A new arrival in the Beans household!

Please forgive me for the lack of posts lately - the last month or so has been a bit of a whirlwind, as our beautiful daughter Lucy Grace has arrived!!! The Boy and I are completely smitten, completely knackered, and completely overwhelmed to be a family at last!

I may be a little biased but I think Lucy is the most beautiful little girl I have ever seen. It is remarkable to see her growing and changing every day and I can already see how parenthood is going to be the biggest rollercoaster of our lives. She is a very chilled out little lady (must take after the Boy!) and we feel very lucky and blessed to have her with us.

Lucy arrived on 20 September at 4.54pm weighing in at bang on 8lbs. Suffice to say the birth didn't go quite as expected... at my 37 weeks midwife appointment my midwife was a little concerned that Lucy wasn't engaged and didn't seem to be in the right position - having been head down for most of the pregnancy. I was sent up to St Thomas's Hospital for a routine scan to check what was what - where they discovered that Lucy was transverse with the umbilical cord presenting. This is extremely rare (happens in less that one per cent of pregnancies, and is even more unusual in first time mums!) and is potentially fatal - I was told that if I was to go into labour naturally at home or my waters were to break and the cord came out first, it was very likely we would lose Lucy.

So, after the scan I was hospitalised and spent nearly 3 weeks in the antenatal ward at Tommies while we hoped and prayed that Lucy would work herself into a safer position. Unfortunately I had the combination of a transverse baby, a heart-shaped uterus, and too much amniotic fluid which meant that didn't happen. She was happy as Larry wiggling away to her heart's content and mostly with her head parked behind my belly button (extremely uncomfortable!) and we couldn't get her to settle long enough with her head down to try inducing me or going for a natural birth. We gave it our best shot - and those three weeks I spent in hospital away from the Boy at the time felt like the longest of my life.

The best - and really, only - way forward to keep Lucy and I safe was a planned c-section which I had on my due date, 20 September. It wasn't what I had envisaged or wanted, but when circumstances change and you understand the risks to your baby, you have to go with the flow and be flexible. At the end of the day all that mattered was our baby came into the world alive and safe, and thankfully that is what happened.

The operation was very strange and I will write more on it another time, but the staff were very reassuring and highly skilled and everything went as well as it could done. We were still able to incorporate some parts of our birth plan - the Boy cut the cord and I had skin-to-skin with Lucy and was able to nurse her... and now she is here and is so wonderful, the way in which she came into the world seems increasingly unimportant. Physically I am healing well - and after a few hiccups with our latch Lucy is feeding well and putting on weight. Hopefully she'll be a chunkster like her Mum in no time ;-)

On that note it is probably time for me to get back to her and give her some lunch, so I will try to write some more soon about how everything has been, my beautiful girl, my wonderful husband and how we are getting on settling into family life. She's certainly turned our world upside down - but we were so, so ready for a little bit of chaos. She rocks :-) xx