16 months post op!

What a crazy 16 months it has been......

From returning to work, to holidays, to many weddings and parties and then in December being discharged from Neurology, but we saw our 12 week old baby on our first scan.......truly amazing!

If you had asked me this time last year when we would be thinking of having children, I probably would have told you that I could only dream of that at the moment, due to the way I was still feeling. I had always dreamed of having our own little man, that was fit and healthy, with thick black hair and was just as cute as his dad. Here I am now, expecting our first baby (and it's a boy!) in just 11 days and I couldn't be better!

I have had an uneventful pregnancy, which has completely flown by! I was expecting to have headaches in the first and second trimester, due to these being common in these stages of pregnancy, but with having Chiari, I thought I would definitely suffer from these - WRONG! I didn't suffer at all! Fantastic! I have suffered with headaches more recently, but I think that is due to the change in air pressure at the moment - this is always the case! It may be because I am slightly anxious about having a C-Section in 11 days.........who knows!

Either way, I am feeling great and even though I know I may never be headache free, I can cope with the ones that I am having, none of which are the severity they were pre op - So that has to be a good thing!!

Due to my Chiari, I have opted for a C-Section over a natural birth. Reason being, I can still get headaches on straining, so the thought of having no option but to push during labour, scares me into wondering how I would cope with a natural labour and how bad my head would be during and after labour. I have images of my head completely exploding with the pressure (although I have been reassured it wouldn't!), it scares me to think that I could be that ill again with headaches/migraines during the first days of our son's life. How would I care for the little mite with my head feeling like it's exploding 24/7......... I can't let that happen.

So I will be having a spinal anaesthesia, which has been cleared with the neurologists and I am being considered as a normal C-Section, which is great news! I have been warned that due to the needle penetrating the CSF area, there will be a slight leak of CSF in to my system, which can on occasion, cause spinal headaches. With having had lumbar punctures before, I am expecting these headaches, but have been reassured that they can prescribe treatment for this, that will not effect the baby at all, even when breast feeding, so this I can cope with. They would be nothing like the headaches I get on straining, so this makes me ok with it all!

My main concern with having a child, was that our baby could have Chiari also. I would blame myself if this were the case and having to see our child go through Chiari would hit me quite hard. HOWEVER, I have been assured by my neurologists that this is not hereditary in any way. Some studies in the US apparently have shown that this is familiar, but not 100%. Therefore, we have been reassured that our baby will be fit and healthy and from his scans, all appears normal, so happy days....

So, we have another 11 days before we can introduce our little angel to this world and life could not be better....truly, dreams can come true xxxxxxxxx