Starving

There is no hunger quite like that which you experience when breastfeeding a newborn. It is of the 'bottomless pit' variety, only allieviated by throwing down a ridiculous amount of food which barely touches the sides.

For example, yesterday I ate ...

4 potato cakes with butter
A blue cheese toastie, crisps and a pear
A packet of Percy Pig sweets
12 M&S party food duck spring rolls with hoi sin sauce
A giant M&S readymeal, enough chicken and chorizo to serve two hungry adults
Almost an entire box of Celebrations chocolates

I also drank 15 pints of fruit squash in an attempt to remain hydrated.

Oh, and in the course of producing enough milk to grow my daughter from 8lb 4oz to 9lb 7oz in her first two weeks I've lost more of my pregnancy weight. Imagine, if I had a modicum of self-restraint and the urges could be quelled with fruit or (shudder) vegetables, I might even be (gasp) thin!

Getting ahead of myself

Our wonderful birth experience has meant I am rather ahead of myself. Following T's difficult delivery I spent five days on a postnatal ward at the Royal Blackburn Hospital. Breastfeeding was a challenge, delaying our departure, and once I came home and gingerly installed myself on the sofa, nipple shields and Lansinoh within easy reach, almost half of my husband's paternity leave had gone, spent driving to and from the hospital and feeding the pay and display machine.

This time has been very different. My husband was in the office two and a half hours before I gave birth, and of course I haven't been near the inside of a hospital. We were out and about the day after C was born, and being more relaxed about feeding this time around seems to be paying dividends. The midwife warned me not to be too disappointed at C's seven day weigh in, 'all babies lose some of their birthweight in the first week', but once on the scales (Cora, not the midwife!) she confounded expectations and had put on four ounces. My superwoman labour hormones still don't seem to have dissipated. I'm even (shhhhh!) coping well with the night feeds and odd five am exploding nappy.

This week I decided then that I needed a new wardrobe. My maternity stuff is all too big (not to mention almost entirely summery after two early autumn due dates) and opening the door on my non-mat clothes didn't fill me with joy. So off we trotted to the shops. Avoiding anywhere 'fashiony' (I'm not in denial about the fact I can't carry off jeggings) Next shone like a high street beacon, offering breastfeeding-friendly tunic tops and dresses that didn't cost the earth. C was starting to root for a feed so I loaded an arm up with hangers, paid and ran for the nearest bench.

It was only when I returned home and tried on my stash that reality bit. I had a baby only nine short days ago. I still have the appearance of a 20 week pregnant Weeble, but with a slightly bigger backside. Nothing fit. Nothing was anywhere near fitting. It's some sort of miracle that I didn't rip anything in the putting on and taking off. It all has to go back of course.

So I was guilty of getting ahead of myself. Clothes shopping is on ice for another month or so, and I've resolved to layer up some mat clothes to get me through the next few weeks, and hope for magic breastfeeding weightloss. But hey, I might not look it, but I feel good. And no number of size 14s could make me want it the other way around.

Brotherly love

I like to think it was brotherly love that caused T to tell everyone at nursery that his new baby sister was called Timon. I wondered why, when we took Cora in to visit, the staff gingerly asked us what her name was as they 'couldn't tell' what T had been saying. Couldn't believe that we'd be so cruel more like!

I'm pretty sure brotherly love was the reason I found C in her bouncy chair with a pile of M&S baby t-shirts (a present from a generous friend) on her head. T said he'd been 'showing' them to her.

I know however that it's brotherly love when C mumbles and peeps and T runs over, pats her hand ('s'OK Cora') and shouts for us ... 'Cora needs a mummy milk, Cora needs a daddy cuddle'.

I am so proud of my little (big?) boy and the way he's handled this massive adjustment. Whether it stays this way remains to be seen, but at the moment, four is very, very good.

Remembering

Cora is the spit of her big brother. She has the same velvety head with its soft covering of black fuzz, the same lips with a tiny milk blister forming in the bow, and the same newborn blue eyes. Is it any wonder then that I'm spending most of my time telling her she's a 'good boy'?

Must. Remember. Baby. Is. A. Girl.

Cora

48 hours ago I was tossing and turning in bed, trying to find a comfy position for my giant bump, now I have two children, and it being almost 3 am as I type this (and 6 am as I finish it, one fingered and with a rest inbetween) of course we are sleepless again. Sitting on the sofa breastfeeding my little girl*, I wouldn't swap it for the world.

So you know the key facts, which are that she arrived quickly, but safely, at home, but I wouldn't be a good blogger if I left you hanging like that would I?! Let's talk details (again, squeamish types look away now).

It seems that after all that hanging around, once she had decided to come out Cora just couldn't wait. I spent most of the morning of her birth pottering around, wondering if the crampy 'Braxton Hicks' feelings I had would come to anything. Around 10 I called my husband and said I thought there might be pattern and did he want to come home. In the back of my mind I did worry that I might be dragging him away from his beloved office for a false alarm. Yes I could now predict that my bump would tighten every five minutes or so for about 20 seconds at a time, but it didn't hurt. I put it to the back of my mind though and carried on with some chores. Putting the cover back onto our Maxi Cosi carseat was probably my proudest achievement, a task that's almost impossible to accomplish even when not in labour.

