generally looking after myself more. I actually napped in the daytime when Wilf did which I never managed with Oscar! I did actually intend to take things much slower that I did after Oscar was born, and I loved the advice in this book about the first six weeks after having a baby, but it wasn’t until after Wilf was born that I read this brilliant blog post which sums it all up perfectly.

A few weeks ago, Ben bumped into the obstetrician who delivered Wilf at work. Ben told me that he asked how we all were, and asked to see a photo of Wilf. He then said to Ben, “And has Hannah come to terms with the birth yet?”

When Ben told me this, I felt stunned, and a lump came to my throat. Firstly, I hadn’t talked at all with the consultant about how I felt about the Caesarian, so I felt amazed that he clearly knew that I was feeling disappointed and torn when I asked him to book the surgery – and to be honest, really impressed that an older, male surgeon was that perceptive of my feelings. But also, no one had asked me about that since Wilf’s birth. Plenty of people had asked how the physical recovery was going, but I had completely pushed behind me any emotions I felt about ‘missing out’ on the opportunity to have another natural birth. I hadn’t even been honest with myself about it. Even now, as I write, I haven’t yet shed a tear about it all, because I really do mean it when I say that first and foremost I am incredibly grateful and lucky to have another healthy, happy baby. Maybe those tears will come at some point in the future, and maybe they won’t, I’m not sure. But I do know, and it’s painful for me to admit, that when I hear or read about friends’ natural births I feel a pang of envy and sadness. My heart does hurt a little that I will never experience that ever again.

I’ve mostly written all of this down for myself, and it truly has helped me to process it all. And I know that I’m OK. More than OK.

I’ve also written it down because I published Oscar’s birth story on here, and it would be unfair to not document Wilf’s just because 1) it wasn’t all I had hoped it would be and 2) it was a surgical delivery. I love (and still do) reading others’ birth stories but there does, very understandably, seem to be a sway to write about natural births and the ones where it all went well, and omit the gory/less romantic/Caesarian birth stories. Which can fuel the feelings of ‘failure’ experienced by women who need medical intervention during their birth. I say this to myself as much as I do to you: whether you have an unassisted delivery, forceps, epidural for pain relief or a Caesarean section – you still gave birth, and none of these variants should lead to feelings of inadequacy. You brought a life into the world. You gave birth. End of.

I’m feeling super vulnerable pressing publish on this… It’s definitely been cathartic for me to write though and I do hope you enjoy reading it. As always I would love to hear your thoughts!

There is actually one last bit of this story that I will be sharing very soon, and that is a vlog of Wilf’s birth and first few days in the world. I’ll post a link on Instagram when it’s published, so keep a look out for it there!

Hannah x

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Wilfred Hector George | A birth story (part one)

April 22, 2018 4 Comments

I’ve sat down to write this a handful of times, but each time I just stared at a blank page for ten minutes before deciding that it wasn’t going to come. If I’m completely honest with myself, the truth is that I’m not really totally cool with how it panned out. That’s not to say that it went badly, or that I didn’t get the birth that I wanted, because I really believe that as long as my baby and I are healthy then all is well – I do mean that. But if you asked me how I feel about it… I’m just not sure what to say. So, for my own form of catharsis, I’m going to write it all down, even though part of me wants to stare at a blank page and avoid it a little longer.

If you haven’t read my birth story with Oscar, you can see it here, and I’d recommend reading it first, as it’s the beginning of my story with Wilf.

With Oscar, my first child, I had a normal vaginal delivery with just gas and air as pain relief. My birth plan was to deliver my baby safely by whatever means were necessary, but I knew that I was dearly hoping for a birth with as little intervention as possible. I stayed at home for as long as possible, practicing my natal hypnotherapy breathing and visualisations, and I used the birthing pool once I got to hospital. I had to get out of the pool to deliver Oscar, but I found the whole experience incredibly positive. I stayed calm and felt in control throughout, and my lasting memories are those of euphoria and feeing like a complete superhero (my brain has cleverly erased the memory of the pain!)

As my pregnancy with Wilf progressed, and I started to think about the birth, I genuinely couldn’t wait to do it again. Yes, it was the most pain I had ever experienced, but also the biggest endorphin rush in my lifetime, and definitely my proudest achievement.

