Thursday, December 22, 2011

{Macy Amelia 12.12.11}

Monday, December 12th was my first day of maternity leave and I was 39 weeks 2 days pregnant.  I woke up early so that I could make it to the hospital by 7:30 am for a BPP and NST.  Before I left the house I was sitting at the kitchen table eating some cereal when I heard Kara open her bedroom door and she came and joined me for breakfast.  I told her that as soon as I was done eating she would have to go snuggle up in bed with daddy cause I had to go to the hospital to check on baby.  At that point Kara told me that the baby was going to be born today and asked who would pick her up from daycare.  I told her that grandma would pick her up, but only if the baby was born, if the baby wasn't born mommy would be picking her up... she told me that grandma would be there to pick her up, she also told Beth, our daycare provider, that grandma would be picking her up today cause the baby was going to be born.  I think she has some psychic abilities.

7:30 am - Arrived at hospital.  Started with the BPP, which is the ultrasound that they do to check on the baby.  I told the ultrasound tech that my 3 year old had predicted that the baby would be born today, she said she didn't like to hear that.  During the ultrasound she found barely any amniotic fluid, in the end the total measurement was just under 2cm, but the baby also had a full bladder and belly, so there was some additional fluid.  Then I had to move on to the NST where they monitor the baby's heart rate and my contractions, while I was having this done the doctor was reviewing the ultrasound and determined that today was the day!  So I had to call Joe and let him know not to start working cause he had to come to the hospital!  I didn't get to leave to go home and get my things, I got to go straight to labor and delivery.  Of course my doctor was on vacation, so the nurse had to try to figure out who was on call and let them know that I was being admitted.

9:00 am - admitted to labor and delivery.  I was brought straight back to a delivery room to have an induction started.  The plan was to get me on cervidil which softens your cervix and makes it more favorable for an induction.  I was about 2 cm dilated at this point, and when the nurse hooked me up to the monitors she discovered that I was contracting every 1-2 minutes, and I wasn't feeling anything!  This changed the plan, because they won't use cervidil if you are having regular contractions, so I got to wait while they figured out what they were going to do with me.

10:30 am - An IV and pitocin were started, and Joe finally arrived at the hospital.  He had to do lots of running around and pick up all of our hospital bags, get Kara's stuff packed up, etc... but he was finally at the hospital with me.


11:30 am - The only thing in the world that I could think about at this point was food.  I had only had a small bowl of cereal before I went in for my appointment, and I wasn't allowed to eat anything.  I could drink water up until I decided to have an epidural, but that was it.   I wanted a Davanni's hoagie incredibly bad.  I tweeted "I sure hope my baby is born before Davanni's closes.  I want a hoagie after I give birth." and guess what.. they responded and ended up sending me out 2 coupons for free hoagies and a Davanni's baby bib!!  Oh the power of social media!

1:30 pm - A doctor came in and broke my water and they inserted an internal monitor to better monitor the contractions, this gives a much more accurate reading of the strength of the contractions.  It was around this point that I started getting really uncomfortable and the contractions were getting pretty painful, but I wasn't sure that I was ready for an epidural yet.

2:45pm  - 3 cm dilated and ready for my epidural!  Getting the epidural hurt like hell - I don't remember feeling pain when I had an epidural with Kara, but this was baaaaad.  I don't know if it was cause I was having contractions while I was getting the epidural or what, but it was a burning, stinging, sharp pain... I don't ever want to deal with that again!  I did learn that when men get epidurals they get morphine prior to the epidural to help with the pain, women just get a small bit of numbing medicine.. WTF, not fair!  Anyway, the epidural hurt like hell, but of course ended up being a life saver!

4:00 pm - 4 cm dilated, feeling much happier now that the epidural is working like a charm.  Between checks from the nurse I was trying to sleep.  It had already been a long day, and I was feeling pretty worn out.

6:00 pm - 5 cm dilated.  Not much else to report at this time.... other than I was getting sick of only progressing 1 cm every two hours, I really thought things would move quicker.  Thank God they had cable in the hospital.. I got to watch all the crappy reality tv shows that I no longer get to watch at home!

8:00 pm - STILL 5 cm dilated.  At this point I was pretty sure that I was not going to be having my baby on 12/12.  The doctor who was going to be delivering Macy came in at this point and decided to stop the pitocin for a while and see what my body would do on it's own.  She also decided to have me sit up in bed for a while to hopefully help the baby move down, as she was still quite high.  The doctor decided to head home because she didn't think that I would be ready to push anytime soon.

