Our baby girl, who has been hitherto been known to us as Peabody, has a real girl's name now. We'd kept a couple of favourites in mind over the last few months but neither of us seemed able to commit to naming her one or the other and all that this would entail - the imagining of her as a real person, bestowing upon her an identity we knew all too well could be so easily snatched away from us.
For me it felt reckless, as if I would be tempting fate to take her away from me. It was my psychiatrist, in the end, who managed to convince me that the sky would not fall in if we began calling her by her chosen name. She suggested that it might help us bond with her and prepare ourselves for her arrival.
And so, we came to call our little daughter Alice, whose birth we hope will bring with it her own special kind of wonderland to share. I love its classic simplicity. I love its literary allusions, especially after visiting Oxford and falling in love all over again with C.S Lewis's stories. I love that it doesn't rhyme with anything outwardly rude or horrible (the primary teacher in me coming out). I love that I've never known another Alice.
Her middle name will be Frances, after Les's mother who died three years ago. She never got to discover the joy of being a grandmother, and this is our small way of making sure she still has an important role to play in Alice's life.
Of course, Alice will also always know herself as Max's little sister. He will always be an important part of her identity; of our family's identity.
We are wishing Alice here safely with all of our hearts. Just a few more weeks, little girl. Just give us a few more weeks to ready ourselves for your arrival!
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
A cautious, yet hopeful update
Yes, it's been weeks since I've written anything. I haven't had it in me. It's almost as if I've been too afraid to open my mouth, to search for the words to describe how it feels to wait - to long for - a baby whose safe arrival is nowhere near guaranteed. I've felt like catastrophe has lingered only a breath away, that if I let my guard down for a single second this baby would disappear into thin air just like it feels her big brother Max did, before I ever had a chance to fight for him.
After all of our careful surveillance, our watchful wondering, our midnight worrying, against all the odds we seemingly faced, though, here we are at 30 WEEKS, hopeful and hell-bent on delivering our daughter and bringing her home from the hospital. The survival rate for babies born at 30 weeks is 95%, and whilst we know all too intimately how easily you can fall on the wrong side of even promising statistics, it's a hell of a lot more reassuring than the spectre of certain death that faced us at 23 or 24 weeks. It's 'likely', they tell me, that this baby will be just fine. After months of expecting and preparing for the worst this is a revelation that has proven very difficult to get our heads around. Suddenly we have to start practicing an entirely new way of thinking - one where we prepare for our daughter's eventual homecoming.f the
The expert monitoring we have received from our wonderful obstetricians at the Royal Women's Hospital has been incredible reassuring during these long, difficult weeks. My cervix has shown no signs of shortening or opening so far. At 26 weeks, however, one of the other predictive tests I'd been having regularly, which measures the presence of of a substance called fetal fibronectin in the cervix, came back positive during our final appointment in the specialist preterm labour clinic. What did this mean? Well, potentially everything, but just as likely nothing at all. While a negative fibronectin result is a very reliable indicator that you're not going to go into labour in the next 7-10 days, a positive result merely leaves you with the very unsatisfactory knowledge that there's a 50/50 chance you will go into labour any time from then. This news sent me spinning for a little while as I realised I'd dared to get a bit confident as the weeks had passed by without incident. Now the prospect of labour began to signal for me the beginnings of an imminent disaster all over again.
There's not a lot they do differently after a positive fibronectin test when you remain otherwise asymptomatic. I was given two precautionary injections of steroids to help mature our little girl's lungs in the event that she did arrive in the next little while. I was grateful for this intervention. I am grateful for anything I can do to increase her chances, however minimally. All we've been able to do in the month since then has been watch and wait - words we are beginning to really, really hate. So many things are out of our hands, but dare I say that despite this, everything seems to be going OK?
It's been nice to have only 'normal' pregnancy symptoms to complain about over the last week or two - breathlessness, fatigue, and slightly tender ribs as our baby begins taking up her fair share of the space in there. I've also had to cut out ALL SUGAR (ahhh) due to a borderline gestational diabetes result, which came back one point below the acceptable threshold. But what price a living, healthy baby, huh? If only curtailing your desperate craving for lemonade could guarantee you one of those we could all breath easy again.
30 weeks. Elation. Disbelief. Hope. Love.
After all of our careful surveillance, our watchful wondering, our midnight worrying, against all the odds we seemingly faced, though, here we are at 30 WEEKS, hopeful and hell-bent on delivering our daughter and bringing her home from the hospital. The survival rate for babies born at 30 weeks is 95%, and whilst we know all too intimately how easily you can fall on the wrong side of even promising statistics, it's a hell of a lot more reassuring than the spectre of certain death that faced us at 23 or 24 weeks. It's 'likely', they tell me, that this baby will be just fine. After months of expecting and preparing for the worst this is a revelation that has proven very difficult to get our heads around. Suddenly we have to start practicing an entirely new way of thinking - one where we prepare for our daughter's eventual homecoming.f the
The expert monitoring we have received from our wonderful obstetricians at the Royal Women's Hospital has been incredible reassuring during these long, difficult weeks. My cervix has shown no signs of shortening or opening so far. At 26 weeks, however, one of the other predictive tests I'd been having regularly, which measures the presence of of a substance called fetal fibronectin in the cervix, came back positive during our final appointment in the specialist preterm labour clinic. What did this mean? Well, potentially everything, but just as likely nothing at all. While a negative fibronectin result is a very reliable indicator that you're not going to go into labour in the next 7-10 days, a positive result merely leaves you with the very unsatisfactory knowledge that there's a 50/50 chance you will go into labour any time from then. This news sent me spinning for a little while as I realised I'd dared to get a bit confident as the weeks had passed by without incident. Now the prospect of labour began to signal for me the beginnings of an imminent disaster all over again.
There's not a lot they do differently after a positive fibronectin test when you remain otherwise asymptomatic. I was given two precautionary injections of steroids to help mature our little girl's lungs in the event that she did arrive in the next little while. I was grateful for this intervention. I am grateful for anything I can do to increase her chances, however minimally. All we've been able to do in the month since then has been watch and wait - words we are beginning to really, really hate. So many things are out of our hands, but dare I say that despite this, everything seems to be going OK?
It's been nice to have only 'normal' pregnancy symptoms to complain about over the last week or two - breathlessness, fatigue, and slightly tender ribs as our baby begins taking up her fair share of the space in there. I've also had to cut out ALL SUGAR (ahhh) due to a borderline gestational diabetes result, which came back one point below the acceptable threshold. But what price a living, healthy baby, huh? If only curtailing your desperate craving for lemonade could guarantee you one of those we could all breath easy again.
30 weeks. Elation. Disbelief. Hope. Love.
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