Samuel Martin Winter is one year old today. He's a lovely little boy and I am taking a real delight in being his mum; the fact that he is also probably our last child adds a certain something to the relationship - the realisation that all the various milestones he's reaching are the last time that you'll experience this with one of your children.
His arrival was a bit of an experience, however. As with Jacob, I'd had trouble with my blood pressure throughout the latter stages of pregnancy and at my 36 week scan it was felt that the placenta was starting to get a bit manky (the sonographer's description) and the baby wasn't growing as well as he might. With my bp being high, they admitted me, stuck me on medication to lower it and announced that they'd induce me at 37 weeks. However, the medication they give you for your blood pressure also makes the baby very sleepy in the womb, which isn't good, and a couple of days later after being strapped to a CT scanner all day, at midnight I was dragged from my bed up to the labour ward.
The surgeon apologised profusely, but I wasn't even slightly effaced or dilated so induction wasn't really viable - an emergency C section it was to be. Doug couldn't make it to the hospital because he couldn't find anyone to look after Jacob. So I went it alone, although tbh, its not like proper childbirth where you really need your other half to give you help, support and wet towels. There was only one point where I could have really done with him - when the epidural was making me faint and nauseous and the nurse and left me unsupported for a minute; staring down off the gurney, the floor of the operating room suddenly looked a very long way down....
After they'd taken Sam out of me (its a very odd sensation - there's no pain, but you can feel them rummaging about inside you) he went over to the resuss table. I'd been through this with Jacob too, so wasn't panicked at the lack of sound from the baby. And then, a few minutes later the doctor arrived at the operating table with Sam.
"Where's all this red hair come from?" she asked. I was too busy staring at my newborn, at how lovely he was, to pay any real attention and just said "no idea". The doctor clocked the lack of any attending husband or partner at my side and hurriedly changed the subject!
After a while, we were taken through to Recovery and for an hour I just stared at him, watching all the little movements and noises he was making and marvelling over and over again that I managed to create this perfect little creature.
Suddenly Doug arrived with Jacob. He'd been up all night worrying, hadn't realised that he could ring the Labour Ward and get an update on how mother and child were doing, and so had waited until Jacob woke up before dressing him quickly and jumping on the first bus to the hospital. He looked extremely anxious, knackered and elated all at the same time. Jacob kept looking at Sam and saying "baby, baby".
That should have been it, but on being transferred back to the maternity ward it was discovered that Sam's blood sugar was extremely low and that he'd need to be taken to the Neo Natal Unit for a few hours to get it stabilised. We were told we'd have him back by lunchtime, then it was later in the day, then it was overnight, then it was a few days.
Finally, by the time I was ready to be discharged I got an answer from one of the nurses, that it was policy to keep them until their due date - that was nearly four weeks away and seemed like an eternity! It seemed that Sam's blood sugar levels kept fluctuating and needed to stabilise for a few days; the other issue being that as lots of premature babies are bad feeders, they are mostly fed through a nose tube. So, not only had Sam got to sort his blood sugar levels, he also had to be taking his feeds orally before they'd let him go.
It seemed an age before his blood sugar normalised; every day I'd go along to the hospital and watch him sleep, talk to the other mothers, attempt to express some milk and then go home without feeling he was progressing at all. The other issue was feeding - all the women in my family are crap at breastfeeding and I was no exception. Jacob wouldn't latch on, my boobs just didn't fill up with milk enough to entice him to have a go and Sam was no different.
I tried explaining this to the doctors and nurses, but they all tend to have that Nazi-like attitude to breast-feeding - that all women can manage it and if you say you can't you're just a malingering, lazy, bad mother who'll have a stupid child who'll end up in foster care within a month. Throughout the next couple of weeks, every nurse that tried to help me breastfeed finally came round to the realisation that it wasn't going to happen, and after that it was much easier. I could feed him formula or whatever breastmilk I'd managed to express and suddenly the day of his release was that much closer - I really wish that I'd put my foot down earlier and said that I wasn't breastfeeding. Part of it was the fact that I was actually managing to express quite a bit, so I was hopeful that I'd be able to actually do it this time. If I ever have a third, I'll not even try it - know your limits, I think!
Anyway, 19 days after he was born, we finally got to take him home. We had a couple of false dawns with the date - he had to do a six hour fast to check that his blood sugar levels really were robust enough and passed it with flying colours, but when we turned up next day to take him home it turned out they'd only done it for five hours and would have to do it again, so another 24 hours went by.
When they finally let us take him, I've never got out of the hospital so quickly, just in case they changed their mind. He looked very small and cold, sitting in his car chair on the steps of the hospital as we waited for the cab to turn up.
In retrospect, those 19 days seem a bit of a blur and not quite the eternity they seemed at the time. It allowed me to recover better from the C section than I would have done had he come home in a normal time frame, and I did manage to get nearly three weeks of quality sleep before he came home.
A year on and Sam is absolutely thriving. He's almost off the scale in terms of growth, he's strong, a good un-fussy eater, has a great sense of humour and an intense curiosity. He weaned easily and although he doesn't sleep through, he is generally no problem for me - a normal night will see him wake just the once, and he'll happily have his bottle of milk in the cot with no need for me to sit with him while he drinks it. He crawled early and learned to pull himself upright early, but like Jacob, I don't think he'll be an early walker; he just crawls so well, he doesn't see any need to walk.
He and Jacob are great friends; Jacob still hasn't learned not to be rough with him, but generally they play very well together. Jacob often says how much he loves Sam and how much he thinks Sam loves him.
So, happy first birthday Sam. You are a beautiful little boy and a delight to be with. Long may it continue :-)
