babyboba

my parents came down this weekend to celebrate the squirt’s one month birthday. the last month has passed by so quickly. we have gone through countless diapers, graduating from the N’s to the 1’s. we have mastered breastfeeding. we have grown out of the newborn onesies. the squid has grown a double chin and has chubby arms and legs. it’s amazing. i love it.

i am now a mommy. a mommy for 3 weeks actually. the first 3 weeks have passed by in a blur as we have been adjusting to a 3 hour feed, poop, sleep schedule. the days when i can have more than 4 hours of continuous sleep are behind me. in fact, if i get 3 hours now, i am feeling pretty lucky.

after 38 weeks of having our little boba in my belly, it’s crazy now that she is out and has become the center of our lives. we are learning the different cries, adjusting to breastfeeding, and starting to leave the house now.

it’s almost been a month, and the memories of labor and delivery are starting to fade. i guess that’s the beauty of having a baby, you almost forget how painful it was to get here. or at least enough to think it’s worth going through to get.

our boba’s birth process began on july 17th. i had gone for a second round of antepartum testing for the high blood pressure in the morning. everything had checked out and we were preparing for induction the next day, so we went out for lunch before the scheduled doctor’s appointment. in the afternoon we went to see the doctor for our regular check up, and the doc said, the blood pressure is too high, go to the hospital, it’s time. so off we went.

our tour of all parts of the maternity ward at the hospital was coming to a close, we got sent to triage where they hooked me up to a fetal monitor,a contraction monitor, and a blood pressure monitor. these monitors would be with me for the next 20 hours. this was the beginning of the tubes attached to me. a little bit later, we also added the IV and we sat in triage while waiting for a labor room to be prepared. this part was pretty boring. a couple hours later, they finally had a room for me, and around 7 pm the doc came in to give me the cervidil. The cervidil is designed to help open the cervix so they could give me the pitocin to start the labor. So the plan was to install the cervidil, let it do it’s thing for 12 hours, then add the pitocin which would start the labor and then some time later the baby would come. Given the average labor time is 18 hours, we thought the baby would come some time late friday or saturday.

The husband and I then spent the night watching tv, where the nurse would come in every once in a while and say, are you feeling your contractions? and i would say no, and we would repeat that every hour when she came in. We decided to get some sleep since we expected labor to begin the next day, so the husband settled himself into the recliner and soon fell into a deep sleep. Around 1 am, I went to use the bathroom and felt a little pop followed by a slight gush of water. I came back to tell the nurse I think my water broke, and she tested me with that piece of paper and confirmed the water had indeed broke and also that I was 1 cm dilated. We were on our way! For the next few hours, my labor began. It started off slowly, oh only a few cramps, it’s not too bad. I can do this. Then the pain started coming more often and more furious. In between I would fall into fitful bouts of sleep with random vivid dreams that I would forget as soon as the contraction began.

Around 4 am, the pain became too much, and the husband finally woke up as my cries of pain were too much to contain and I called out for the drugs. So to be up front, the goal originally was to try to do this au naturale, but with the blood pressure issues, I was unable to move around, and I was stuck to the bed that coupled with the warnings from the doc saying if the blood pressure stayed high, they would do a c-section. So the call for drugs came.

They started out by trying to give me that drug they put in the IV, that’s supposed to take the edge off though make me drowsy. They gave me that, and checked me to see that I was 4 cm dilated, moving right along. An hour later, the pain was just as bad as ever, and the nurse was like.. well if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. time for the epidural? so the man with the needle was called, and i added to the tubes attached to me with the epidural in the back. it should be said though that when you ask for the epidural, it’s not like they can give it to you right away. First they have to give you something through the IV, then the anesthesiologist has to make his way to your room, meanwhile you’re still fighting through the contractions. That being said, by the time he came and gave me the epidural, they checked me again and pow I was 9 cm dilated. Doh! So come 7 am, I was fully dilated. My doctor was quite surprised at my progress.

Tomorrow we talk about pushing..

