This afternoon Daniel and I headed to my friend Emily's house for a playdate with Emily, her 5 month old son Noah, Nicole, and 5 month old Alejandro. It was amazing to see how much bigger the other boys are than Daniel...Emily and Nicole said they couldn't believe their kids were ever as small as Daniel, while I can't believe he'll be as big as they are before long! Ale and Noah are able to hold their heads up and grasp rattles and toys with their hands which of course Daniel can't do yet, but he did show off his latest trick, smiling. He started smiling a few days ago and I love when he rewards me with one.
The afternoon was fun and the boys kept it lively by making sure at least one of them was awake and making noise at every moment. Two would nap at the same time but we could never get all 3. I was pleased that when Daniel got a little fussy, he calmed right down and even fell asleep when I put him in the ring sling. He really seems to take well to that.
Toward the end of the day we lined the boys up on a blanket for picture time. Daniel and Ale were wearing the same outfit but Ale's 6-month size was almost too small and Daniel's 3-monther was a little too big. It was funny to see skinny little Daniel between those two big boys. They started flailing their arms around hitting each other, much to the amusement of the mommies.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Happy 1 month birthday Daniel!
One month ago today our lives were forever changed at 11:16am when our sweet little boy entered the world. Somehow it's hard to believe 31 days have already passed since then. I don't know what he weighs or measures right now but I can tell he's gotten bigger. He's getting a bit of a Buddha belly and his newborn clothes are getting a little snug.
Here are a few pictures of him at 1 month old. I'll take a picture every month on the 21st so we can track his growth.
We're still getting to know each other but I'm already thoroughly smitten with the little guy. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
- The faces he makes after a feeding as he drifts off to sleep. His eyes roll back, he moves his mouth like he's eating then gets this lazy gummy grin. I know it's not a true smile yet, just an involuntary muscle movement, but it's so cute.
- The way he rests his face on his elbows after I burp him on my shoulder.
- The look he makes when he raises his head and closes his eyes, usually as part of a yawn.
- How when he lets go after nursing sometimes he'll have milk running down his chin.
- His uncanny ability to free his arms from a swaddle, no matter how tight, and raise them over his head and stretch when he yawns (see picture below).
- The way he furrows his brow and looks so concerned sometimes like he's just not sure about what's going on.
- How peaceful he looks when he's sleeping.
- Though I don't like to see it often, the big fish-mouth frown he makes when he's unhappy is pretty cute.
- How much he loves being worn in my new ring sling when I'm making breakfast, putting away laundry or getting the mail.
Mainly though, I love him because he's ours. When I look at him I see the living embodiment of the love Kevin and I have and it's amazing to think we created him from almost nothing and now he's a living, breathing little person. I love that we'll get to watch him discover his world and learn new things. I can't wait for the smiles of recognition when he sees me, to hear him laugh for the first time, call me mommy, and tell me he loves me.
But all of that's off in the future. For now I'll just love him for the beautiful one month old baby he is and be thankful for this wonderful little blessing we have. How lucky are we?
Here are a few pictures of him at 1 month old. I'll take a picture every month on the 21st so we can track his growth.
We're still getting to know each other but I'm already thoroughly smitten with the little guy. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
- The faces he makes after a feeding as he drifts off to sleep. His eyes roll back, he moves his mouth like he's eating then gets this lazy gummy grin. I know it's not a true smile yet, just an involuntary muscle movement, but it's so cute.
- The way he rests his face on his elbows after I burp him on my shoulder.
- The look he makes when he raises his head and closes his eyes, usually as part of a yawn.
- How when he lets go after nursing sometimes he'll have milk running down his chin.
- His uncanny ability to free his arms from a swaddle, no matter how tight, and raise them over his head and stretch when he yawns (see picture below).
- The way he furrows his brow and looks so concerned sometimes like he's just not sure about what's going on.
- How peaceful he looks when he's sleeping.
- Though I don't like to see it often, the big fish-mouth frown he makes when he's unhappy is pretty cute.