8:30 pm - Extreme nausea.  Joe was trying to find something for me to puke in, and trying to call the nurse.  The nurse came in and I told her that I felt really sick so she had me lay back down on my side.  She said sometimes sitting up with all those meds can make you feel like that, so back to laying down I went.

9:00 pm - The contractions started to become extremely painful again, it almost felt like the epidural wasn't working at all.  I called the nurse again, she came in and I told her what was going on, so she checked me and guess what... I was fully dilated and effaced and ready to push!  So in one hour I went from 5cm with the baby still high to completely dilated and ready to push, no wonder I felt to sick!  The nurse called the doctor and told her to head back to the hospital cause it was time!

9:43 pm - I started pushing.  With Kara I pushed for 3.5 hours, so I was hoping for a much shorter time this time around!  At this point in the day I was so worn out and didn't want to push at all, let alone for 3 hours! I pushed and pushed and pushed... it felt like I wasn't doing anything, even though the doctor and nurse said I was.  It was a lot harder to push this time around and I think it was cause I could feel the pain, I have no idea how or why women decide to give birth without pain meds... maybe I just have a super low tolerance for pain, but man, I couldn't imagine going all that time without any pain meds.

10:09  pm - 26 minutes of pushing and Macy made her screaming entrance into the world!  She looked so tiny to me, and exactly like her big sister!  She was very covered in vernix (the white slimy stuff), she was so covered cause my amniotic fluid was so low, but she was my tiny, slimy, beautiful, perfect baby girl!   She weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 21 inches long.  This may be TMI, but it's a part of the birth story... so I had an episiotomy (if you don't know what that is, don't google it - you don't want to know) anyway - I am glad that they allow you to hold your new baby and ooh and aah over the baby while they stitch you back up, it's a good distraction from the pain...and  that's all I'm going to say about that. 


Holding my sweet new baby girl.


Screaming baby on the scale

Proud Daddy
 Proud Mommy

Big sister Kara meeting Macy for the first time

Our first family picture


And another of the proud big sister


So there is the birth story and a few pictures for ya.  Macy is now 10 days old.. so I will start a new post on how the last week and a half has gone, it's been pretty hectic and the time is just flying by!  We are loving our sweet little Macy and trying to settle in to what it's like to be a family of four! 



Sunday, December 11, 2011

I'm trying so hard to enjoy these last few (hopefully) days of pregnancy, but it's just so hard.  This last 2 weeks have been insanely stressful, so on top of all of the third trimester discomforts of pregnancy, I am also completely stressed out.


It all started the weekend after Thanksgiving, I could barely stay out of bed on Saturday and Sunday, I chalked this up to being 37 weeks pregnant and exhausted.  I was literally out of bed for 2 hours, in bed for 2 hours all weekend long.  I woke up Sunday night/Monday morning with a bit of a scratchy throat, went to work on Monday and felt like crap the whole day.  I ended up going to After Hours care after work and found out that I had strep throat - so I stayed home Tuesday to take meds, be non-contagious and try to get some rest. 


Wednesday I had my weekly Dr. appointment to check on baby.  At the checkup Macy's heart rate was 175 and going as high as 195 - my doctor had been concerned with her fast heart rate the previous few visits, but it was always within the normal range, so she didn't take any further action, but 175-195 was definitely fast.  My doctor said "I am going to make a few phone calls, you are going to go to the hospital tonight to have the baby monitored.  Bring your bags with, if things aren't looking good you will be induced tonight.  If things are ok you will be going in for a Biophysical profile and Non-Stress Test tomorrow.  Either way you are not going to work tomorrow." So now I had Thursday off work too.  I sent Joe a text while I was waiting for the doctor to make calls - I said pack a bag for Kara, we are going to the hospital tonight.  Once I got home I frantically threw together a bag for me and a bag for Macy, luckily I had started to accumulate piles of things for our hospital bags, so I at least had a general idea of what to pack and where it was. 


We sat at the hospital to be monitored for about 2 - 2.5 hours.  Macy's heart rate was fast the whole time, it got up to about 210 for a period of time.  While I was hooked up to the monitors they also did some labs, I'm not 100% sure what they were checking for with the labs, but they all came back negative.. so that's good...  They also gave me a liter of fluid, I think mostly in preparation of possibly inducing me.  In the end we were sent home and the constant appointments began. 


