First Week with Finlay

Finlay James Malcolm Brown arrived at 11.45am last Monday (21st Sept) weighing 8lb 3oz. That's exactly 1 year and 1 day after our wedding, I'm thrilled!

It's been a very traumatic week for me. The birth didn't go as I'd hoped because when I was admitted in labour they found I was running a very high temperature and had to continuously minitor me and Fin throughout, cutting out most of my natural water birth hopes immediately. Fin's heart rate kept dropping very low so we had doctors regularly checking us and a student midwife with us at all times to watch the machine, c-section was also mentioned early on. I managed a very long time just using paracetamol and gas & air but eventually had to have an epidural as it got too painful and I was only 4cm. Managed to avoid the section but had to have a ventouse delivery so that made it all a bit worse and means I'll take longer to heal up.

Got out of hospital about 9/10pm on the Tuesday night but was feeling realy bad all Weds and Thurs with increasing back pain and a pain near my ribs. Thurs evening it got excruciating so we had to call Scott's parents to come and watch Fin whilst Scott rushed me to A&E and I was given an enormous syringe of morphine. Initially they thought it might be an effect of the epidural so I was taken back to maternity and given some stupid diagnoses (bad posture... ) before they noticed something strange on a blood test to do with liver function. I was kept in overnight and on Friday afternoon they found I had gallstones. I was kept in another night for obs and came home Saturday with a new diet which means I can have practically no fat, very difficult for me! I have an appointment with a surgeon in 6 weeks to talk through my options but will most likely have keyhole surgery to remove my gall bladder to prevent any recurrances.

I'm sure you can imagine just how stressful this has been for us all, not only having a new baby but having this straight on top of it. Being in hospital 2 nights without Fin was agonising as I was in the baby blues phase and struggling to come to terms with everything. He made it very easy for me by being an angel for his grandparents and not crying when they had to take him away in the evenings.