Why do mothers judge each other?

Where is the solidarity between mothers? Why do we feel a need to cast a side-long glance in the direction of every other mum we pass on the street?

There are so many ways for women to judge each other and I ask the question, do men do that? Do men get through life constantly questioning the moves and motives of every other man, or do they get on with their own lives confidently, not worrying what the father next door is doing?

We, as women and mothers, need to stop being so critical. Does it hurt me or impact on my life in any way, shape or form that you do things differently? If it does not, then I should spare you my judgement.

Whether you choose to stay at home or continue your career, use cloth nappies or disposables, breastfeed your child until he's 3 years old or bottle feed from birth, give your child toys that I don't approve of ... we can disagree about these things until we lie down and die, but it doesn't achieve anything and all that time, all those years of motherhood spent scornfully snarling at each other's choices, merely increases the great gaping divide between us to further isolate and alienate each other.

I now realise that this constant criticism between women and mothers comes from a place of fragile insecurity in ourselves. First and foremost we judge ourselves too easily. We don't expect other women to be super mums, but we do expect that from ourselves. So we try to make the right decisions, we try to do the best we can and so finally we come to the conclusion that our way is the only way.

My supposedly comforting advice to another mother "do whatever is best for you and it will be what's best for your baby" came back to haunt me when, after struggling with breastfeeding for 4 and a half months I finally accepted that I had "failed". Jude was happier now that he was no longer fighting me off at meal times and was getting a full feed, and theoretically I understood that I had done everything I could and it wasn't my fault, but emotionally I continue to struggle. After a month I still find myself wondering if it would be possible to restart breastfeeding as I squeeze a little remnant milk from my nipple just to make sure ... I don't know why.

It doesn't help that when I meet other mothers and share my sad tale they ask me if I did this or tried that, and look at me with disrespect, tearing away at my already tattered ego. It's too late now anyway, even if I hadn't already tried everything. Nothing you can say will change things now and your scorn makes me feel terrible.

Having been on the receiving end of such judgement I see now with wide-open eyes that we, as women and mothers, should be there for each other and put aside our differences to give each other the support and love that we really, really need.

Competing, Lies and Mothers

True to my self-doubting form, I invited a community nurse to visit me at home and observe Jude's sleeping and eating routines. This was about a month ago, before I finally accepted the end of breast feeding and before I realised Jude's sleeping patterns were quite normal.

While the nurse was visiting us Jude slept perfectly (of course), so I ended up chatting with the nurse about motherhood in general and other mums (no single mum in particular). She told me how shocked she often is during group meetings when mums start talking about how perfect their babies are and how well they sleep/feed/learn/play etc. As a community nurse she has spoken to the same mothers in private who say very different things to her about their experience.

I can't help but notice how 90% of the mothers I interact with tell me that their babies sleep through the night, when everything I read in parenting books or hear from the medical health community tells me that most babies don't sleep through the night.

A little probing reveals that "sleeping through" means very different things to different people. One mother I spoke to recently admitted her baby wakes up at 5am every morning ready to start the day. In fact, many of the mothers who claim their babies sleep through are very early risers, out strutting the pavement with their babies and prams at sunrise.

Other mums have revealed that their babies don't sleep until later at night. One mother told me that she is often still awake at midnight struggling to settle her baby to sleep.

Other mothers say "my baby sleeps from 7 til 7," but if you listen carefully you'll hear them mutter under their breath "she wakes up around 3am, but I give her a little drink of milk and a cuddle and she goes back to sleep."



I'm sorry, did I hear that correctly? So what you're really saying is that your baby wakes up in the middle of the night for a feed. How exactly is that "sleeping through"?

The concept of "sleeping through" means to me that a baby goes to bed at 7pm and wakes again at 7am without so much as flinching through the night (they can flinch, as long as it doesn't wake up mum and dad). How many babies do that, I ask? My guess is very very few.