Moving on to my second pregnancy, at my 34 week appointment with the midwife, my bump was measuring big – as in, off the chart. I wasn’t surprised or worried, as Oscar was a big baby (9lb 2 oz for my 5ft 4 frame), but she told me that I’d have to see the consultant. The only thought that crossed my mind was that I might be offered a growth scan, or an early induction of labour.

The following week, I saw the obstetrician. This was a senior consultant that we had met before (we had an early pregnancy scan with him) and Ben has worked with him. We both trust and respect him greatly. He told us that, although it was difficult to accurately predict, he thought that Wilf was shaping up to be even bigger than Oscar. He read carefully through my birth notes with Oscar (which I had never seen before) before delivering his recommendation in a calm, measured manner.

I had shoulder dystocia with Oscar (this is when the baby’s shoulder gets stuck in the mother’s pelvis after the baby’s head has been delivered).

In my memory, I know this had happened but I simply didn’t realise the seriousness of it because, 1) I had just delivered Oscar’s head and I was in a world of pain, and 2) once it was all over I had just become a mother for the first time and that was the beginning and the end of everything.

I had a ‘high’ risk of having shoulder dystocia again

It is impossible to predict just how likely I was to run into this problem again, but previous shoulder dystocia is the single biggest risk factor for having it again.

If I did get shoulder dystocia with Wilf, there was a 1 in 4 chance of a bad outcome

‘A bad outcome’ meaning either harm to the baby (brain damage, nerve damage to his upper limbs), or death.

My options were: 1) Have a planned Caesarian section or 2) Have a normal vaginal delivery. If my decision was to go for the latter, they would ensure that a senior midwife, an obstetrician and paediatrician were present at the moment of delivery, in case things did not go smoothly.

I left the appointment with my heart racing and my head spinning: I had not envisaged being told what we had just heard. I had been convinced that if I had had a normal delivery once before, the next time would be even quicker and easier. I had started to prepare for the birth with my hypnobirthing CDs already. I told the consultant that I needed time to think about my decision; he said “of course,” and booked me a follow up in two weeks time. I asked him, I pressed him – what would you recommend? What do you think I should do? He wouldn’t answer this, as he stressed that only I can make that decision. But he did say that if I still wanted to go for a normal delivery, that was fine – as long as I felt that the risks involved in doing that were acceptable to me.

Ben and I spent the next two weeks thinking about it; talking about it, but I felt like I was going around in circles. I chose to tell a few people close to us, that I respect, about our predicament, hoping to get some clarity. Every single response was, “well, you must have the Caesarian, surely? You’d be crazy to take that risk!” I tried hard to rewind what had happened, thinking that if I had never been sent to see the obstetrician, I would have never realised that Oscar was actually one of the 3 out of 4 cases of shoulder dystocia that are fine, and I wouldn’t know the risks I was facing, and could carry on planning my natural delivery. But it had all been said out loud, and now I couldn’t ignore it.

I finally found clarity on the day before our next appointment, at 37 weeks, perhaps just through the pressure of having to make a decision. There was one phrase that the consultant used that I kept coming back to – “was this an acceptable risk?” The odds were in my favour – 75% chance that Wilf would be just fine, and that’s only if I did get shoulder dystocia again. But the possible bad outcome, if things did go wrong, was catastrophic. Of course this risk was not acceptable to me. No way. And for what benefit would I be taking this risk? For me to have the experience (and hopefully the joy) of having a natural birth. I mean, it would be purely selfish, and if anything went wrong, I could never have lived with myself for making that decision.

I went into the appointment and asked for the elective Caesarian, knowing it was absolutely the right decision but in all honesty, really disappointed that it was happening. It was booked there and then for 2 weeks time, when I would be 39+3 weeks pregnant.

I’m going to leave it here for now, at the risk of losing some of you to my endless rambling – this is going to be a long one! I’ll be posting the second part of Wilf’s birth story next week.

