In the Hospital

There's not much to say about our stay in the hospital.  It seemed very chaotic because none of the three of us knew what we were doing or had a routine or was running on adequate levels of sleep.  We stayed in the hospital all day Sunday and were discharged around lunchtime on Monday.  It was so short because Ella came before midnight Saturday night, so our "next two days after birth" were Sunday & Monday.  If she had come just 20min later and been born after 12:01am Sunday, the two days would have been Monday & Tuesday.  Go figure.  I'm still not sure if we would have benefited from that extra day in the hospital or if we were just ready to go home.

Ella had great complexion until she started to scratch herself.
Apparently babies are born with raptor talons. Who knew?

John's family was great while we were at the hospital.  They helped take care of our house -- feeding the cats and taking out the trash (Remember that futon? We hadn't even had a chance to take the boxes to the dumpster yet!) -- and they came to visit bringing breakfast and goodies for us.  My mom was able to take a whole week off to come and help us, too.  If there's one thing I've learned with a new baby, is that it really does take a village to raise a child.  Even if "all" they do is bring dinner or hold the baby while mom takes a nap, the extra help is invaluable!!!

My mom came just in time to help us get home.
 Ella thinks having two grandmas is pretty cool.

Sunday night going into Monday was the toughest part, I think.  I wanted to feel better and I wanted to get into a routine with Ella, but apparently it was still much too early for all that.  I was tired and sore, and Ella was not sure about this "being outside the womb" craziness, so we both struggled during the night.  A lot of doctors and nurses and visitors had come through our room during the day, so daytime napping had not occurred as much as we had hoped.  To make sleep even more elusive, our hospital does "rooming in" instead of taking all the babies away to the nursery.  (It's supposed to be great for bonding and all that).  This means that even when John and I were taking turns getting sleep, there wasn't really anywhere the one could take her so that the other could sleep.  It is hard to sleep in the same room as a fussy baby!  I think the night nurse took pity on us.  She definitely saw each of us trying to soothe Ella over an extended time, and finally she offered to take Ella to the nursery for a few hours.  That really helped us both get a decent nap in before we were back on baby duty.

Monday was much more relaxed as all we really did were final wellness checks on Ella, take a shower (gasp!), and review discharge procedures.  We left the hospital around lunchtime, and realizing that we had no real food in the house since we'd been gone several days now, we decided to grab lunch on the way home.  And what better way to celebrate Ella coming home than the way we started to greet her Saturday morning?  Why, back to the bakery, of course!  (Also, John and I were a little concerned that the girls working had suffered trauma or something because of that crazy pregnant lady. Haha)  Well, the girls weren't working Monday, but the owner was there and he was just tickled with our story.  I'm pretty sure he created a "new baby, free loaf of bread" policy right then and there, but I'm not going to complain.  So, loaded down with sandwiches and tasty snacks for a few days, we finally arrived home.

Yes, our pushy cat, Martin, was not affected by Ella at all.
No one was surprised.

The Labor of Love, Part 2

So, where were we?  We were about to be officially admitted to our labor and delivery room.  John laughs because my stamina was fading rapidly -- well, not laughing because I was getting tired, that makes him sound horrible.  He was laughing because I had been such an active pregnant lady all morning, but then kinda crashed as the contractions were amping up.  As the nurses were prepping everything to move me out of triage, one asked if I could walk.  I said, sure I could, just let me get over this next contraction.  When that one passed, they asked again if I could walk myself; to which I responded (with my face buried in the bed), "No."  Then they asked about a wheelchair, but as the next contraction passed, I changed my mind again.  Face still buried off to the side, "No."  The nurses ended up wheeling me on the bed down the hall to labor and delivery. Much easier method of travel, in my honest opinion!  We definitely should have started with that one.

Now the fun really started.  In labor and delivery, you get a nurse all to yourself to help you through everything.  But the problem is, as a first-time mom, I wasn't really sure what I wanted.  They'd ask about using the jacuzzi tub or sitting on a ball or some other technique, but I was so scared of losing what little comfort I had in the position I was currently in, that I just stayed in the bed the whole time.  It was odd because my "plan" was to be as active and mobile as I could be and AVOID just lying in the bed.  Just goes to show you how worthless birth plans are -- you never know what you will encounter.  I did use "the peanut" a lot to keep my hips open as I was in the bed.  It's like those yoga balls but shaped like a peanut so it can fit between your knees.  The one thing that I found I really liked was that I asked to stay connected to the baby monitor the whole time.  Hearing her heartbeat whenever I wanted was really comforting.  John also liked to watch the screen to see how bad the contractions were (you wear two monitors: one for baby and one for mom).  I had several that spiked so high they went off the chart!  He kept me aware of when a bad one was coming, or would say that this one wasn't as bad as the last one and I could still do it.