Mothers out there, stop lying! You're not being at all helpful or constructive by painting your picture with rose-hued brush strokes. It isn't a competition, we're supposed to be there to support each other by creating realistic expectations and sharing true information. I'm sure you don't want to be a negative Nelly but there's a big difference between staying positive about your experience and telling outright BS!

Well I'm here to set the record straight. Next time you hear someone telling you their life with baby is perfect, rest assured it simply isn't true.

5-Month-Old Angel

Jude has been perfectly delightful lately. He smiles, giggles and babbles constantly. Just yesterday he discovered that his toes reach his mouth, and it's the cutest thing in the world to see him with his bum in the air, hands grasping his feet and his toes between his gums. Don't be fooled. If you see a cute photo of a baby, there's a very good chance it isn't a newborn. Most likely that cute, smiling little bundle of joy is at least 5 months old.

He's also taken to sleeping a lot during the day. He doesn't sleep for too long, but he sleeps like clockwork. 1 hour of sleep followed by 2 hours of awake time then back to sleep for another hour. However, this means he has 4 day-time sleeps which is more than other babies his age. It is a bit of problem for trying to organise my day, especially now that I'm going to Mothers Group.

I've introduced him to solid food. So far he's eating breakfast and dinner but I'm going to add in lunch (I guess) tomorrow (I have to buy some more food first). Breakfast and dinner are easy to implement, but lunch will be a bit tricky since (a) I have not (and never will) force Jude onto a strict routine just for my own convenience and (b) I'm not sure how to manage lunch if I am out-and-about. Anyway, I'm sure it will sort itself out, these things have a way of just working.

Lately Jeremy has been taking the night shift. Since Jude decided to wean himself off the boob, Jeremy can bottle feed him as easily as I can, and since Jeremy can get back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night and I can't, it makes more sense this way.

However, after 8 solid months of no sleep (including the third trimester when I had pelvic displacement and the pain kept me awake), my body clock was completely out of whack and I just can't sleep any more, so I took some sleeping pills for a few nights to reprogram my sleep patterns and it helped. I have since dropped the sleeping pills and I'm now taking natural melatonin. Last night was a bit difficult for some reason, I think because I had a set-back the night before when the neighbours decided to do aerobics in the middle of the night (or something, they probably came home drunk and decided it was a good time for Dance Dance Revolution).

I just have to keep working on it. I know I'm not alone. I know there are other mothers out there who can't get back to sleep after feeding their babies, either (although I am yet to meet one), but I wonder if I'm the only mother who still can't sleep even now I don't have to get up to feed my baby.

The 4 Month Baby

At 3 months people started to congratulate me for getting through the hard part. With the days of the eat-sleep-eat-sleep routine falling behind us, things were starting to look up. It was true that my days were getting better.

As Jude gained week upon week, he started to be a little more independent every day. I remember the first time I put him on his play mat and vacuumed around him. Joy! I could finally get things done again. People with babies that sleep well during the day may not understand what an accomplishment that single feat was, but it was a mega-milestone. The ability to function can not be taken lightly, I personally will never take it for granted again.

However, despite Jude's growing autonomy and despite the congratulatory remarks around 3 months, things were still tricky. Jude's signals for hunger and sleep were still lacking and I didn't feel like I was on top of things quite yet, but by the time 4 months rolled around life with baby had really improved.

The books all tell you to watch for tired signs like rubbing their eyes, but they neglect to tell you that babies don't start with the clear perfect signs like eye rubbing until they're a little bit older, for Jude that was around 4 months. All of a sudden he became a little communicator. "Mummy, I'm tired," he would tell me with his fist in his eye and a little yawn on his perfect lips.

He's also started sleeping better during the day and when he wakes up too soon still grumpy, I can pick him up and give him a little cuddle and a kiss then put him back to sleep again. Today I took a nap in the middle of the day! It's taken me nearly 5 months to achieve that gargantuan goal, but achieve it I did.

Every day he seems to learn something new. First it was rolling around, then trying to sit up, then actually being able to sit for a couple of seconds on his own, yesterday he put his own dummy back in his mouth (and today he practised that trick some more). We just bought him a highchair and he was just sitting in it playing with his toys from a new angle without mummy holding him.

