Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The birth of Devon Hannah - Part 1.


I've decided to make my first post about my pregnancy with Devon and her birth. In the above photo she is about 15 minutes old, this was taken after Shane cut the umbilical cord.

I'll firstly mention that Devon was supposed to be a boy. I mean, we had a daughter and it was natural to hope that we would have a son this time to round out the family. This was also important to me as Shane is the 6th generation Robert McLean, Shane being his middle name. So if we had a son, we were going to continue the tradition by calling him Robert McLean and using his middle name for everyday use, like yelling at him from the back door. I liked Eden and Shane liked Riley, so Robert Riley or Robert Eden it was going to be.

However, Shane was convinced he is a girl breeder (Thanks Azza) and we were having another girl. So was Mum and Britt-Marie. But everyone else, and I mean everyone, even complete strangers I would chat to at the shop when they saw my belly, would all say I was having a boy. I was carrying a certain way or had 'that' look about me. So I was convinced of that too by the end.

But you know what? When Devon was born and they pulled her out and put her on my chest (I was NOT expecting that, Shane said my eyes were big as plates), I was busy trying to look past the midwives hands to see a fanwa or a willy. And when my fantastic midwife Cynthia said "it's a girl", I felt a... BURST of happiness. I was SO pleased, SO happy that I had another girl and a complete surge of pleasure hit me like a ton of bricks. So not only did I deliver her naturally, but I was clever enough to make myself another beautiful daughter! But more of that later...

I would like to say it was an uneventful pregnancy, but unfortunately that would be lying. When we first fell pregnant after 6 months of trying, we couldn't announce it for nearly 4 months due to all the testing we had to have. Due to my age, I had the extra tests for Down's Syndrome and other abnormalities and we had an awful couple of weeks waiting for the eventual all clear, as the Dr's thought they had detected something and had to order extra tests.
Of course, I had the usual backaches, indigestion, swollen ankles and leg cramps, but the added awkwardness, clumsiness and general uncomfortableness really took a toll on my sanity, especially in the last few weeks.
Then the worst happened. On 25 November, over 6 months along, I fell. I was walking to work along a footpath which was wet from the sprinklers and strewn with fallen frangipani flowers. My foot slipped out from under me on a wet flower, twisting my ankle, I fell heavily on my opposite knee on the concrete and landed facedown... on my belly. After what felt like forever but must have only been 5 seconds, I got my breath back and started to cry... well, scream actually. I'd just said hello to a bloke I knew in the carpark; luckily they heard me and came running over. Bayden quickly rang 000 and the other guy helped me sit up. They got some help from the nearby building and some lovely ladies got me a chair, some ice for my foot and helped calm me down. I was having twinges in my belly but thankfully after about 10 minutes, I could feel the baby move a little bit. I was panicked inside but trying not to show it because of all the concerned people gathered around me.
The ambulance soon arrived and the officer decided it was best to take me to the hospital to check on the baby, which was fine by me. My belly wasn't hurting as much by then but my ankle was killing me.
I tried ringing Shane on the mobile but he didn't answer. I kept redialling, unbeknownst to me, Shane was in a meeting and had his phone on the table, on silent, so he couldn't feel it ringing. He eventually saw it was me ringing and hung up on me! This is our code for 'I'm busy' so I sent a message saying 'Emergency. Pick up' and kept ringing. He then checked his phone again, saw the message, saw the dozen missed calls and freaking out, finally answered. When I said I was in an ambulance and on the way to hospital, he did a runner from the meeting and took off straight to the hospital.
To our relief, the midwife Carol that met us in the emergency room was well known to us, she'd been there when Cassidy was born. They put the monitor on my belly to check for baby's heartbeat and movement and bandaged my ankle, then took me to the maternity ward, where I stayed for constant monitoring all day. Everything turned out fine, Devon was protected by being behind my placenta so she didn't cop any major knocking around, and I was released from hospital with strict orders to take it easy by late that afternoon. BTW, when we got the ambulance bill, it was $850! Thank God for HBF.

Obviously that wasn't enough excitement for me though, as about 2 weeks later, on 11 December, I fell again! This is my sisters birthday, I told her later I was upset about all the attention she was getting so I decided to take some of it!

I was in KMart shopping by myself, Cassidy had gone with Mum back to work for a while so I could get some things done. I was walking down the Xmas tree aisle and didn't see that someone had spilt sweet chilli sauce all over the floor (well actually, I'm not sure what flavour it was, I didn't taste it while I was down there). I slipped on the sauce, landed heavily on the OTHER knee on the ground and fell, but luckily more on my side. Again it knocked the wind out of me and bloody hurt too. A lovely man nearby with his family, who I later found out was a copper, rang the ambulance for me and then rang Shane. Poor Shane, getting a phone call from a complete stranger saying his wife Tracey had fallen over, he must've thought he was having deja vu. He rang me back on my phone to make sure it was true!

A couple of ladies from KMart got me a chair and wiped up the floor (and all the evidence, I was thinking), but luckily the manager Phil came along and saw it all before it was cleaned up, although I had sauce all over my clothes. The same ambulance officer turned up, although he didn't recognise me at first. He gave me the all clear on the spot, it was mainly my knee that was bunged up and I didn't have as hard a knock to the belly. He decided not to send me to hospital, although again I was on strict orders to call or go straight there if I had any pains or worries.

Shane turned up just as they left and helped me limp out to the car to take me home. I was fine and had no complications from either fall, and you'll be glad to hear that was the end of my pregnancy acrobatics. And yes, I threw those shoes away. Shane doesn't seem to quite believe me when I say that neither fall was my fault, I genuinely slipped each time, but I threw them away anyway. It was a good excuse to buy a new pair! And I never got an ambulance bill this time, I'm pretty sure KMart took care of it. Someone asked me whether or not I was going to sue... hmm...

Okay, I'll leave it there for now, that's enough to absorb this hour. I'll update Part 2 soon, but for now, go and vacuum your floors while waiting for the next intriguing episode of...

LaLa's Life!

Tracey x

2 comments:

GlossQueen said...

I loved this article, till I got to the part when you said 'vacuum your floors', that's Roy's job! hehe

Anonymous said...

Those falls must of been awful for you!...of course you must of been so worried for the baby.

I had a fall when I was 6 months pregnant, I was on one of those chairs with wheels and doing a pedicure at the time, anyway the chair came out from under me and I fell on my butt, it was quite a shock tho nothing as bad as yours...least all is well with you now!