Cuteness

Yeah. I’m going to be that Mom. The one that takes an inordinate amount of pictures of her child. I can hardly help it though. My little man is just so dang CUTE! Those kissy lips just kill me.

The number of pictures is also the result of sending at least one picture of Nathan to John every day at work. Though most of them end up being of Nathan sleeping. Because he does that the most right now. (Note his hands - Up by his head as soon as he sleep-wiggles them free) He has become an incredibly noisy sleeper. Grunting, squeaking, snorting, you name it. And it’s loud. I’m surprised he doesn’t wake himself up, because he certainly wakes me up. ;)

Although sometimes Agent P will sleep with him. Just to make things interesting. It was Nana’s idea.

Then, every once in a while, we can get a picture of him awake. And not eating. It’s a rare thing, as he seems to have adopted the attitude of “hey, if I’m going to be awake, I might as well be eating” ;) Oh my goodness, can you even handle that pouty lip?!
While he seems to enjoy the binkie once it’s in his mouth, he graces us with a very pained expression every time we offer it to him. Then he’s perfectly fine with it. We’re not sure what the pained face is all about…

Enough cuteness for one day? ;)

Meet Nathan

Some fun facts about our little man, now that’s he’s a ripe 10 days old! ;)

*He is packing on the poundage! He was 6lbs 9oz at birth, and was discharged at 6lbs 1oz. The day after we left the hospital he had a doctor’s appointment and he weighed 6lbs 2.5oz. One week later we had a follow up appointment and he weighed in at 6lbs 13.5oz! Dr. said we could stretch feedings out to every 4 hours instead of every 3. I had the best night’s sleep last night ;)

*If I thought he was wiggly in the womb, it’s nothing compared to how wiggly he is out here. I guess it’s because he’s got more room to move. He’s a little crazy person when he’s not swaddled up. This makes for difficult (read: messy) diaper changes sometimes. This is also the reason it’s so hard to get a clear picture of him. Most of my pictures are at least a little blurry because he doesn’t hold still. ;)

*His most wiggly feature is his hands. We call him “Houdini Hands” because without fail, his little hands manage to sneak their way out of his blanket, no matter how tightly we swaddle him! We can barely keep his scratch mittens on him as well. Thankfully we finally managed to file his nails down so he at least doesn’t scratch his face as badly anymore.

*Speaking of his hands, he really likes them by his head/face. This would probably explain why they always get out of his swaddle, so desperate he is to have them up by his cheeks. Whenever he’s in his car seat he’s got them right up on his face, since we can’t swaddle him up when he has to be buckled in. The only problem is that he wakes himself up when his hands are free for too long. I snapped this picture of him this morning of the Houdini Hands in action:

Those sneaky hands…

*He’s a super mellow baby so far. (We’re hoping it stays that way) Sleeps a lot, doesn’t cry too much. Hates getting his diaper changed though. He shows us his displeasure by waiting until his diaper is open or off before spraying the unfortunate parent. We’ve even had poo all over the changing pad. AND a blowout diaper complete with goodness up his back. And he’s not even two weeks old. How lucky are we?! John gets really nervous at every diaper change now, ha ha

*He makes the best faces. I mean, can you even stand those lips?! I have yet to catch a picture of it, but he likes to stick his tongue out too. Seriously adorable. Again, you’ll notice his hands are up by his head.
I don’t understand Dad’s placement of the burp cloth any more than he does…

*We are still trying to figure out what color his eyes are, but they are looking as though they are going to be blue. We’ll see if it continues to go in that direction.

*We just love him and think he’s pretty much the best ever ;)

What I learned at the Hospital

1. You leave all your dignity in the delivery room. Any you had leftover is left in the recovery room.

But what surprised me the most was how little I cared. I know, I know, everyone tells you that you don’t care when you’re in labor, but still – it surprised me. Although it was nice that with the exception of John, all the medical personnel in the labor and delivery room with me were all female. And when you’re in recovery and you have no feeling in your legs from giving yourself an extra dose of epidural right there at the end when you’re getting stitches – you need help doing most things. Like going to the bathroom. And you just have to get over it.