Thursday, December 1st I had my first Biophysical Profile and Non-Stress Test, which I had to go back to the hospital for, because of course there were no appointments available at the clinic down the road from my house (with free parking).  At the BPP it was discovered that my amniotic fluid level was low (more stress...). My level was at 5.9cm - I later discovered that 5cm to 25cm is considered normal, and if you get to 5cm they will induce you immediately.  Other than the low fluid the BPP went perfectly, they have 30 mins to do the ultrasound and check for certain things, they saw everything they needed within the first 3 mins, so baby seemed fine!  The NST went fine as well.  Baby's heart rate was still high, but they were seeing the accelerations and decelerations that they wanted to see and everything else seemed perfectly fine, and I got sent home once again.


Over the weekend I developed this horrible itch all over my body, no rash or anything, just insanely itchy.  It got worse overnight, to the point that I couldn't sleep - the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet itched like crazy, it was not cool, and of course nothing that I tried did anything to help.  Put in a call to the on-call doctor, and they suggested I see my doctor first thing Monday morning.  So I rescheduled my Wednesday evening appt for an early morning appt on Monday.  On Monday I went in, my blood pressure was high, baby's heart rate was still high, I was still itchy, but the doctor explained that they were not concerned with the BPP and NSTs other than the low fluid.. so they would now be monitoring my fluid levels very closely.  My doctor also told me she wanted me to be done working, mostly cause of the stress level I was feeling, but I told her I couldn't be off work until I was closer to my due date.  I couldn't afford to take off two weeks before my due date and have the possibility of going overdue.  At that time she told me that she can't see me making it to my due date, that she thought that I would have to be induced within the next week and a half due to the fluid levels, but of course she couldn't make any guarantees...  Oh yeah, and she also told me that she would be out of state from Thursday thru Tuesday.... She missed Kara's birth because she was on vacation!


Tuesday, December 6th I got to go back to the hospital for another BPP and NST.  Fluid level was at 7.4 and the NST was fine again, so once again, I was sent home. 


Thursday, December 8th I was back to the hospital again.  During the BPP they couldn't find much fluid at first, like 3.5cm at most.  The lady doing the ultrasound asked if I had brought my bags with me and said that it wasn't looking very promising that I would be leaving the hospital.  Well, guess what, she found another pocket of fluid that measured about 3.5cm, so that put me at 7cm...ugh!  The NST went fine, baby did what they needed her to do right away, and once again I was sent home. 


As you can imagine all of these extra appointments have been very draining on me, psychically, mentally, they have me very stressed out.  It's very hard to try to work full time and manage these appointments in the middle of the day.  I ended up having to use quite a bit of sick time, which also stressed me out cause it was cutting into my paid time that I would get for maternity leave.  But I decided that Friday, December 9th would be my last day of work - I needed to take something off my plate.  I am hoping that Macy decides to arrive in the next week so that I don't have to take more than a week off work before she's here.  


I get to go back to the hospital bright and early tomorrow morning for another BPP and NST - I am SO hoping that they will just keep me this time and let me have my dang baby!  If things are fine, I see my doctor on Wednesday evening... at which point I will beg, cry, do whatever I need to do to make her induce me!!!!  


When I was pregnant with Kara I didn't mind being overdue, I worked past my due date, and I was for the most part pretty happy - at least approachable ;)  This time around things are very, very different.  I cannot wait to be done, and hopefully we don't have to wait too much longer!  

And a few pictures...

I finally got around to adding Macy's name to the quilt that I made for her (and I also recently discovered that my husband doesn't care for Mae as a middle name...so yeah, we are trying to find a new middle name!)


Kara went to see Santa yesterday!  I was pretty shocked when she decided that she wanted to wear her dress and picked out a cute little clip to put in her hair!  When we got to the mall to see Santa we had to wait in line for about 45 mins.  Of course the two kids in front of us threw huge fits and were screaming and crying, so I thought we were doomed... but Kara still sat on Santa's lap and even told him that she wanted a firetruck with glitter on it!  She let us take a few different pictures, sat there and talked to him, it was adorable!


One last thing - my amazing sister in law took some maternity pics for us when I was 36 weeks along.  I wasn't sure that I wanted maternity pics, but I figure this will be my last time being pregnant, and at some point in my life I will miss it and I should probably have some pics.  Here is the link to the full album, and below are a few of my favs!