Jude smiles and laughs all the time, and he's ticklish under his armpits where he loves to be munched on by mummy. Yes that's right, he's no longer one of those weird little alien creatures, he's a little man with a very happy and charming personality. As his night sleeps improve, that light at the end of the tunnel is shining very brightly.

The isolation of motherhood - Does anyone else understand?

Some people love babies. Personally, I have never been a baby person. I enjoy the antics of toddlers and children who can in some form express their needs, be it in words or gestures, but babies are a mystery to me and having a 3-month old hasn’t changed that despite everyone’s (and I mean everyone) predictions that I would be miraculously "cured" of my attitude once I had a baby of my own. I didn't choose to procreate just so I could have a baby, I wanted to raise a child to be a good person.

It seems to me that human babies are born way too soon. When I was pregnant with Jude it was my job to protect him, feed him, keep him warm and deal with his waste. Since his birth nothing’s changed, except now instead of all those things being automatic, they now take a hell of a lot of time and effort. No other animal is born so completely dependant on its mother for so long after birth.

As far as babies go, Jude is a lovely little boy. He has a smile to melt the iciest heart and I love to watch him learning to reach out and play with his toys. Just the other day I saw him pass an object from his left hand to his right hand, and that tiny feat made me so proud of him, but most of my day is spent feeding him, changing his nappy, and trying to settle him back to sleep.

There’s no end to it, either. This isn’t an 8-hour work day, it’s 24 hours every day of the week. I don’t have weekends to look forward to and at the end of the day I can’t just say "phew, that was a tough day I’m exhausted, I can’t wait to lie down and have a good night’s sleep." I’m still waking up through the night to feed, change and settle Jude. It’s like being tied to a wheel. It just goes round and round and there’s no end to it in sight.

The tough part is that I keep hearing from other mothers with babies Jude’s age that their babies sleep for a long stretch at night, and have done so for the past month or more. I feel like no one in the entire world understands how I feel. I had no idea that motherhood could be so completely isolating both physically and mentally.

I’m about to start attending a mothers group, finally, but I’m afraid that it will just make me feel even worse when I am confronted by all those other mothers who don’t relate to me and my situation at all. Is there anyone who understands?

Invalidation from Other Mothers

Mothers groups and online forums provide a wonderful means of communicating with other mothers during the often bewildering first weeks and months of new motherhood. As each mother's experience is unique, the opportunity to share with other women is a golden chance to find solidarity with other mothers who are also figuring things out as they go.

Unfortunately, mothers groups and online parenting forums can also be completely invalidating. Online forums have proven particularly damaging when they provide little more than a façade of comfort (which occurs if closer real-life connections are not made). In the past year, an Australian mother suffering severe post natal depression reached out across multiple parenting forums for support and found none. She broke down and killed her children. This is an extreme example but serves as a terrifying reminder of the potentially damaging effects of invalidation.

One primary cause of invalidation is that many mothers feel judged by others and themselves and worry that their feelings may not be normal so they present a very one-angled view of their experience. When mothers share only fragmented pieces of their experience, it merely acts to reinforce the sense that the feelings they have kept to themselves are abnormal.

If a woman does share the deeper parts of her experience, the response from other mothers is vitally important. Invalidating responses range from seemingly benign to outright cruel.

Hollow sympathy, i.e., "I hope it gets better for you soon," diminishes the mother's experience by openly suggesting that (a) her experience is not shared, and (b) her experience is fleeting and is, therefore, insignificant. This is one of the most common responses from other mothers, and due to its seemingly genuinely sympathetic nature can also be one of the most damaging and invalidating responses. Such responses tend to pile up on a mother until she feels her reality has been reduced to complete irrelevance by the women around her.

