Hiccups!

A daily event ... captured on film by Grandma!

One Month!

It seems impossible that this little dude is one month ... except that it seems like we've had him forever so this is officially the dumbest sentence ever.

Daniel is the most amazing, wonderful creature and I can't believe I'm his mother. All of the sappy cliches spring to mind and I'm too sleep deprived to come up with anything more profound than this: I am in love and so very blessed.

At one month, Mr Baby is 9 pounds and 1 oz. This puts him in the 34th percentile for weight which is a nice improvement over the 21st percentile where he was at birth. He's also now 21inches long. He can hold his head up for over 5 seconds during tummy time which is way ahead of his age. We need to work on moving objects from right to left in front of his eyes and not letting him turn his head to follow.

Sleep is on track for age: on a good night we get a 3 to 4 hour block beginning anywhere from 9 to 11. After that we're lucky to get 2 hrs at a time.

We are exclusively breast feeding ... and are about to start pumping so I have a stash when I go back to work. He loves to eat and has been nicknamed 'The Boobie Monster' ... lol.

I'm excited to take his "official" one month pic later today (he's snoozing right now and there's no chance I'm going to wake him up!)

Pics!

Daniel's Birth Story

After waiting as long as possible for Daniel to join us on his own, Brandon and I headed to KU Medical Center for induction on Monday, October 21. I was 41 weeks and 4 days pregnant.

             We had gone to bed early on Sunday night but, being us, managed to have some drama. Brandon fell asleep around ten but it took me a little longer. All of a sudden, we were startled awake when his alarm clock rang at midnight. It took us a minute to get it off and then, hearts racing, we tried to go back to sleep. When my alarm rang at 4 am, it felt like I had just barely fallen asleep. I got up and took a shower and then went in to wake up Brandon – who asked me for 5 more minutes. For some reason that struck me as such a bizarrely normal thing for him to say that it made me laugh.

             Once we were up and organized, we fed the dogs and loaded up the car right around 5. The paperwork from the hospital said I could eat so we ran through McDonalds. I got a sausage biscuit (bad decision) and Brandon got a breakfast burrito and a sausage biscuit – with two jellies. We ate as we drove and the main advantage of leaving so early was the complete lack of traffic on I-70. There wasn’t even any pink in the sky when we turned in to the parking garage at about 5:15.

 
            I had a little road rage as we tried to find a parking space as the Toyota in front of us thought it would be okay to stop in the middle of the ramp. It seemed like ages before we parked but we finally got settled and headed into the hospital. It was cold (the high that day only ended up being 58) but we didn’t have far to go because the parking garage is connected to the hospital with a sky bridge. I told Brandon that I was scared and a little sad because this was not how I wanted to be doing this. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it and then, with a typical half smirk, told me he was excited to meet his baby.

Once we were in the hospital, we had to go down to the main lobby in order to get to the internal elevators that took us up to the 5^th floor labor and delivery. The unit is a locked unit so when we got upstairs, we had to check in at the front desk. They checked me in right away but they had Brandon stand on paw prints on the floor and take a picture. His picture was then printed on a sticker that he wore on his shirt. They asked us to sit in a little waiting area but came for me almost immediately. I went back with the nurse while Brandon had to wait.

 

 

            In the room, they had me go into the bathroom and change into a gown. It was a truly lovely shade of green and tied down the left side. I climbed up into the bed and texted Brandon at 5:35 that I’d just gotten into bed and was waiting for the charge nurse began my check in. They asked me some questions and then introduced me to Deanna who was going to be my nurse until the shift change. I felt a little anxious until they let Brandon back but he was there fairly quickly. There was a nice recliner next to the bed so he settled into that while they hooked me up to blood pressure, pulse oxygen monitor, and then two belly straps to check on how Daniel was doing.

             Then began the drama of starting an IV. For the record, I don’t actually have a fear of needles – or blood. I have no problem pricking my finger for blood sugar checks, taking blood at the doc doesn’t bother me, cuts, nosebleeds, etc. don’t bother me. However, for some reason, I have IV issues. When mum was in the hospital for her mastectomies, they came to take out her IV and the second I saw the line coming out and the blood that followed, I got majorly light-headed and had to sit down so I wouldn’t faint.

