Long time no update

It's been a while since I updated, and really nothing other than watching my beautiful boy grow-up has been going on. So since a picture is worth a 1000 words, here are some photos to let you see how wonderful my happy heathly son is.

9 1/2 weeks

It's been over 9 weeks since I had Max. I am exhausted but really happy. I just love my little guy so much! I think he is so adorable. He is gaining weight like a champ. He's now 12 pounds! He's growing so fast! Stay little Max! We have been through some medical things. He had really bad acne for the first 6 weeks, then he had horrible heat rash on the side of his face. Now he has bad cradle cap and super dry skin. I am hoping that once he is 4 months old, we can get past all of his skin issues.

I have also had my own medical issues. On Monday, Aug 6, I felt a pain on my right side when I woke up. I was supposed to go to a salon that morning to donate my hair and get a nice cut and color, but I just didn't feel well. I canceled the appointment and had my husband take me to the hospital. I had him just drop me since I didn't want Max anywhere near the ER. I spent most of the day in the ER getting tested when they finally diagnosed me with appendicitis. They scheduled me for surgery at 8 PM that night and I spent the night in the hospital recovering. The surgery went well and I don't feel that bad, but it sure make being a good mommy harder when I can't hold Max as much as I like or pick him up very easily. I hope to heal quickly!

Sleeping is starting to get better. Max can now go 4 to 5 hours staight sleeping at least once during the night. He is also getting better at falling asleep as soon as we put him down. Sleeping arrangments are a bit strange right now. We were originally letting him sleep between us, but he keep spitting up and choking. So we now keep him in his bouncy seat and and he sleeps in between us. We also got a white noise machine from Brookstone. So now he doesn't choke and cough anymore when he sleeps. We are all doing much better.

My DH and I are both on parental leave. It has been so great having us both home. He goes back to work at the end of this month and then I am on my own until the end of Oct. I hope I can do ok without losing it. I am spoiled with my husband giving me one good nap a day so I can manage during the night.

Labor: Part II

It’s been awhile since I updated. Being a mom is taking up all of my time. But as promised, here is the rest of the labor story…

My doctor comes in around 9 AM to check on my progress. She is finds that I am at 5 centimeters dilated and she wants to keep me going as is since I am progressing, albeit slowly. She also informs me that the baby is posterior in position instead of anterior. Meaning the baby is facing forward instead of backwards. This is a complication that makes labor much more difficult on the baby and longer. She requests that the nurses to work with me to see if we can turn the baby. They have be lay in the sims position (almost laying on my stomach). I am only able to lay on my right side. We tried the left side, the baby’s heart rate would plummet. The contractions are very strong, and my husband starts taking pictures of the printed tape that is recording my contractions to show me how strong they are. He is quite impressed by them. I however am very aware of their strength. I ask for another pain shot, which does really nothing this time. By now, I am on my 17th hour of labor. At 11 AM, my doctor swings back by. Since the turning exercises haven’t worked. They baby is still posterior so she decides to go forward and get things really moving by breaking my water, and we will deliver our baby in the posterior positon. Once the water is broken, the contractions really increase in intensity. Which is amazing since they were hurting so much to begin with. The contractions are causing me to really shut down. All I can do it just bear through each one. At noon I beg for an epidural. I was really trying to go without it, but I am not doing well, and neither is the baby. 20 minutes later, the anesthesiologist shows up and gives me the epidural. When she is working on putting in the needle into my spine I have a terrible contraction and she is telling me to stay still. That is just about impossible at this point, but somehow I manage. 15 minutes later I am numb from the waist down and feeling great! At 1 PM, I am finally at 10.5 centimeters, ready to push. The nurse and my husband help me turn into the correct laboring position. Since my legs are useless, I need help to move at this point. We start pushing, but with every push, the baby’s heart rate starts to drop. It’s supposed to be around 120, and during the pushing, it would drop to 40 and it wouldn’t recover very quickly. I was sucking on the oxygen as best as I could. After 6 pushes, the nurse stops me and we decide to labor down. I am losing it. I start crying uncontrollably. I am petrified that my baby is going to die while in labor. My sister-in-law lost her first child in labor and all I could think of was that. The nurse rushes out to find my doctor, but she is in surgery with an emergency c-section so we have to wait. The nurse starts talking to me about vacuum extraction for delivery, otherwise it will be a c-section for me. I am crying so much that I can barely comprehend what she is saying to me. My husband is whispering my ear that I am doing so well and everything will be alright. At 2:30, my doctor comes in and the room gets really busy, nurses, doctors, and students fill the room. I am only really aware of the my doctor, nurse, and husband along with the scary heart beat of my baby. I am sucking on the oxygen like a robot, not taking a second to stop to talk to anyone. I am finally told to make a decision right this second about vacuum extraction. No more thinking about it. I make the decision to go ahead and do the vacuum extraction as scary as I think it is. My husband and nurse pull me back into the laboring position, and the doctor gets ready. She tells me to push. I do. I feel a huge pressure then a quick release. She tells me to stop pushing, they have to get the umbilical cord unwrapped around his head. Then she comments on all the hair that he has. That was all I needed to hear. I lost it. I has actually giving birth to my son! She then tells me to push one more time, I did, and then that was it. My son was born! He was totally blue, they quickly cut the cord and put him under a warming light and began to work on him. My husband’s face said it all, he was terrified seeing him blue, but turned to me about a minute later (seemed like forever), and said that he was pinking up and then I heard him cry. They let my husband cut the little cord that was still on the baby and then they wrapped him up and put him on me. What an amazing moment. I will never forget the first glimpse of Max. The doctor told me that the reason that the baby wouldn’t turn from posterior was because the cord not only was around the baby’s neck, but too short. So we did the right thing with the vacuum extraction. Max had a nice little bruise about the size of a plum on the side of his head for a week or so and he was a little jaundice, but other than that, Max was born a perfectly healthy little guy!

