happy mini birthday, mini girl!

Can you believe this little sleeping beauty is a whole month old today? We had a lovely afternoon celebrating with her at the hospital.

She enjoyed a little dance with her dad...

... and we decorated her cot with some of my miniature bunting.

Happy mini birthday, Dulcie!

what becomes of the broken hearted?

I am sure even the least observant of you will have noticed that I have been unusually absent on my blog over the last four weeks or so. After contemplating ditching the world of blogging for ever (it's hard to get back on the horse after so long when so much has been happening) I decided I should do one dedicated post to get things back up to date and then start trying to get back to some form of bloggy normality, so here is the short-but-still-long version of the last month's events.

I don't know if anyone will remember way back in about September when I had to visit the out of hours GP with a suspected urinary tract infection. I didn't have a urinary tract infection in the end, but while I was there the nurse noticed that my pulse was a bit irregular and advised me to go and see my GP about it even though it was very common in pregnancy and most likely nothing to worry about. Over the next couple of months I was back and forth to the doctor about it, getting blood tests that didn't show anything, spending lots of time with the doctor's stethoscope. The doctor agreed that it was nothing to worry about, very common in pregnancy, probably just caused by my insides being all squashed and my diaphragm rubbing against my heart a bit, but he decided to refer me to a cardiologist to get an ECG done (and maybe an ultrasound scan or similar) so that they had a record of what my wonky heartbeat was doing, but he reassured me again that it was absolutely nothing to worry about and I really wasn't worried.

So late afternoon on November 8th I left work a little bit early and headed over to the hospital for my appointment with the cardiologist and, obviously you can see where all this is going, it turned out that my irregular heartbeat was something to worry about after all. In fact, it was something to be so worried about that I wasn't allowed to leave the hospital and was admitted to a cardiology ward immediately. In fact, the doctors were so worried about it that I wasn't even allowed to walk down the corridor but had to be taken to the ward in a wheelchair where I was told not to get out of bed for any reason. A whole host of medical staff kept coming in and asking me (among other more scary and strange questions) had I really been at work that afternoon and had I really used public transport and the power of my own legs to get to the hospital for my appointment, exchanging incredulous glances and raising their eyebrows a lot. All of this gave me the pretty clear impression that things were serious, although the only symptoms I had were a bit of breathlessness and very slightly swollen ankles, not exactly unusual for a pregnant lady.

As you can imagine, if the doctors wouldn't let me walk 20 metres or even stand up, they were not particularly keen for me to be pregnant. The consultant started talking about the possibility that the baby might have to be delivered a little bit early and they began giving me steroid injections (very painful ones right in the bottom) to help the baby's lungs develop "just in case".

After a sleepless night of watching my heart on the monitor (realising the doctors were not making this up and it really was very wonky) and having my blood pressure taken every 30 minutes, about six doctors appeared at sunrise and told me that I would be getting transferred immediately to the hospital where all the heart specialists lived, where I would be having the baby by Caesarian section the following morning. Everything started moving scarily fast and I was whisked to the maternity hospital in an ambulance for a scan to see how big/developed the baby was and then taken straight to the heart hospital where the full horror of the situation was explained to me in tiny instalments over the course of the day. Editing the whole mountain of bad news down to the bare essentials for the sake of this blog post and your eyes, which must be feeling the strain by now, I was told that I was too unwell to be able to have a spinal anaesthetic during the Caesarian and so would have to have a general anaesthetic, and even if they didn't have to keep me knocked out for two days as they were suggesting they might (an idea that absolutely terrified me) by the time I came round, the baby would already have been taken to neonatal intensive care at an entirely different hospital and I would be staying right where I was, not even having seen our baby.

So on the morning of November 10th our baby was delivered and we had a little girl who weighed 3lb 12oz, a very good weight for a baby at 31 weeks' gestation apparently. Graham and my mum and dad got to meet her very briefly before she was whisked away in the ambulance and they assured me she was lovely.

THE BABY'S FIRST PHOTO, COMPLETE WITH APPROPRIATELY PINK HAT, ALL READY FOR HER AMBULANCE JOURNEY TO NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE. MEANWHILE, I WAS STILL UNCONSCIOUS IN THE OPERATING THEATRE.

The hospital staff set up a webcam so I could see the baby in her incubator from my hospital room, first in intensive care and then on a heart failure ward. This was better than not seeing her at all, but it was still just the most miserable time ever. I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried. I had lots more tests and scans done over the next few days and weeks and I cried through them all. Then I cried a bit more and every day I begged the doctors to let me go home or at least be transferred to the same hospital as the baby but the answer was no, so I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried some more.

