Eating and Sleeping

Since bringing our little girl home we have learned something about her, she is a cluster feeder. What is cluster feeding? It is when a baby will want to eat every 1 to 2 hours. So what does this mean? It means that Evangeline starts cluster feeding at about 11 pm and continues to cluster feed till about 9 am. Which means no sleep for Mommy, because every hour Evangeline wakes up and wants more food. Needless to say, my last few days have been a sleepless agony. Most nights I have been averaging about 2 to 4 hours of very awful sleep. Well the other night Kevin hit upon a fantastic way of fixing this. He noticed that Evangeline sleeps better when there is a lot of noise going on around her. And when things are dead quiet she tends to wake up and want food and stuff. So on Christmas Eve I downloaded a white noise app on my phone and played it whenever I put Eva to bed. I ended up getting about 6 hours of sleep this way and felt much more rested the next morning. Which was perfect since it was Christmas. Last night I went to bed early, and then used the white noise app to help me get even more sleep during the night and ended up getting 8 hours of sleep total! Finally I have a morning where I don't feel like a zombie!! Thank goodness for a wonderful husband with awesome ideas!!

The last few days

So much has happened in the last week or so that it seems crazy looking back at it all. I posted last week about our false alarm that took us to the hospital and then back home again. So Monday of this week I went in to have my growth ultrasound and to see my ob. She ended up doing both the ultrasound and the doctor visit. She checked me and determined that I was still at a 3 and had not really made any change. We talked about everything and about giving birth and after doing the ultrasound she determined that the baby was about 6 lbs and maybe 8 oz and her lungs should be fully developed and she should be good to go if she was born this week. And she said that I seemed to be ready to have her, which at that point I was. The false alarm had gotten me to the frame of mind where I was finally ready for her to show up. So my ob said, "Well I am scheduled to be on duty at the hospital tomorrow night so if you can get contractions started and come in I can strip your membranes and that will get things moving and we can deliver you that night. But if you can't get contractions started then come in on Thursday morning and I will strip your membranes and you can deliver that night." I left her office trying to decide what I wanted to do.

On the one hand Kevin and I were planning to go on a date on Wednesday and I was really looking forward to that. We have only had two dates the entire year and I was so excited about having one more before the baby came. However, if I went into labor on Tuesday then I would be guaranteed to have my doctor deliver me, which is what I really wanted. I sent an e-mail to Kevin's mom that night (Monday) updating her on what  was going on and the decision I was trying to make. She sent back a recipe for using castor oil to induce labor. So Tuesday Kevin had a doctor appointment and Davy and I went with him. While waiting for his appointment to be over I checked our bank account on my phone and discovered that we did not have enough money to go on our date. We had been buying things to get ready for the baby (since the false alarm made us realize just how unprepared we really were) and the extra money we were going to use for the date was gone. When I realized that there was no chance of a date I decided that I wanted to try and get contractions going that night rather than wait. So before we left the town Kevin's doctor is in we stopped at a  health goods store and got some castor oil.

When we got home we put Davy down for his nap, I made up the castor oil concoction and after drinking it I started working out on our elliptical. After a few hours I started to feel contractions really get going. Kevin and I had been getting things together in preparation for going to the hospital, and so by the time things really got going we were ready. We finished things up, got things out to the car, got Davy out to the car, took him over to my parents house dropped off him, and his over night bag, filled up on gas, dropped off a redbox video and headed up to the hospital.

When we got there they took us directly into a labor and delivery room and started asking questions, they brought in the doctor who checked me (I had progressed a little) and also stripped my membranes. Then they let me continue naturally. Things moved slowly, as they seem to do with my labors, and Kevin and I relaxed and slept a little, the contractions began to get stronger and eventually I had them attempt an epidural on me. My epidural with Davy failed so I was worried that this one would too. However the anesthesiologist did a really good job and taped me up really well and it worked like a charm. I began to not be able to really feel my contractions and so when they gave me pitocin to speed things up I barely even noticed. I actually fell asleep and was waiting for things to actually start moving. Then around 3 am something changed, the nurse came in because she was seeing something strange with the baby's heart rate. I had an internal monitor on the baby at this point (they attach a monitor to the baby's scalp), but the monitor was not giving them very good readings, so they switched to the external monitor, but that was not great either because the baby moved so much it was difficult to keep a good track of her heart rate. Anyway after some time of watching and trying this monitor or that we came to a conclusion of what was happening. Every time I contracted the baby's heart rate was dropping and when the contraction stopped the heart rate would go back up. They called in the doctor and kept trying different monitors, but it still wasn't giving them consistent readings. Either way the doctor was worried about what was going on. So she had the pitocin stopped. The heart rate still continued to drop during contractions and rise after they were done. She checked me and I was dilated to 6 cm.

