I've been meaning to start a blog for a long time now. I kept putting it off back in May, and then Cassie was born and somehow I haven't had time since then. Imagine that!
I suppose the best thing to start with would be to talk about the day my life changed forever: the day Cassie was born. This will be long because I'm just going to copy and paste from my Facebook note so if you've already read it feel free to skip over it :-)
The basics are that I was 35 weeks along, and she was born on Saturday the 13th of June 2009 at 8 pm. She was 6 lbs 12 oz, and 19 inches long. If you care to know the full gory details of my labor, keep reading, but I'll warn you its probably only interesting to other moms :-)
So the things to remember are that my 40-week due date was July 15th, and my first sonogram (at 25 weeks) showed my due date to be July 9th. I had another sonogram on June 2nd that showed her due date to be June 15th, and that she already weighed around 7 and a half pounds at that point.
I went to the doctor on Thursday the 11th for the first time since the second sonogram, and she said that she didn't put any faith in what the sonogram showed. I think she might have actually called the sonographer a goober for believing that might be her due date. She said the fake contractions and incredible amount of uncomfortable feeling that I was having since Sunday night were all totally normal. She took my Group B Strep test and said that next Thursday we would see if I was starting to dilate yet.
So Friday night Joshua and I decided to go ahead and get the room as ready as possible for whenever she did come. I spent the afternoon cleaning, and we rearranged the furniture to fit in the pack and play and the rocking chair. Joshua made some serious kickass ribs for dinner, and then complained about wanting to go to the store to get the supplies for chicken and waffles at 12:30 at night. I said no and opted for a bowl of cereal and a banana at 1 in the morning instead.
I got up around 4:30 to go to the bathroom, and took note that it was even more painful than usual. I went back to bed and made Joshua move over since he was taking up the whole damn bed. About ten minutes later, my water broke while I was sleeping. I tried to wake up Joshua, but the only thing that made him respond was me practically shouting the words "Honey either my water just broke or I'm taking the biggest pee of my life!" His response: "No."
So we got up and determined that I was leaking some serious water. I wasn't having a single contraction or even unusual feeling in my abdomen at this point. I hopped in the shower (not knowing when my next one would be...). We headed down to the hospital and arrived around 5:30. We got checked into a labor and delivery room, although it wasn't until almost 7 that the physician came in to determine whether or not my water had actually broke.
I am positive that I can't have been farther along than 35 weeks and three days, so I wasn't sure if they would induce me or what would happen, but they determined that my water had indeed broken (duh), but I still wasn't actually having any contractions. He said they were going to just induce me, and started giving me Pitocin at 7:30. It probably still took about an hour before I started feeling any contractions, although I was only dilated 2-3. However once they started coming, they got intense pretty fast. I had some pain medicine around 9:45, then actually asked for the epidural around 10:30. By the time I got it at 11 the pain was pretty intense, although I remember the epidural process actually being almost as stressful as the contractions themselves. It was worth it once it kicked in then.
Then it was just a waiting game. I actually got some decent rest for a couple of hours. People kept commenting on how quiet the room was, because even when I wasn't sleeping I was just kind of sitting there with the tv off, and Joshua was sleeping on the couch for a good portion of the time. I couldn't really feel the contractions at all, except every once in a while I felt some pressure. I kept asking the nurse how far apart they were because I only felt about one every twenty minutes, even when they were actually two or three minutes apart. The nurse spent most of the afternoon reading a romance novel.
My mom came by to visit, then my dad stopped by for the second time that day. I think he left around 4:30, and I was dilated to 7 at that point. Joshua ran out to get food. I think it was around 5:45 to 6:15 than they decided I was finally to 10, and I started pushing around 6:30.
I felt like nothing was really happening for about the first hour. I did have a kind of weird pain in my abdomen, but after giving me a little bit more medicine they determined that it was just the position, probably her shoulder or something. At about 7:40 I started to feel an incredible amount of pressure. I heard the nurse get on the phone and say "We're ready to have a baby....like now" All of a sudden there were about 15 people in the room, putting on scrubs and masks and talking to each other. I actually felt kind of abandoned by everyone but Joshua at that time because no one was really talking to me, I was just sitting there feeling the pressure keep increasing. It was actually quite like the opening of Monty Python and the Meaning of Life. I'm pretty sure there was actually a machine that went PING a couple of times.
Pretty much all I remember after that was Joshua standing beside me talking to me and helping hold my legs. I remember feeling the sensation of her sliding out and everyone talking. I really just wanted to look at her and see for myself that she existed, but the NICU team took her to examine right away. Even though it was only fifteen feet from my bed, I couldn't hear her crying and could just see them looking at her. They kept working on my stomach, which I remember being almost as painful as the contractions from earlier. After a couple of minutes they brought her over for me to hold for the first time :-)
I slowly recovered, and remember that the next hour was much more painful than anticipated. It even hurt REALLY bad when they pulled the epidural tape off of my back. I was amazed at how soon she asked what I wanted to eat, and I'm pretty sure that that was the best apple juice of my life :-) Eventually I moved upstairs to a new room. My dad was waiting, and Erin and Spencer brought Sonic for Joshua and I. I think I got to sleep around 1:30 in the morning.
They woke me up around 5 to give me more medicine and make me pee again. I suppose that was the beginning of the lack of sleep that comes with motherhood....
They released us at about 2:00 on Monday afternoon. Since she was so early she failed the car seat test (meaning she isn't strong enough to hold her head even at that kind of angle), so they gave us the car seat bed to use with her for probably the next month. She tested kind of high for jaundice on Sunday, but they tested her again Monday morning and she was fine. Her temperature was pretty low most of Sunday, but by the evening it was up to a better level.
I guess since then we've just been trying to figure her out. She's sleeping more now than the first couple of days, although she really isn't eating very much or very well so we're worried about that. We are supposed to talk to a lactation specialist again tomorrow morning, hopefully we can get her eating better. Today the specialist said she wasn't concerned yet, but we'll see about tomorrow.
