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November 2011 Moms
i have an outside baby! with birth story
Julian Archer born 11:41 pm 10.15.11! He is 19 inches long and weighed in at 6lb12oz.
everything went fine birth wise. I'll write it all down later.
I'm doing great, and the baby is doing well for being so early. They have him in the nicu for the foreseeable future (possibly 2 weeks?!). They need to make sure that he can breathe and eat correctly (ie gain weight) before they'll let him out. I'm just bummed that i still haven't been able to hold him and that it took us 3 hours before they'd let us see him. We took some pictures so we'll put them up as soon as we can.
Thanks for all of the support guys.
6:30 am 10.15.11
last night was AWFUL. I've been cruising through this whole pregnancy thing and all of a sudden it's like i hit a brick wall and i literally don't know what to do. I fear that a lot of it is psychosomatic because now i know how low the baby is. I'm having cramps, but i wouldn't call them contractions. They aren't timable. My stomach is hard as a rock and i stayed like that for most of the day. Last night my pelvis was so achy and my hips hurt so bad i literally couldn't sleep. I woke up every half hour until i lost it at 4 am and completely broke down bawling. i just kept thinking, "i can't do this for another two weeks." I was so desperate for it to stop that i attempted to sleep face down butt up with a bunch of pillows under my chest, but it was only comfortable for about 5 minutes before my lower back started to hurt. Up until last night i could still sleep on my back (which i know i'm not supposed to do...) but every time i tried my stomach felt like it was going to push right out of my body. Poor brady didn't know what to do for me. i decided that i would try sleeping sitting up. Thankfully we have a padded head board so i just moved around a bunch of pillows and sat there for a while. It felt A LOT better. Eventually i fell asleep.
My crampy achy feelings are still here and now my neck hurts from my head flopping around, but i at least i got some sleep.
Oh and the bonus! i'm leaking even more fluid and i literally have to pee every 15 minutes. Half the time i get to the toilet and i can't get anything out. I'm sure it's because the baby is so low, but goddamn! it's horrible. Not to mention, every time i sit down on the toilet it causes an immense amount of pressure so i don't want to sit there forever waiting for my bladder to unsquish itself enough to relieve the "i have to pee feeling". I was told by a bunch of people that women love to sit on the toilet while they're in labor. I just don't see how that could possibly be true. of course i'm not in labor (i don't think), so maybe it will be different then. who knows.
3:30pm 10.15.11
brady and i just got back from labor and delivery. I was there about six hours. Turns out those were contractions and they were actually pretty strong. I got worried and called the doctor because when i got to work i realized that i hadn't felt the baby move in more than 12 hours. Most of the time i was at the hospital was spent monitoring the baby and making sure he/she was fine. He/she was in fact fine. But when they checked me i had progressed about 1 cm and they were worried that i was going into preterm labor. They had me drink a ton of water and that helped some, but not enough so they gave me a shot of Nubain to slow contractions. it seemed to work pretty well. My contractions went from every 2 minutes to every 8 minutes in about three hours and they sent me home. Because it's a mild narcotic i was able to sleep for most of those hours, which was GREAT. I don't think i'm going to go to work tomorrow. The doctor seemed pretty concerned about possible complications if i gave birth now and made it seem like if i could even make it two more days it would be worth it. I'm still 4+ cm dilated so we'll see.
5:30 pm 10.15.11
for the last hour i've been back to contracting every 5 minutes. what sucks is that all i want to do is walk around to ease the pain, but i'm not supposed to because that will make me progress. I'm supposed to be on my sides not moving. I HATE THIS.
8am 10.16.11
we got to the hospital yesterday around 6:30? and my contractions were really painful. I felt like a HUGE wimp. I could talk through them so i knew they couldn't be that bad, and from the nurses reactions to me i could tell they didn't think i was going to make it med free. When they checked me i was at a 6 and i decided that i was going to get an epidural. They broke my water and the baby dropped to a +2. The epidural was amazing and worked like a charm. It didn't slow anything down and within an hour I was 9 cm. They flipped me over to one side for a while and then flipped me to the other and checked me again around 10pm. By that time i was completely dilated and they had me start pushing around 10:30. My epidural was working a little too well and i had a really hard time trying to figure out where i was supposed to push. Plus i was holding all of my air in my face and i felt like my eyes were going to explode. I should have taken more singing classes in school! the doctor came in about every 15 minutes and by 11:30 i had the head almost out. I had to wait a few minutes for them to prepare everything and then I delivered the head. They pulled the rest of the baby out without me pushing at all and handed him over to the NICU nurses. He didn't really cry, which made me super worried, but they kept saying he was super pink. He was just having a hard time keeping his lungs open. They never ended up giving him oxygen, just room air under pressure to help keep his lungs inflated. At first they were saying that he had premature lung syndrome, but after the perinatologist took a look at the x-rays he's convinced that he doesn't have it and that his lungs were just wet. Which means that he will be out of the NICU much faster than 2 weeks!
i only had a small internal tear (1st degree) and so far haven't had any pain at all. my bleeding has been minimal and in general i feel really really good. The doctor kept telling during labor that i was doing it all on my own and how impressed she was that i didn't need any pitocin. In general i think my doctor did a great job during delivery. She was super supportive and answered all of my questions. She didn't get panicked and was very level headed.
Part of why it took so long for me to be able to see Julian in the NICU was because the epidural was taking a long time to completely wear off. I could move my left leg like it was completely normal, but my right thigh was still numb enough that i couldn't hold any weight on it. Im not sure why they wouldn't let me use a wheelchair, but after trying a couple times the first two hours after i gave birth with no luck they finally broke down and allowed me to be wheeled down to the NICU to see Julian. He had a lot of tubes hooked up to him, which i was expecting, and a huge thing around his head which held the room air thingy to his face. It was hard to see him really.
10am 10.16.11
I just got back from seeing him again and they have the big thing off of is head. Now he just has a regular nasal "oxygen" tube with room air pumping through it. I could see his face and he is just adorable. He looks just like brady. They think that I'll be able to try to feed him today, which means i'll get to hold him. I'm really really excited about that.
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Re: i have an outside baby! with birth story
congrats on your baby boy!
DMoney will be a kickass big sister