This year has been emotional mainly because our gorgeous boy Julian was born.
He is my fifth baby, but our first together. Roger has a son Jack from his first marriage.
We tried for nine months for Julian, we knew right from the off we wanted to have a baby together. You do not just find your soul mate and not do such things!
We found out at only 13 weeks that he was a boy (the better equipment on holiday in Las Vegas helped this) and saw him on a 3d/4d scan that was pure amazement seeing our baby so small but already sucking his hand.
We had numerous scans as Rogers boy had been born with numerous heart defects (tetrology of fallot) so had to be sure our baby was not suffering from a similar fate (although seeing as I am not a heavy smoker we were told it was not very likely anyways). We really felt we knew our boy, especially after a later 3d/4d scan where we could see what he looked like, saw him with his eyes open, yawning, neck stretching etc
I had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes at only 11 weeks pregnant so had been using metformin and insulin later on to control it. I had excess fluid but the last growth scan showed normal levels of fluid and that he was slightly under the huge baby size of babies I normally have so I was not overly worried....and then it all went wrong.Our baby stopped moving, he then became a victim of medical negligence and we very almost lost him. I was told on entering hospital and being monitored he was not happy and he would be born today but they waited numerous hours, tried to induce labour and it ended with him with no heartbeat. I had an emergency crash code red c section. Jules needed 18 minutes of CPR and had no heartbeat for 12 minutes of that. His apgars were 0 at birth then 1 at 5 minutes, 3 at 10 minutes and 5 at 20 :( we were told he was not expected to make it through the night and he was transfered to another hospital for brain cooling for 3 days. He had 13 days in NICU it was a very hard time.
I blamed myself...I gave myself a hard time. The reality on seeing the notes though were that before I even had my waters broken the consultant had written CTG= chronic hypoxia...so he was suffering lack of oxygen 3 hours before the crash c section....lovely!
Thankfully we have a baby that is mainly completely normal...I say mainly, he is mine and Roger's son he is never going to be totally normal ;) he does have bilateral hearing impairments and wears hearing aids.
We are lucky, we were told he would not live through the night, we were also told the next night he would live but be brain damaged....we are very lucky :) he is a cheeky full of fun and laughter happy little boy :) he is the light of all of our lives.
We decided against presents, chosing to instead raise money for the unit that helped him.
www.justgiving.com/julianleyster
I can't wait to take Jules to see the consultant who was dealing with him the night he was born in a few weeks time for a check up, he really will not recognise him.
We have been asking for some cheeky votes for a competition....so if you are on facebook it would be fantastic and very helpful if you could vote and ask friends to vote once a day.
We would love to be able to take all of the children away in celebration for my 40th birthday next year. Plus we will be getting married but I could not bear to leave Jules here, so if we take all of the children we can for one night at least have a room to ourselves whilst my eldest takes care of him :) plus it would just be lovely to have a made crazy family holiday to start off my 40's eeeek lol
http://apps.facebook.com/clarkscontest/contests/52337/voteable_entries/8332729
Many thanks :)
