Welcome To The World, Baby Ella!

So after only 4 days of patiently waiting after my due date arrived, baby Braithwaite arrived into the world!

I went to sleep on the Thursday night and woke a few times during the night with a sore back which was pretty unusual because nothing usually wakes me in the night! I woke up Friday morning and there was still a dull ache there but I didn't really think anything of it.  Byron said he needed to do a site visit quite far away that morning at work but he wouldn't do it if I didn't want him to, I said go for it and that the baby wasn't coming anytime soon! He dropped in back at the house an hour later to pick up his wellies, and I told him I wasn't sure but I thought maybe this could be the start of labour! He had a half day and so came home around 1pm, and made me lunch.  By this time I was definitely feeling more pains, so I switched the tens machine on that my lovely friend Laura had loaned to me and I was good to go! The tens really took the edge of the pain nicely! By about 3.30pm I started getting contractions so I started timing them with the app on my phone, and when they were only 5 minutes or less apart we called the maternity ward and they told us to come in.  So at 5pm we left the house, hospital bag in hand thinking this is it - it's really happening! but unfortunately when we got to the hospital the midwife who checked me over said yes I was having contractions but they weren't nearly strong enough and I would need to go home again! Soooo disappointing! 

 So we headed back home, I got back on my ball and kept using the tens to help me through the contractions.  By 10pm they were way too painful so we headed back to the hospital again.  This time the midwife checked me over and hooked me up to the machine and gave me a sick bowl because I hadn't been able to keep anything down since lunch! I told her my birthing plan and she started running the water in the birthing pool for me...but she didn't seem to think anything was going to be happening too soon.  By her estimations of how far along I was in my labour, I should have only been having a baby by midday the following day!

I got into the pool at about midnight, with my trusty friend gas and air to help me through! It was quite relaxed.  The midwife only really came in about 3/4 times to check the babies heartbeat or see how I was doing, the rest of the time it was just Byron and I and I was just chilling out in the water! We asked her at about 2.30am if she knew how long it was going to be and she said she really didn't, because I wasn't hooked up to any machines or anything I guess it's hard for them to know.  By about 3am I started feeling like maybe I couldn't handle this birth thing with only gas and air and I might have to get out the water, but I had remembered the midwife in our parenthood classes telling us that usually there's a point when you think you can't handle anymore and then the birth is shortly after that...so I kept hanging in there, and next thing I saw the midwife coming in and putting an apron on and wheeling some equipment in so I started getting excited realising things were going to be happening soon!

At 3:28am I gave my final push, the midwife told me to reach my hands down to catch my baby! and there she was! I held her in my hands, speechless for a minute, until the midwife asked what it was!! I announced to the room it was a baby girl! She was weighed at 7 lbs 3.5 ozs, and she did not like being naked on that scale one little bit!

We were wheeled back to our room, and Ella got cleaned up and then we had our first official picture as Mommy and baby! This is when we decided our little bundle of cuteness should be named Ella!

We had some nice snuggles for around an hour, and we got to know one another before she fell fast asleep.  I got wheeled through to the ward to try and get some sleep too but I couldn't stop staring at my beautiful baby girl so not much sleep was had!

By came back to the hospital at 9am which is when spouses are allowed back in, and his dad showed up a short while later and popped in for 5 minutes (ahead of official visiting times) to get a peek at Ella! Her first official visitor was her Gramps!

Around lunchtime Granny and Grandad Jones also popped in unofficially! to steal a quick hug, and then everyone came back at 2pm for the official visiting time!

By's friend Stu was up visiting for the weekend before he was heading off to New Zealand so he also got a hug in before he left!

I pretty much stayed in my pj's the whole of Saturday so on Sunday I decided I had better get dressed and look a bit presentable so Ella and I could have some more pictures!

Our first official picture as a family of 3! We got the couple who I shared the room with to take this for us, and randomly their baby girl was also called Ella!

Just incase their was any confusion, here's Ella telling the world she's a girl! We didn't have any brand new newborn or tiny baby clothes, the only ones we had were hand me downs from cousin Ellis and she was so tiny that is all that would fit her...hence the blue onesie! That cardigan was also newborn size but was still massive on her, we had to roll up the sleeves!

I love how red her lips were in the hospital, super rosy! and I love her squishy face!

One last shot before we were able to take her home!

A few days later, we took her to the registry office to make it official! Ella Kristyn Braithwaite...no going back now!

We didn't really see her eyes for the first few days all that much, she slept nearly all day long! so this was a rare pic we managed to take when they were open! You can see she was also a little bit jaundiced still, but it cleared quite quickly.

 This was a newborn vest sent by auntie Mara, look how big it was on her! She was so teeny, and her cute bunny slippers that my friend Leanne knitted for her!

