Dominica Malcolm

I started steady, consistent labour contractions at around midnight on the 9th of January. I’d been trying to get to sleep but there was no way the contractions were going to go away. After about an hour I ended up feeling so much pain, Jeremy decided it was time to go to the hospital. We arrived at about 1:45am.

After very little rest, and a lot of painful contractions that had me wondering whether I could go through with a natural birth, and 12 hours of labour, I gave birth to a very healthy baby boy. We have named him Doyle Alexander Malcolm. My obstetrician didn’t end up making it to the delivery on time, so he was delivered by two mid-wives, with a little support from another obstetrician on duty. They were all incredibly proud of me because apparently there aren’t so many first-time-Mums who have as natural a delivery as I did (I tried the gas for about 2 minutes and found it useless). In fact the obstetrician said you could count the number of those births in one year on your hands. It doesn’t seem like such a big deal now, with how little pain I seem to be experiencing compared to the actual labour, but it was definitely hard work and I was exhausted. Jeremy was a champion through it all – I don’t know if I could’ve coped without his lower-back massaging through the final 3cm of dilation. Although that only took maybe 2 hours. I was a little surprised by how quick it all happened.

Little Doyle is adorable, though. Some of the first things he did include furrowing his brow and blowing spit bubbles. He’s going to be a handsome trouble-maker

Doyle was born weighing 3.28kg with a height of 48.5cm. Jeremy has been an absolute darling with him so far, taking to him like a house on fire. He’s going to be an awesome dad. We notified all of the immediate family members even before the baby had been measured.

Also, as I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, and since Doyle was born at 12:05pm, we were presented with a very nice luxury platter of food – including sandwiches I couldn’t eat while pregnant, a chicken salad, jam tart, ice-cream and fruit salad. It was to die for! I can’t wait to be able to order hospital food for the rest of the week.

I realise it has been quite some time since I’ve last written anything for my WordPress online journal. Jeremy has been begging me to do so for quite some time, but I just haven’t been bothered to use the scanner to share some pictures with the world.

However, I realised I couldn’t just keep putting off telling the world/Internet that I am, in fact, pregnant. It happened about a week into Jeremy’s and my honeymoon, releasing the spawn in Singapore, with conception likely taking place somewhere in Phuket. One thing I plan on telling baby in the future that one of the very first things it did with us after conception was getting to ride atop an elephant.

So I’m now about 14 weeks into the pregnancy, and I’ve had two ultrasounds. The first one being bulk-billed to Medicare, and therefore free for us, but the second one lending no Medicare rebate at all. Had I known, perhaps I wouldn’t have bothered with the first trimester screening. After all, I didn’t expect to be carrying a baby with Down’s Syndrome. And given that I haven’t heard back from my obstetrician, I must be in the “low risk” category, which is exactly what I expected.

Anyway, here’s some ultrasound pictures I wanted to share.

This is baby at 8 weeks and 6 days. As you can see, the person taking the ultrasound was nice enough to label all the bits.

This is baby at 12 weeks and 3 days, full body, with its head on the left and feet on the right.

This one was labelled as baby’s face, so I’m just going to repeat that it’s baby’s face.

This is another one of baby’s body. It’s where baby was measured at 65.22mm from head to rump, and I guess the writing in the bottom is indicative that this height is typical of a baby of 13 weeks, and therefore baby is a little tall for its age.

This is a 3D interpretation of baby at 12 weeks and 3 days.