McBride Merriment: November 2009

Wow, has it already been over 2 weeks since she was born? That's crazy. So, as far as things that have happened over the past couple of weeks. Well, the first day we were home, we took Jessica to the doctor, as we were told to, and he said that while she was having issues breathing, they were normal issues, and should resolve by 3 or 4 months. So, it is good to know that they will resolve, but I'm not a fan of the waiting 3 or 4 months. Most of the time she's fine, but every once in a while her breathing sounds really labored, and as though she is really struggling to get air in there.
The first couple days we were home were really hard. I was trying to recover from the near-hemorrhage I had, so I was a little weaker to begin with (because of loss of blood) and then I almost got a breast infection. I was extremely lucky, and caught it early enough that I was able to fight it off when it was just clogged ducts, but it took me about a week, and buying new bras, to finally get it all taken care of.
We were also extremely lucky with how much help we received, both with dinners from our ward, and with dinners from my family, and then my family helping when Nathaniel had to go back to work after only the first 2 days home.
As far as Jessica goes, she was just eating and sleeping a lot. The only problem was that she didn't like to be set down while she slept. This made those first few nights really difficult for us. Nathaniel was a huge help, and let me sleep those first few nights while I was having a hard time recovering, but then I needed to step up and take her, because he needed sleep for work. We finally figured out that she would sleep if we put her in my boppy. I actually haven't used it that much for nursing, but it works wonders for her sleeping. So the next couple of nights we were able to sleep, though one of us would sleep in the living room, because we had the boppy on the floor, and that is where she would sleep.
Then I was finally able to move the boppy into the crib, and now she'll sleep in there. It is fabulous. We also currently have a very good sleeper. It sometimes takes a while to get her to fall asleep at night, but once she does, (latest has been 10:30) she'll sleep for anywhere from 4 to 6 hours at a time. I know I am seriously the luckiest new mom in the world. I also know that it is possible for this to change at a moment's notice, so I am enjoying the sleep I'm getting while I can.
So, at Jessica's 1-week mark, we hit Halloween. Seeing as she was only 1 week old, we decided not to go anywhere, or dress her up in a costume. However, I did want to dress her up for Halloween, so I did have a onsie that I had bought, and I made a skirt for her.

So we dressed her up, and took pictures and that was about it for our Halloween. We didn't really want to give out candy either, because that would mean opening the door to all the little kids, and so exposing ourselves to all the sicknesses they had. Not what I wanted to do with a 1-week-old baby.
At the 1-week mark I also noticed something else that was kind of cool. I had lost 10 pounds in that first week! I was way excited. So I had lost a total of 27 pounds, giving me 15 left to lose before I hit my pre-pregnancy weight. Yeah. Definitely excited about that.
Her second week was rather uneventful, but I do have some pictures.

Then I took her to her 2-week appointment at the doctor. She is doing extremely well again. She now weighs 9 pounds 11 ounces, which is 3 more than they needed her to be. She has also grown an inch, so she is now 23 inches long. Her head circumference and her weight are in the 90th percentile, but her length is in the 100th percentile. She’s a big baby, but that is perfectly fine. We like big babies. I also set up an alternate schedule for vaccines with our doctor, because I really don't like the one the CDC set up. I feel like vaccines are important, and the good far outweighs the risk, but I think their schedule gives a few too many shots at the same time for my taste. So yeah, that was the first 2 weeks. Rather uneventful toward the end, but I am loving being a mom, and I feel like I am getting the hang of things as they are. We'll see where things go from here though.

Okay, I did promise a “gory details” account of Jessica’s birth. Now, 2 weeks after her birth I’m finally getting around to writing it.

First of all, here are the details on Jessica. Her full name is Jessica Mykelle McBride. She was born on Friday October 23rd at 6:11pm. She weighed 9lbs 8oz, and was 22 inches long.

