Birth Story and The First 12 Weeks

It's only taken 3 months to put this out there...

Sunday, April 29

I wake up around midnight with what feels like mild, period-like cramping.  I go to the bathroom...I also have diarrhea (yes, you have to get all the gory details)...and I go back to bed.  I wake up around 1 a.m. and the cramping is a teensy bit more, but not crazy...I go back to sleep.  I wake up at 2 a.m. and notice that not only is the cramping getting worse, it seems like it's only maybe 5 minutes apart.

I call the OB number as instructed and leave a message and await callback from whoever is on call.  The Dr calls back within minutes.  He says, "yep...time to come in" so I wake Ryan.  We are in the car by 3 a.m.

We get checked into the hospital and I make it to the bathroom JUST in time for my water to break.  It was totally like peeing, but having NO control over it.  Still having diarrhea also...lovely.

They get me to a temporary bay area, changed and hooked up to monitors.  They check and I'm at 3cm.  They have to test to make sure that yes, that was amniotic fluid.  By now the contractions are getting much more intense and are only like 2 minutes apart.  They get me moved to my Labor and Delivery room.

Since I tested positive for Group B Strep, they have to hook me up to IV antibiotics.  I have to go through two bags before they want me to start delivering.  At this point the contractions are getting out of control and I'm getting virtually NO break in between.  They were coming 1 minute apart and felt like knives ripping my insides apart.  I was actually whimpering.  Ryan was a bit freaked out by the sounds I'm making.

I keep asking when can I PLEASE have the epidural???  I can't remember why they kept putting it off...but I know that it was probably around 5 a.m. that the guy came in to administer.  It was such a strange feeling...felt like electric shocks down one leg?  But nothing painful really.  After that I just waited probably 15 minutes and then the relief kicked in.  Sweet, blissful relief...ahhhhh.  I felt so much better that all of a sudden felt super relaxed and wanted to go to sleep haha.

The Dr came in and checked me out and said to just try to relax.  Ryan and I just chilled and after an hour the Dr came back in and said that I had gone from 3cm to 10cm!  He said that was kinda crazy.  He said I was almost ready to begin pushing, but we were still having to wait for the stupid antibiotics to be in my system.  So we just wait...and wait.

Finally around 8 a.m. they give me the go ahead to start pushing.  So it's just me, Ryan and the RN.  She's great though and coaches me well considering I can't feel what I'm doing like at all.  So while I'm not feeling ANYthing...the act of pushing is really exhausting.  I pushed like 3 times then would rest...then they could see on the machine when another contraction was coming so I would push 3 more times and then rest...etc.

This went on for 2 hours.  At this point the Dr comes in and tells me that if things don't progress further in a decent amount of time, we may need to do vacuum-assist, forceps or a c-section.  He said that baby's shoulder seemed to be at a non-ideal angle.  So this had me determined more than ever to make every push count. So those last 30 minutes I gave it my all.

He finally crowned and the Dr came in and tried to coach me on my pushing.  All I know is that he told me to push...then quickly said, "ok stop, stop, STOP!" but it was too late.  I had just had a third degree tear, but Nolan was here at 10:37 a.m.!


They took him away to clean him up and do all the usual checks.  Ryan had to hold him while the Dr spent over an hour repairing me.  He said had I not had such a wonderful epidural, he'd have had to have taken me straight to the OR because the damage was so great.  I lost a little over a liter of blood, but sitting there while he worked on me, I felt fine.

But then they sat me upright and my whole world faded.

It was so scary...I remember looking at Ryan and then my vision going tunnel-like and gray...and then black as my hearing also faded out.  I honestly thought I was dying.  I have never passed out in my life.  As soon as they laid me back down I came back, but I was terrified.

They wheeled me to my postpartum room.  As soon as I'm in there, they let the immediate family in.  I remember I'm just STARVING...keep in mind it's almost 1 p.m. and I hadn't eaten since maybe 6 p.m. the night before.  I remember seeing all my family and watching them all look at Nolan and pass him around.