- How much he loves being worn in my new ring sling when I'm making breakfast, putting away laundry or getting the mail.
Mainly though, I love him because he's ours. When I look at him I see the living embodiment of the love Kevin and I have and it's amazing to think we created him from almost nothing and now he's a living, breathing little person. I love that we'll get to watch him discover his world and learn new things. I can't wait for the smiles of recognition when he sees me, to hear him laugh for the first time, call me mommy, and tell me he loves me.
But all of that's off in the future. For now I'll just love him for the beautiful one month old baby he is and be thankful for this wonderful little blessing we have. How lucky are we?
Monday, August 16, 2010
Daniel's first bath
Saturday morning Daniel's umbilical cord stump finally came off after 3 1/2 weeks. I had always thought it only took a week or two so I was starting to worry we might be sending him off to kindergarten with that thing still attached but no, it's finally gone. Good thing too because it was getting stinky.
With that milestone accomplished we decided it was time for our big boy to get his first real bath. I didn't record most of it but you can see how he felt about the experience. Let's hope he warms to the idea soon...
With that milestone accomplished we decided it was time for our big boy to get his first real bath. I didn't record most of it but you can see how he felt about the experience. Let's hope he warms to the idea soon...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Our NICU experience
Wednesday, July 21: Into the world, off to the NICU
As I mentioned in the birth story post, Daniel aspirated some meconium before delivery so a NICU team was standing by to tend to him when he was born. Within probably 15 minutes of the birth, and after I'd only gotten to hold him for a few short minutes, Daniel was taken to the NICU.
Here are pictures of me holding him for the first time. I never noticed till now that the nurse handing him to me was in a plastic suit. I guess the whole NICU team probably was but it didn't register at the time.
After Cecily finished sewing me up and we had gotten our things packed we moved to our recovery room on the 7th floor then headed over to the NICU nursery to visit Daniel. My parents came with us to meet their first grandchild.
When we first saw Daniel he was lying on his tummy in an incubator bassinet with a big breathing mask strapped to his face and a feeding tube in his mouth and taped to his cheek. He had a hep lock in his right arm for an IV and a big soft blue pad strapped to his arm so he wouldn't scratch himself or try to pull out an IV. He also had wires taped to his chest to monitor his heart and more wires on his foot to measure who knows what. It looked like so much equipment on such a tiny little body, and to top it off he had antibiotic ointment in his eyes.
Despite all of that, he still looked beautiful. We were also impressed by the way he was already lifting his head up and trying to move around. He might have been covered in wires and tubes but he was proving himself to be a strong little boy already.
We didn't get to hold him on that visit because he was hooked up to the CPap breathing machine. But when we came back a few hours later his breathing had improved enough that he was off the CPap and breathing with a nasal cannula tube (like what people on oxygen tanks use).
Now that he was off the CPap we could hold him. For Kevin this was his first time. We also dressed him in some of the newborn clothes we'd brought. Unfortunately we hadn't counted on a 4 day hospital stay so we didn't pack enough clothes for him (or us) so he had to wear hospital shirts most of the time. But getting to hold Daniel and dress him in his own clothes gave us a little more of a chance to bond and feel more like his parents and less like visitors.
Thursday, July 22: The good news, the bad news, and a very ugly diaper change
The next morning Dr. Moin, the NICU doctor caring for Daniel, came by our room and told us that over the night Daniel's breathing had improved enough to remove the nasal cannula and let him breathe room air. We were optimistic that since the initial reason for his NICU stay had been resolved we might get to take him home soon.
But as we learned, news in the NICU tended to follow a pattern of one step forward, one step back. A few hours later came the news that Daniel's white blood cell count reflected a high number of immature white cells. Dr. Moin explained that this could be a sign of bacterial infection or just be related to the normal stress of birth. To find out, they would run cultures and see what they found in 48 hours and in the meantime Daniel would be given antibiotics preventatively. Even assuming all was fine, this meant the best case scenario didn't have Daniel going home sooner than Saturday morning.