So here we go. “Gory” details. My labor went great. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, but I didn’t know really know what that was, so…yeah. I started thinking "I think I'm in labor" around 11:30, and called to let my doula know so that she could find a babysitter and such. At that point I tried to take a nap, but my contractions were strong enough that I needed to concentrate through them. So I put in my headphones with some relaxing music and set about relaxing. I used the HypnoBirthing program, which states that since your muscles were made to do this, as long as you are relaxed, and everything works the way it should, there doesn’t have to be any pain. Whether or not there is depends on a variety of things though, one of which is how much you practice and so how relaxed you are able to get. I probably didn’t practice as much as I should have; however, I would still say that my surges (contractions) didn't hurt. I wouldn't say they were quite comfortable, but pain is definitely not the word I would use to describe them, nor were they ever unmanageable, as long as I had Nathaniel there with me. I would describe it as a tightening sensation. It was really cool, I could put my hands on my belly, and feel it rise and tighten, and then I would get the “contraction” part down really low in my abdomen. That was the part that I had to concentrate through.

I called my doula again around 1, and said that I would actually like her and Nathaniel to come over, so she picked up Nathaniel from work and they got here around 2. So they helped me concentrate, and we watched the length and time between the surges. They were coming anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes apart, and they were about a minute long. I was just sitting there at my computer with my feet up on Nathaniel’s lap and they were just fine. However, Megan (my doula) thought that Jessica might be posterior, so she had me get onto my birthing ball (exercise ball) and do a hula motion with my hips. I was still writing down the time every contraction, and she asked me to stop doing that. At that point (4:00pm), the surges started coming steadily 2 minutes apart, and 1 minute long. They were also more intense. I was like “Oh!, maybe we should head to the hospital (4:30pm). So we got all ready to go, and Megan called Claudia (my midwife), and told her we’d probably be there in about an hour, and we finally left for the hospital.

We got there around 5:30, and checked in. The one bad nurse I had was the very first one. She asked me to change into a gown, and I said I didn’t want to. She was a bit snippy after that, but she wasn’t there very long. I had not wanted to be in a gown, because I was not sick. I was a woman going through a completely normal, natural process, and I wanted to wear my own clothes. The other nurses were great though. They did have me on the bed for the 20 minute strip, and they checked to see how far I was. I was dilated to 8 cm! I really didn’t expect that. They didn't say how effaced, but it was really close. I kept surging about every 2 minutes all through that, and then once the 20 minutes was up, I got up and they got their birthing ball for me to sit on. It was a fair amount smaller than mine, but I think that actually helped. I was only on the ball for about 5 minutes before my water broke and she started crowning. It went everywhere! All over the floor. That was kind of a surprise. That is something I don’t think you ever really get used to… how much water comes out. I really didn’t expect it, but at that point my surges got really intense. I couldn’t do anything else during them like I had been able to do before, but still, it was just that my abdomen was extremely tight. I’d been feeling kind of like I wanted to push since about when we left for the hospital, but I’d been able to hold it back, (seeing as I didn’t want her born in the car) until I sat on the hospital’s ball. After the water sac broke, I started really bearing down. Now, I did not push the way they show in movies "hold your breath, count to ten, tuck your chin, and PUUSH!!!" (but I definitely bore down), nor did I lie flat on my back. I actually went through a couple positions. I stood up from being on the ball, and then couldn’t move any further. However, I really wanted to be on the bed, but I was shaking because of the adrenaline. So after 1 or 2 surges I got up onto the bed, but stayed in a hands and knees position. Claudia thought I was going to give birth right there in that position. Nope. My arms were about to give out. So we laid me over on my side. Maybe not the best position to be in, but better than flat on my back. At this point is where I think I needed to have more practice from HypnoBirthing. During this stage there was some pain. It was a very intense burning sensation. If I had to endure that for the duration of labor, then I very well may have gotten an epidural. Luckily I didn't; and luckily, that's one of those things where you know the end is right there, so it makes it not quite as bad. So, from the time my water broke until Jessica came was about 15 minutes. (She arrive at 6:11 pm) It was really cool! I could feel me stretching as her head came out. Now, I did tear a smidgen, but for those of you who know HypnoBirthing, it was not because of pushing at all. She came out sideways. Not posterior, but sideways. My tear was so small that they didn't even need to stitch. We had asked that they not cut the cord until it had stopped pulsing, so that Jessica could get the 2/3rds of her blood that was still in the placenta, and so she could have the help switching to breathing air. Normally that takes about 15 minutes. Nope. 3. After 3 minutes the placenta came out on its own. So we had Nathaniel cut the cord.

