Three’s a charm

Here’s to sharing…

I got quite a surprising piece of good news the other day. Turns out we’re adding another Piglet or Dragon to the family. By next summer, we will be a family of 5!

I say surprise… …I probably shouldn’t be entirely surprised; I know enough biology to know how these things work. But lets’s just say that we had such issues with fertility that I did not expect for a second that, if it was going to happen, it would happen so soon. We’ll never know for certain, but I suspect this was about the earliest it could have possibly have happened after Dragon was born. I never ever imagined, particularly in the anguish of many, many failed attempts in trying to have Piglet, that I would be the father of three!

It poses some interesting issues…

We currently live in a 2-bed house; one was that was already starting to creak under the strain of housing two adults, both of whom are at home 5+ days a week, and two increasingly space consuming children. As you’ll know from the previous blogs, we’ve been looking to move for a while but this puts somewhat more pressure on the need to move but also the requirements of the new place.

We are also currently a one-working-parent household: with my wife not going back to work as a teacher at the end of Dragon’s maternity leave; choosing instead to set up a business as an Antenatal and Hypnobirthing teacher which means a period of training before setting up a business from scratch. It’s great for avoiding childcare costs and giving Piglet and Dragon as much quality parent time as possible, but a slightly different business plan to what we’d previously laid out.

It basically means that we appear to be going into a recession, in desperate need of moving house, against a backdrop of horrific mortgage rates and energy bills and an unavoidable delay in how soon we can re-establish a second income. To put it lightly, I’m a little nervous…

Despite all of this, I am struck by a feeling of luck. I’m very excited to welcome a third child into our home (wherever that home may be) and I realise that while this may not be economic bliss for us over the coming years; there will be families that will, and already are, feeling this much more acutely than us.

I do have to admit though; I’ve been struck by waves of anxiety since finding out.

In fact, I had quite a panic just before we did find out, on the realisation that it would probably make sense to take a pregnancy test. I’m not proud of my reaction and I wish I could have managed it better but I can’t pretend that I didn’t react. In that moment, I couldn’t shake the thought of losing out on the other things I (and we as a couple and a family) would be able to do that would get so much harder on having a third child. The ultimate FOMO. It was intense but short lived and by the next day, by the time the pregnancy test said positive, I was able to imagine all the delights of having another child alongside the challenges and sacrifices that come with it. The rapid and irrational emotional response leading so quickly to a point of willing acceptance was sincere but I imagine must have scared my wife quite a bit.

I have realised though that some of the anxiety pre-dates this announcement however.

Well before discussions of a third baby, I’ve had what I now realised were probably panic attacks when talking about the birth of Dragon. I can’t remember how much I have talked about this before, and my perspective now would probably be slightly different than when I last talked about it anyway, but I found Dragon’s birth quite traumatic and there is a part of me that is frustrated (I’m not sure I’d go as far as angry but it could be) at the steps that led to Dragon being delivered in the way that she was. For those of you that don’t know, Dragon was delivered by emergency c-section at the end of a pregnancy with more plot twists than [insert appropriately convoluted topical TV program… For me it would be 24, or Lost but I suspect there are much more recent examples for people that have a closer handle on modern popular culture!].

We had wanted a home birth for Dragon, as we had had for Piglet, but there were some complications during the pregnancy that made that potentially risky. Primarily that Dragon appeared to be on the small side and in particular had a small head circumference as picked up in the 20 week scan. But on top of that we had complications with the placenta potentially blocking the birth canal but also, such was the nature of Dragon’s size in categorisation for the risk levels, we flip-flopped between quite severe and surprisingly relaxed guidance. This led to high levels of monitoring, strong pressure to be induced early and guidance switching from planned Caesarean, to early induction, to birth on a labour ward, to birth in a birthing pool and ending up with emergency c-section. In the final weeks, we actually arrived at hospital ready to be artificially induced only for the midwife to ask if that was what we actually wanted and to then persuade our consultant to let us go home again!

I don’t want to get either too political or too principled about this issue as it ends up in a lot of whataboutary that probably isn’t helpful, but in hindsight I think a lot of the fear and stress caused by this intervention in the second half of the pregnancy could have been avoided. Put simply, we seem to make small babies, and on reviewing the guidance and literature I think that too much emphasis was put on Dragon falling just inside the percentile for ‘small-for-gestational-age’ babies rather than looking at how Dragon was progressing in her development. That said, I don’t disagree with the decision to deliver by emergency c-section in the end, and perhaps that was always going to be the outcome, but a part of me thinks that we were never given the chance to have a physiological birth.

I’m not in any position to comment on whether it’s a sign of medical progress, I can only give my personal thoughts on what direction things seem to be going. But I find it incredible that at our local hospital, the one Dragon was born in, over 20% of babies were delivered by emergency c-section in their latest month’s report. That’s 1 in 5. For comparison, the total number of Caesareans (i.e. including elective and emergency) was never more than 11% of all births from 2005 and 2008.

But for all of this, I think I have probably experienced some sort of trauma as part of this process. It feels a little overdramatic to give it such a name and I sure it exists on a spectrum, but I suspect what I’m actually suffering with is a level of PTSD related to Dragon’s birth. Something that I’m quite worried about in the context of being able to be the supportive birth partner that I want to be during this pregnancy. It doesn’t help that I’m pretty squeamish in general but at the point that my wife was able to break the epidural needle because of her incredible back muscles, I spent most of the delivery prep in the theatre lying on the floor watching everyone ‘scrub up’. For context, the reason my wife’s back is so muscly is that she’s spent her entire adult life having such intense period cramps due to endometriosis that she has effectively toned that part of her body so much that the doctor doing the epidural asked her “are you some sort of athlete?”. If this part wasn’t traumatic enough; earlier in the labour, I arrived back on to the ward, having gone to buy her some food, to find that the oxytocin drip had acted far faster than expected and every single nurse and doctor on shift at that moment appeared to be crowded around her bed trying to bring the contractions back under control. It turns out that the intense contractions had put the baby at risk and an injection was needed to slow them back down. The silly thing is I can talk about these events with light hearted humour, but I find it hard to rationally discuss the options we might need to take around a birthing plan for this next baby.

As part of the post-birth discussions with the hospital (we decided to have a follow up session with a consultant to discuss the options we were given and the choices that were made along the way), I was suggested to be referred to the maternity councillors at the hospital for therapy to help try and manage the issue. I’ve had three sessions to date and while I find them interesting and valuable; I’m not sure to what extend they’re helping yet. They seem to be making me aware of a high baseline anxiety rather than addressing the birthing triggers themselves; but maybe that’s an important first step. You can carry a full tea cup very carefully to avoid spilling it; or you can just avoid filling it so full in the first place.

I can see a future not too far away where everything will be just a little bit easier. We just need to get there. Don’t we all?

Toodlepips x