 

Anyway, Deanna came to my left hand and started talking about how I have great veins and how great she was at starting IVs and on and on. She stuck the needle in but wasn’t getting the “output” that she wanted so she started wriggling it around. At that point, I broke into a cold sweat and threw up for the first time. She apologized and said it was no big deal and said she’d switch arms. Came around and got to work on my right arm and the same thing happened – put in the needle, didn’t like the “output” and started messing with it. At that point, I threw up again. Remember, I mentioned that the McDonalds was a bad idea?

            Deanna finally decided to admit that she was having trouble and, after mentioning that I might be dehydrated (what happened to my good veins?), she went to get the charge nurse. The charge nurse was awesome – very matter of fact, some kind of South American accent (Chile, Argentina, something), - and clearly was annoyed that Deanna wasn’t able to start the IV. She came in and focused (without chit-chatting) on putting the IV in my left arm a little higher up than the previous attempt. She got it in one shot and patted my knee on her way out.

           Next up was the anesthesiologist, who came in to explain the pain relief options and also what would happen in the event of a c-section. I signed a bunch of consent papers and tried not to think about the fact that induction was one step closer to c-section. Shift change happened during all of this and we were introduced to nurse Karen who was assigned to us for the day.

            Unfortunately, my doc wasn’t available on that Monday because she had to leave town for a funeral but Dr Hecker, my favorite of the resident doctors, was there and specifically was looking in on me. She came and did my first check and I was 3 cms dilated. Because of this, starting me on meds to open the cervix wasn’t an option and they were immediately ready to start the pitocin. It, plus the antibiotics to treat me being GBS+, plus the saline to keep me hydrated were all flowing by 6:15 am.

 

I was a little bit upset about going right to the pitocin. I had hoped that cytotc or some other cervix-softening drug would get my labor started and we could avoid the pitocin altogether but Dr Hecker explained that it wouldn’t have been effective, given that I was already at 3 cms. I tried to focus on staying positive but I kept remembering all my reading about how every intervention is a step closer to c-section. I raised these concerns with the Doc and she said that they would do everything possible to avoid cutting and that they were starting me on the lowest possible pitocin dose in hopes that my body would see it as a “jump start” and take over.

The conversation with Dr Hecker made me feel a little better and, at that point, we thought it was time to hurry up and wait. Brandon decided to head down to the cafeteria for some breakfast (barely an hour after we hit the drive thru!) and I picked up my book for a while. Brandon came back with some biscuits and gravy and then promptly fell asleep. I was starting to feel a few contractions and was able to take deep breaths and get thru them without much effort. Pain was not more than a 2, although I was having trouble getting comfortable. I eventually settled on my left side and kept reading and breathing thru contractions.

 

 

 

At 8:15, Dr Hecker came back and checked me. I’d gone to 4 cms (one cm in 2 hours) and, because of this relatively slow progression, Doc said she’d like to break my waters. She said that breaking the bag of waters can often help to move labor along without having to up the drugs too much. I agreed and she pulled out a long plastic hook and went to work. It didn’t hurt but was kind of an odd pressure sensation – truth be told, I’d rather have my waters broken again than to have another IV started! The waters were clear which was awesome because it meant that Daniel had not pooped inside me. When the baby has a bowl movement, there is always the danger of aspirating the meconium during birth so it was awesome to have something we didn’t have to worry about.

 The one downside of having my waters broken was that I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed due to the risk of umbilical cord prolapse. This is when the umbilical cord comes out of the mom before the baby and – as you can imagine – can be a problem. So I kept laboring in bed and continued to have some trouble getting comfortable while I breathed thru the contractions. More than once, I’d shift around only to wind up back on my left side.

At 9:30, nurse Karen came back in because my blood pressure was dropping (not really because I’ve always had low blood pressure but they were a little nervous about it) and put me on oxygen. My contractions were picking up and my pain was approaching 5s and 6s. I started to notice that, while I could breathe thru the contraction itself, I was tensing up as each new one started and I was having trouble making myself relax. It was such and odd sensation because I knew I needed to relax but I couldn’t.

