You Wouldn't Believe It

Here is my darling wee Sian on her first day in the world:



And here she is at about 2 weeks:


And in hospital at nearly 3 weeks old with a drip in her arm:


Yes - hospital! My 4 and a half weeks since Sian has been born have been full of drama. At first I got a huge haemorrhoid, and I am talking the size of a nectarine. If it wasn't for that I would have had a pretty good first two weeks. Then colic hit in and Phoebe got quite sick with a chesty cold. I was running on the reserves of energy. Sian started having seizures. They would last from a minute to five minutes and consisted of her limbs jerking violently and her respiration rate going up quite high. Then her temperature started to go up and down all over the place. I felt something was different and took her to the doctor on the Tuesday, 2 days before she turned 3 weeks. He was concerned and sent us to hospital to get some blood tests. Everything went topsy turvey. Drs were convinced that they had to rule out all the nasties as she had a few symptoms of meningitis and encephalities etc so they did a lumbar puncture!! It was bloody hideous and they took 3 goes to get it right. Blair thought he would be up to handling it but left the room crying in a matter of seconds. I have never felt more useless. We ended up in hospital for four days while they tested her on every possible thing and put her on three different IV antibiotics. Policy with newborns is to treat first and find results later. Things just happen too quickly with that age group and they have to err on the side of caution. You can imagine by the time I got home both Blair and I were exhausted. Finally got diagnosed as having benign neonatal sleep myoclonus, which is a sleep seizure thing that about 1 in 30 newborns can have. Should go by about 3 months but have to have some more blood tests etc to rule out epilepsy in about another month.

Had been home five days and I woke with a bit of heartburn sort of pain at 3am in the morning. It went after an hour so I thought nothing of it. At 3pm the next day I was rushing around trying to get two young uns in the car in the pouring rain to pick up kids from school when I started to get pain again. Took a mylanta and then headed off to school. Pain got worse and worse just below my breast bone and was stabbing into my back and radiating out in both directions. I started to panic on the way back home that I was dying! Stopped at my doctors surgery in handicap park and went into surgery and started to cry to receptionist. Kids were surrounding me in consulting room as I had an ECG to check whether I was having a heart attack. I wasn't, thank god!! Blair arrived and took kids and they waited for pain to ebb. It didn't. Ended up in hospital on morphine with suspected gallstones. They ultrasounded and found no gallstones so I ended up bunking in with Sian for another two nights in hosptial while they ran more tests and then on the Friday morning they did a gastroscopy, where they put camera into stomach to see if any ulcers or inflammation. All a bit horrible but nothing showed up and I haven't had any pain since. My guess is that I passed a gallstone and that is why they didn't see one on the ultrasound. So I got out of hospital 3 days before Christmas and had a mad rush to get organised.

So, my friends, that is why I have not posted. But, I am back.