Expectations, perspective and lots of crying

K's favourite position, with her bum in the air

Mandy asked in the comments if I was home yet.

Yes, I am. In South Africa, they keep you in the hospital for 3 nights after a C-section so I was discharged on Friday.


I'm still dealing with some noise in my head because of the suddenness of the babies' arrival.

The first thing I thought after my waters broke was "I'm only 32 weeks; this can't be happening to me". I expected to maybe be a week early at 35 weeks, but not 32 weeks!

The craziest things kept going through my head that morning, like...

• My hair's a mess (because I was going to have my hair coloured, washed and blow dried that afternoon)
• I'll have to cancel the pregnancy photography shoot (scheduled for 18th)
• I'll have to cancel our birthday party (D & I have just 10 days between the two birthdays. Normally we do a party on the weekend between the two; this year I'd brought forward the date by two weeks, just in case!)
  
• I still haven't even reached 70 kg (that morning I was still 69.9kg) and
  
• I'm only 32 weeks (over and over and over)
  

Of course this all paled into insignificance once they were born and once the paediatrician told us that blue Kendra was now a healthy pink Kendra :) and I was fine the rest of the day until I woke up on the Wednesday.

I was sharing a general ward with two other ladies who both had scheduled C-sections at 38 weeks, normal babies, etc, etc. The kind of people we infertiles love to hate :)

Well, these two were chatting away about really normal baby stuff - breastfeeding, etc, etc, and it suddenly hit me that MY babies should also be with me.

Why am I going through this all again? Have I not suffered enough? - you know the drill!

And then I started crying in earnest. Quiet but serious crying.

Then an amazing thing started happening. God always looks out for me like this.

I got text messages from 3 of my friends saying things like, "I remember day 2 being really hard for me. Just want to let you know I'm here for you" and similar.

Which of course makes you cry more :)

After a few hours I felt fine again, especially after D came to see me with the laptop!!!

Thursday was a good day and then I was discharged on Friday.

It's very, very weird to leave the hospital without your babies when you'd arrived pregnant a few days earlier.

The thing is on the Thursday evening a lady had had a natural birth but her child was stillborn. Terrible! But put things back in perspective for me because I was grateful that at least my babies were alive in there.

Thursday night - the first time I got to hold one of them. See, a good day.

Also, that Friday morning a new baby arrived in NICU. A nice, big baby at 38 weeks (3.4kg) but he had lung problems which again reminded me that I should be grateful that there is NOTHING wrong with my babies except they're small.

Anyway, had just got home when a friend phoned me and told me she's a bit jealous that I got to experience things with this birth that she never experienced nor would in the future.

She's had two babies and both times the deliveries were sudden, emergency Caesars due to high blood pressure. The doctor has now said no more babies as it's too dangerous for her health.

Honestly, I never even thought about that. But she's right. At least I got to feel what it was like having my waters break, I got to feel contractions all the way up to being 6cm dilated and then I got to experience the Caesar.

I love having friends who challenge you.

Yes, it was not my plan but those experiences have now made my life richer.

I have to keep saying that to myself because yesterday morning, I weighed myself and I've lost 5.1 of the 10.9 kg I gained. Multiply by 2.2 for pounds.

Other people would be happy but I cried and cried!

I also realised that I wasn't starving like I usually am (it really was the babies making me eat ALL the time) in the mornings, so MORE crying.

My eyes were swollen and red - it was terrible.

• I miss my preggy belly.
• I miss my babies' movements.
• I miss the on-demand pregnancy eating.
• I miss my glow :)

Today, no crying yet. So far, so good!

My hand on K

D's hand on C