Advanced warning, this blog is going to talk about my traumatic birth experience… if you can’t handle the following fact, then I suggest you don’t continue on…I was put to sleep under general aesthetic not knowing if I was going to wake up to my baby being dead or alive.

For those of you that are still with me,  get comfy, maybe with some tea – it’s going to be a long one! The most important thing I want you to take away from this is how important it is to listen to your body, that and having faith in the glorious NHS.

On Saturday 30th November, at around 4pm, I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt the baby move. We had gone into town for the Santa run, and I had a sugary hot chocolate, which would normally make him go crazy in my tummy, but nothing had happened. So when we got home I had a lie down.. nothing, then a bath.. nothing. Throughout my pregnancy I had be diligently counting kicks, following the advise from the wonderful Kicks Count charity – https://www.kickscount.org.uk, who emphasise how important it is to monitor movements, and be aware of any changes in your babies normal pattern. Ultimately knowing this helped save Isaac’s life.

I came downstairs and insisted to Matt that we go to the hospital immediately. Something just didn’t feel right. Mum came round within about ten minutes to look after Dylan and put him to bed (I am sure she teleports somehow), and we headed to the hospital.

If Matt was unkind, I am sure he would have told me he thought I was being neurotic/OCD about it, but he’s not unkind, he is supportive and understands that I lived every day of the pregnancy expecting to bleed and lose another child. We got up the ward and luckily were seen incredibly quickly. They took us into a side room and I immediately started crying – it was the same room in which they told use that Max was going to die, having lost all my waters. I thought it was a sign. The midwife was very sweet and offered to move us to another room, but I just wanted to “get on with it”. I was put on the heart rate monitor and immediately there it was, happily beating away at 140 beat per minute – or so we thought. The sobs of relief came, but were short lived.

The midwife left the room and within minutes the machine started going crazy, Matt went out into the corridor to find her, as thought maybe it had come unhooked etc. Another midwife came in – Shona – to readjust the pads, but it wasn’t working, his heartbeat was going below 100 (something termed Bradycardia) and I am pretty sure it flashed up lowest at 63 BPM, there was definitely an 80. Then suddenly there was also a Dr in the room, who did an internal check to see whether I was actually in labour or at least dilated, I was not. By this point I was in a lot of pain, I thought it was contractions, it felt like he was twisting in my tummy.

Next thing I knew they said we were going through to “delivery”. I naively thought this meant they were going to break my waters, but then the reality became clear as I was rushed down a corridor, with Matt practically running behind us, as alarms were blaring and people were appearing left, right and center.  It was then I saw the door we were going through had a sign saying “theatre” – I was still confused at this point – they wouldn’t let Matt in, and I thought it was just because he needed to scrub before theatre and that I was having an epidural, all I remember is Matt calling “I love you Becky” before doors closed on him. They told me a little white lie and said he was getting changed when I begged for him to be let in.

By that point there were people everywhere, someone doing a cannula in each hand, someone putting towels across me, painting my tummy with weird dye, a catheter, oxygen mask, and being told to drink some horrible tasting liquid. I still didn’t really understand that I would be asleep for the birth of my baby. I was thinking, this is it, I am going to have yet another dead baby. Nature had played a cruel joke on us letting us get to over 37 weeks, and now I was going to lose my rainbow baby. The last thing I remember doing was screaming at poor Shona, “DON’T LET THIS BABY DIE!!!!!” over and over. I went to sleep not knowing whether he was alive or dead. Something that I will never ever get over. We were later told that Matt wasn’t allowed in the room because a) they don’t let husbands in as it takes up time to scrub etc and b) it’s thought to be too traumatic for the husband to see his wife being put to sleep and baby being born that way, but I still wish one of us had been there to see the little man being born.

Two hours later I woke up in a small dark room, where Matt had been all that time – Isaac having been given to him twenty minutes after we went into theatre (poor Matt – when I think about him being on his own in there not knowing what was happening with his wife or child makes my heart ache with sadness for him).  Bless him, Matt had done skin to skin with Isaac, and called my mum to let her know the baby had arrived safely. Mum then had to stay the night in our bed and look after Dylan for the next few days – luckily he adores his Granny and Grandpa. It’s still hard to come to terms with thought that my mum and dad knew my baby was alive before I did.

Apparently when I came round the first thing I did was start shouting about the radio being too loud (there was no radio). When I opened eyes properly, there he was being held up to me in a little red hat and a towel. I looked at Matt and said “is he alive?” (the red hat in my head signified danger/end as Royal Surrey use a traffic light system for hats for their new borns). Then they handed me my miracle.

I felt like I was in a weird dream. The pain I was in then showed me I was definitely NOT in a dream!! Unlike an epidural, where the pain relief is still present for a few hours after c section, with a general, there was no such relief sadly – which is one of the reasons why they only do it as a LAST resort. They gave me a morphine drip, but for some STUPID reason, I didn’t want to use it, I think I just wanted to be as compos mentis as possible, to be in control of my mind, to absorb what had happened.