THE WEBCAM, MY CONSTANT BEDSIDE COMPANION DURING MY HOSPITAL STAY. I WAS ABLE TO SEE THE BABY IN HER INCUBATOR AND TALK TO HER NURSES WHENEVER I WANTED TO.

Graham and my parents visited the baby every day and I watched them visiting on the webcam and cried some more and they brought me back photos of the baby (all covered up with tubes) and I cried some more.

OUR FIRST "FAMILY" PHOTO. THERE I AM ON THE SCREEN IN THE BACKGROUND.

Eventually, after five solid days of crying, the doctors could stand it no longer and agreed that I could go and meet our baby, provided I travelled by ambulance and took a nurse and my heart monitor with me. So I finally met our little girl when she was five days old and while I was having my first ever cuddle with her we decided we would call her Dulcie Lois.

OUR FIRST REAL FAMILY PHOTO, TAKEN WHEN DULCIE WAS FIVE DAYS OLD , NEWLY NAMED AND MEETING HER MUM FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. AND, YES, I KNOW I DON'T LOOK IN THE LEAST BIT ILL, BUT I AM! HONEST! I'M ACTUALLY LYING ON AN AMBULANCE STRETCHER HERE.

Dulcie has been doing really well since she made her debut appearance over two months ahead of schedule. She was moved out of intensive care and into high dependency when she was ten days old and on Wednesday evening she made her second attempt at moving out of her incubator and into a cot, and this time she has coped with it really well and is managing to keep herself warm with only a mountain of blankets and her granny's hand knitting to help her. She has been gaining weight slowly but surely and this week she got back to her birth weight and past her birth weight and is now a whopping (to us) 4lb 2oz! On Saturday she will be a whole month old already! She is still getting a little bit of oxygen now and again to help with her breathing and she still has to be fed through a tube, but over the last few days she has been trying her hand at breast feeding and she's getting pretty good at it, even though she gets so exhausted that she can't suck for more than a minute or two.

HOW EXHAUSTED (AND RELAXED!) DULCIE IS AFTER A FEW MINUTES OF BREAST FEEDING. POST-PREGNANCY SQUISHY BELLIES MAKE VERY GOOD BABY PILLOWS, FORTUNATELY.

Dulcie's really very adorable, if I do say so myself, with hundreds of hilarious facial expressions and crazily long arms and legs. She is very patient with us and our inept attempts at nappy changing, which is much easier now that we don't have to do it with our hands stuck through the incubator portholes! She doesn't cry very often and when she does it is the tiniest little noise you could ever imagine. Her nurses assure us this will change! The doctors can't give an exact date for us to be able to take her home (it depends how she gets on with feeding, breathing and growing) but they are hopeful that she might be home around Christmas or New Year.

I finally got out of hospital after two long weeks and many nasty procedures like having tubes fed into my wrists and up my arm and right into my heart, not something I would recommend if you can possibly avoid it! The doctors are not sure what made my heart stop working - maybe the pregnancy, maybe a temporary blockage (like a blood clot) in one of my coronary arteries, or maybe a heart attack - but whatever the cause, the treatment is the same. I'm still having to visit various hospitals for appointments most days (sometimes three times a day) but at least it means I am free to spend time with Dulcie whenever I like in between times. I am not feeling ill in the way the doctors assure me I should be, but am quite tired and light-headed from all the medication I have to take and a bit depressed with the whole situation and the fact that I am spending so much time in waiting rooms where I am the only person under 80. The doctors say everything is going well so far and that they are very optimistic that the medication will help my heart, but we won't really know for sure until I have been taking it for at least six months. At the moment it's quite difficult to forget about it and just enjoy having Dulcie, but I am sure it will all be much better/easier once she eventually comes home.

DULCIE AS SHE LOOKS NOW, ALL GROWN-UP AND CUTE IN HER COT.

I should add, just so it's on the record, that Graham has been completely amazing throughout all of this, super supportive in the most and least practical of ways, keeping me focussed on the good aspects of what has happened as well as keeping on top of everything in the house and generally being lovely to me. And my parents have been a huge support too, running back and forth to Glasgow (a long journey to make multiple times) and finding the perfect balance of being there for us all and giving us space. The only downside of all this is that I'm pretty sure my mum has officially fallen in L-O-V-E love with Graham!

