our nicu journey

Our NICU Journey- Week One

So, you arrived early. I expected it, I just knew my body hadn’t felt right, I’d been saying this since week 24 and after my waters broke early I mentally prepared myself for your premature entrance into the world. We had the tour of Neonatal during my first hospital stay… it took me aback. We were shown the incubators and told that was where you would go straight after birth if you came early, it took all my strength not to cry. As a blogger, I have read many stories from others I follow of their premature babies being in NICU and I have been moved by what has been written but nothing can prepare you for for the reality of it all. To see tiny babies lying inside what is essentially a plastic box, being helped with their breathing via ventilators or under UV lights for jaundice is something that makes your heart sink. We were shown the two types of ventilators and the nurse explained why you may be on them and how they work… I couldn’t really take that information in because I didn’t want to picture you on one. We were told how the unit worked and how you would be under 24/7 care. I was shown the expressing room, where I would have to go and sit to pump breastmilk for you to be fed through a tube. Not the image I had for you to start your breastfeeding journey. I think I nodded along and tried to take the information in but it was a bit too much to process at once.

Continue reading “Our NICU Journey- Week One”
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An Eventful Birth Story: PPROM, VBAC and Prematurity

If you have been following my blog you will know that I have been openly documenting my pregnancy journey and all topics that come along with it. What I thought was going to be a straight forward time and something lovely to write about suddenly changed at week 24 when I had a bleed. What followed was a second bleed, the loss of my mucus plug, the diagnosis of Group B Strep and then the preterm premature rupturing of membranes (PPROM) at 30 weeks leaving me in hospital to be monitored and the chances of infection being very high; a normal pregnancy had suddenly changed to one that was risky and quite scary. One that would lead to a premature birth…

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At 30 weeks pregnant, the last thing I expected to happen was to have my waters breaking this early. The pregnancy has been a little up and down due to the presence of Group B Strep but as this was known about and I was monitoring myself for any changes I just assumed everything would be ok up until my due date.

I first felt something at around 7pm but as I hadn’t experienced my waters breaking during my first labour I just assumed that I’d had a little urine leakage… just an oops moment! However, ten minutes later and I felt the same thing.

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Our NICU Journey- Week One
our nicu journey

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The Best Nautical Themed Products for Your Nursery

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With the imminent arrival of baby number two, we have been looking into the essential items that we need to purchase or replace. We do have a second-hand travel cot from Jake’s baby days but it has always been a tricky one to set up so I was eager to see what else was now available on the market as I know children’s products adapt and change so rapidly.

Kiddies Kingdom is your one-stop online shop for all things baby and child. I had a look through their wide range of Travel Cots for sale and was immediately drawn to the Joie Commuter Travel Cot with Changing Cloud. The main reasons being that I love the colour– yes this is important to me– I love the changing mat feature, how easy would this make life when you are away? And the fact that you can reduce the issue of draughts on your sleeping baby.

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The Baby Show

The Baby Show Experience

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On Sunday I was invited along to The Baby Show at London Olympia. When I was pregnant with Jake we didn’t do any of the big baby things; we didn’t go to NCT, we didn’t go to baby shows or expectant parent evenings and my general attitude was to take things as they came and learn on the job. This is fine to an extent but when it comes to gadgets, new products, items that will make your life easier, I had no clue which is why I was so excited to be able to attend a massive show like this one.

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