Similarly, many mothers who have had multiple children forget the difficulties and confusion they faced the first time around. Subsequent children are viewed through the rose-coloured lenses of experience. There are quite a number of ways an experienced mother invalidates the concerns of a first-time mother. "We've all been there before, don't worry", "They grow up so fast, enjoy these early weeks while you can", "if you feel like that you should talk to someone" are all dangerously harmful responses which lack solidarity and diminish a mother's reality.

Outright cruel responses, such as "you're a bad mum", are thankfully less common but they do occur and are obviously damaging on a woman's psyche.

So what should be done?

As members of mothers groups and online forums it's vitally important to treat every woman's experience as real. Validating responses acknowledge the mother's feelings and opinions as true, honest and acceptable.

For example: One of the mothers from my mothers group commented that she feels judged when she is bottle-feeding her baby in public. I acknowledged her reality by agreeing that some woman will judge her, but I also comforted her by letting her know that not all women will judge her and that I didn't judge her. Finally, I validated her choice to bottle feed by reminding her that her choice makes her life easier and happier and is therefore the best choice for her baby. One of the other mothers in the group then added that she has experienced the same feelings of judgement while bottle feeding in public as well.

It would have been icy cold comfort if I had simply said "oh honey, I hope it gets better for you,” and there is little chance the other mother would have opened up and shared her experience. Hopefully you can see how that would have actually had a negative impact on the mother. Please keep this in mind if you have an opportunity to validate the reality of a first-time mum. Your response will make the world of the difference. I should know, I am a first-time mum.

Getting Baby to Sleep

I'm not glad that I paid $200 for antenatal classes that turned out to be entirely useless. They didn't prepare me for the reality of what I experienced in giving birth, nor did they prepare me for the reality of what comes next.

We were told babies follow a routine of feed-play-sleep (or simply feed-sleep for newborns). However, Jude did not care for supposed routines. From week 4 to week 8 he flat out refused to sleep during the day, thus making it impossible for me to do anything (like eat lunch or get dressed) during the day.

It was incredibly frustrating. Yes, some babies do follow by-the-book routines but some babies don't and it's unfair to disarm expectant mothers by pretending otherwise. I was completely oblivious to how severely my life would be turned upside down and dumped on its head by having a baby that didn't nap during the day, and by day I mean from 8am until 11 o'clock at night.

Almost all babies start off life waking every 3 or 4 hours (some every 2 hours) through the night. For me this meant that Jude feeds at 10pm, then 2am, then 5am, then 8am and I try to sleep in between. Some babies grow out of this pattern and start skipping one of those night-time feeds. According to one of my baby bibles (which I rushed out to buy as soon as I realised the antenatal classes had been a flat-out waste of money), babies can't really sustain themselves overnight until they're about 5kgs because their stomach is too small prior to that.

Jude was born smaller than average and at nearly 10 weeks of age he still hasn't reached 5kgs. Many babies will reach 5kgs as early as 6 weeks of age. This means that while all those mums with babies the same age as Jude are complaining they can only sleep from 8pm until 7am (what?), I am still getting up twice in the middle of the night to feed Jude and I leap with joy on the rare occasion that I get 5 hours in a row of beautiful, blissful, uninterrupted sleep.

Note: Not all babies start skipping night feeds once they reach the golden weight of 5kgs. Some babies still wake for feeds at 1 year of age or even older.

Happily, Jude has started sleeping more during the day allowing me time to catch up on much needed tasks like cleaning my bathroom (which was a bit skanky after 8 weeks of mold cultivation). I'm not sure if we've done anything to encourage the sleeping or Jude's doing it on his own, but we have tried very hard by putting him to bed when we think he's tired. There are supposed to be clear signs that a baby is tired, but Jude's signs are subtle and we function on guess work.

I've learned through trial and error that Jude likes it when I sit by his bassinet and read him a story. He's not interested in the pictures and I'm sure he has no idea what I'm saying, but a reading voice is different from a conversation voice, there's a certain rhythm to the written word that helps calm Jude and lull him towards sleep. My aim is simply to quieten him to a state of peace so he can put himself to sleep when I leave the room.