Here is a photo I took of Max when he was 3 day's old. It's the cutest picture I have ever seen of a baby - of course I am COMPLETELY bias! :)

Labor: Part I

It all started at 5 PM on Wed June 6. I was rushing as I do at the end of every day at work to finish up what I could just in case that day was THE day, and I get a contraction. I got them all the time, so I thought nothing of it. I continued to finish up a few tasks and realized that I had been feeling contractions for 45 minutes really regularly. I called my husband, we work at the same company, and let him know that I was ready to go home and oh by the way, I think I am having regular contractions. They were very VERY weak, but still present. I got in the car to go get D and started watching the clock. The contractions, as weak as they were 2-3 minutes apart. D got in and we decided that we would get dinner and go home so I could lie down. Last time I had a bout of contractions, laying down helped to stop them. They remained regular for the whole ride home. We go home and I rested on my side and still they persisted every 3 minutes like clockwork. Well the rule is that you are supposed to call the hospital when you reach the 511 - contraction happening every 5 minutes, lasting one minute, and go for one hour straight. I never had 511, I went straight to 311. At 8 PM we called the hospital and I told them what was going on with the very weak contractions. They told me to go ahead and come on in so they could take a look.

D and I then ran around getting everything in order, like feeding the cat, getting the neighbors to feed the cat if we don't come home that night, and making sure that we do indeed have everything. It was pretty fun watching my husband start to go into a tizzy with getting us out the door. We pulled out of the driveway and we realized that we needed my living will, and power of attorney (nice having an attorney for a husband) so we pulled back in the driveway and he ran in to get it. Needless to say, this caused the neighbor across the street to take notice of the activity and he inquired as to whether or not we were heading in to have a baby. We said we were going in for a look see which was plenty of info for our very plugged in neighbor to get the news out.

We get to the hospital and they have my room waiting. We go in and they hook me up to a fetal monitor to track the baby’s heart rate and my contractions. I am NOT admitted at this point, I am only there for observation. I am to be monitored for 30 minutes, get up and walk for 15 minutes, then be monitored for another 30 minutes. I do all of that and my contractions are still weak and 3 minutes apart. They check my progress and I am still at 2.5 centimeters, where I was a week ago. They leave me hooked up for more observation. Another hour goes by and still no progress, just really regular contractions. Another hour, same thing. All the while, the nurses are saying that I looks like they will send me home. It’s midnight now, and the doctor comes in and announces that they are going to admit me and put me on Pitocin to get this show started as they feel that I am officially in labor, but not progressing very quickly. Once the Pitocin goes in, my contractions start to get stronger and I begin to use my breathing techniques to help with the pain. After 2 hours of regular contractions 3 minutes apart they checked my progress and I was now at a whopping 3 centimeters! WHA? I have been in labor for 9 hours now and I have only progressed half a centimeter, are you kidding? They up the Pitocin another notch and I start to have stronger contractions that are now starting to cause me to feel faint. They hook me up to oxygen to help with the dizziness which does help and they ask me to just sleep as much as I can for the next couple of hours to see how I progress. I also ask for some pain medication, so they add a half does of a meds to my IV which do indeed reduce the intensity, and make me groggy. D and I sleep about 2 hours and are woken up at 5 AM to be checked for how I am progressing. I am now at 4 cm. However, the baby’s heart rate isn’t doing well on the upped Pitocin, so the medication is backed back down to its original amount. The nurses say that my OB will be coming on duty at 8 AM and that we’ll consult her as to our next steps.

To be continued…

Special Delivery!

Five days early, baby Maxwell Leo, came into our lives! He was born on June 7 at 2:59 PM. He weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches in length. What an amazing experience! There were some VERY scary moments in labor, but all is well and Max is now 6 days old and such a cutie! I am so in love! I have to fill in the blanks later with all of the labor details in the coming posts. Meanwhile, here are some pictures of Max while still in the hospital. He's a spitting image of his daddy.

BTW, in the previous post, I added pictures of the baby's room since I was still needing to get those added.

Progress

I am still 8 days before my official due date, but dialation and effacment has commenced. Friday I went in for my weekly appt. The results are I am 2.5 cm dialated and effaced. Cervix is soft and she was able to push on the baby's head. It's hard to belive that I have progressed already. Labor could still be weeks away, but at least I know that my body seems to know what it's doing.

At work, there is a baby watch going on. Today I had a morning meeting in a different building so I didn't get to my office until 11 am and there were a group of people in the hall wondering if I was having or had a baby over the weekend. Each day when people leave I get the good luck good bye incase I go into labor that night. It's fun to have such a good group of co-workers who care.

The other news is that the baby's room is finally done! It is so beautiful! It took a marathon of weekends to get it there, but it was worth it. I never would have thought that it would have turned out so pretty. I had the vision in my head, but sometimes things don't turn out quite how you think it will. In this case, I got it right.

Hello? Is this thing on?

Does anyone even visit this site? If so, please let me know. I am just feeling insecure and emotional that I get no posts to speak of and post all over the place on many other blogs out there in blogland.