First Ever Blog!!

Wednesday Nov 04 2009 16:44:20

By EmilyLovesBabyArchie

Probably should start with a little introduction, I'm Emily, I'm now 20 years old and I live with my fiance Stuart (23 years old) and we have a beautiful little boy named Archie who was born on Sunday 02.08.2009 at 11:12pm weighing exactly 6lb (yes the memory is still very fresh in my mind!!).

To start off with, I know I'm classed as a young mum, and hate is a very strong word, but I HATE that title and the stigma that goes along with it. Yes I got pregnant at 19, yes there are days that I struggle, but mum's of every age have that same daily struggle, not just young mum's in particular. And no I do not claim every benefit under the sun, and no I did not have a baby in order to claim said benefits. In fact the only benefit I do get is the bog standard Child Benefit. I haven't even put in the forms to claim Child Tax Credits for my other half yet (although I should probably get round to that at some point!!). We don't get housing benefit, council tax benefit or any other benefit as although I am not working and haven't done so since I was 12 weeks pregnant, Stuart earns too much for us to qualify for anything WHICH to be quite honest cracks me up as we have to budget our money and think sensibly about what we can and cannot afford, we even have to SAVE for things :O yet I do know of a few people who could be put into the category "had children to claim benefits", and they have money falling out of their ears, they smoke 30 fags a day, go out on the lash at least twice a week (whilst Grandma/new boyfriend on the scene or less cash rich people babysit) and still have money to throw about. THIS is my pet hate, if you hadn't already noticed.

We moved in together (renting) in Dec 2008, a little 2 bed terraced house in Gosport (lovely house, not so lovely area) and found out I was pregnant the night before we were due to move out of our parents house. I won't lie, I was scared sh*tless!! It took me 2 more weeks to work up the courage to tell my parents, and then ensued the obligatory "What have you done? You've ruined your life!!" rant, although saying that they were soon 'over it' as when I went round to fix their laptop that same evening, I noticed my Mum's internet browsing history was already full up of baby shopping websites!! Stuart's parents, him being a little older, were slightly more relaxed about the situation and pretty much just said they'd support us whatever we decided to do. So in all, I had the support of a loving partner and we both had the support of our parents. Fantastic set-up.

At the time I was working as a Purchasing Administrator for a small-ish company in Segensworth, it was only office work although I liked the people I worked with so that brightened up my day a bit. The job was only temporary though (I took on the contract after I left college as it was available immediately and I wanted the cash flow!!), and come February time, my contract ended and I was jobless. I registered with the Job Centre the next week, but due to endless amounts of errors on their part, of the 13 weeks I was actually registered with them, I received a grand total of £47 from them. Probably not even enough to cover my petrol and parking costs to actually drive to the job centre and sign on each week!! I applied for every job going (even McDonalds!!) and got invited to a fair few interviews, but each time I turned up with my already growing bump, I was turned down almost instantly. Luckily in the previous year I had worked enough days in order to claim Statuatory Maternity Pay from the Government, and touch wood, I've been receiving this every fortnight for the past 26 weeks and haven't had any problems with this, as yet!!

Stuart proposed to me on Christmas Day 2008, a complete suprise to me, although apparently everybody else (parents, friends etc) all knew and had kept it a secret!! We had a fantastic engagement party mid-Feb 2009 with all of our friends and family. Stuart was extremely merry, to put it politely, and at around 14 weeks pregnant, I found myself dragging my comatose fiance from the car to the house after he passed out on the way home. At least I look back on it with humour and fond memories!!

I had a fairly easy pregnancy really, no morning sickness at all, although I was very VERY tired constantly throughout my preganancy. We went for a dating scan at what we thought was 12 weeks, but when the baby's measurements were taken they thought I was only 11 weeks and therefore too early to measure the Nuchal Fold etc. Luckily for us this meant we got to see our baby again a week later where we were told that everything looked fantastic and my bloods came back as a very low risk of Downs. Good times.

I was adamant right from the start that I wanted to find out the sex of the baby, and Stuart didn't want to, although by the time the 20 week scan came round we had switched sides and now Stuart was desperate to know and me not so much!! We still hadn't come to an agreement as we were walking into the sonographer's room, but when we saw our bean on the screen and an alarmingly large, very long object floating around our baby's legs we both looked at one another and laughed. The sonographer obviously realised and told us it was actually the umbilical cord which made us feel slightly better than our baby didn't have monstrous proportions, although had whetted our appetites enough to want to know for sure. The sonographer took great delight in telling us that she had no doubt in her mind that we were expecting a little boy and he was wearing the largest pair of testicles she had seen in her 25 years of work!! Monstrous proportions perhaps!! We had already picked names for boys and girls so from the moment we walked out of the room, bean was now Archie.