Hannah x

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Photography

The honest truths of parenthood and a shoot with Melia Melia photography

November 20, 2017 4 Comments

Something that has struck me recently is how, with parenthood, time has taken on a different quality. It feels like the days fly by at a panic-inducing rate, and yet in other ways they can drag on and on. As I write, Oscar has had a nasty cold for the past three days, and it’s made him feel utterly miserable and grumpy. I can’t seem to do anything to cheer him up, and whilst I feel so sorry for him, I feel completely broken by his near-constant whining. It’s only been three days, but in my emotional, sleep deprived mind it feels like it’s lasting forever. Next week, he’ll be better, and I know that I’ll barely remember how fed up and helpless I feel in this moment.

Each moment itself is so fleeting; heart-melting joy can switch to biting back tears of frustration, and then back again, in a second. Earlier today Oscar whinged in the back of the car for the entire journey home – no amount of cheery chatting, singing or distraction from me helped, and I felt my patience dissolving and my hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel as the journey went on. As we pulled into the drive, the crying stopped. I walked around the car to get him out; my patience shot and head thick with an angry parent mist. In that very moment, my feelings of warmth towards my child were one out of ten. As I opening his door, he cocked his head to the side, grinned at me and chirpily said, “Hiyo, Mummy” followed by him sheepishly mumbling, “Sorry Mummy Oscar noisy.” Completely stunned by this, I melted into a puddle, scooped him up and felt a few hot tears prick my eyes. As someone who, previously, was prone to remaining in a bit of a grump for a while, if something had set me in a bad mood, I find this newfound emotional rollercoaster that comes with parenting thoroughly overwhelming. One of my favourite bloggers, Sara Tasker, wrote about this phenomenon a while back far more eloquently than I can put into words – you can find the post here.

A couple of months ago, James and Jo Melia popped over to our house in York to take some photos of Oscar, Ben and I together. Initially, I thought I had wanted a ‘family shoot’ – I had an image in my mind of us looking happy and windswept somewhere on the moors, amongst the purple heather, looking completely natural and not at all staged(!). Whilst I’m sure these images would have been beautiful, James and Jo suggested some shots of us around our home, and what we’ve got as a result is so, so much more than a ‘family shoot’. James has captured those memories, the fleeting ones, the ones that are so difficult to truly remember once they have passed, in the whirlwind of hectic, day-to-day parenting. We will treasure the images from this day not only because they are an insight into the little moments of joy shared within our little family, but also because they remind me to grasp onto all the little moments of joy that happen in every day, the ones interspersed between the mundane and frustrating bits, and reflect on them, or take a quick photo, or make a note, so as to not forget them.

James has a talent that extends far beyond his dreamy and captivating images, and that is his ability to capture the most authentic, intimate moments, such that I found myself looking through the photos and thinking, “I don’t remember him taking that!” Maybe more impressive still, is that our Oscar, who is always wary and shy of strangers, especially men, took such a shine to him that his cheeky, sunny and mischievous personality shows in each beautiful image.

I did envisage that the whole shoot would be focussed around Oscar, but another thing that I am grateful to James and Jo for is encouraging Ben and I to share some moments in front of the camera together. Since Oscar arrived two years ago, we are perpetually guilty of failing to find time to devote to each other, and whilst we are often together, we rarely truly find moments to connect, simply due to lack of time and tiredness. I love these images of us so much; this person of mine is the most wonderful husband and father I could have ever hoped for; I couldn’t imagine sharing life’s experiences with anyone else. Neither of us expected that a family photo shoot would remind us both to make a resolution to devote more quality time to each other.

After James had used all the rolls of film he had with him, we went down to find Oscar and Margot (James and Jo’s daughter) flirting outrageously. If I remember correctly, Oscar was feeding her raspberries and bringing her flowers. The boy is smitten! As I’ve found previously with others that I’ve connected with on Instagram, James and Jo were both gorgeous, warm people and we found ourselves chatting to them all afternoon as if we’d known them for far longer. Several cups of tea later (and a fish finger tea for the little lovebirds) we parted, with a plan to try and meet up again soon to capture some more of these little moments, either soon before or after our family grows with the addition of our second baby in January.

All of these images are shot on medium format film on a Pentax 67. You can find out more about Melia Melia photography and book a film photography family shoot here, and you can find more of their work on their Instagram account here.