2. You will endure levels of sleep deprivation that you didn’t know existed.

Since I labored from 4:30pm Tuesday to 7:20am Wednesday, there was no sleeping that night. And then there was no sleeping for most of that day, getting moved over to the recovery room, having your postpartum life explained to you, signing papers, holding the baby, trying to feed the baby, and stressing over the fact that you haven’t a clue what you are doing. For almost 48 hours I was running on only about 45 minutes of sleep. Yikes. Poor John ended up getting really nauseous as a result of the lack of sleep and the crazy schedule. Our second night at the hospital was very rough on both of us and at about 5 in the morning when John was trying to change a poopy diaper, he threw up. Then as I try to finish changing the diaper, Nathan spits up and is choking on mucus. I had way too many people throwing up on me! I made John call the nurse when he was finished. I needed some extra hands, especially as I was still having difficulty standing and walking. I then did what made the most sense: I called my Mom, who dropped everything to come back up (she had been there during the previous day) to Maryland and help us out during the day, so we could get some sleep. We sent John home for several hours so he could take a nap ;)

3. Even when you only pack the bare minimum, you might still over pack.

I had toiletries, a robe, and going home outfits for me and baby. Plus a notebook, my laptop, and chargers and a few other things (like my pillow). And it all fit in one bag. I hardly used any of it. I was too busy figuring out how to take care of my baby and trying to sleep to take the time to shower or brush my teeth. (I know, gross, sorry) But that’s how it ended up going for me. Maybe if I’d regained feeling in my legs sooner I might have kept up with it better, but when we got home and I took a shower for the first time since Tuesday, I felt like a new woman. Ahhhh…

4. Murphy’s Law runs rampant at the hospital.

I can only imagine how this will continue to apply as a parent ;) But seriously, as soon as you get the baby down to sleep and you try to get some rest, 20 people will come knocking at your door to give you pain meds, to have you sign consents, to take your vitals, to check on your progress with breastfeeding, to take the baby away to run tests or do a physical, to push on your stomach to make sure your uterus is shrinking like it’s supposed to…you get the idea. And they all leave saying something like “get some rest!” Yeah, thanks. I’ll get about 2 minutes until the next person comes banging at my door, just like I got 2 minutes before you showed up…

5. Don’t say no to the cookie lady.

I don’t know if every hospital has a cookie lady, but Howard County General Hospital does. And really, she was the only person from the hospital staff that I looked forward to seeing ;) She made her rounds to the maternal child unit every weekday at 2:30pm. She was the cutest little Asian lady and her cookies were pretty dang good. Warm even. Yum.

6. Everyone (and I mean everyone) has their own professional medical opinion. On everything. And no two opinions are alike.

And this caused me a lot of stress. Urg. Because of course I want to do what’s best for my baby and those first days were difficult. I had no idea what I was doing, my baby was having a really hard time latching for feeding and trying to nurse was the single most stressful thing for me during recovery. All hormonal breakdowns (and I had about one a day) revolved around my efforts to breastfeed. So of course every nurse and lactation consultant had something to say about it and I got a lot of contradicting opinions. What’s a new mom to do?!  By my last day, I was finally feeling confident enough to make my own decisions, and my mom gave me the best advice: “Everyone is going to have their own opinion. But he’s your baby – take what you need from all the advice and do what you need to do” Which leads me to the last thing I learned:

7. Most importantly: John and I know our baby better than anyone else. 

It took me until my last day at the hospital before I really felt confident that I really did know my baby better than the doctors, the nurses, and the lactation consultants. But once I did, it was quite liberating. Having a little bit more sleep certainly helps with that. ;) And sometimes your plans for your baby change a little bit. Example: I was not going to give Nathan a pacifier until he was at least 4 weeks old. Because, you know, according to the experts you run the risk of nipple confusion and your baby will have difficulty taking the breast to feed and blah blah blah…And so I was going to wait until 4 weeks. But after Nathan would feed and he had fed long enough to be full (we’re talking longer than 15 minutes on both sides – his stomach was the size of a walnut at this point. He’s full), he’d still smack his lips and root as though he was still hungry. After agonizing over the decision for a couple of hours, I gave him a pacifier after his next feeding. And he was perfectly happy with it, and continues to feed normally. He’s gaining weight and filling his diapers like a normal healthy baby who is getting enough to eat. Turns out he just likes something in his mouth. Of course, I should have taken it out when the lactation consultant came in – I got an earful about it. Whoops ;)