By 10 AM, they were worried about Daniel’s heartbeat decelerating and rolled me onto my right side to try to get into a position that he liked a little more. What we didn’t know at the time was that this was going to be the first of many concerns about his heartbeat. Once on my right side, he stabilized a bit and they were content to let me keep laboring. I wasn’t timing my contractions at all (since we were in the hospital and I figured they were doing that) but I’d guess they were about 4 or 5 minutes apart at that point.

 

 

When they checked me again at 11:30, I was 6 cms. That means that I’d only gone 2 cms in a little over 3 hours. I was beginning to understand why they say that inductions can average 24 hours! Over the next 90 minutes, the contractions seemed to get worse and I was certain that I must be making progress. They got to the point where I was starting to cry through them and needed to hold on the Brandon’s hand.

 

At 1 PM when they next checked, I was still at freaking 6 cms and thought I was going to lose my mind. We decided to go ahead and get the epidural. Part of me was extremely upset about this because I was hoping to go without meds – although, yes, I see the irony/stupidity of trying to go “med free” when the meds are what put you in labor in the first place. The process of putting in the epi was much harder than I expected. They had me sit up on the side of the bed and lean on Brandon and the nurse – while trying to sit completely still. Something about sitting up (or just general labor) meant that my contractions were coming about every minute – even tho they had turned the pitocin completely off. I was crying out in pain from the contractions and tensing up in anticipation of each one while the poor doc was trying to place the needle.

 

Once the epidural was in, my left side went almost completely numb right away but I had a bizarre shooting/stabby pain on my right side almost exactly where my appendix scar is. It was really freaking me out that I couldn’t feel my left leg at all – I couldn’t move it and kept thinking I had fallen off the bed – but could totally feel my right leg and this shooting pain. The nurses and the anesthesiologist kept trying to reposition me and kept checking to see if the right side pain was going away. Even tho I could still feel pressure and knew I was having contractions, they didn’t hurt like they had before.

It took about a half an hour for them to put the epi in and get me settled and they were ready to check me again and turn the pitocin back up. Turns out that, in that 30 minutes, I had gone from 6 cms to 9 cms – no wonder I was wanting to scream through the contractions! They told me to rest and labor for a bit to see if he’d drop down. I was so tired at this point that I wanted to nap so I tried to close my eyes.

Next thing I knew (some time between 2 and 2:30) it was time to push. I’d agreed to allow students to be present so there was nurse Karen, Dr Hecker, the baby nurse, the assistant nurse, and the medical student when we got started. I pushed a few times and, while they were being encouraging, it was fairly clear that we weren’t making enough progress. Daniel was high and his heartbeat kept decelerating in between pushes. They decided to thread a uterine monitor up inside me so that they could have a better idea of what his heartbeat was doing.

All of a sudden, his heartbeat was the loudest thing in the room and listening to it became my focus. It was bizarre to hear it drop with each contraction and then there was an eternity in between beats as we waited for it to pick up. In an instant, Dr Hecker and the million nurses were back – this time with an attending physician – saying that it was time for this baby to be born. I started pushing again and was finally making some progress. It was great to hear them say that he had hair and that they could see him coming but still terrifying because his heartbeat would drop during each contraction.

Dr Hecker decided that Daniel was having to work too hard and that they were going to have to use the vacuum. I was really frightened at that point – obviously because I didn’t know if he was ok and also because the vacuum is the last step before a c section. They got everything organized and in place (all while I kept pushing) and then said that we really needed to get him out on the next push because this was taking too long.

 So, on the next push, with all my might, the help of a vacuum, a tear and an episiotomy, Daniel Eugene was born at 3:03 PM. Because of the vacuum, I couldn’t hold him right away and they plopped him in the warmer to check on everything while they sewed me up. He yowled right away and had an APGAR score of 9/9 so – despite his funny cone head and purple feet – he was perfect and weighed in at 6 pounds, 14 oz

                            

They brought him back to me within just few minutes and laid him on my chest. To his father’s amusement, Daniel proceeded to poop all over me but I just didn’t care. Looking at his little face, all I could think of was the “I am a child of the King, yes I am King Jesus’ child” song that mum wrote when I was tiny. He was so gorgeous!