Oh! Quick anecdote from before things got really intense.  If you know me, you know that I don't handle needles or drawing blood well.  I have very wiggly veins that like to roll away as you stab at them.  This usually leads to having several nurses attempt to draw blood, or a determined nurse ending up digging around in my arm to find the vein.  Neither option is fun.  Well, in labor and delivery, even if you are going medication-free, they want to put an IV-line in your arm for a Pitocin / saline drip once the baby is born.  Guess how many attempts it took them?  If you chose three nurses, an anesthesiologist, and a head nurse for 6 total attempts, you win a prize!  The first three sticks got a local painkiller, but apparently you can have too much Lidocaine, so the last three were just plain needles.  Yuck!  They kept saying that they could get the needle in the vein, but couldn't get the catheter to enter because of too many valves in the way.  Needless to say, my arms now look awful -- bruised little pincushions.

--THIS PART COULD BE GROSS FOR GENTLE READERS. CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK--

I don't really know how long we were in labor and delivery just waiting, but I do know that I was fully dialated before my water ever broke.  That was a unique experience.  Through all the birthing classes, they tell you that your water breaking "could be a trickle or could be a gush."  So, the last few weeks of your pregnancy, you are looking very closely at every little squirt you get in case that tiny trickle meant something.  Even I had a fake-out in week 39 that I thought was the amniotic fluid but wasn't.  Apparently, my water breaking was delayed enough after we started really pushing that I felt the pressure pop like a balloon and then GUSH everywhere.  I'm glad I had my eyes closed for most everything, because giving birth is disgusting.  Everything is everywhere.  Gross!

I remember pausing to ask the nurse what time we started the "It's Go Time" level of pushing, and she said around 8:15pm.  So that meant I was in prelabor for about 12hrs, active labor for another 8hrs (no idea about transitional - that crap was pretty rough), and then was pushing for about 3.5hrs.  I was so exhausted at this point that getting Ella to crown was awful!!!  I couldn't lift my legs on my own anymore, so John and the nurses were basically positioning me so I could push effectively.  Have I mentioned that I was having pretty rough back pains this entire time?  I forget.  Anyways, it wasn't true "back labor" because Ella came out facing the correct way, but it was intense muscle cramps and pain in my back from the very beginning.  So, now that it was time to really bear down, my back was on fire!  Poor John was still on back-massage duty (even after 16 hours!) as well as helping lift my legs for each contraction.  It was at this point of the pushing stage that I began to either growl like a bear or curse like a sailor.  I'm not proud of it, but at least there were no tears. There might have been begging, but I'm not admitting to anything.

The doctor came into the room as baby's head starts to crown to make sure she comes out just fine before catching all the nastiness afterwards.  Ella's head finally popped out after several attempts (did I say it was hard? Definitely the hardest thing I have ever done), and the rest of her followed smoothly.  I barely remember the doctor saying to pause a little between her head and shoulders, but there were so many voices coming at me and so much pain / relief that I probably couldn't have stopped even if I understood him.  The nurses put her on my chest right away while the doctor cleaned me up.  THANK GOD, I had no tearing or other problems.

So now my sticky baby is lying on me, and John is cutting the cord, and all I feel is overwhelming relief and warm, fuzzy things.  The nurses and the doctor get the placenta out before leaving us alone for a bit and cleaning up around us.  Our hospital does one hour of skin-to-skin contact before moving onwards.  Ella latched onto me right away and was suckling for most of that hour, so I think the nurses gave us a little extra time before taking her away for her first bath and measurements.  Call it sentimental malarkey, but I remember just looking up at John with lots of love for our new little family.  John keeps saying that I did the hardest work, but I say that I could not have been able to without him and his constant attention and support.

Finally, one nurse took me to clean up, and one nurse took Ella for her bath. John watched Ella and says that she was not a fan of being naked in the water, but did enjoy getting her hair washed.  I tottered back out to the bed as John was helping the nurse take Ella's measurements -- 8lbs 1oz, 20 inches long, and with a 13.5 inch head.  Thank God that noggin was in the average size range because I could not have handled anything bigger!  Once John was holding Ella all wrapped up in her new blanket, he asked the nurses if it would be easier for the family to see her now or after we moved to the mother-baby recovery room.  I nearly fell off the bed! I couldn't believe that the family had been waiting for so many hours (it was well after 1am at this point).  They were allowed to come in for a quick meet-and-greet before we were transferred to our new room.

 John, Ella, and I arrived in our recovery room around 2am wanting only to crash from exhaustion.  We had woken up 22hrs earlier and had been very active all day.  Never doubt the power of biochemistry -- you think pregnancy hormones are wild?  The birth hormones pumping through my system were out of this world.  I kept getting these whole-body shakes that kinda scared me, but did not affect the nurses so they must have been normal.  Once we were settled, I tried to get Ella to nurse one last time before bed, but really just ended up cuddling her for a while more.  When the nurse came back at 3am, she put her back in the bassinet and told me to sleep.  It had been one wild and crazy day, and I had a feeling that we wouldn't really recover the missing sleep for a very long time!

Our Little Thinker

The Labor of Love, Part 1

We'll start fresh with Day 1 of meeting Miss Ella Rose, skipping all the pregnancy stories.  The pregnancy was actually mostly uneventful considering we had two miscarriages in the year before.  I don't think I even had traditional "cravings;" I had desires for food, of course, but nothing that caused my poor husband to go to multiple stores, searching for an out-of-season item. So, yes.  Fast forward through all that to the day before we met Ella.