Jeremy's technique is to sing him a medley of songs with the same tune, like the ABC and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

It's been a long, confusing and exhausting journey to help Jude sleep. The scary part is, what works today might suddenly stop working tomorrow. With babies you just never know. As my GP said, as soon as you think there's a routine developing something happens and everything changes.

Warning: Bad advice and Mastitis

While in hospital after giving birth to Jude I tried to make use of the supposed deep well of knowledge that were the nurses and midwives surrounding me. I thought "I'm going to be out on my own soon. I should ask all the questions I can think of now so I am prepared when I go home". In retrospect, I wish I'd done anything but ask for help.

36 solid hours with not a wink of sleep following labour, my first night in hospital saw me falling apart at the seams with fatigue. At 10pm a night nurse told me I had a "sleepy baby" and I needed to wake up every 2 hours to feed him. She told me to set my alarm for midnight. She took Jude to the nursery so I could have a short uninterrupted sleep before I had to wake up again. All I could do was cry but I wanted to do the right thing by my son, so I set to work feeding him constantly without any sleep.

The next day the paediatrician came in and was horrified to see on Jude's chart that he had been subjected to a blood sugar test and that I had been subjected to feeding round the clock. "He doesn't actually need to eat," Dr Withers told me. "His stomach is the size of a pea and it's full of amniotic fluid. The only reason to feed him is to give him a little colostrum and get some practice at breastfeeding."

All the same, the idea that I had a sleepy baby and that something was wrong with Jude stuck with me and I couldn't stop waking to feed him. I just wanted to be a good mother to my little innocent baby boy.

Now, Jude was a natural at attaching to the breast, but being a first time mum I didn't know what correct attachment really was, so I asked the nurses to check each time I fed Jude. They kept telling me conflicting information. "He's not attached properly, you can tell because you can still see some areola. He should have all the areola in his mouth," one nurse told me, ignoring the fact that all women have different sized areolas and that my son was incredibly small with a little mouth.

I kept taking him off my breast and reattaching him, but this constant tug-of-war on my nipples was absolute hell and it wasn't long before my nipples were cracked and swollen.

During my last night in hospital I felt my milk come in, and I was discharged from hospital the next day with hugely swollen breasts and very sore nipples.

That night at home I took a nap and woke up at 7pm shivering uncontrollably with my right breast throbbing painfully. I tried to take a hot shower to warm up but I could barely stand and when I got out of the shower I was freezing. I took some paracetamol and the shivering finally subsided after 2 hours, but I knew something was wrong.

The next day I felt terrible and made my way to the GP. It was Sunday so I had to wait for almost 2 hours as people kept coming in off the street with apparent emergencies that were getting priority over me. Finally I burst into tears and told them I was in pain and I had a 5-day-old baby waiting for me back home. The nurse on duty said "you should have said something, honey," but I failed to understand why the girl with 3-month pregnancy morning sickness was being treated as an emergency when I had been waiting patiently with an actual appointment, I didn't think I needed to say something in those circumstances.

The GP took one look at my red swollen breast and diagnosed mastitis. He prescribed antibiotics and I started the course immediately but it took about 3 days for them to work. In the mean time I continued shivering with fever while trying to breastfeed, but my nipple was so swollen Jude could no longer attach to my right breast. The engorgement of milk was unbearable so I rushed out to buy a breast pump, even though I was sick with pain and fatigue and just wanted to stay in bed.

Pumping the swollen nipple was hell but I had to persevere or risk losing my milk supply, plus I had to get rid of that built up milk and try, try, try to unblock my milk ducts.

Fresh out of hospital with no idea what I was doing I found myself living this torture. All my questions and search for knowledge in hospital had not only given me nothing of any value, but had resulted in me getting very sick and it set me on an early path in the worst possible direction. I wouldn't wish mastitis on anyone, but a new mum fresh out of hospital with no one around to support her ... there couldn't be a worse scenario.

