The year began with Squiggles 3rd birthday, followed by an awful lot of hospital trips. As well as giving me the gift of Hyperemesis gravidarum, Jelly Bean decided it'd be fun to acquaint Mummy with sporadic labour. This meant for the 3weeks before JB's birth I had the joy of experiencing labour pains and dialating to 4cm, but no further. We made several trips to the hospital in those weeks-driving a half hour whilst in the midst of back labour is zero fun. In the end, the doctor decided to induce me. JB arrived relatively quickly once I was induced, though by that time I was exhausted and had enough...I can't say it was our most peaceful birth or that I was very brave. The moment I placed JB on my chest though made it all worth it.
Numnut and I were pleasantly surprised when Jelly Bean entered the world. She is the first of our children to cry upon entry to the world and not require any medical assistance. We were feeling very blessed with a healthy child and a lack of afterbirth complications that we're used to.
When JB was 3 days old, we packed her into the car and took her home. When the midwife came by for our home visit, JB had lost a little bit of weight, and I was struggling to breastfeed her, the midwife looked at her bellybutton twice and asked how we were cleaning it, happy with my answers she packed up and left. Two seconds later she came back in the house and said she's take a swab just to be careful.
I thought no more of the visit and immersed myself in being a mum of three. When JB was just six days old we got a call from the hospital saying we had to go to a doctor IMMEDIATELY. The doctors surgery was closed, but thankfully we had just enough money for a trip to the after hours doctor, our doctor wasn't sure what to do and called the Monash Children's Hospital to consult. JB had Ecoli Menningtis. After much discussion between our doctor and the doctors at Monash, it was decided we'd drive JB the hour and a half to Monash Children's Hospital. The emergency room at the hospital was full but we didn't even get to sit down before being called in. Nobody seemed to want to make the decision to give a six day old baby antibiotics, however they regrew whatever it was that told them she definitely had Ecoli Menningtis, so the decision was finally made.
We had the student doctors come in and learn how to put a drip in such a young baby, which thankfully didn't bother her at all after they gave her some glucose. Seeing my tiny baby on a drip was one of the most heart-renching moments I've ever experienced as a parent.
We were very lucky, after just one night in hospital, and three doses of antibiotics, JB was declared healthy and our doctor told us to take her home.
Then, when JB was just four months old, I decided to get sick. I was on the waiting list to get a hernia fixed. I'd developed the hernia during my pregnancy with Squiggles and it had been exasperated by my pregnancy with JB. However, my body didn't want to wait and the hernia strangulated. With all the nearby hospitals in bedlock, I wound up being operated on about 2hours away from home.
Numnut was amazing during this time but unfortunately JB decided that she wouldn't drink formula. Being exclusively breastfed she had never had it before, and I had no expressed milk in the freezer because I find expressing so hard. She went 13hours without drinking anything, we were all becoming very worried, until one of my amazing friends gave Numnut some of her breastmilk which JB devoured.
After I was released from hospital our little family of five split up. Squiggles, Jelly Bean and I went to live with my parents where they and my brother and sister-in-law helped me with being mum, as I wasn't allowed to lift JB for 6weeks! Numnut and Bubbles went back to our home (4hours from my parents) and Numnut and my sister worked together to look after Bubbles and get her to and from school. It really was a trying time, and being unable to pick up my baby was incredibly painful!
Jelly Bean is 8months now, and starting to crawl, Bubbles is doing exceptionally well in school, even receiving an excellence award in writing and Squiggles is as bubbly as ever. I'm still struggling abit to juggle three kids but we are slowly gelling as a family unit and hopefully I'll be up to blogging in abit!
I hope you're all doing well!
Please always supervise your infant/child at play. Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended. You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.
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