Mom had stayed with us the whole week which was amazing, she would take Ella during the day so we could nap and catch up on our sleep from the night before! and she also cooked and cleaned and generally helped us out so much!  On the Wednesday we headed to Glasgow to pick up Mel and Ellis from the station so Ella met Ellis for the first time! She slept through all the excitement of course...because at this point she was sleeping through everything!

Her first little outing was to Whole Foods where we got some delicious lunch!

Auntie Mel was loving the new baby snuggles!

and we had to take a picture of the adoring Granny and her 2 grandchildren she has now! Exciting times!

I couldn't believe how big Ellis seemed in comparison to Ella, he'd always been the baby in the family and now next to Ella he seemed like a little boy! We like the way he's patting her head here, shortly after he got a bit more rough though and we had to end the photoshoot!! His being gentle with new babies awareness is not the best!

On Friday night Uncle Arne was able to come and join the fun and he got his snuggles in, he didn't remember Ellis ever being as small as Ella but he was! I think you just forget easily.

So in the first few weeks I made sure I took as many pictures as possible so I wouldn't forget any of it! She is such a peaceful sleeper, I found it hard not to spend all day starting at her sleeping! We have been blessed to have such a good baby!

A few days later Auntie Mara arrived, and got caught up on all the Ella snuggles!

and we took Ella on her first visit to a cupcakery, but again she slept through the whole thing!

When she was 10 days old, she had a little photoshoot!

How I love those little lips of hers, and her sticking up hair at the back!

This was probably the turning point for when she started to stay awake more! She was meant to sleep through the whole thing so that the photographer could manoevure her into crazy poses, but she was awake most of the time with us all trying to shush her back to sleep! I quite like this final pic we got though where her eyes were meant to be closed but she'd popped them open! 

What a cutie pie!

We just couldn't be more happy, and we feel like she has always been a part of our family! I can't remember what life was like before her...although I do remember it involved a lot more sleep :)

40 weeks...and the countdown is over!

I wrote this at 40 weeks...but am only getting around to publishing it now!!

So I've been so busy trying to play catch up and blog all our road trip adventures, that I've missed blogging about this whole exciting pregnancy thing! so I thought I'd just sum everything up right now...as I sit here at 40 weeks plus 2 days...and there's still no sign of baby!

We are SO very excited to meet this little one...you know some people just grow up knowing that the one thing they want to be in life is a mom and I was one of those people!  I have been making lists of baby names since I was old enough to hold a pen! and Mel and I spent many hours as children trudging through the argos catalogue picking out our cots to our highchairs and everything inbetween!  I used to babysit tons when I was growing up...and once I'd put all the kids to bed, I'd love tidying the houses of the families I was at and pretending that it was my house and imagining the day when I would be putting my own kids to bed! 

To say we were excited to find out I was pregnant is the understatement of the century!

 

There is never anything I have wanted more in my life than this! One of the most annoying things I've found whilst being pregnant is all those people who already have kids who come up to you and go 'what are you letting yourself in for, good luck - you're going to need it, life is never going to be the same again' and they're all so down on having kids...but what they don't know is I know that life is never going to be the same again and I'm fully on board with that because I've been wanting and hoping for this change in my life for so long that I'm so ready to take the sleepless nights, the handing in your social life at the door, the days of getting baby sick in your hair etc... I'm ready and excited for it all! and if I never get a good nights sleep again, so long as there is a beautiful little baby to keep me company I'll be happy! 

Aside from my extreme sickness in the first two months of my pregnancy, the whole rest of my pregnancy has been an absolute dream! I've had zero pelvic pain, zero heartburn, zero symptoms of any kind that I'm even pregnant aside from a growing belly! I feel really lucky that I've had it so easy! and even now my due date has passed I'm not frustrated, and desperate for baby to get here, and I'm not horribly uncomfortable - I feel just as well as I always have done and I know baby will come in it's own time so for now I'm just relaxing and enjoying!

Since we found out I was pregnant when we were living in Canada still, it was an excruciating 5 week wait until we were back in the UK before we could tell our families, because telling them over skype wouldn't quite have been the same!