Since then I bought some parenting and baby books that explained things much better and made a lot of sense to me, and showed me that the nurses in hospital were completely wrong in everything they told me. If I had my time over I would do things differently, because I feel like I lost the ability to sit back and enjoy the lovely first week of my son's life, back when he slept all day and his needs were very simple.

Pre Eclampsia and an Emergency Epidural

9.36pm. Waters broke 5 minutes after my head hit the pillow. I sat up uncertainly as a small trickle escaped. A wave of energy ran through my uterus. It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling but I knew what it was. Waddling out to the living room where Jeremy sat trying to fix my computer, I wondered what to do next. “My waters just broke,” I said. Jeremy stood up to hug me and I started to cry as the reality sunk in.

The hospital wanted me to come in right away, but told me not to rush. I was prepared for this news. Both Mum and Nan started their labours with their waters breaking first so I knew it would happen that way and had long since given up the dream of labouring slowly in the peace and solitude of my home.

In the last weeks of my pregnancy I’d developed pre eclampsia. After several days of hospital visits and constant monitoring, the doctors told me that baby needed to come out. I was just waiting for my obstetrician, Dr Cary, to return from school holidays the next day. Facing a medical induction, we raced the clock using every trick in the book (sex, spicy food, acupressure and caster oil) and won. I was feeling very pleased with myself as we drove to hospital, but a bit of a surprise lay waiting for me.

Dr Cary came to see me right away. He gently informed me that I was going to need an epidural. Somewhere in the bottom of my labour bag sat several copies of a birth plan that would never be used. The birth plan had specifically requested no epidural unless needed in an emergency. High blood pressure, it turned out, was such an emergency. The epidural would lower my blood pressure and ensure that the pain of contractions didn’t tip me over the edge of safety. It also meant Dr Cary could pump me full of Syntocin to get the contractions hurtling along like a bullet train and baby could be delivered as quickly as possible.

As it turned out this was the best-case scenario. I had an appointment to see Dr Cary the next day but he told me in hospital that I was in line for a serious chat. If I hadn’t gone into labour on my own and my cervix wasn’t ripe I would have been facing a caesarian. I guess I hadn’t realised the seriousness of my situation.

The anaesthetist arrived and I was systematically attached to a drip, CTG, blood pressure monitor and finally the big needle was stuck in my spine. “Let’s have a dawn baby,” Dr Cary said when he left me after midnight to go home and get some shut eye.

During the night I couldn’t sleep. There was no pain or discomfort, just a steady boredom and a nagging interest in what was happening inside me. Next door I heard blood-curdling screams of another woman in labour. I could feel the baby moving and as the night dragged and my legs became heavier and more numb, I could steadily feel my contractions as short, sharp pains growing closer together.

Two midwives attended to me through the night. I chatted with them and discovered the primary attendant was a trainee. It was apparent by the fact that she failed to find my urethra 5 times while trying to insert the catheter. I quickly gave up any pretense of dignity. After all, I had already soaked my pants through with amniotic fluid when I arrived, but it would have been nice to have a competent midwife by my side through the long night.

As dawn came creeping over the horizon the midwives starting fussing about my contractions which they insisted were getting weaker. During the night they’d upped the Syntocin according to Dr Cary’s schedule so they failed to understand what was happening to my labour. I was frustrated and worried. This was the reason I’d wanted to avoid an epidural. I’d heard the horror stories of 40-hour labours resulting in c-sections and I started to see it happening to me. I wanted to sit up and give gravity a chance. So the midwife raised my bed for me and I was suddenly overcome by nausea. The midwives handed me a sick bag and a wet cloth.

Soon after 6am Dr Cary arrived back on the scene and asked me how I was feeling. “Nauseous,” I said, holding back tears of frustration. “Let’s take a look.” Dr Cary took one look and saw a head. “Well the reason you’re feeling nauseous is because you’re about to have a baby, so let’s get those legs up and push!”