The baby is coming, by this weekend, baby boba will be here! My first week of maternity leave was very exciting, and scary. I had a few days where I went for long walks, got stuff for the baby room, ran errands and relaxed. All was good. But then on Weds, I went to my regular doctor’s appointment and we found out my blood pressure had risen to dangerous levels. Blood pressure is weird, it’s hard to say what causes it to go up, and especially in my case, I went 37 weeks with it quite low and the pow, up it went. The doctor didn’t like that, so she sent us to the hospital for some additional monitoring. We didn’t think much about it at that point. We thought it was pretty routine and figured we would be done in a few hours.

So we were put into the triage area, and they hooked me up to a machine that took my blood pressure every 10 min, tracked the baby’s heart beat, and also tracked contractions. They also took some blood and ran some tests on that. So we were lying there for a while, long enough to hear what was going on in this room we were sharing. It was pretty interesting. The first couple thought their water broke, but it turns out she just pee-ed in her pants. She must of had bad contractions though because she sounded in pain. The second couple was in for some routine test because she had a tummy tuck done and then found out they were pregnant. I can’t imagine that to be comfortable at all. The third couple came in because the wife was feeling contractions, though she had the same due date as me. They were the most exciting because it turns out they were already 4 cm dialated! They were shocked when the heard the news, they kept saying, we’re not ready! we need another week! They had to suddenly figure out what to do with their 1 year old, go pack a bag, the funniest was the part where the mom said, we don’t even have a name. And the husband said, how about huntington? or hunter? (which is funny because the name of the hospital is huntington) =) so all this was going on, while we were just lying on a cot getting monitored. With all that excitement it wasn’t surprising we fell to the bottom of the triage list.

Around 3 pm, about 4 hours after we had checked in, we finally got a verdict from the doctor, who said my blood pressure was still high, so she wanted me to spend the night at the hospital. Yuck! I don’t ever remember spending a night at the hospital. By then I was also starving! So they moved me to the high risk pre-natal area, and I climbed into bed where I would spend the next 48 hours. The first 24 hours, they had me collect my urine because they wanted to check my protein count. Then they would come every 4 hours to do an hour of baby monitoring, and check my blood pressure. It was very nervewracking, I’ve never cared so much about my blood pressure before. 152/93, 147/85, 144/82. It was all about trying to get under 140/90. The husband was a rock star, going home to get some things, including the baby book where we read about why the doctor was so nervous. It’s called toxemia, pre-exclampsia. The only way to really fix it is delivery, so for a few moments we thought we might have to deliver that day!

So we spent the night at the hospital, watching tv and just hanging out. The husband even spent the night as they rolled in a cot for him. By the time 24 hours rolled around, I was getting restless, when the nurse came in and said well.. your blood pressure is still high, the doc wants to keep you around for one more night so we can do more blood work in the morning, and have the ultrasound guy come take a look at your baby. One more night! Talk about disappointment. I couldn’t believe I was able to go 37 weeks with zero problems and then now end up in the hospital not 1 night, but 2! So one more night came and went, the next morning, they did a pretty extensive ultrasound and found our baby was doing fine, phew! And finally agreed to send me home. But still on bed rest. So we spent the weekend at home, not doing anything.

We went back to the doctor on Monday for 45 min of monitoring, and then another appt with the doc. Since I’m past the 37 week mark, the doctor said she wants to induce. As she said, my baby is done cooking, so unless I go into contractions in the next 2 days, come Friday, we’re off to induce and by this weekend, we’ll be mommy and daddy! Crazy!

In the next days, we’re going to try natural induction methods. So we got some raspberry tea and the husband is going to buy this salad dressing that’s been known to induce people into labor.

Hello faithful readers who have been blog-less the last 2 weeks. We are back, but bare. We suffered an internet tragedy a few weeks ago where the servers we were using to host our blogs died. And since we don’t pay the daily $6 for backups, we lost everything. It was quite sad, both the husband and I were quite devastated. It’s taken a while, but we are back in business and will now be more diligent on backing up our posts.
In the mean time, the tummy is getting larger and as the little squirt moves around, it will sometimes get me out of breath or squirm around trying to get into a more comfortable position. Tomorrow is my last day at work before I go on maternity leave. Yes! I’m super excited about taking some time off of work. It’s been a while since I’ve had that long of a break. Though I guess taking care of a baby isn’t really a break.

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