They were monitoring me every two hours, as I had lost over 1.7 litres of blood, and there was talk of a transfusion. But they were both surprised and happy that I seemed “really well” given the amount I had lost, and my blood pressure and iron etc were all fine. The staff were very sweet and got a large black beanbag for Matt to try and sleep on next to me – although his legs still hung off the end. There were times during the next few hours where I lay in the darkness and thought I was in the same recovery room, like after we lost Isabella and I’d had a D&C after loss, but then suddenly Isaac would make a noise in the hospital cot, and I would remember that this time my baby was alive.

Within a couple of hours I was able to get Isaac to breastfeed, which I was so happy about, but then bubble burst slightly when they told me yet another side effect of a general was that it delays your milk coming in. He was so little (6lbs and then dropped to 5lb 6oz over the next 48 hours), and I just instantly felt like I wanted to protect and nurture him. It was hard though not being able to pick him up myself, but every time I moved my tummy hurt and I still had a catheter in, as well as two cannulas.

At about 7.30am (12 hours after he was born), at my request we were moved to a private room – I just had spent so much time on wards at that hospital in the previous year that I just couldn’t bear the thought of being on one again. I wanted the three of us to have some privacy, I needed the quiet to process what had happened. One of the Drs came in and said two things that will always stay with me. One was that we were lucky the little man wasn’t in SCBU given the circumstances of his birth (turns out he had the cord wrapped round his neck), and secondly that we were “moments away from the worst case scenario”. My blood ran cold when she said this. So many what if’s – what if we had dinner first before leaving, what if we had stayed to put Dylan to bed, what if mum had taken longer to come round to the house, and what if he had kicked just once? I know if he had kicked just once I would have not insisted on going to the hospital and just gone to bed.

The first full day (Sunday) went in a blur, various checks and all was going well.  Matt’s mum, dad and nan all came to visit us, and it was lovely for them to meet their latest grandson. Matt went home to catch up on some sleep and Isaac and I watched Netflix! (he would only sleep on me).

On Monday I was delighted that Wendy was able to take a break in her shift and visit us. It was so nice seeing her, she has been with me at every step of this journey. She is such an amazingly kind person, and I feel really really blessed to have her in my life now.  She will always be Isaac’s “aunty Wendy”.

Then jaundice hit! The first six hours under the lamp in the afternoon went well, and it didn’t seem to bother him. During this time we had a visit from the lovely Jacqui Tingle, she was brilliant – Isaac decided at that moment to be sick everywhere! She helped me clean it all up and has such a calming presence.

Matt went home to pick Dylan up, as we really wanted to keep things as normal as possible for him. My parents came to visit, Mum armed with various gifts for Isaac and me, and it was lovely hearing what Dylan had been up to for the last couple of days. Unfortunately the same calmness  under the light was not apparent for the second session of eight hours. He WOULD NOT settle. Poor like thing just wanted to feed or cuddle. There was an AMAZING transitional care nurse – called Sheena – who basically spent her entire shift with me trying various ways to settle him. At one point I was even just in my pants sitting in a chair with the blue light shining down on us whilst I fed Isaac – me covering my eyes with a sleep mask. At 4am I was at my wits end, but he was finally allowed out from under the light, the lovely Sheena took him for a couple of hours so I could get some much needed sleep.

On the Tuesday morning I saw a Dr and she said we could both go home. The relief was overwhelming. I just wanted to see Dylan, and let him meet his little brother.

I will be forever grateful to the midwifes, Drs and nurses at the RSCH. I can not fault the staff – they work so hard, such long hours, and never complain. I am sure I was a pain in the bum at various points, but they were always so kind. I am in NO DOUBT that it is due to their speed at getting Isaac out that saved his life. That at the work that Kicks Count do in making sure mums are aware of their babies movements.

As I said at the beginning, if any mums to be are reading this, LISTEN to your body, don’t worry about being neurotic or bothering people with questions etc, do what you have to do to keep your bump safe. If I hadn’t listened to my body, and trusted my instincts, Isaac would be another one of my babies to not take a breath, and another missing piece of the Owen family puzzle.

I would like to thank all my family and friends, especially my wonderful husband, my parents, my sister and my bestie Katy Pelling White –  who have really be my rocks during the journey for number two over the last two years. They have dealt with all the lows, and I know they are delighted for me now we have finally got our “high”. I couldn’t have done it without them.

I will continue to blog, moving from our journey to complete our family, to the both the good times and the hard times of being a mum raising two boys, so I hope you will all stay with me 🙂

Been a while since I’ve blogged, but still living day to day with this pregnancy, and set myself the goal of blogging again once we were twenty weeks – which was yesterday.  A milestone which had followed an absolutely horrendous week – physically, mentally and emotionally.