My Mum arrived for a long arranged date to play with T. I told her things felt like they were getting started and she arranged to take him on a bus and tram adventure to her house, giving me some space and peace and meaning I could relax even if the tightenings turned out to be just another trick my overdue body was playing on me. At 11.30 they left and I went upstairs for a lie down.

Once on the bed I felt the tightenings ramp up. I put on my iPod and listened to Marie Mongan's Rainbow Relaxation, the hypnobirthing script which had lulled me to sleep almost every night for the past four months. The practice paid off, and although the cramps were getting harder to ignore I was managing to breathe through them with ease, inflating an imaginary balloon with each contraction, counting up and down to 20.

It's only because of the script that I am able to time much of what happened with the rest of my labour. I stayed on the bed, on all fours, breathing through two plays of the Rainbow Relaxation, a total of 50 minutes. I heard my husband call the midwife to warn her I was in early labour, and start to organise the birthing pool, the low hum of the pump intruding into my headphones.

Then suddenly whatever I was doing stopped working. The Rainbow Relaxation started for a third time, but the surges were so strong I could now no longer concentrate on the breathing. From far away I could hear myself groaning, and knew the contractions were suddenly much closer together. I called for my husband who, although having completed nine tenths of the hypnobirthing course with a look of disdain on his face, remarkably managed to coach me back into the correct pattern, which helped, albeit temporarily. Despite my clinging to him for dear life, he left to call the midwife again and ask her to start the 15 minute journey from the hospital to our house. He returned and I hung my arms around his neck, levering myself off the bed in a desperate attempt to relieve some of the pressure I was feeling at the bottom of my bump. My waters went all over the bedroom carpet.

Despite being encouraged to get back onto the bed (which in hindsight was probably my husband's futile attempt to protect the new landing carpet from, erm, leakage) I demanded to go to the toilet, hobbling doubled over to the bathroom. The pressure was too great to allow me to sit on the loo, so I got onto the floor.

'I'm pushing'
'No you're not'
'I am, I can't stop it'
'Calm down, the midwife will be here in a minute'

More of my waters released

'I can feel the head'
'No you can't'
'I can, I can feel it, the baby's coming'
'Stop touching it you might do some damage'
'I'm pushing!'
'Hold on, the midwife's on her way'

'I need to stand up'
'You'll slip on the wet floor and hurt yourself, stay down there'

I hoiked myself up on the sink

'The baby's coming ... catch her'
'HEEEEEEEELLLP!'

And so Cora was delivered into her disbelieving father's arms. His shout for help was answered by the midwife who had just arrived and let herself in through the (thankfully open) front door. She came up the stairs to hear the baby's first cries and began a well rehearsed operation to get us wrapped, warmed and fully checked out. The time was 12.45 pm, just an hour and a quarter after I'd gone for that first lie down, and we were back in bed, this time plus one. More towels than I thought we owned were called into service. Sadly though I'm not sure the landing carpet will ever recover.

I did it. I had my homebirth. The baby arrived safely. No pain relief. I am superwoman!

*learning to BF lying down is high on my list this time. T didn't get the hang of it until around three months when he was a bit bigger and I realised the joy of feeding and sleeping at the same time. C had her first feed lying on a pillow next to me, but it's been hit and miss since. Still, I shouldn't complain, it's not like we're not going to get chance to practice is it?!

She's here!

Baby Cora Joan, named for her great grandma who sadly never had chance to meet her, was born at home this afternoon. Her entrance was a little unorthodox, after only just over an hour of active labour she was delivered on the bathroom floor by Daddy as the midwife let herself into the front door! She cried straight away, weighs 8lb 4oz and is feeding beautifully. More details (and photos!) once we've got our heads round it all.

Oh, and I never made the acupuncture.

40+9

This baby is officially more lazy than her brother. He'd managed to find his way out by 3.35 am on the 289th day of my pregnancy. Today, as the clock ticks down towards day 290, I am officially fed up.

My inlaws are visiting from Essex this weekend. It's their 40th wedding anniversary and my brother and sister in law, niece and nephew are in tow. They're staying elsewhere (they wouldn't all fit in the house, even if we didn't have all of the birth pool paraphenalia hanging around the place, plus I don't want anyone seeing me in this intense hormonal state!) and there's no denying they would have loved to have been meeting the baby today. Not as much as I would have been of course!

As the days pass, I'm finding it harder to manage the emotions of being VHP (Very Heavily Pregnant) and absolutely concede I am harder still to live with. My husband has done both of the weekend get ups with our lively toddler. Yesterday, knowing I hadn't slept well, he took him to the Museum of Science and Industry for some train time, even managing to feed him lunch, take him to play with friends and pick up a yummy M&S tea on the way home. As they walked through the door, happy and tired, having had a full day to nap, read and catch up with guilty TV pleasures, of course I cried at the fact that I'd 'missed them' and moaned about being lonely. Talk about a kick in the teeth. Contrary, or hormonal, barely covers it. But despite being well aware of how irrational I was being, I was unable to stop the tears from coming.

Today I have tried to spend the baby out. The Boden Spring preview, replacing a lost baby toy via ebay and a massively expensive but lovely to look at baby seat thing. I am still pregnant. Poor and pregnant in fact.

Tomorrow, sweep number two and acupuncture. Oh, and my Mum. I think this is a 'my head on her lap' occasion.