I’m going to forget about fashion just for a moment and concentrate on the reason I started this blog in the first place. On 11th July 2014 it was a beautiful sunny day and I walked to the Whittington hospital to have my baby girl. I once joked in an NCT class that I had chosen the Whittington because I would be able to walk to hospital. I was duly told that if I was able to walk to hospital then I clearly wasn’t far enough on in my labour! So it gave me a certain sense of glee that I did in fact walk there to have my baby. The previous day had been quite eventful, a late and fairly stressful scan at 39 weeks and 5 days showed the baby was breach, and so we opted for a c-section at 8am that morning – helpfully described as the ‘click and collect’ approach by a friend of my husband’s!
Perhaps you should know that my husband, James, is a doctor, not a doctor that knows anything about having babies but a gastroenterologist, who by default loves poo! Anyway, the point is he is comfortable in hospitals, he speaks the language of doctors, can cope with that slightly sterile smell and doesn’t notice the ugly green painted walls. I, on the other hand, hate hospitals, hate needles, hate bodily fluids of any kind and always wonder who chose the uncomfortable chairs or slightly odd paintings on the walls? So it was with a great deal of apprehension that I arrived at the hospital. I doubt you want to hear about how wonderful the staff were (they were wonderful) or that it took four attempts to get the needle for the anaesthetic into my back – ouch! They kept telling me to relax, but you try relaxing when this huge needle is being put into your back! But, a mere forty-five minutes after I went into theatre I had a very neat scar (with beads on at either end) and, much much more importantly, a very tiny, slightly slimy baby lying awkwardly on me.
N4 Mummy with Daisy moments after she is born
Postnatal wards are hell, there is no other suitable word to describe them. Where else do you have the pleasure of being kept awake 24-7 by screaming babies? When you do finally get some well earned sleep you are woken for your blood pressure to be checked or catheter removed. Anyone who has a normal blood pressure in those circumstances is, quite frankly, incredibly healthy. James spent the first few nights sleeping upright on a broken hospital chair. Anyway, this is where James and I spent our very first few moments with our very precious little girl – Daisy.
James asleep (finally) in broken hospital chair with Daisy
Six, well nearly seven, months on I can’t imagine life with out our flirtatious little girl. Seriously, I have never met anyone who can be so grumpy with me at home and yet charm the socks off the man at the table next to us in the coffee shop. Whilst I was pregnant I up-cycled an old suitcase to make a toybox for Daisy, and so as a way to record her first year and see how much she has grown, we decided to take a photo every month of Daisy in this toy box. Here below are the first six months.
Month one starts top right hand photo. Photos then proceed clockwise month one, two, three four etc. I love how wonderfully grumpy she looks at four months!