And then they tried to sit me upright again...once again the world starts fading away and I yell for them to put me back down.  I hear a nurse say that my blood pressure is 79/54 o_0.  Apparently I was "this close" to needing a transfusion, but they really only do those if ABSOLUTELY necessary.  Apparently I look scary to everyone...my family is so freaked by my pale appearance that they insist on leaving and try to get Ryan's family to do the same...they feel as if I need to rest and looking back I think they were right.  I remember finally getting some food and Ryan had to feed me lying down.

At this point I can't yet feel anything to do with my tear and luckily I have no need to go to the bathroom for quite a while.  But later that evening I do and the nurses have to help me...I almost pass out every single time they set me upright.  And on top of that, all the feeling is coming back and it's just horrible.

I also haven't slept at all during any of my time since I checked in...every time I am finally left alone, I try to get to sleep, but then a machine in my room beeps, or the IV has an issue, or the blood pressure cuff goes super-tight and wakes me.  And if I do drift off momentarily through all of that, they bring Nolan back from the nursery to try to nurse, which is a total disaster in itself.

So this goes on for the 2 nights I am there.  Completely exhausted, in so much pain and feeling like a huge failure to Nolan who is so obviously starving that they have to ask me if they can give him some formula.  He is jaundiced :(

It was just such a stressful time.  Not at all what I had expected.  Thank GOD my mom was able to stay with us from the beginning because I couldn't do much of anything with my tear and blood loss.  It was all I could do to hold Nolan and try to breastfeed.  My milk didn't come in until the fifth day and the Dr was concerned about Nolan's health.  He had lost quite a bit of weight so we had to supplement.  I was pumping and pumping all the time, but never got more than 5 oz total from both breasts.  We gave it a solid 3 weeks, but that's all I could do.

The first three weeks of his life were hard...omg were they hard.  He wouldn't sleep more than an hour and a half at the most...ever.  Around 4 weeks I was changing him and noticed an olive-sized lump in his groin above his penis.  I knew that Ryan, his dad and his brother had all had inguinal hernias as children...but more like after 6 months of age.  Sure enough this is what Nolan has.

Poor little guy has surgery at just over 5 weeks of age.  That was so hard...to hand him over knowing he'll have to be put under at such a young age.  But he made it through and that completely changed how he slept, ate and felt overall.  Was so nice to have him nap for more than 25 minutes at the time.

By 6 weeks things were really getting good.  I had figured out a great routine that was pretty much on a 3-hour cycle.  Wake, change, feed, play, nap, repeat.  In doing this, I was getting 1-hour naps during the day and he was sleeping 5 hours a night with only one feeding.  By 8 weeks he was consistently sleeping 6 hours at night...by 10 weeks 8 hours at night with two, 2-hr+ naps and now he's going around 10 hours at night with at least two, 2-hour naps during the day.

I never used to believe it when people would say "it gets better"...but now I know it CAN happen haha.

Things he loves:
Mobile gym - omg his favorite thing ever!  He'll spend 30 min on this easily
Bumbo - he just recently can sit in this and is good for right after he eats
Eating
Cooing and laughing

Things he does not love:
The swing??  Of course the most $$$ thing we have for him he's not big on..I've gotten him to like it for like 10 min at the time haha
The bouncer??  He likes it more now than he used to, but still not much

What else...um...I know I'm forgetting things here and there...but I would say we're doing good!  I just started back to work, but with reduced hours.  I now work 30 hours...3 days are in the office so Nolan is in daycare on Monday, Wednesday and Friday...then I work a few hours from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I'm so fortunate to be able to do this...but also still mad jealous of women in the UK and Canada who get crazy maternity leave.  And REALLY jealous of those fortunate enough to be able to be stay-at-home moms.  Best job in the world I think!