Thursday and Friday we were still staying in our NICU recovery room. We learned the NICU's schedule of feeding every 3 hours on the 3's and timed our visits so we could feed him and change his diaper.
One thing Baylor was great about was supporting breastfeeding. Wednesday afternoon a hospital breast pump was delivered to our room so I could start pumping, and whatever we collected from that we'd take to the NICU in syringes to be fed to Daniel.
My ideal birth plan had called for Daniel to room in with us and be exclusively breastfed, but in the NICU they require the babies to eat 40ml at every feeding and before the milk comes in, a nursing mom couldn't possibly produce enough so they had to supplement with formula. We did give him whatever milk I was able to pump and I got help from several of the hospital's lactation consultants as we made our first attempts at breastfeeding. It may be a natural process but it certainly didn't come naturally to Daniel or me right away so their advice really helped.
On one visit Thursday we were changing his diaper and experienced a close encounter of the gross kind. We had taken off the dirty diaper and were wiping Daniel's booty when he decided it was time to poop again. As we were cleaning up the new mess and laughing hysterically Daniel started spitting up so I left Kevin to tend to the diaper mess while I wiped up the spit-up (and yes, I would say I got the better end of that deal!). Before we could put a new diaper on, Daniel decided to add another bodily function to the mix and peed all over his shirt and Kevin's hand. We put a new diaper on quickly before Daniel could unleash something else then changed the shirt (which was quite hard with the hep lock and blue pad on the right arm and all the wires to work around). That would have been the end of the drama except that as Kevin was trying to fold up the dirty diaper he stuck his finger right in the poopy part! Needless to say during all of this Daniel was crying frantically, no doubt as startled as we were by all that output from 3 sources in such a short time!
Friday, July 23: Feeding troubles
While Daniel was otherwise doing well the NICU team was concerned because he wasn't eating 40ml of milk/formula at his feedings. Whatever he didn't take from a bottle they gave him through the feeding tube in his nose, aka "gavage." Sometimes he'd get close to taking the full 40 but other times he'd take half or less. It seemed like all of our time with him was spent trying to make him eat rather than getting to hold and enjoy him.
I remember one feeding Friday night when he was just not hungry and we had to give up and have him gavaged. We held him while the gavage was going and he seemed so content in our arms like he just wanted us to love on him instead of trying to force-feed him. It was hard because there was so little we were able to do as his parents at that point and it felt like we weren’t even succeeding at the main job we could help with.
The nurse on duty said even if the blood cultures came back negative and everything else looked good, they couldn't discharge him till he was eating well. It felt like he'd be there forever. It was especially frustrating because they even agreed with me that if he was rooming in with us he'd just be getting a little colostrum every day and that would be all he needed, but because he was in the NICU he was on what seemed to be an arbitrary schedule and dosage. I made it through 37 hours of labor and pushing with no medication and very little sleep and don't recall crying at all but the frustrations with feeding definitely brought out the tears.
Friday evening we were discharged from our hospital room but rather than go home we checked into a room at the hospital hotel. The room was certainly nothing to write home about but at least we were close enough that one or both of us could still make every feeding, even the middle of the night ones. Leaving our hospital room and going to the hotel rather than home was the hardest time of the whole birth and hospital stay for me. It hit me then that we didn't know when we'd get to take him home and just when it had looked like all we had to do was wait for the blood cultures, now the feeding issue was looming over everything and suggesting our stay might be extended again even though he was otherwise healthy.
The absolute low point for me came around 2:45 Saturday morning. I had woken up at 2:15 to pump some milk to take and feed him at 3:00. I sat on the edge of the bed pumping in the dark then walked the halls to the NICU tired but looking forward to seeing and feeding my son. When I arrived the nurse said Daniel had woken up early and while they tried to hold him off with a pacifier, he was hungry and she'd had to give him his bottle. He had sucked down the whole thing and was now sound asleep. I was so disappointed at having gone through all that and not even getting to hold him that I headed back to the hotel crying and it wasn't till I was halfway back that I realized the good news that he had taken a full bottle for the first time.