At this point she talked to me about it all. She said, "The baby's heart rate keeps dropping during contractions which makes me worried that something is wrong. If you were at an 8 or a 9 we would probably just proceed forward and have you deliver naturally but because you are at a 6 I think we should do an emergency c-section." It was not what I wanted to hear. But the entire time they were talking about the heart rate dropping I knew that a c-section was a strong possibility. I was really scared, scared for myself but more scared for the baby. Kevin could tell because he kept saying "You are going to be ok, it will all be ok." I told the doctor that I really didn't want a c-section but that I was fine with it if the baby was in trouble. So she brought out the consent forms and I signed them and they moved me to the operating room.

I am so thankful that the epidural worked because now that was exactly what I needed for the c-section. I am scared to imagine what that Wednesday morning would have been like if the epidural had failed. They got me prepped and made sure I was completely numb and then they brought Kevin into the room. He stood by my head as they operated on me and took the baby out of me. All I felt was tugging and pulling and pressure, thankfully I did not feel or see anything they were doing. What they discovered was that Evangeline had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and her body so every time I contracted it tightened the cord around her neck and her body and was cutting down on the oxygen she was receiving  Once Evangeline was born they had Kevin come over and cut her umbilical cord and he was able to stay with her. They brought her over to me for me to see, she was crying and so I reached out and stroked her face and talked to her, the moment I touched her she calmed down and stopped crying, it was beautiful to see my little girl. As the surgery continued and they put me back together and stitched me up I was finally able to calm myself down and get myself to a point where I was calm enough that I almost fell asleep. Evangeline was born at 4:25 am, she was 6 lbs 1 oz, and was 18 3/4 inches long.

After they were done they took me to a recovery room where I had to wait until a certain amount of time before they would take me to the postpartum room. During that time I slept a little because I was so tired and also drowsily just waited. After a little while Kevin came in with Evangeline and I was able to nurse her for the first time. She took to it like a pro and latched on right away. After nursing for quite awhile she fell asleep and was taken to the nursery to sleep for awhile. Kevin and I were then taken to our own room. We slept most of Wednesday, I nursed Evangeline when she was brought in but mostly we all slept. It took awhile for my pain meds to wear off and for me to get to a point where I needed some more. The incision pain was not too bad at first but got worse over time. Thursday was also not extremely eventful, mostly I was focused on passing gas. At first I wasn't allowed to eat real food until I passed gas, but my doctor came in and vetoed that and soon passing gas was instead what I needed to do before we could leave the hospital. However, I think the castor oil cleaned me out so well that it took forever for me to get any gas out. By Friday I was getting desperate because I was told that I could leave once I passed gas. I began to call it "The fart of freedom" because that is all I needed was one little toot, one fart and I could go home.

We spent Friday walking and rubbing my belly and trying anything we could think of to get me to pass gas. And it wasn't that I didn't have gas, oh I had gas, I could feel it roiling around inside of me. In fact it got to the point where the gas pain was my worst pain. And here is the crazy thing, the gas pain traveled up to my shoulder and gave me shoulder pain to such an extreme that it hurt just to breathe. Finally on Friday night after over an hour's worth of walking I finally passed gas. However, we were not yet free. Earlier in the day Evangeline had gotten the green light to go, however, because of me we were there long enough that they did another vitals check on her in the evening and thought that they had heard an irregularity in her heartbeat. So they ordered an EKG on her and had a pediatrician come and look at it. He said he didn't see anything wrong with her and finally gave us the good to go. We finally got out of the hospital around 11:30 pm and got home around midnight. It feels good to be home finally.

I am currently on many different restrictions. I can't lift anything heavier than 10 lbs for 6 weeks, I can't drive a car for a week, I can't do housework for two weeks. I feel pretty useless, because of my incision I can't bend over to pick things up, I can't move quickly, I have to avoid stairs when possible. It is crazy, but it is so that I can recover correctly. Today has been our first day at home with our entire family and it had been busy but good. I am so thankful for Kevin and for everything he has done to support me through all of this. And I am grateful to my parents for watching both Davy and our dogs while we were in the hospital.

Looking back on it all I sometimes find myself wondering if I was being selfish by inducing myself so early. But then I think back to how wrapped up in the cord Evangeline was and I wonder if I had waited if she would have made it or if something bad could have happened to her. If I had started contracting really bad while at home I would not have had a monitor to tell me that something was wrong. Though I wonder if I should have waited the fact is Evangeline is here healthy and safe and alive and that is the important thing. We are so thrilled and happy with our new little girl.