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Oscar Henry James | A birth story

November 13, 2017 14 Comments

I was fascinated reading others’ birth stories when I was pregnant with Oscar. I had decided that the more I knew; the more possible eventualities I was aware of, the better — plus it was something that filled me with awe, an event that many consider to be the greatest hardship in their lives yet at the same time the most magical, joy-filled occasion they’d ever experienced. I knew I wanted to document our birth story, if only for myself, but somehow it wasn’t until the run up to Oscar’s first birthday when all the memories, feelings and emotions of the day started flooding back that pen eventually came to paper. For a long while, that story was going to be just for me, to help me remember in years to come, but I decided I wanted to pluck up the courage to share it with you: this feels very raw and vulnerable for me, and I’ve shared some less-than-attractive photos (who looks good right after giving birth?!), but it’s real, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Oscar was born twelve whole days past his due date. For some reason, I had not expected this — I had a ‘gut feeling’ that I wouldn’t make it to forty weeks, so that wait felt like an absolute eternity. Thankfully, other than some obligatory lower back pain and indigestion I had a relatively easy pregnancy and loved having a huge bump, so I spent the last few weeks walking (waddling) around York, knitting, cleaning the house obsessively, taking long, relaxing baths; punctuated by the occasional (daily) brief ‘blip’ when I’d feel incredibly inpatient to meet my tiny man and I’d become a tearful hormonal mess. Forty-one weeks came and went, there were three uncomfortable and ineffective membrane sweeps, until we were at 40+11: the last day that the hospital were happy to leave things up to nature. I had done a lot of research into induction of labour and knew that I wanted to avoid it at all costs, and felt a little more frustrated and panicked with each day that brought us closer to it. I even felt annoyed with my own body for not going into labour (which is a little crazy, as I knew that normal full-term is anywhere between 37 and 42 weeks). That evening as I took a relaxing, hot bath, Ben came to me and read a letter he had written to our unborn little boy; about how he couldn’t wait to meet him, his wishes for him for the future — it filled me with so much happiness and a sense of calmness, and all at once I simply felt ready for whatever was ahead. We discussed our options again and decided that I would go for the induction that had been booked the following morning; I finally felt both resigned to this as the outcome of the pregnancy, but also completely at peace with our decision, and went to bed feeling calm and relaxed, dreaming of meeting our baby soon; and for the first time in two or three weeks without the nervous mix of anxiety and excitement of hoping that tonight would be the night.

I awoke a few hours later, at 3am, with a tightening feeling across my tummy. It wasn’t painful, and this had happened most nights for the past 3 weeks, so I thought nothing of it. As I lay in bed trying to get back to sleep I soon felt a second, then a third. I realised that they were different from my pre-labour tightenings; they were very low down and began to feel like a dull ache. After weeks of false alarms I knew this was the real thing, and part of me wanted to whoop with joy and excitement; but strangely, I felt an overwhelming sense of focus and direction which took over at that moment, and remained with me right up until the end, that somehow kept me (uncharacteristically) calm and composed. I would follow my instincts, I knew what to do. I murmured to Ben that I was having tightenings, and was going downstairs, not wanting to disturb him at such an early stage.

I sleepily set myself up with my hypobirthing tracks (I had been listening to the labour preparation tracks in the weeks before the birth) and leaned over my birthing ball, rolling my hips from side to side with each surge. I began to time these; they were only every 10 minutes but lasting a good 90 seconds. I lost track of time, and drifted off to sleep in between surges, but at some point Ben came downstairs and slept on the sofa next to me, to be with me. At around 5 or 6am, I filled the bath and continued with the labour tracks on loop. They were incredibly soothing, kept my mind occupied and in a trance-like state and reminded me to breathe deeply and slowly through each surge. In no time, Ben came through and told me it was 8am, and rang the labour ward to cancel our induction admission as I was in labour. Their response was: “Ok, well as it’s her first time things will probably fizzle out, and you might need help, so we’ll keep a bed available for you”. We looked at each other, and unphased, I popped my headphones back in and continued with my routine.