Saturday, July 24: Close but no cigar
As it turned out, Daniel wouldn’t need to be gavaged anymore from that point on. When Kevin went back at 6 Daniel took a full bottle from him, he nursed well from me at 9, and we went back at noon optimistic about the blood cultures and hoping this might be the day we got to take him home.
The good news was that the cultures were negative, so there was no infection. But in NICU fashion, there was also some less positive news. Another blood measurement for C-reactive protein, which had tested high the day before, had fallen significantly but hadn't yet dropped to the normal range. So, while Daniel had no infection and was eating well, he still couldn't go home. The doctor said they wanted to keep him till Sunday morning and check his CRP and assuming it was normal, Daniel would be discharged. While we were disappointed to be facing yet another day of staying at the hotel and seeing him only for feedings we were glad that momentum had turned.
Daniel continued to eat well throughout the day, nursing from me and taking bottles of pumped milk from Kevin. We woke up Sunday feeling very optimistic.
Sunday, July 25: Free at last!
Sunday morning the doctor said the CRP hadn't quite dropped to normal but was close enough and showing sufficient progress that they were ready to discharge him. We set about packing up our room, loading the car, and getting Daniel's car seat and going-home outfit ready.
Here’s Daniel in his going-home outfit, which reads “Daddy’s #1 draft pick.” The hospital photographer suggested this pose and as she was taking her professional pictures I was snapping away behind her with my camera.
The discharge seemed to take forever but soon enough he'd had (and passed) his hearing test and gotten his picture taken, we'd packed up all the contents of his bassinet tray (along with keepsakes like his wristband and blood pressure cuff), and it was time to go. We put him into his carseat and we were finally on our way home. As we pulled out of the garage I pulled out my sunglasses for the first time in 5 days.
On the way home we pointed out landmarks to a sleeping Daniel telling him about places we wanted to take him. Once we got him home I carried him around all the rooms and then sat rocking him for a long time in the recliner in his room, so happy to finally have our little boy home.
Daniel received wonderful care in the NICU and the nurses and doctors there were great, but being separated from him for so much of the day and being limited in what we could do with and for him was a rough way to begin parenthood. Looking around the NICU certainly gave us a lot of perspective though. Daniel was among the healthiest babies we saw and over some of the bassinets we saw signs wishing the baby occupant a happy 2-month or 3-month birthday. Some of the parents waited weeks and even months to take their baby home while others were just praying that they would ever be able to take their baby home and most of the other NICU parents would have happily traded places with us. I know that by comparison 4 days, during which his health was never at serious risk, is a small inconvenience. But I also know that someday when we give Daniel a little sister or brother if we're lucky enough to have an uncomplicated birth and room in with our baby, I definitely won't take it for granted.
And the NICU experience did have a few silver linings (aside from the obvious one of ensuring we took home a healthy baby). I hadn't planned to bottle feed for the first few weeks because I was worried introducing a bottle, even of expressed milk, too soon might derail my attempts to get breastfeeding established. But since Daniel took bottles in the NICU and it didn't seem to interfere with nursing we have a schedule that lets Kevin give several feedings in a row of expressed milk every night so I can get some sleep and Kevin and Daniel get some boy bonding time.
Also, before we had Daniel I had imagined that when we left the hospital we might be feeling overwhelmed and anxious about how to care for him. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they're actually going to let me leave with this baby!" But after 4 days of worrying about him, getting up at all hours of the night to walk the long halls, just to take advantage of every chance I could to see him, feed him, and even change his diaper, I realized I wasn't nervous when it was time to take him home. I may not have known how to do everything (and still don’t, and never will) but I knew the mother instincts were there and that we’d be fine.