Unfortunately we had to stay in the delivery room for 3 hours. I was bleeding an awful lot. They gave me some Cytotec to try to get the uterus to contract more and get all the clots out, and stop bleeding. It didn’t work. Then they gave me a shot of Pitocin to do the same thing. It eventually worked, but not before they started getting worried. Claudia even said that if that shot didn’t work, and one more didn’t, they might have to take me in for surgery. *EEP* Luckily that didn’t happen. They also came in about every 10 minutes for a while to give me a fundal massage. That sounds kind of fun (“ooh a massage”). It’s not. Honestly, I seriously wished I could get the epidural for that. Definitely the most painful part of the whole thing. Sadly, I’m not the only one who had problems. Jessica had gotten a lot of the amniotic fluid in her lungs, so they suctioned her in the delivery room. I think this is why my placenta came so quickly. I think God (or Nature, whichever you believe) and Jessica, and my body knew that she would be having some of these problems, and so would need all the help she could get. So they worked together to get the placenta empty as quickly as possible. So, after about 3 hours, they decided it was safe to move us down to the maternity ward. At this point they finally weighed Jessica. It was just the one nurse, Nathaniel, Jessica, and I in the room, and so we were all able to see the scale. She weighed in at 10 pounds 12 ounces. (I know I said her stats were 9lbs 8oz earlier, just wait) So we went downstairs and got me all settled in our room, and then Nathaniel went with Jessica to the nursery.

It took them a lot longer than I thought it would to get everything done. That was because they had to suction her lungs out again, and they had to re-weigh her. They had noticed a discrepancy in the size of her head, it had been listed as 2 different things, so they decided to check all of the stats again. It was at that point that we learned that no, I did not have a 10 1/2 pound baby. She was only 9lbs 8oz. We had been planning on having Jessica with us in our room all night, and then leaving the next day. Neither of those happened. That night, as Nathaniel was holding her, so I could get some sleep, she stopped breathing. Obviously that was something scary. So they came rushing in, and got her breathing again, and then took her to the nursery for a little bit to watch her. There were just problems all night long. We did end up having her in the nursery, because they would be more alert for problems like that than we would. Some of the problems were that she was having trouble latching on, and figuring out how to suck. So we did give her a pacifier so she could learn how to suck, and we used a nipple shield to get her to latch on correctly. (I just later had to deal with the problem of weaning from those) She also continued to have respiratory issues, for which they had to come in almost every hour to get my permission for something. They finally called the pediatrician, who ordered a chest x-ray, and a infection screening. Both came back negative, so they didn’t know what was wrong. They finally suctioned her lungs yet again, and at that point she finally started breathing better. They had her on an oxygen saturation monitor all night, and then they left the wires on, in case they needed to check the levels again later.

The next day went a lot more smoothly. We mainly just rested. Jessica was doing lots better, but she still was making some funny noises when she was breathing. The nurses were worried about it as well, but the pediatrician said it was nothing to worry about. However, he’d never seen or heard any of it. We definitely were not going home on Saturday though. I would have much preferred that, but with how weak I was because of loss of blood, and with Jessica’s respiratory problems, it wasn’t happening. Saturday night we had Jessica stay in the Nursery again because we didn’t want anything (like her not breathing) happening while we were asleep. The next morning, the nurse said that the pediatrician might want to recommend an ENT doctor, because Jessica was still having the problems. The pediatrician said no. But again, he didn’t ever see or hear any of her problems. The nurses did advise us to set up an appointment with our pediatrician the next day (Monday). I know that technically the pediatrician was the expert, but this one wasn’t even the one they talked to all Friday night. So I tended to believe the nurses a little more.

Anyway. Sunday we came home, and it was great being at home, though it took us a few days to get settled at all. And here are some pictures of her.