By around 9am my tightenings were every 5 minutes, but it was only at this point that they started to become really painful. I was out of the bath, had had some breakfast, and was pottering about the kitchen but was finding I’d have to lean on something for support and concentrate on my breathing hard with each surge, however in between I’d have complete relief of the discomfort and could go about busying myself. I checked my hospital bag and tidied up, finding something to grab onto each time a strong surge came; Ben even took some last bump photos in between! Until this point everything was going far better than I could have ever hoped, I felt entirely in control, calm and with just a little bit of nervous excitement.

By 11am, my contractions were every 3 minutes and I was no longer getting any relief from the pain in between; things had fairly rapidly gone from entirely manageable to less so. I asked Ben to call the hospital, feeling a release of adrenalin in response to the surprise of how unbearable the pain was at the height of each surge. One very quick but unpleasant car journey later we were at labour triage, so that they could “see if I was in labour”. The next hour or so was possibly the worst part for me: the pain was accelerating in intensity at an alarming rate, I was moving my hips from side to side with each surge desperately trying to find relief, but failing to, and I found myself crying out loud for the first time. We were first left alone in a room for what seemed like an eternity, and then a midwife entered and slowly leafed through my notes, commenting, surprised, that this was the first time I’d contacted them – with more than a hint of doubt in her expression that I was really in active labour. Finally I was examined, something I was prepared would happen but nevertheless resented, as I knew the only function of this was to prove to her that I was worthy of the labour ward at this point in time. I do wish I had had the confidence, in retrospect, to decline this painful examination that offered no real benefit to me or my baby.

I had chosen to use the birthing pool, and while it was being run I was finally offered some gas and air. I breathed this in deeply, and initially it truly dulled the intensity of the pain, and it was wonderful! My midwife walked in and introduced herself, and, inexplicably, I responded with “I’m off my face”, then immediately felt embarrassed at my utterance and the initial effects of the gas on me (in my defence, I really did feel as though my face had left my head). Left alone with Ben again, I clutched his hand and told him for the first time that day, “I can’t do this, it’s too painful – I need an epidural”. On cue, I was told that the pool was ready. By this time it was 1pm.

The warmth of the water and the feeling of weightlessness was blissful, and I quickly relaxed into it. Our midwife dimmed the lights in the room low, and left Ben and I alone. Contractions came in thick and fast, and the pain at the peak of each was excruciating and all consuming. I sucked hard on the gas, which no longer gave me any relief, but did serve to keep my breathing long and slow through each surge. I entered a trance-like state again and was aware of very little, except Ben’s presence next to me the whole time, offering sips of cold water. Although this was the most painful stage so far, strangely I enjoyed the experience. I felt in control, focused, empowered. I knew that I was progressing well, I felt proud with myself for coping with the pain, and this encouraged me.

As I entered transition I began to struggle; the intensity of the pain felt too much to bear at the peak of each surge, and I said to Ben for the second time, “I’m serious this time – I need an epidural”. He looked at me and said, “I know you can do this, but if you want an epidural, of course you can have one. Do you want to me get the midwife?” Again right on cue, she knocked on the door and came through to ask if there was anything I needed. I looked back at Ben for a few moments, and then shook my head.

Soon afterwards, the pains began to feel slightly different; less intense, and although I didn’t feel a very strong urge to push I heard myself letting out a low pitched, guttural sound with each out breath. I instinctively knew what this meant, and I could feel the top of Oscar’s head, which was sitting very low. It was now around 3pm, and only 2 hours after being admitted to the labour ward (when I was told I was 4cm dilated) I was fully dilated, and it looked like we would meet our boy very soon.

It was at this stage that things began to unravel slightly. Oscar’s heart rate was dipping with each contraction, and after a period of continuous monitoring in the water I was told it was best that I got out of the pool, and reluctantly did so. A quick examination to reassure the midwife that I was indeed fully dilated resulted in my waters being broken, inadvertently. Out of the water I felt heavy, and the cold air brought me back to reality and out of the trance-like state, and I felt both uncomfortable and irritable, as if someone had woken me from a deep sleep too early.

It was time to start pushing, and strangely the only position that Oscar’s heart rate remained stable was with me on my back, partly upright. The pushing went on and on, and it felt as though nothing was happening, which was incredibly disheartening. I was told by the midwives (her senior was in the room as well now) to put my chin down on my chest, hold my breath and push; I did so, and it didn’t feel right, nothing was moving, and there was new pain in my back which, although not severe, felt very unpleasant. I think, in retrospect, this sensation was putting me off pushing too hard — the only way I can think to describe it was a feeling as though my bum was going to explode! Two hours passed. I was completely exhausted at this point, and began to truly doubt myself for the first time in the labour. I simply felt that I couldn’t get him out.

A doctor was brought in, who suggested that as I was at the limit of time recommended for pushing, but as Oscar’s head was very low and visible (as it had been for the past 2 hours!), she would help deliver him with a suction cup. I was exhausted, frustrated, in pain, desperate to meet my baby — and what I said next took everyone in the room, including myself, by surprise. I looked at the doctor and asked, “Is there a greater risk of me tearing if you use the Ventouse?” She answered, directly, “Yes, there is”. “Ok, I’ll have another half an hour to try to do this myself”. She nodded and left the room. With new found motivation, I listened to my body and found myself pushing differently, now arching my back with each push, and as I did I felt Oscar’s head move down, and heard cheers of encouragement through the room. I felt searing pain as he crowned, and with a few more gentle pushes his head was out, and I felt an overwhelming sense of relief, both from the pain and that I had managed to birth him alone, without needing the Ventouse after all.

But the drama wasn’t all over yet. I remember the moment of restitution vividly (when Oscar’s head turned through 90 degrees); it was such a strange sensation. Ben told me that the senior midwife murmured to her team “It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of room here, we might need the manoeuvre“, although I wasn’t aware of this at the time. When another contraction finally came, I was encouraged to push as hard as I could and I did so as the midwife applied gentle traction to his head: Oscar didn’t budge. His head was delivered, but his shoulder was stuck. Without a second’s hesitation the emergency buzzer was pressed for assistance, the bed was flat, I was being bent in half with my legs pressed against me, and without needing to be told again I pushed with all my might. Oscar’s shoulder was delivered, followed by the rest of his body, and was placed straight onto my chest, into my arms.

There were exclamations through the room remarking what a big boy he was, nods from the doctors to myself and their team as they left, their assistance thankfully not required, and words of congratulations from the midwives. These bits of memory have been built in my mind from Ben’s recounts, as I was in a bubble of relief, shock, and pure love for this purple, puffy, warm, dark haired creature lying on me, and I couldn’t have been happier.

In all honesty, I can’t say that I did experience the profound heart-flip, love at first sight emotions that I had been led to believe that I would when I first held Oscar, especially now that I can see retrospectively how my attachment has grown with each day that we’ve spent together; how now each time Oscar smiles at me and reaches his arms up for ‘mama’ my heart feels as through it might explode with pride and love. What I did feel, however, was an overwhelming sense of protectiveness, and once that baby touched my skin I didn’t want to let him go, ever. I declined passing him over to get dressed and weighed, and instead kept him on my chest as I had my stitches done. Oscar crawled his way over to find a breast and began nursing, just twenty minutes after he had entered the world.

The next moment of surprise came when Oscar was eventually weighed — 9lb 2oz, or 4.1kg! Suddenly it was clear why I had found it so difficult, and taken over three hours to push this baby out of my 5′ 4” frame.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have had such a smooth and straightforward labour, in which I felt largely calm and in control, and managed with only gas and air for pain relief; however I didn’t feel like this immediately following the birth. For a few weeks, I was in shock that I had grown such a big baby for my small frame, and felt more than a little traumatised at the three, long, hard hours of solid pushing, and the shoulder dystocia that was thankfully mild and resolved very quickly, but could potentially have been worse. I worried about what would happen the next time — what if I have an even bigger baby? I spoke to a consultant a week after Oscar’s birth who very confidently reassured me, “If you’ve managed a normal delivery the first time, you can do it again.” What people say about forgetting the pain of labour has been completely true for me, and now I look back on it as one of my proudest achievements.

Thank you for reading this, and if you’ve shared your birth story, let me know where I can read it!

Hannah xxx