Let me explain. At ten weeks we had paid for a private test called “Harmony”, which looks at the chromosomal abnormalities a baby might have, it’s meant to be around 99% accurate, as opposed to the NHS blood screenings for these that is approx. 85% accurate. Everything came back clear at the time. Then when I had my combined NHS screening at twelve weeks, although the Nuchal Translucency measurement (to do with the amount of fluid around baby’s nuchal fold – high fluid could be a sign of Downs Syndrome) was normal, 1.5mm, my results came back as 1 in 40 for Downs, so there the blood test was showing something up. At the time, my consultant said not to worry as I had the results from the Harmony, which were far more accurate. Then four weeks later (about two weeks ago), she was looking through my file at a clinic with her, and said it wasn’t good enough that they had only screened on 8% of Fetal Cells in the Harmony test, the NHS like a minimum of 10% apparently. So she order the SAFE test (Harmony just by another name) to be done then and there. We waited an anxious seven days, and on Friday last week it came back with bad news – 1 in 127 risk for Downs.

We were in turmoil. My consultant was away for another two weeks so couldn’t discuss with her, and we were at a loss of what to do. We were offered an amniocentesis test – which basically means putting a very long needle into my uterus to take some of the amniotic fluid, to test the baby’s urine. This was a diagnostic test, that would tell us one way or another – great. But not great. It came with a risk of 1 in 100 chance of miscarriage, and given my history, it felt like my chances of miscarriage would probably be higher than that. My main thought being, what if we do this, and we accidentally kill a healthy baby, I would never forgive myself. But my head was also saying, I can’t spend the next twenty weeks wondering, it would affect my relationship with Matthew and Dylan – as would be too much pressure and distraction and not being able to focus on everyday life. I was also worried that the baby might be born incredibly unwell, perhaps with heart problems, and not survive birth and then I would have carried on pregnancy building up hope, to only then be devastated all over again. But all that being said, I don’t think we would have ever gone through with an abortion unless scans really did show a problem with the baby’s heart or brain which meant he would have no quality of life. I don’t think anyone really knows what they would do in this situation, until you are forced into it. So I hope nobody judges me that we even contemplated what we would do if he did have Downs, not unless you have been in my shoes.

On the Monday morning I went to see a specialist at the hospital, and she said in reality we had now had two “positive” tests for Downs, so in most cases they would strongly suggest the invasive test. She said it’s better to have it now, as it can bring on birth, if we left it later, then the baby could be born extremely prematurely, with severe health problems, so they normally say before 24 weeks or not until 34. I called Matthew and we decided to at least book at appointment the next day at St George’s in London, where we would have a detailed scan and then the test, but that we could always cancel once we had slept on it. Not that any sleep was possible.

The next day we agreed to drive to Tooting, knowing that we could pull out last minute. The staff there were fantastic, and I had the most detailed scan I have ever had, they even called into the room one of their main consultants in fetal medicine to do it. She said although the scan showed no physical problems, the only way to truly know was to do the test. We decided we couldn’t go through the next twenty weeks worrying about it, so went ahead. It was incredibly painful. When it was done, I went a bit dizzy so had to sit and wait for a while before we left. They also took some of my blood for a research project they were doing on the test, as I had had three different results from the previous blood tests, they thought it would be an interesting case to add to their research. Wasn’t ideal, but at same time, they had been so kind and so thorough that I didn’t have the heart to say no.

The next 48 hours were a bit of a blur, it was the “high risk” chance of miscarriage, so was ordered on strict bedrest. Luckily Matthew was able to work from home to do the nursery runs etc. – as I wanted to avoid lifting Dylan. Unfortunately, on Wednesday night I started feeling ill, very hot and headachy as well as pain when I went to the toilet. So, mum and dad had to rush round to look after Dylan whilst we drove to the hospital. We were there for four hours, well gone midnight, with more tests completed. There were infection markers in my urine and blood, which for me felt like it was the beginning of the end, as that’s what had happened in the previous two losses. They gave me some antibiotics and told me to come back if I got cramping/bleeding etc. Luckily, I didn’t, and started to feel better a couple of days later. Basically I spent an entire week in bed, in a heatwave, wondering when I was going to loss my baby again. I am very fortunate in that my boss told me to take all the time I needed and not to give work a second thought, so at least I didn’t have that to worry about on top.

On Thursday afternoon we got the results – everything was clear. We were delighted, but at the same time, I couldn’t help thinking, that’s only the next hurdle we have overcome, I am convinced there will be more.  I think my consultant will be surprised that we had the test, but sometimes I think you have to roll the dice, you have to have faith that you have had your cruelty in life, and it’s your turn for something good to happen.

On a positive note, I had a scan on Tuesday, and everything seems fine, but at the back of my head, I always think “for now”.

Here is our little man, it reminds me of the Rodin’s The Thinker statue… or should that be Bruce Forsyth?!

As it stands, I am twenty weeks, with the plan of coming off the progesterone at 34 weeks and being induced or having a C-Section at 38 weeks – as the consultant does not want to risk my placenta making it all the way to forty weeks. They will also scan at 22, 26, 30, 34 and 38 weeks as a minimum. Each of these will be a milestone, as will 24 weeks, as this is the “viability” stage – when the baby could be born and potentially survive. So although I am hoping the next four weeks go quickly, I also want to make sure I am not wishing the time away, as I know it’s important to enjoy every minute with Dylan, as he is still my little miracle.