We broke the news to my mom and dad and Mara in Ikea! Where else?! haha! Since it is a family favourite of the Jones family! We got back from Canada on 25th July, the day that our nephew Ellis was born - we saw By's family in Milton Keynes on the Thursday and Friday and then on the Saturday morning we planned to drive up to Leeds to meet the little cutie! The plan was Mom and Dad were still going to be there, but their plans changed and suddenly they were back in Shropshire! We were desperate to tell them so we called them at 7am on the Saturday morning and said maybe we could make a pit stop at the Birmingham Ikea on the way up to Leeds just to see them and grab some meatballs! So that is how we ended up breaking the news to them there! We had made this little slideshow on our laptop of our American road trip and we had the final picture be the 3 pairs of Converse in a row to tell them we were expecting! Well...there was a laptop malfunction by me, and somehow during the slideshow I leaned on the mouse and it skipped right through to the end - there was lots of confusion before I eventually had to tell them I was pregnant! My mom said it was a lot to take in all in one week with Ellis just being born too!! Luckily, when we made it to Leeds I played the slideshow for Mel and Arne and when they saw the 3 pairs of converse they got it straight away!!

Our announcement pic!

I met with some of my school friends a few days later to tell them the news too! We went to Bill's, which is a fave of ours and had some delicious food.  During the meal, I got up to take a picture...and had planned that this would be the moment I told them.  So as I was pressing down the button and telling them to smile, I said 'say Gem's pregnant' but because the lighting was so dim in the restaurant my camera wouldn't focus and so it didn't capture the look on their faces as I told them! I started saying 'oh no, it's not working' and someone thought I said I was joking.  Caz replied with 'that's not a funny joke' and then I had to tell them it wasn't a joke and I was really pregnant...so that way of announcing the news kind of backfired too!!!

Straight away Caz said she knew it! and she did...she knew before even I did! Back in June, I was skyping with her a few days after our weekend away to the hot springs in Canada when I was so sick and I told her how sick I'd been for days and straight away she said I was pregnant! I said no, but then just a day later the test told us otherwise!

So just to be good sports, the girls put on their best fake surprise faces since I didn't get a picture of the real deal!

So let's take a look at some bump pictures!

This was at 20 weeks and when I decided my bump had finally appeared! Although, when I excitedly posted this picture on Facebook my dad called to tell me he had a bigger 'bump' than me, and that it didn't look like I had a bump at all! 

22 weeks pregnant and enjoying a day out at Kirsktall Farmers Market in Leeds.  This was also the weekend our nephew Ellis got blessed at church.  As you can see, I wasn't really showing yet at this point.

25 weeks pregnant, and with my mom paying us a visit in Scotland I got her to snap this one of the both of us plus bump!

I felt like it was starting to get more noticeable here!

28 weeks pregnant, and that is a definite bump right there! I was super excited to finally look pregnant! and have people notice when we were out and about!


 

 30 weeks pregnant, and we couldn't let a pleasant day go by without getting out and about! So Byron convinced me we needed to go climb this craig! It was a little bit tiring, but worth the view from the top!



 32 weeks pregnant and with Caz visiting, we went on a nice long walk around Chatelherault Country Park - you can just see my bump peeking out of my coat here!

 

37 weeks pregnant! Officially full term in this pic, and still feeling great!

I also got thrown two amazing baby showers, one I knew about and one was a complete surprise! 

I had one down South over Christmas time so all my Harpenden and Uni friends could make it. 
We played lots of fun games, and there were lots of predictions and guessing going on about Baby Braithwaite - most people predicted girl!



It was hosted by Mara, Mel and both the grannies to be!

Baby Braithwaite got spoilt with a lot of amazing prezzies!

I especially loved this little America tee from Auntie Mel!

It was a starry theme, so everyone wore something starry and the colour scheme was yellow and purple!

Mara baked up a storm, like these lemon and blueberry cupcakes! yum.



These carrot cake plant pots of cake went down a treat, made by my mom!



and no dessert table is complete without oreo goodness - some oreo brownies courtesy of Mel!



We also had lots of cute sweets in jars, and hand designed 'Gem's baby shower' labels thanks to my graphics pro friend Jade!

We had to balance out with some savoury star shaped sandwiches, made by Kathy and enjoyed by all!

Even Ellis got involved with the star theme! and as you can see he was loving it!

Me and my Harpenden girlies and Lilia getting in on the starry action too!

and a shot with the Grannies and their 'Granny to be' starry headbands!

It was a lot of fun! 

A few weeks later we were back in Scotland and Byron told me our Bishop at church wanted to meet with us on a Friday night.  So off I went to our church building, expecting just that, and when I arrived I was met with a room full of friends who were throwing me a surprise baby shower! It was a very big shock, but a thoroughly lovely one!

I had to guess who each present was from before opening it, and when I got it wrong I had to stick cotton wool balls to my face - as you can see I didn't guess many right!

We played lots of fun games, like a relay to see who could dress their baby dolls fastest!

and of course the good old classic melted chocolate in the nappy game - can you guess which chocolate it is!

We also ate lots of delicious goodies, but clearly I was too involved in the eating to take any pics!

Here I am with the lovely hosts - Bronwen and Joanne.

...and that's it in a nutshell, the happiest 9 months of my life :)