The end of the beginning

So Saturday I made a decision, I decided to stop breastfeeding. It was a difficult choice for me, but as Kevin and my mom pointed out, it is not like I am giving up. I breastfed him for almost a year, through quite a few really tough breastfeeding trials. I was put in the hospital twice, I had a breast infection, I was put on medication where I had to pump and dump for two weeks, Davy went on a nursing strike, not to mention the pain that comes with breastfeeding. It has been a tough nine months, but I made it through them. And besides, Davy has basically weaned himself off. Over the last few weeks Davy was less and less interested in nursing during the day and more interested in the bottle. It got to the point where I was only nursing him at night when he woke up. Then on Friday night I went to nurse him at Midnight, he would have none of it. He nursed and then screamed, nursed and then screamed, rinse and repeat about ten times and I finally had enough and got the bottle. He drank the bottle and then went to sleep. It was about 2 am at that point. So Saturday morning I decided that we were finally done. He was no longer really interested in nursing anymore, not during the day or at night. So the breastfeeding days were over.

I kind of miss it though now that the choice is made. Breastfeeding was a bonding time for Davy and me, both of us snuggled up cozy and warm on the rocking chair, both slightly dozing. But all things have to come to an end sometime.

Turns out it was really good timing, today while playing with Davy I felt the beginnings of his first tooth. And considering that teeth were a really big fear of mine in regard to nursing I am glad that we are done. Soon his little toother will pop all the way out and we will move on to a new phase in his life.

Breastfeeding revisited

Davy is doing so much better at breastfeeding. I have been able to get him to nurse at almost every feeding now. We usually finish him off with the bottle, but on average he has been feeding for 15 minutes on each side. That is 30 minutes nursing total per feeding session. Yay!! I still pump after each feeding, which means that the whole feeding thing (if Kevin is not around) takes a long time. But it was already taking a long time anyway.

One thing I have learned with having a baby is that formula stinks! And I mean it really smells, to the point that I have almost puked from the smell of it. Yuck! Breast milk on the other hand smells just fine, hardly any aroma to it at all, and if there is an aroma the best I can describe it as is sweet. I guess different women's milk looks different, meaning it comes in different colors. Some is white, some is yellow, some (depending on what they eat) can be slightly green and I have even read of some which after eating certain things came purple. Mine, according to my husband and my mom looks like sweetened condensed milk. All I know is it keeps the baby fed and happy. If only it didn't leave me feeling like a miniature cow. Seriously, if I am not feeding the baby I am hooked up to a machine that milks me, and when it is done I hand milk myself to make sure to get anything the machine missed.

Ah well, at least the baby gets fed and that is what matters to me. I do wish it didn't hurt quite so much though. OUCH!

Breastfeeding

Davy breastfed twice during the last two feedings. He fed for probably about 30 minutes last night during his 3/4 am feeding time and then he did the same thing this morning at his 8/9 am feeding. I let him feed until he unlatched and then finished him off with the bottle. Considering that he hasn't breastfed regularly yet this is a big success for us. Not that it really makes things any easier. I still need to pump after he feeds, and I still need to make plans for when I have to go back to work. Which is at the beginning of March. I know I still have three weeks left (mostly) but it seems like my maternity leave is going by so quickly.

I don't really want to go back to work, even though it will be working from home still. I still don't feel like I have enough time in the day with everything the baby throws at me. Something that would seem like a quick little process turns into a big production. Take last night. My mom comes over so I can take Kevin's laptop to him at work since he forgot it at home. Baby wakes up while I am gone, so my mom feeds him and then he falls asleep. She leaves and like always after my parents leave, Davy wakes up. I change him, and then feed him again because he is acting hungry. He seems to finish eating so I go to put the bottle away, as I am in the kitchen he gets the "I am going to throw up" look on his face and then proceeds to throw up what looks like everything he ate while I fed him and while my mom fed him. (a huge waste of milk, ugh!) I go to clean him off and end up changing his diaper while I am at it, while doing that he proceeds to pee all over himself, so I end up having to give him a bath. By the time he is cleaned, changed, in new clothes and calmed down a huge amount of time has passed. All my plans for the night (cleaning the rest of the kitchen, making bread, making a dinner for myself other than a frozen meal) has gone out the window.

And currently the little guy is crying, but I am still hooked up to the pump. So finish pumping and then see if I can get him to go back to sleep.