baby anders

I can hardly believe it but my little baby is a month old today. Its been the fastest and slowest month of our lives and it's true what they say...we can't imagine life without him! When I think that this little boy was the same one whose heart was fluttering away on the ultrasound screen in June and then wiggled around in my belly for months and months it seems unreal. I know birth stories are not for everyone but in my last month of pregnancy I scoured the internet for them so I wanted to at least give the Reader's Digest version of mine for anyone who's interested. Creating good internet karma for myself! (And then maybe Hanford will post their public tour dates for 2014? Pretty please?)

So...as I mentioned before, my due date was January 8th. Or 9th. Whatever. I went in for my (nearly) 41 week appointment on January 13th and in addition to the normal exam, they did a non-stress test to make sure the baby was still doing well. Things initially looked good, and then they started to look maybe not so good and when an ultrasound showed low fluid levels my doctor was like, "do you just want to have this baby?" and I was all, "I JUST WANT TO HAVE THIS BABY!" Game on.

We ran home and grabbed a few things and then headed back to the hospital for what we expected to be a long night of preparing my body for labor ("cervical ripening" is the technical term but I would never say "cervical ripening" on my blog) before they administered Pitocin in the morning. Once I was checked in, the nurse hooked me up to the monitors again to get a baseline for contractions before they started the medicine. After a couple of hours she came in and told me that I was contracting too frequently for them to induce me. Essentially, in the 3 hours between when we left my doctor's office and arrived at the hospital I had gone into labor all on my own which is just the kind of sassy thing my uterus would do.

We stayed in the antepartum wing for about 7 hours as my contractions got more intense and closer together. Around 2 AM, I was dilated to a 3 and my nurse told me they could send me to labor and delivery. Hallelujah! I kind of hated my time in antepartum and more importantly, I knew what was waiting for me on the other side. My contractions were now coming every couple of minutes and were so so painful. Basically, I was totally unequipped to handle them. I requested an epidural right away and 30 minutes later things were looking up!

Adam and I were able to relax, although I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night. Nerves? I don't know but whatever it was was not afflicting Adam in the same way. He probably had the best nights sleep of his life. I roused him a few times when things were getting exciting (every time I got checked) but other than that I'm pretty sure he got about 10 hours of sleep which is also (spoiler alert!) how much total sleep we've had since that night.

Around 6 AM I had progressed to 6 centimeters and by 10 I was at an 8. Do you follow? Around 11 my doctor told me that she didn't like how the baby's heart was reacting to some contractions I was having (the same concerning thing we saw during the NST) and that if this kept up there was a chance we would have to move to a c-section. I was pretty discouraged by this thought but knew that ultimately we would do whatever my doctor said was best for the baby.

Flipping me on my other side seemed to help a lot and by 1:00 I was completely dilated. I started feeling like I needed to push around 2:00. Pushing was so much more exhausting than I had anticipated. I don't know if it was because I had an epidural but it didn't feel really relieving to be pushing, something I had read in a lot of other birth stories. I was so parched and Adam fed me ice chips between contractions until I threw up (my first time all pregnancy!) and they cut me off.

Adam had initially hoped to be more involved in the delivery but a combination of a nuchal cord and meconium in the fluid meant he spent his time coaching me on the sidelines which turned out to be perfect. After about an hour the baby started crowning and Adam made an 11th hour switch in his gender prediction. "That looks like girl hair!" Ha! At this point the gender was actually the least of my concerns. My doctor told me, "ok, we're going to have a baby with the next contraction". I gave it everything I had and sure enough a perfect blue slimy little baby came out looking straight up at the ceiling! Adam announced, "it's a boy!" and our baby let out a wail that to me said, "peds team? who needs em?". To be on the safe side my doctor handed him over to the pediatricians who cleaned him up and looked him over and within a couple of minutes Adam brought him to me for some skin to skin time. He just calmly stared up at us a we marveled over his perfect little face. To me, he looked, and still looks, exactly like his Dad. It was the best moment of my life.

tears of joy from both of us

 

you say you want a revolution

 

those purple hands and feet that kept him from the perfect 10 

on the APGAR that Adam was hoping for.  #tigerdad

We spent the next hour holding him, nursing and settling on a name. I thought I would know just looking at him which of our 3 boy names fit perfectly but he didn't look like an anything and it was stressing me out! We eventually settled on Anders Wolfe and now I can't imagine him being anything else.

Well, that didn't turn out to be very abbreviated after all. I want to write more about our first month with him. Magic. We love him so much. I think we'll do this again.

A Christmas Miracle

Hello? Is anyone out there? I'm sure all my faithful blog readers have long since given up on me. 1000 apologies for my absence, etc.

The biggest thing that's happening around here is that...we're having a baby! In 3 weeks! This is news to no one I'm pretty sure. I've been terrible at documenting this pregnancy but I would be remiss if I didn't mention how thankful I am for a healthy body and a healthy baby. I recognize that I've had the world's smoothest pregnancy (no real morning sickness or tiredness, no back aches/heartburn/sciatic nerve pain, still sleeping like a log at 37 weeks, etc.) and I'm so so grateful for that.

I didn't deliberately give up on blogging when I got pregnant but truthfully, I've felt incredibly vulnerable ever since we found out we were expecting and guess I went the road of "the less I share now, the less I'll have to share if something goes wrong". So, there you have it. Do I sound cynical? Maybe I am. I'm not sure if that will change once the baby comes (I hope it does) but luckily I have a husband who always anticipates the best and willingly smacks me when I'm letting the crazy out. Thanks, Adam! I think.

36 weeks

Some things about this pregnancy, for those who are interested:

I'm due January 8th which is Evlis's birthday so please bless that the baby comes on time.

 

We found out we were expecting super early (before 4 weeks, even!) but we were able to hide it pretty easily since, like I said, I trucked right through my first trimester. 

I have a major torpedo belly. One of the most common comments I got when I told people I was pregnant was "I bet you'll hardly show at all!" False. I had strangers start asking me when I was due when I was 18 weeks along. So. 

Braxton Hicks. I've had them for like...4 or 5 months? Lately they've gotten much stronger but I can't say they've been more frequent so I guess that will be my sign that I'm in labor. I'm also hoping my water breaks although I've heard that's not all it's cracked up to be.

Before I got pregnant I really wanted a boy first, but now I totally feel like it is a boy and I'm all...wait! how about a girl, maybe? I'm a hard woman to please. As for Adam, he doesn't care if it's a boy or a girl (to which I always add: as long as he's healthy) (I'll probably get in trouble for that one later). 

I'm totally unprepared to birth this baby. I'm regretting now that we never took a birthing class especially since some of the doctors at my office look at me with big eyes when I tell them I'm not taking a class. Come on, people. You're supposed to support me in my ignorance. This is why I don't go to a midwife. One doctor did tell me, "once you get the epidural everything else just works itself out". That's more like it. 

 the bebe at 20 weeks and behind that at 9 weeks. be still my heart!

 

Aaaaaand, that's about it, I guess! Now we wait for the baby and you wait for the next blog post. Let's pray it won't be another 6 months for either of us.