So that is where I have been for the last four weeks - busy having life-threatening heart conditions and premature babies, not just taking a well-earned break from blogging after blogtoberfest! The doctors don't seem to be considering a month of daily blogging as a potential cause of heart failure, but I am not so sure. Now that I have got the old blog all up to date with recent events I will aim to share my November's Day In The Life post later this week and start getting back to normal blogging (albeit less frequent and more focussed on babies and boobies, I expect) as soon as I can. Many, many more photos of the lovely Dulcie to follow!

remember this thursday, please!

Remember...
Originally uploaded by Madeline Olivia

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS POST IF YOU DO BLOG ABOUT YOUR DAY AND I WILL MAKE UP A LIST OF LINKS AS SOON AS I CAN. THANKS :) MY OWN DAY IN THE LIFE POST WILL BE SLIGHTLY DELAYED BUT NEVER FEAR BECAUSE I TOOK EXTENSIVE NOTES!

Hello, world. I am kind of out of action at the moment, but just wanted to pop by to remind everyone that this Thursday (the 17th) is the date that I chose for November's Day In The Life. In case you don't know what I am talking about, this is really just an opportunity for bloggers to get together and share the minutiae of their day. You can write a list of everything you do or you can get more imaginative. In the past people have recorded their day in the form of a pie chart or an A to Z or just by posting pictures. You can tackle the challenge however you like. Once everyone's done, I'll compile a list of links to everyone who took part this month so we can all see what other people have done with their day. No matter how boring you think your day has been, I can guarantee it will interest someone else! It's not very easy for me to blog etc this week (there have been some unexpected incidents) so I'd really appreciate it if you could help me spread the word by reminding people via your own blog/twitter/whatever. I'll share my day as soon as I can too. So that's this Thursday, November 17th. Have fun :)

kirstie's handmade britain

This week I have been catching up with Kirstie's Handmade Britain, watching an episode in the morning while I eat my breakfast and hang out with the cats. I'm really liking the series so far. I did enjoy Kirstie's Homemade Home (I know opinion was very divided on this most controversial of matters!) but was getting a bit irked at how she would try a craft for about an hour, leave her project with the expert for them to finish and then go on about how she made it herself. In this series, she has to see the projects through to the end, although I do wonder how the other competitors feel about her having so much expert guidance. I also have some doubts about the anonymity of the judging, especially in this week's needlework episode. Very suspicious, if you ask me! But I do love Kirstie (my lookalike if Graham is to be believed) and it's great to have a fun programme about crafting on the telly. Plus we always enjoy the crazy world of the craft/baking tent when we go to the Aberfeldy Highland Games, so it's fun to get a glimpse at other shows around the country. My mum has been watching this series too and seemed very enamoured with Mr X Stitch (though didn't he just come across as a lovely man? aw!) when I spoke to her last night. When I told her that my Little Red Riding Hood embroidery was once featured on his website, she was very excited and said she was very proud of me. I think she saw it as a bona fide celebrity endorsement. Tee hee! Have you been watching Kirstie too?

firsts and lasts

Here is the first item I made with the much sought after mustard (and blue and brown) wool. I made this cardigan last weekend. It took two train journeys and a couple of hours on the sofa. This is the third cardigan I have made with this pattern now and much as I would be very happy to start on another one today, I am going to make this my last crocheted cardigan, for a little while, at least. There are so many other things I want to make for the baby, starting with a pair of crocheted cowboy boots to go with this. Yee ha! Graham thinks a baby-sized balalaika is all we need to complete the outfit (huh!) but he is wrong. He'll know we need crocheted cowboy boots once he sees them.

Here's the cardigan with a bit more sunshine, which shows off the golden colour much better.

Yesterday I did my last pre-baby late shift at work where I had my first argument with a subtitling colleague. Not fun. I hate conflict :( But on the upside, I am so glad late shifts are over for me now. My work have been great over the last few months and made all my late shifts start and finish a little bit earlier, and also made sure that I wasn't doing too many in a row, but I was still finding them torture. I hate admitting that I can't do certain stuff very easily now that I'm pregnant, but I think I am ready to admit that I can't work until 10 o'clock at night any more. Since I am back to waking up at about 4am most days, it just doesn't give me enough sleep to be able to handle life.

