Veronica and Sven’s Baby Diary

Simon’s now two and a half weeks old so I thought I’d give you an update on his progress so far.  He’s definitely got a different personality to Holly.  He’s much more mellow than Holly at the same age but can definitely let you know when he wants something.  He’s a fantastic sleeper… unfortunately, never when you want him to.  He seems to want to play at night a lot and sleep during feeds (which makes feeding him until he’s full quite slow and often difficult).  Holly’s currently training him so that he can sleep through any kind of noise too - she frequently runs up to his cot shouting “SIMON! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” and tries to give him cuddles and tickles while he’s asleep.  It’s very adorable. 

Physically, he’s progressing well too.  He weighs more than his birth weight again now and is definitely filling out.  His hair is starting to get a bit longer too although it could still be definitely classified as fuzz :)  And he’s almost grown out of 0000-sized clothes already!  He has really long fingers and everyone keeps commenting that he’s going to play a musical instrument of some kind.  He seems like a very happy, content little boy.

Holly’s getting so much bigger these days too.  I think she’s about to go through a growth spurt because she’s been eating everything we could throw at her and then still asking for more!  She’s had a bit of a cold this week though and has slowed down a little but that could also be because she’s just getting two new molars!  I didn’t even realise she was due to get any more teeth for a while so I got quite a surprise when I was brushing her teeth and found one poking through the other morning.  Oh, and she’s also turned into a chatterbox.  She is constantly wanting everyone’s attention so she can tell them things and is learning so many new words that Sven and I can hardly keep up so as to understand what she’s telling us.  Just this morning for example, Sven was asking what she might want when she said “paw paw”… funnily enough it was paw paw but he didn’t realise she even knew what that was

Anyway, Simon’s finally gone to sleep for his morning nap so I need to duck off and have a shower while I have the opportunity.  It’s a never-ending cycle of sleeping, feeding, throwing up, cleaning up, changing nappies, and sleeping again.  Hopefully the sleeps will get longer before too long and then we can all be much happier campers

Well, one thing’s for sure, I definitely know how to get it over with fast once things get going. In the very early hours of Tuesday morning (6/3/07) our baby boy, Simon Jasper Abrahamsson, was born. Yay!

After what seemed like an eternity (he was a week late) and after I tried everything I could think of to try and spark Simon to come earlier (including jumping castles, visits to Dream World, and many long walks) I was beginning to think we’d have to wait until the induction day. But, on Monday night at about 10pm my waters broke (quite an unusal sensation, but not at all painful - much better than last time). I rang the hospital and they told me to head on in for an examination. So, after a brief shower, Sven drove me in while I rang family to let them know it was all starting. Once there, the hospital staff did an examination and told me that only the hindwaters had broken and the forewaters were still in tact (I didn’t realise there were different types until that point) and the baby’s head was still a long way back so it looked like it might still take a while before things started. Turns out the midwife broke the forewaters when she did the examination but I didn’t tell her because I didn’t realise it wasn’t part of the other water breaky thingy.

The midwife hooked me up to a device that monitied the baby’s heart rate and my contraction intensities so she could give a report to the obstetrician (who was being called in). In the mean time I started having contractions. “Would you like to take a sleeping tablet or some pethadine so you can have a sleep” the midwife commented, insisting it would still be a long time before anything would happen. Anyhoo, to cut a long story short, within 15 minutes she’d decided she wasn’t going to send me up to the maternity ward after all and that I probably was about to give birth and so she started getting the room ready for the deliver.

Before very long, and after the obstetrician finally arrived after getting diverted by half a house being moved that was blocking her way to the hospital, the labour was well under way. I insisted on having some gas despite the annoying midwife insisting I was doing fine and could cope without it and that I really did want a drug free labour (mad woman). Suddenly, the midwife commented that the contractions really were getting stonger and were one on top of the other (er, der, could’ve told her that… in fact I did). When I asked if I was going to be able to have a pethadine injection I received the reply, “Oh no sweetheart, you’ve left it too late to have it now”… I wanted to cry.

Not long after that I was told to start pushing… without the gas. I wanted to cry again :) It was definitely a different experience pushing without pain relief. I wouldn’t recommend it just for the fun of it, that’s for sure. I thought the head was bad, until I got to the shoulders. Thankfully, Simon popped out after a very fast 9 minutes of pushing, unfortunately, after the very rapid delivery he was in a bit of shock and was blue so they had to cut his umbilical cord (so Sven missed out) and give him oxygen and he quickly recovered.

So, after having my waters break at 10pm, contractions start just after 12pm, Simon was born at 1:34am. They classified that as a 1 1/2 hour labour (compared to Holly’s 4 1/2 hours). He weighed 3.96kg (8 pounds 7 ounces), and was 52cm long (the same length as Holly). He has dark blue eyes, a little bit of short, fuzzy brown hair, and has been a very good boy so far.

Anyway, here are some pics.

 

 

Well, we’ve started a new blog so I hope you’re all not too upset about not having any history to look through.  Anyway, I hope you all keep on reading!