My wedding invitations are almost ready to send. Luckily. I think I understand why people charge so much money for making them, they’ve taken ages to complete. And my dear fiancé had a lot of trouble folding, cutting, sticking or doing the bows. I don’t think he’s the card-making type. Here is the final version, we changed the colour of the ribbon, but it’s mostly the same.
Homemade Gatefold Wedding Invitation
Pregnancy wise I’m 4 weeks 2 days. Time seems to be going slowly. I’m mentally convinced that my period will arrive any time soon and I’m having a hard time processing the information that there might be a little embryo making it’s home in there right about now.
In fact, I’m in such denial that I don’t want to go to my appointment on Monday. Right now I feel 1) it’s too soon 2) I like my little patch of denial.
But I am going to go, I have a ton of questions to ask, and at least then I can get all the answers I need.
Mainly I want to point out that with the transvaginal cerclage, 1) I’m going on bedrest from cerclage until 30 something weeks and 2) I don’t think driving 1.5 hours to see him every 1-2 weeks is a good idea. I’d rather go see someone closer to home who can relay information to him. I know the care would be better seeing only him, but I cannot do that long travel with my crappy cervix, especially after 19+ weeks. Arrangements need to be made I think.
I haven’t decided which hospital to use, they’ll ask that in a few weeks, and I have two choices: the first one told me to abort Gideon and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I understood informing me of the risks and even suggesting their “best” course of action, but they wouldn’t stop. And the constant badgering to kill my baby upset me tremendously.
Or there’s the other hospital where I spent everything from about 23.5 weeks until delivery. Initially I hated that place, they were horrible to me, they put me in the labour ward when I arrived from the first hospital and for several days I lay there watching women in early labour, hearing their grunts and screams of pain and watching them get wheeled away to have their babies. They also refused to give me antibiotics. I was on bedrest and I kept getting up, going to find a nurse and beg for them. I had an infection, and they told me they “were too busy” to give me the antibiotics, I was in tears thinking the infection would put me in labour. Then they tried to put a drip through a blocked vein. I kept telling them how painful it was, the liquid was just pouring out of me and it HURT, like you cannot believe, I was crying in pain, and they told me “that’s normal” until a kind nurse came round some hours later and discovered the whole vein was blocked, never to be used again.
So, yes, I hated them. At least at the first hospital, most of the nurses were kind, the doctors not so much, but the nurses were lovely and even kept phoning to check on me and when Gideon was born they kept phoning to see how he was doing. Most of them were really nice to me, and kept me hoping even when the doctors gave us no hope at all.
Later, at the second hospital I did manage to make friends with enough nurses to get reasonable care, but a lot of the nurses did not like me, and made no effort to show otherwise. In their view I was a waste of a bed (and eventually a private room) because I refused to go home and refused to induce. I was past viability and about 45 minutes away from home, I was not going back there in case my baby came too fast. They would also refuse to bring me food unless I got up to walk down to the dining room, and the food was awful, usually inedible, and not suitable to pregnant women with gestational diabetes.
Clearly, I have great choices. But the first hospital has no SCBU (special care baby unit) they only take babies at about 34 weeks gestation. If I went into early labour I’d need to to the second hospital anyway (shudder). The SCBU was lovely at the second hospital but…I think there may have been better facilities elsewhere.
Just an overview of my Welsh NHS options.
Writing it all down has helped, I think I’ll go for the first hospital. At least they have reasonable care, reasonable I say, not great. If I go into preterm labour after viability I’ll head straight to the second one anyway.
In case you can’t tell, my brain is working in overtime right now. I just want everything figured out.