Friday, August 22.  I went to work like normal.  I had a doctor's appointment with an ultrasound the day before, and nothing was showing up unusual.  They said Ella was measuring in at 8lbs, 1oz which was around the 70th percentile for being at 39 weeks.  We still had another full week to go until the due date, and I was feeling pretty decent most of the time.  What was interesting about Friday was that I worked a normal full day, then went to the gym by myself.  Usually, John and I go to a trainer together, which means that as I got more pregnant, he could take some of the focus off of me when I needed more rest than normal.  But on Friday, he got tied up in a work emergency, so I went by myself and received the full attention of our trainer.  And then, when I got home, the futon we ordered had arrived, so John and I put it together after dinner (not the easiest thing to assemble, that silly futon).  I definitely remember a moment where I was helping pull two pieces into place so we could bolt them together, and I felt a small squirt 'down there.'  It was nothing major, but I was laughing to myself that it would be funny if my water had just broken because of assembling this futon.  Like how some people eat spicy food or go for a run to initiate labor, my story would be that I was assembling a futon.  (Spoiler alert: It wasn't my water breaking, just a small little squirt).

So now we go to bed on Friday, tired after a long week and futon assemblage.  I woke up Saturday morning at midnight feeling kind of rough, so I staggered into the bathroom, thinking that I had just waited a little too long for a bathroom break (that can really mess up a pregnant woman, in case you weren't aware). I do my business and go back to bed.... only to repeat this at 1am and again at 3am.  By 4am when my tummy was still waking me up with uncomfortable feelings, I apparently groaned loud enough to wake John.  He had already downloaded a contraction timer app on his phone, so he suggested we start tracking the feelings.  They started out about a minute each, fifteen minutes apart, with some not-really-ignorable back pain as well.  John was super great about rubbing my back as I rode out the waves, as well as keeping track of the timing.

After just an hour or so of contractions while we were still in bed, we decided that they were Not Kidding Around and not just little baby Braxton-Hicks.  Once we got out of bed, I found that the intervals were much shorter between contractions and the intensity of pain was less as well.  So we decided that I'd walk as much as possible to help decrease discomfort.  We ate a light breakfast and then spent a few hours walking in the neighborhood before deciding on a change of scenery-- the bakery!  Walkies AND some second breakfast!  And away we headed to the local bakery at the edge of our neighborhood to get some snacks (now around 9am).  There was a guy finishing up his order as we walked in, and his first comment to John was, "You need to walk that baby out." To which John answered, "We kinda are!"  We slowly ate our breakfast yummies (chocolate croissant for me!), which meant that I had about three more contractions while we were in the bakery.  Yes, I was fine. No, I was not dramatic, moaning and groaning like in a movie.  But still, yes, it started to make the bakery girls concerned.  One asked, "Can I get you anything? Like an ambulance?"  We just laughed and tried to assure them that we were still several hours away from anything like that.

We just kept walking and tracking for most of Saturday morning.  We found that when I was lying down, contractions were still about 15min apart; whereas when I was sitting, they were about 10min apart, and when I was walking, they were closer to 7min apart and much less painful.  When we were averaging around 6-7min apart, we returned home to get another snack before deciding if it was now finally time to head to the hospital.  We loaded our bags in the car (they had been by the door ready for a few days, despite our due date being a week away) and decided to risk the chance that the hospital would send me home for being too early in labor to be admitted.  It was interesting that I was so concerned about 'wasting time' at the hospital instead of laboring at home because 1) we had already been in labor for about 8hrs, more if you start the clock when I was first woken up at midnight, and 2) my labor ended up being so long, that we were still at the hospital for about 12hrs more!

I had two contractions in the car while John was driving (not fun at all) and one more in the parking lot as well arrived.  We left everything in the car to check in first, and as I was giving the nurse my name, I got hit with an "extra-spicy" contraction that made me a little nauseous.  Nurses sure do move fast when you are leaning over their computers and say you are about to throw up!  It also gets you into a room rather quickly.  The first few contractions made me vomit some more, so no one doubted that we would be admitted today, but they still had to check my dilation progress before making it official.  (Here's the part where I start to lose track of time. Go figure.)  We had arrived at the hospital around 1pm, got taken to a triage room where we were checked in and asked to wait.  I was already at 3.5-4cm dilated when we arrived, and after a couple hours, I had progressed to 6cm.  This was good news and meant that we would soon be going to our own labor and delivery room.

The nurses were all impressed with my desire to have a natural childbirth (no drugs, yikes!) and were even more impressed that I was still walking up and down the hall at 6cm dilated.  I'm still not sure if they were trained to tell all the natural ladies how awesome they are because they want to diffuse the crazy, or if going natural is rather rare nowadays and the nurses were indeed impressed.  Either way, almost every nurse made a comment about how great I was doing.  One nurse who was working with us the longest was upset that her shift ended before Ella finally came, and even our triage nurse came by later when her shift ended to encourage me some more! I think the labor nurses were great.

Stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion to come soon!