Routine bloods at a midwife appointment around 25 weeks came back that I was anaemic, which explains the extreme tiredness, and I was put on iron supplements and urged to eat plenty of spinach, red meat and 1/2 a pint of Guiness a week. Well I'm not the biggest fan of the black stuff so the last one definitely wasn't happening. But I did my best to eat properly so that I could still give birth in the local Midwife-led centre rather than going to the Maternity ward at the hospital.

At about 28 weeks I started to get awful shooting pains in my groin/hip area and had to crawl up the stairs on a few occassions so after being referred to the physiotherapist I was told I had SPD (symphysis pubis dysfunction). From this point on I was told to rest as much as possible (woop!!) and to wear a support girdle (definitely not the most attractive item in my underwear drawer) or risk having to spend the last few weeks of my pregnancy on crutches and ultimately bed rest. Luckily I never let it get to that stage and invested in a lovely new bean bag to rest my legs on.

Those legs, oh dear, well mine were awful. I had normal sized ones until about 30 weeks, then my ankles started to puff up, by 34 weeks my legs looked like they were owned my the Elephant Man. I mean you've never seen legs like this. I lived in flip flops for 3 weeks. Not even my slippers fitted me anymore :( In fact I made it through the pregnancy with no stretchmarks on my tummy whatsoever (generous amounts of Avon's Maximum Body Makeover applies every morning and night) although I did manage to get some baby scars... 6 stretchmarks on the back of my left calf. Not my right one, just the left. One leg must've been fatter than the other. Lovely.

I went for a 4D scan at 31 weeks, but by then Archie had already engaged (added even more pressure to my SPD) so after starjumps, fizzy drinks, rolling about, much 'air-humping' and even more embarrassment, I was booked in for another scan the following week to see if he'd moved at all. Come the following week, Archie's head was still locked in the same position (it was either very comfy or he was stuck!!) and the only clear picture we managed to get was of his big, beautiful pouting lips and to this day that picture scares me as, don't get me wrong, I know that it's a picture of Archie, but it seems surreal that he was once inside of me and he still has those big pouting lips now!!

My mum threw me an amazin baby shower on July 25th 2009. All of my family and friends were there. We played silly games and mum even went through the trouble of personalising EVERYTHING. We had personalised lipbalms with stickers on saying Emily's Baby Shower and the date. Personalised chocolate bars, banners, everything. It was brilliant, I had such a lovely day. Stuart sent me some beautiful flowers whilst I was there and the message "I love you and can't wait for our little man to arrive x" brought a tear to everybodies eyes!!

At 37 weeks and 3 days I had a routine midwife appointment and then decided to take a trip to Babies R Us to finish filling up my hospital bag with things I'd probably never use (antibac hand gel, soothing CD's etc) and a mammoth amount of sanitary towels designed to soak up the Atlantic Ocean... I also thought it would be a fab time to call around my other pregnant friends to organise buying a TEN's machine between us rather than each hiring one individually. I promised myself I'd sort it out the next day.

The next day I woke up at about 8am feeling like I was wetting myself, fantastic, Archie had gone from just sitting on my bladder and periodically kicking it, to full force squeezing the life out of it. I waddled as fast as I could downstairs to the bathroom (we didn't have the luxury of an upstairs one) leaving a trail behind me, but when I finally manouvered myself onto the toilet it just didn't feel like I was wetting myself. After a moment of pause, I suddenly became hysterical, bawling my eyes out screaming for Stuart to bring me my phone. I heard him stomping down the stairs moaning about me waking him up on his weekend off (it was a Saturday morning) until he saw me crying melodramatically into the sink whilst still sat on the toilet. He must've asked me what was wrong at least 20 times before my mum finally picked up the phone at her end and I cried to her that I thought I was weeing myself, but I couldn't stop it and I thought that my 'bits' were broken. To which my mum replied that I was being silly and that it was probably my waters breaking, to which I cried even louder because I hadn't started washing and ironing Archie's clothes yet so he wasn't allowed to come. This was when Stuart finally woke up and realised he might not be getting the quiet weekend he'd hoped for!!

Now I know I'm leaving things on a bit of a cliffhanger but I'm due to pick the monster up from his playdate at Nanny's house so I'll be back as soon as I get another 5 mins to give you the rest of the labour story. It's a summary of the longest 38 hours of my life!!

Thankyou for reading, Emily x