The midwives were shocked. I guess if either one of them had bothered to actually examine me internally, instead of trying to rely entirely on the CTG, they might have known what was happening. They were so useless and were completely unprepared for delivery. They flew into action as Dr Cary gently coaxed them. I shudder to think what would have happened if Dr Cary hadn’t shown up when he did, but he did so I won’t waste time worrying about that.

Three contractions and some well-visualised pushes later, our darling Jude was born. As his head emerged I stopped pushing and sat back to watch in quiet contemplation as his body was delivered on October 7th, 2008 at 6.39am. My little posterior baby had turned himself around. What an angel!

The midwives were pretty astonished by how quickly it happened. Jeremy and I were blissfully happy, we both cried as Jude was placed immediately on my tummy. He was all slippery and floppy and fragile. “Is it a boy?” I asked through tears of joy, but they hadn’t looked between his legs yet. It was soon confirmed what the 19-week ultrasound had shown … the dream that had been Jude Hugo Thomas was now a beautiful, perfect reality.

Jude opened his left eye, then his right eye and started searching my chest for the nearest nipple.

Pre-Eclampsia or Hypertension

On Thursday I went for my routine 38-week check up. I mentioned to the midwife that I thought baby's movements had been a bit less pronounced. She asked me if I felt it was a significant reduction in movement and I didn't really know how to answer that question (based on what knowledge would I be able to judge what "significant" means in this case?) The midwife suggested a cardiotocograph (CTG) which is just a simple heat-beat monitoring test for the baby.

After that, she measured my blood pressure. This is the only measurement I've had throughout my entire pregnancy. It has always measured around 120/70, but when the midwife checked it had risen to 130/90. She was a bit concerned about it, but I thought it was probably just related to the stress of wondering if my baby needed the CTG or not.

During the CTG that same day, my blood pressure raced up to 160/120. Now I happen to know from previous experience that I am susceptible to stress. My blood pressure has been this high before. I didn't think there was anything to worry about, but they ordered some blood tests.

That afternoon I had a call from the midwife who said my blood tests were ok but I should go to the hospital on Saturday for a follow up. That evening, however, I had another call from the attending obstetrician's office who said there were some concerns about my blood test and asked me to come back the next day (Friday).

Friday (yesterday) I went back for more monitoring. Apparently there was something about uric acid in my blood results. I had my blood pressure re-checked (the midwife said it was high, but I don't know what the measurement was) and then I had another blood test plus a urine test. The results didn't come back that same day, so I had to wait and see what happened at the hospital.

Today is Saturday. I went in to the hospital this morning with my husband by my side really not knowing what was going on. We had another CTG and my blood pressure was checked again. Today it measured 139/94, which is considered pretty high.

I asked some appropriate questions and I now know that I am being monitored for pre-eclampsia. A condition specific to pregnancy where a woman's blood pressure rises for no known reason. It starts in the placenta and can cause oxygen deprivation for the baby. It can be quite serious. At my stage in pregnancy the treatment is to deliver the baby as quickly as possible.

My obstetrician is away on school holidays, but he'll return this week. At the moment I'm not particularly under any specific obstetrician's care (just whoever is on duty). The doctor on duty this weekend didn't want to make a call today, given that he's just been introduced to my paper work (although I haven't met him because he was in theatre when I was there).

This means I have to go back again tomorrow (Sunday) for more blood/urine/blood pressure tests and a CTG and if my blood pressure has gone up or my tests come back any worse I will be induced almost immediately.

This comes as quite a shock. I'm a little bit thrown that I could suddenly be facing the imminent arrival of my baby. It's been 9 months and in just one more week I will reach my due date. My baby has already been considered full-term for 2 weeks, so having my baby now is completely acceptable it's just that I hadn't expected it to be this way.

I had assumed I would go into labour at a time that the baby would choose and it would all be a big surprise and at first I wouldn't even realise I was in labour, or I wouldn't be certain, and it would probably be in the middle of the night ... but now I'm facing a very real chance it could be tomorrow.

I sort of hope I go into labour naturally in the middle of the night and skip all this rigmarole.