Today (depending on when Graham gets back from getting his hair cut) we might be attempting our last pre-baby full-day charity shopping excursion and for the first time, I think, we are missing out part of our route. I am feeling the effects of pregnancy very much these days and have the lung capacity of an elderly gnat. The new and reduced route only misses out four charity shops (two of them usually not very good) and the chocolate cherry brownie shop (nooooooo!) but it cuts down the amount of walking we have to do by quite a lot. If we don't do this today, we are going to go to a few more local charity shops instead and reschedule the last great charity shop shebang for a couple of weeks' time. Graham (who has recently witnessed me not managing 30 minutes in the town centre and saw how much I struggled round the charity shops a couple of months back) is not convinced I am fit for the challenge, but our days out have been such a big part of our relationship over the last eight years and I am really determined to do it one last time while it's still just the two of us. I can do it!

And one last exciting first... I'm getting to pick the date for November's Day In The Life and I have decided to choose Thursday the 17th. No particular reason, really, other than that it's nicely in the middle of the month and I have my first antenatal class that day, which might (or might not) give me something interesting to say. Please spread the word and do join in if you can. I will post a little reminder nearer the time.

covered in stitches (see what I did there?*)

The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency
a photo by Embellisher on Flickr.

This month Feeling Stitchy have been having a sewing contest inspired by Penguin's recent embroidered covers. I really wanted to give this a go, but decided my to-do list for this month was already a bit too full. Lots of people have had a go though (check out the other stitchy covers in the flickr group) and I will file this project away as something I might try in 2012... or 2013!

* I just noticed the flickr group is called Covered In Stitches, meaning I didn't actually do anything! Oh well...

unillustrated day in the life

Here follows my day in the life post for October 31st 2011, a day on which I failed to take any photographs. I did have a grand idea of drawing some accompanying pictures, but frankly you should count yourself lucky to be getting the words. Good lord, I am pooped this week! Roll on the weekend, I say. Anyway, here is pretty much everything I did on Monday 31st October. You can find out what other people did on this day by checking the comments here, although it doesn't look as though many people have completed their posts just yet.

7.00 am - Lola doesn't understand the clocks have gone back, so all our training of the past month goes out the window. She had been getting very good at waiting until either a) the alarm went off or b) it got to 8 o'clock before she started her attempts to wake me up, which involve miaowing in my ear and scratching my face and elbows or combing my hair with her claws. Using everything I've ever learned from watching Supernanny, I lie firm and pretend to be asleep for a full hour of miaowing and scratching. Hopefully Lola's amazingly accurate internal body clock will adjust within a week or two.

8.00 am - I get up, feed the very excited cats and eat my breakfast while checking my emails and favourite blogs. Graham is rushing around the flat with a gobful of mouthwash, getting ready for work. I enjoy my daily entertainment of trying to make him laugh and spit the mouthwash out. Today I succeed and laugh heartily as he has to dash to the sink before exploding everywhere. Mwahahahahaha!

8.45am - Graham leaves for work and I shower and get dressed.

9.30am - I write my final blog post for the month of October. It wasn't easy, but I managed to blog every day for a whole month. Hooray for me!

10.30am - Blogging took longer than expected and made me lose track of time a bit, so I quickly gather up everything I need for the day and leave for work. I am helped along by the fact that I only ate half the picnic my mum had prepared for my train journey the day before (so have a leftover sandwich to take with me) and find a tin of Baxters soup in the cupboard. Phew!

11.00 am - I arrive at work for a DVD shift. I quite like subtitling DVDs (you get to be really pernickety) but I know it's not going to make for a very interesting day in the life post as it is such a slow process. My first task of the day is to review episode five of The Fades. The series has turned out to be more entertaining than I had expected from episode one, but this is the third time I've had to watch this episode for work reasons in the space of about ten days and I'm getting a bit bored of it now.

11.45am - The chair I have ended up with today is a bit broken and won't let me lean back at all. Every time I try to rest against the back of the chair, it starts tipping backwards and threatens to throw me onto the floor. Normally there are spare chairs kicking about the office, but every single one of them has disappeared and there is not a spare chair in the whole place. After ten minutes of searching high and low, I overcome my embarrassment (my back is sore after one hour of sitting on this chair so I really don't want to sit on it for another seven) and send an email round to ask if anyone knows where all the chairs have gone. Within minutes someone produces a much better chair from one of the live subtitling booths, but I quickly realise I have caused an accidental revolution. Emails are flying back and forth about the terrible state of the chairs in the office and various managers are fussing around me, bringing me numerous back supports and offering to give me their very own personal favourite chairs. Later I find out they once had a near legal disaster when a decrepit chair fired a pregnant lady across the office.

