Gwen - the first week

Welcome to the family Guinevere Charlotte Ritchie, or Gwen for short.

By Friday 6th May the building work had mostly finished so Adam and I spent the weekend cleaning. I, 39 weeks pregnant at this stage, was literally on my hands and knees scrubbing floors and scraping plaster off floors for hours. Now these sorts of activities are usually the kind of things recommended for engaging babies ready for labour (baby had shown no signs of engaging). It is also recommended for turning breech babies, but I didn't have that problem. On Sunday night my tummy moved about 10cm off centre to the right which was very odd.

On Monday I did wonder if she had turned breech. I thought it was very unlikely but was very conscious of where the movements were and figured I had plenty of time to mention it to midwife if it started feeling different (we all assumed I would be 2 weeks overdue). I was getting stronger Braxton Hicks and was generally more uncomfortable but didn't think much of it as I walked into town and then walked to yoga. Monday also saw the last of the plastering and the builders move their stuff out completely.

4am on Tuesday morning my waters broke and contractions started slowly. I let Adam sleep, figuring this could be his last chance for a while. Mum and Dad landed at Heathrow at 6:30 am and made it to ours around 9am. We all piled into the car and went to the hospital just for a check up, which was fine. The midwife said the baby was engaged now, and I should go home and come back when contractions were 1 min long every 5 min (they were about 30 sec long every 3 mins).

Within a few minutes of getting home I had meconium (baby poo) in my waters - an indication that the baby might be in distress. After a bit of food and a rest to check that it really was meconium, Adam and I went back to the hospital, leaving Mum and Dad to rest. After monitoring me for a bit and being happy that the baby wasn't in distress I was contracting enough that they took us through to the delivery suite (we had arrived at a really busy time so we had had to wait for a while to get seen). By the time the midwife checked my progress, about 12 hours after my waters broke, labour was well established, but wait... that isn't a head. Baby was breech!

Cue arrival of doctors, consultants, anaesthetist, more doctors, ultrasound machine etc. Within an hour (a really quite painful hour) I was in theatre with Mum with a spinal block and, 10 minutes later, my baby girl.

Gwen is a lovely baby, described by one midwife as "chilled out". She eats, sleeps and poops well. Adam and I are besotted. She wasn't affected at all by her somewhat turbulent entrance into the world. I have recovered well from the surgery and was released from hospital 2 days later (thankfully - getting poked and prodded at midnight and 6am isn't what you need when you are already struggling to sleep around your newborn baby's schedule).

And now we are all home and happy. Mum and Dad have been great, taking care of the cooking and helping Adam with the cooking and cleaning, and waiting patiently until we are ready to share Gwen with them. Somewhat surprisingly we haven't taken that many photos yet, but I'm sure we will make up for that soon. But here are some photos from our first week.

Watching Spurs on Match of the Day with Dad (in her Spurs romper)

.

A few hours old

Sleeping beauty

First trip out in the pram

Taking in the cafe culture in Headington with Dad and Nana