And now, pictures

Can you even STAND the cuteness?!?
Nana loved being able to just sit and hold him all day :)
Big yawn!
Please ignore my scary-haven’t-showered-in-2-days hair ;)
Getting ready to go home!
Yay! We’re finally home!

He’s here! He’s Here! Nathan’s Birth Story

And Happy Mother’s Day!

As I join the sacred and noble ranks of Motherhood, I wanted to take the time to record how I myself became a mother this week! My little man is just perfect and I feel so blessed that he even came in time for Mother’s day. What a sweetie. This is a super long post because this blog is my journal in a lot of ways, and since I want to remember everything, I’m writing a lot. So on we go…

I suppose it all really started the evening of Sunday, May 5th. We were watching the CES fireside that night and I was feeling really achy and crampy and generally uncomfortable. It didn’t help that Nathan was a wiggle monster most of the time. But I didn’t think too much of it, though I knew I’d be having a Dr’s visit the next day, and with the aches and cramps starting, I was SO hoping to get some news at the Dr’s that I had started dilating or something.

The next day, May 6th, I went in to the Dr’s and had my usual appointment, as well as my first pelvic exam of the pregnancy (um, so sorry to all of you who had to have more of them during your pregnancies – that was awful!) and I received the grand news that I was an entire half a centimeter dilated and about 60% effaced. (which, as exciting as that was, it didn’t do me any good unless I was dilated more) While I was trying to be excited that I had at least started to dilate, I was so sad it wasn’t more! Thus, I began to scheme. And Operation Walk-the-Baby-Out was born.

Apart from making 3 trips up the stairs to our 4th floor apartment, there’s a mall about 10 miles from us that is a mile when you walk the entire way around. So for FHE that night, John and I walked around the mall 3 times. That’s 3 miles, peeps. I barely made it the third time around, but I was feeling pretty good about this plan. ;)

The next morning, Tuesday, May 7th, I woke up around 5:30am to get something to eat and I noticed that I was feeling a mild pressure in my pelvis at random intervals. I didn’t think too much about it and slept through them until I got ready for the day. I actually went back to the mall and did another 3 laps around. Yep, another 3 miles. Pretty sure I’m crazy. Throughout those laps I was feeling more of that pressure, but still at pretty random intervals. I just knew I had to slow down quite a bit when they hit. But I still didn’t really think they were contractions, they didn’t really match what had been described to me as a contraction, so I thought maybe they were the predecessor to contractions. (or something. I have no idea what I was thinking) At any rate, I continued to feel this pressure throughout the afternoon, and it wasn’t until I couldn’t really sit or stand up when they came that I realized that they were the real deal. And it wasn’t until I was on the phone with my mom that afternoon and I had said that I had had 2 or 3 just while talking to her that she said “uh yeah, you need to time those” “oh. okay.” After I got off the phone with her, I started timing them, starting at 3:59pm. For the next 20 minutes, they were coming in at around 6 minutes apart. I emailed John with the news, but that he shouldn’t come rushing home just yet. Then a contraction (yeah, I finally realize they are contractions) hits at 4:30 that really hurt. For the record, I didn’t actually think that Operation Walk-the-Baby-Out would work!

Suddenly, I was having contractions hard and fast every 3-5 minutes. I also realized at around 4:45 that I had bloody show as well. Holy crap, this was really happening. But honestly, I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. Only until the next contraction, in fact. By now, they are strong enough to take my breath away. I call John at work, only to get his answering machine. I leave a message, saying something like “yeah, I know what I said in my email, but I need you to come home now”. It’s getting really hard to concentrate and breathe like I learned in our birthing class, but I’m hanging in there. I call John 3 or 4 more times at work, only to get his voicemail. And I’m trying not to panic. Maybe panic isn’t the right word, but I was starting to get desperate for John to know what was going on. I finally heard back from him around 5:15. Turns out his boss had called him over to talk about something and ended up keeping him late. He was finally on his way home.

At 5:30 I called the midwife on call that night and told her what was going on. She invited me to go ahead and come on over, but I told her we wouldn’t be there until about 6:30, as I was waiting for John to get home. She said she would let the nurses at the hospital know. John comes bounding in at 5:45 and runs around packing up our last minute items for the hospital bags. I tried to eat something, but could only get a few spoons of rice down. My last meal had been lunch at 1pm. John took the bags down and then came back for me and we successfully made it down the stairs. Whew!

We arrived at the hospital around 6:45pm. John got me a wheelchair and took me up to the labor and delivery unit, where we checked in. I was so worried the nurses weren’t going to take me seriously (I had only been dilated a half a centimeter the day before, after all) and when we initially got there and they asked about my appointment, they said they’d put me in triage. Then they saw me sit through a contraction or two just while checking in and decided to put me into a delivery room. Which I’m thinking was a smart idea. By now I am barely making it through the contractions, they are so painful! They had me change into a hospital gown and get settled in. Well, as settled in as you can get when the most pain you’ve ever felt in your life keeps occurring every few minutes. John was great at coaching me through them, making sure I was breathing and letting me grip his hand for dear life. Wow, it hurt!

At 7pm, Stephanie, the midwife that would be delivering me that night, came in and did a pelvic exam and the results were in: 4cm and 100% effaced! I was NOT getting sent home!!! (To be honest though, neither John nor I really believed I’d get sent home at this point, but it was nice to have it confirmed)

Now, we had written out a birth plan ahead of time and while I was always planning on receiving an epidural, I had wanted to wait until I was about 6cm dilated until I received it so that I could try to make sure baby was in a good position for delivery. I had hoped to be able to walk around while I was waiting to dilate that far, but by this point, I could barely walk. My legs would shake in between contractions in response to the pain. So that kind of went out the window, as did my desire to wait any longer for pain relief. I requested the epidural, but there were lots of things that needed to happen before I received it. Like getting blood drawn, signing papers, going over the risks, getting an IV, etc. Then the anesthesiologist was backed up several patients. I ended up having to wait 2 1/2 hours to get my epidural and at the time those were the longest 2 1/2 hours of my life (because obviously, there were longer ones in store that very night). I finally received the epidural at 9:30pm.

It took fairly quickly, but only on my left side. The nurse Meredith (who was seriously fantastic, by the way) had me lie on my right side to get the medication to flow to that side, but it wasn’t really working, I was still feeling pretty intense pain from the contractions on my right side. The anesthesiologist came back and gave me an extra dose and finally, I could no longer feel the contractions. It was seriously awesome. By the time the epidural had fully kicked in (around 10pm), I felt a little trickle run down my leg! Eek! I thought I had emptied my bladder, you know, as I could no longer control anything. But Meredith checked it out and it turns out my water broke! Stephanie came back and did another pelvic exam (which is so nice when you can’t feel anything) and I was 8cm dilated! So I basically went from a 4 to an 8 in 2 1/2 hours. YES. And as John pointed out, since I’d had to wait so long for my epidural, I ended up dilating past my goal of 6cm anyway. Awesome. PAINFUL. But awesome (you know, now that I couldn’t feel anything).

Then the waiting began. We tried to get some rest, but I was feeling really hungry by then and could only subsist on popsicles at that point. So I didn’t sleep at all while waiting to dilate more. Around 1am (May 8th now, officially my due date) Stephanie came back to see if we’d made any progress. I hadn’t. I was still around 8cm and based on the monitor, my contractions had slowed down quite a bit. They decided to hook me up to an internal contraction monitor (which can measure intensity, unlike the external monitor) and put me on some pitocin to get the contractions going again. And then more waiting.

Around 3:30am, they told me I could start pushing. For about an hour and 45minutes I pushed, but we had some problems. During the contractions, baby’s heart rate would go down, and there were a few tense minutes for me when it seemed like they couldn’t find his heartbeat on the external fetal monitor. It would pick back up, but after a couple more pushes, it would go down again. I was starting to get really worried, especially when Meredith told me Stephanie had brought up the possibility of an emergency c-section. They ultimately decided to have me rest for about an hour, and then see if we could get me into a different pushing position and see if that was easier on baby and his heart rate.  So while we waited, I asked John to give me a blessing, and we found a position on my left side that was a little bit better on the heart rate, though it continued to go down in between contractions. But I was starting to feel the rectal pressure they had told me to expect when the baby started to move down through the birth canal. So they had me push anyway.

So I pushed. And pushed. And pushed. And it was incredibly slow going. I was exhausted. I had no idea how to push, and after some coaching I think I finally got the hang of it during that first bout of pushing, but I still wasn’t as effective as I think I could have been. After another hour and a half, we’d made some progress. Stephanie came back in and got ready to deliver, which gave me a little bit of adrenaline – the baby was coming! He was really coming!

Those last several pushes were the hardest. My epidural dosage wasn’t quite enough there at the end and I was in so much pain when the head finally crowned. I had about reached my endurance as well and at one point the head was 3/4 of the way out! But I couldn’t get one more push in during that contraction and I had started to cry from the exhaustion and pain (I should mention that Stephanie had started stretching the area around the head to make room for it to come out – so not pleasant). Later half the hospital floor knew me as the poor girl that had had to push for almost 4 hours.

Finally his head came out and I can’t even describe the relief (and the weirdness) I felt as the rest of his body came smoothly out of mine. Then I cried some more as they placed my beautiful baby boy on my chest as they finished cleaning him up (he was pretty slimy). As it turns out, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his head and shoulders, which explains the issue with his heart rate while I had been pushing. John was able to cut the cord, and after a few minutes, I delivered the placenta. Stephanie said that it indicated that it had definitely been time for the baby to come out. (So who knows? Maybe I hadn’t needed to walk 6 miles in 2 days. We’ll never know.) All I knew is that my baby was here. And he’d come on his due date!
6lbs, 9oz – I am SO glad he wasn’t any bigger! ;)
Isn’t he just perfect? We’re still trying to figure out what color his eyes are :)

Then it was snuggling with my baby and trying to get through getting stitches – blech. I figured that I would tear, but they didn’t tell me how bad it was. I’m not sure I want to know, but it seemed to me they put a lot of stitches in. My epidural wasn’t quite enough for the stitches either, even after pushing my nifty button to give myself an extra dose. This made my legs numb for quite a while during recovery, but oh well.

I still can’t believe I gave birth to a baby this week. It still seems pretty surreal. I think there was a small part of me that wondered if I could actually get through the entire process of labor and delivery (though I definitely know I couldn’t have done it without the epidural!!) and I definitely view it as the hardest physical thing I have ever done in my life. And the most rewarding. Our little man is seriously the cutest thing ever (it doesn’t matter that I’m biased – he is) and while it’s been quite the challenge trying to adjust, I am so grateful I’ve been trusted to be Nathan’s mother here on this earth. It is truly an amazing gift to be able to give life to another. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Mother’s day celebrating the wonderful women in your life. I know I wouldn’t be who I am today without my Mom and I am grateful every day to my mother-in-law for raising such an amazing man to be my husband and the father of my baby.

Happy Mother’s Day :)

The Waiting Game

Dear Baby,

Well, we are ONE week from the due date today, and even though everyone says you should “stay in the oven” as long as possible, are you sure you don’t want to come out now? The nursery is all set up, the apartment is clean (hm…mostly), your car seat is installed, Daddy’s busiest day of the fiscal month is finished up at work…

So really, if you want to come this week, that’d be pretty cool. It’s pretty awesome here on the outside and I seriously can’t wait to meet you! (Please don’t make me wait too long, okay?)

Love,
Mommy