1.30pm - Finished with The Fades, I make a start on Him and Her, the BBC3 "comedy". I have never seen it before and don't find it very entertaining. I'm using the programme's script to subtitle this, something I've only learned to do very recently. I have no idea what I'm doing and it makes my brain hurt and I want to run away or go home.

2.15pm - I eat my lunch and recharge my brain power a bit. I have the kitchen to myself so manage to have a mini nap (much needed) on the sofa until a manager comes in to make coffee and starts asking me if my chair is OK now.

3.15pm - Back to work on Him And Her. Yawn!

3.45pm - The new software fails and means that nothing I try to do works. I spend a long time trying to make sure it's not just me being stupid before asking a manager for help. He can't work it out so asks someone else who can't work it out either. In the end, they suggest the classic switch-it-off-and-on-again solution which works.

4.00pm - Back on track, but still wrestling with this Him And Her script.

4.20pm - Make an executive decision about whether it's OK to use the label LAURA FARTS as opposed to LAURA BREAKS WIND. These are the strange sorts of things I have to consider a lot (along with how to spell rude/sexual words that don't appear in our dictionaries).

4.25pm - I email Graham to escape the extreme boredom for a few minutes and take my mind off the mental heat and my indigestion.

4.30pm - Back to work. Ugh. And it's dark outside already!

4.35pm - I visit the X Factor website for work reasons, trying to find out if it's Bootcamp or Boot Camp. It turns out it's Bootcamp, but there's so much X Factor news on the site that it makes my internet die to find out and I have to reboot it.

5.00pm - I open a window and stick my head out of it in attempt to cool down. So hot in here! The heating is not on now, but I notice the temperature control had been set at 26 degrees. 26 degrees?! Come on, people! I know who the culprit is and wonder if there's any way we could be scheduled to work opposing shifts. Nice as she is, I can't stand the crazy heat she claims she needs.

5.15 -5.30pm - I open more windows and get in a messenger conversation with Claire about air conditioning, petrol spillages and day in the life. Neither of us are having very interesting days for it so far, but at least Claire has the drama of being highly flammable as she is covered in petrol. We wonder whether it will be safe for her to microwave her dinner later and I suggest she should use her managerial status to delegate the task. You can read more about Claire's petrol incident here.

5.40pm - I find out my application for a stall at Made In The Shade's Holiday Hop has been successful! Woo hoo! I'm not sure how I will find time or energy to prepare for this, but I am still very excited at the prospect.

6.40pm - I try to teach a colleague how to send subtitles using the new software, but her file is a rogue file and much scratching of heads ensues.

6.55pm - Just when I think I might be able to sneak out five minutes early, I mess up a bit of admin and have to stay to sort it out. Ugh.

7.10pm - I leave the office and head to the underground.

7.12pm - I miss my train while trying to get the ticket out of my purse and it's over ten minutes until the next one. I'm not very good at standing up these days, so I get on the next train to arrive and go the long way round. I enjoy the chance to sit down and read my book.

7.40pm - On the way home from the underground station I get severely rained on and get leg cramp while climbing the hill, but make it home eventually. Graham lets me in and manages not to laugh at how much I am puffing and panting with wet hair and steamy glasses and a funny walk because my legs are still cramping. Ouch.

7.50pm - I catch up with Graham over dinner (chilli and wraps from the freezer).

8.15pm - I mooch around on the internet while the cats fight over my warm lap space.

8.30pm - Both cats squeeze in on my lap and we all watch the latest episode of Misfits. It's probably the worst episode of Misfits there has ever been, but it's still OK and I have high hopes for the rest of the series.

9.30pm - We watch the last episode of League Of Gentlemen series two. We've been working our way through these lately. Lola thinks it is 10.30pm (supper time) so miaows a lot, but we do our best to ignore her.

10.15pm - I feed the cats and get ready for bed. I read a few pages of my book while I wait for Graham.

10.30pm - Our noisy student neighbours decide to move their party out to the back garden, so it's basically like they are standing right by our bed and shouting in our ears. They are really annoying in so many ways. We lie awake and moan about them, but I am trying hard not to get angry otherwise I won't be able to sleep even if they ever do shut up.

11.30pm - During a brief respite in the noise, I fall asleep and manage not to wake up when the noisy neighbours apparently return. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz!