November 3rd, 2009 by Ascelyn
I haven’t written in a while. I feel lame, since this is the time I should probably record more than any other thus far, but I’ve been a little busy. Just a little.
Michael is three weeks old today. He’s big and thriving, and other than the typical newborn stuff, he’s a very easy baby. He loves being held, but he’s starting to be more and more willing to let us put him down. Right now, for example, he’s sleeping in his bouncer while I rock it with my foot so that I can have my hand free to type. For the first week or so, he refused to be put down in his crib, swing, bouncer, you name it.
I’m going to try to make a series of posts over the next few days to catch up, but I might as well start at the beginning, which is the end. Of pregnancy, that is. By the time 39 weeks rolled around, I was huge and uncomfortable and DONE with being pregnant. By 40 weeks, I was getting a tad impatient. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move around properly, couldn’t get anything accomplished. I was off work but could barely do dishes (my big belly kept me from getting close to the sink, so I had to lean over it, which hurt my back) and had to kneel on the ground to get clothes in and out of the washer and dryer. By 41 weeks, Doc W was planning to induce, and I was starting to feel a bit desperate. I had an appointment on October 13th at 11:30 to be examined and schedule the induction. It would have been the 12th, but he had to go out of town for an emergency, so I was quickly seen by another doctor, rescheduled for the next day, and sent over to L&D for a routine non-stress test just in case.
I had been having very mild, very sporadic contractions all day, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. After all, I was still only dilated to 2, partially effaced, and the contractions barely showed up on the monitor. The NST gave the baby and me a shiny clean bill of health, and we were sent home. Jason wanted cookies, so I baked and made a mess of the kitchen while he wiped the hard drive on my laptop and reinstalled Windows. I wanted to keep on my feet as much as possible just in case the contractions might someday amount to something. I eventually read a book in bed while he played with the computer in our room. He refused to come to bed until after midnight, so I was a tad irritated at not being able to sleep with the lights on and him moving around.
Sleep was difficult even then because I kept having to get up and run to the bathroom every twenty or thirty minutes. That ended around 3:00, when the baby seemed to decide that my cervix was a punching bag and hit me hard five times, followed by the most intense, longest contraction I think I’ve ever felt. My water broke quickly thereafter, and the race was on.
I jumped out of bed quicker than I thought possible and ran to the bathroom. Eventually I changed into jeans and a t-shirt and started throwing the few remaining necessities into my bag. By the time I got downstairs and managed to get shoes on my feet, my water broke a second time. I was soaked. Since that was my last clean pair of maternity pants, I ended up going to the hospital in bright red pajama pants, a polo shirt, brown work shoes, and socks that I didn’t realize until far too late were jacked up ridiculously high. We arrived around 4:30 a.m.
Our hospital doesn’t allow women to preregister, so I had to attempt to answer questions and fill out routine paperowrk between contractions. Did I mention that my contractions had been coming about a minute apart since my water initially broke? The paperwork never did get fully filled out. My plans to stay at home for a long time, take a nice hot shower, use the jacuzzi, and stay active didn’t quite materialize. I went from 2 cm upon arrival at the hospital to fully dialated and pushing by 8:00–about three and a half hours. The nurses went from laughing at me for refusing the epidural they’d already ordered and Pitocin drip they’d tried to set up to amazed. I never even had an IV. Things seemed to be going amazingly well.
Then labor came to a stand-still. Pushing took as long as dialating did. The nurses kept telling me that they could feel the head and would call the doctor after one more push, but for some reason they didn’t for hours. When he finally was called, he came quickly and determined that Michael was facing upward and stuck. He tried to turn him, but there wasn’t room and Michael wouldn’t budge. The anesthesiologist was called back to the hospital and a room was set up for a c-section. Thankfully, I love Dr. W for a reason, and he tried one last time to turn the baby. This time, he was successful, and despite reservations that the shoulders might not deliver properly, Michael was born at 11:37 that morning–right on time for what should have been my appointment to schedule his induction.
Apparently the poor kid has inherited his parents’ tendency to wait until the last minute for everything. Nothing short of an impending induction and c-section would get him out.
The pain was never close to unbearable, although my back hurt horribly and I wanted to cry when they kept making me try to lay on my left side to get him to move down more. I assumed it was the same backache I’d had for weeks, from being so off balance, but I wish the nurses would have listened and realized that it was because he was turned wrong. I wish they would’ve called the doctor much earlier so that he could’ve been turned higher, where there was more room. I was more exhausted than anything and not even really feeling the contractions anymore. I could ignore them because I was so tired. I hadn’t slept in two days and had been pushing for three hours, so I guess it wasn’t an unreasonable complaint.
His Apgars were 9 at both one and five minutes, and he was pink and screaming from the moment he was born. People in both L&D and the nursery commented on how healthy he looked–more like an older baby than a newborn.
I had a second-degree tear, so they took the baby to the other side of the room to get him cleaned up while the doctor stitched me. Jason stayed with the baby, at my request. He had passed some meconium, so they wanted to take him to the nursery instead of letting him stay with me like I’d wanted. I’d not yet even had a chance to see him up close, so one nice nurse finally let me hold him for a few seconds and attempt to nurse. Since a few seconds was literally all I had, total, it didn’t work out. He was taken away, and when pressed, they told me he’d be back in about half an hour. They didn’t even want to tell me that and kept saying that it wouldn’t take long at all, but I wanted a concrete estimate.
Two hours later, I still hadn’t seen my baby and was getting worried that something was wrong. My parents and brother had come and left to see him, but I still hadn’t gotten more than those few seconds. I had just been left, alone, in the delivery room. My mother came back and then left again to see why they hadn’t brought him back, and eventually a nurse came in and told me to get a shower. I wouldn’t get to see him until I was showered and moved to the other side of the floor, to the postpartum area.
I settled into my new room and waited again. Finally, Jason wheeled Michael in and we were given a few moments with him, though my family was still in the room playing paparazzi. I kicked my father and brother out after a few moments and my mom helped me try to nurse him. I was only partially successful, but after an hour or so he seemed to be content, and I’d promised him we could both take a nap. He’d been given a bottle of formula in the nursery because he blood sugar was slightly low, so he was still pretty full from that. (I still want to know why they didn’t let me try to nurse him, since it wasn’t by any means an emergency.) At that point, the first and worst of the bad nurses arrived. She looked at my chart, saw I intended to breastfeed, and asked if I had yet. I told her that I’d tried and had fed him a little. She decided I needed to nurse again right then and rolled me on my side to make me try. I told her I’d already fed him and just needed to sleep. She kept pushing, and I eventually started crying and couldn’t talk. She then picked the baby up, told him that apparently his mother didn’t feel like taking care of him right then, and left, telling the other nurses and students outside the door that I must not really want to breastfeed and that they might as well mark Mikey down as a formula baby right then. Jason retrieved him from the nursery for me and I slept a while before feeding him again. I was stubborn and refused to call to ask for any help with anything until her shift was over.
There were okay parts and bad parts for the next two days, but I was grateful when we left. I asked a few times for help feeding him, but no one ever came. He would latch on fine, suck two or three times, and then pull away. This would go on and on, frustrating us both. Finally, I ambushed a nurse who came in for something else, and she determined that he was pulling his tongue back in his mouth instead of laying it flat because of when they’d suctioned his mouth out after birth. She brought me a nipple shield and helped me latch him on. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell me that you’re only supposed to use it for a minute or so, then take it off and try without, so I’m still trying to wean him off the shield. Don’t even get me started on the one and only lactation consultant in the area, who works for WIC (tell you something about our town?) and only wants to repeat her four or five points of info that I already know instead of listening and helping. Everyone in an official capacity just wants to tell me that it’s okay if I have to use it, and please don’t stop using it if it means he doesn’t eat!! Duh. I haven’t. That’s why he gained weight back so quickly. But it’s annoying to need to carry it around with me, has promoted a lazy latch in my baby, takes much longer to nurse using, and apparently is known to cause women’s supply to drop off long before they want it to. We’re working on it.
The first few days at home were both great and hard. I think I pushed myself too hard, especially when we had visitors, and I backtracked in my healing. I could barely walk and had to sleep downstairs in the baby’s room, away from either the internet or my books in the basement when I had questions. At three weeks, I’m still not healed anywhere near where I think I ought to be, but I can do steps again, pick things up off the ground, and don’t need a stool to climb into bed. I’ll get there, I guess. I just wish that day would come sooner.
Our little moose is waking up, so I’ll go feed him and try to figure out where J is so I can start dinner afterward.
October 13th
11:37 am
8 lbs 15.4 oz
21.5″