And almost three weeks later, we are doing just fine. We're still learning on the job and there have been some hard hours and days but on the whole things are going quite well. Daniel has been perfectly healthy since we brought him home and the little boy who had to be gavaged because he wouldn't eat is now quite the eater and getting bigger, weighing 7lb 8oz at his checkup last week and measuring 21 inches, up from 7lb and 20in at delivery. Looking at him now you wouldn't believe he was ever anything less than completely healthy. And when I have to get up early to feed him, or he won't go down for a nap, or he pees all over the place when I'm changing his diaper, I can remind myself that at least I am lucky enough to have him to take care of round the clock in my own house rather than having to scrub in to visit him in the NICU every few hours.
As I mentioned in the birth story post, Daniel aspirated some meconium before delivery so a NICU team was standing by to tend to him when he was born. Within probably 15 minutes of the birth, and after I'd only gotten to hold him for a few short minutes, Daniel was taken to the NICU.
Here are pictures of me holding him for the first time. I never noticed till now that the nurse handing him to me was in a plastic suit. I guess the whole NICU team probably was but it didn't register at the time.
After Cecily finished sewing me up and we had gotten our things packed we moved to our recovery room on the 7th floor then headed over to the NICU nursery to visit Daniel. My parents came with us to meet their first grandchild.
When we first saw Daniel he was lying on his tummy in an incubator bassinet with a big breathing mask strapped to his face and a feeding tube in his mouth and taped to his cheek. He had a hep lock in his right arm for an IV and a big soft blue pad strapped to his arm so he wouldn't scratch himself or try to pull out an IV. He also had wires taped to his chest to monitor his heart and more wires on his foot to measure who knows what. It looked like so much equipment on such a tiny little body, and to top it off he had antibiotic ointment in his eyes.
Despite all of that, he still looked beautiful. We were also impressed by the way he was already lifting his head up and trying to move around. He might have been covered in wires and tubes but he was proving himself to be a strong little boy already.
We didn't get to hold him on that visit because he was hooked up to the CPap breathing machine. But when we came back a few hours later his breathing had improved enough that he was off the CPap and breathing with a nasal cannula tube (like what people on oxygen tanks use).
Now that he was off the CPap we could hold him. For Kevin this was his first time. We also dressed him in some of the newborn clothes we'd brought. Unfortunately we hadn't counted on a 4 day hospital stay so we didn't pack enough clothes for him (or us) so he had to wear hospital shirts most of the time. But getting to hold Daniel and dress him in his own clothes gave us a little more of a chance to bond and feel more like his parents and less like visitors.
Thursday, July 22: The good news, the bad news, and a very ugly diaper change
The next morning Dr. Moin, the NICU doctor caring for Daniel, came by our room and told us that over the night Daniel's breathing had improved enough to remove the nasal cannula and let him breathe room air. We were optimistic that since the initial reason for his NICU stay had been resolved we might get to take him home soon.
But as we learned, news in the NICU tended to follow a pattern of one step forward, one step back. A few hours later came the news that Daniel's white blood cell count reflected a high number of immature white cells. Dr. Moin explained that this could be a sign of bacterial infection or just be related to the normal stress of birth. To find out, they would run cultures and see what they found in 48 hours and in the meantime Daniel would be given antibiotics preventatively. Even assuming all was fine, this meant the best case scenario didn't have Daniel going home sooner than Saturday morning.
Thursday and Friday we were still staying in our NICU recovery room. We learned the NICU's schedule of feeding every 3 hours on the 3's and timed our visits so we could feed him and change his diaper.
One thing Baylor was great about was supporting breastfeeding. Wednesday afternoon a hospital breast pump was delivered to our room so I could start pumping, and whatever we collected from that we'd take to the NICU in syringes to be fed to Daniel.
My ideal birth plan had called for Daniel to room in with us and be exclusively breastfed, but in the NICU they require the babies to eat 40ml at every feeding and before the milk comes in, a nursing mom couldn't possibly produce enough so they had to supplement with formula. We did give him whatever milk I was able to pump and I got help from several of the hospital's lactation consultants as we made our first attempts at breastfeeding. It may be a natural process but it certainly didn't come naturally to Daniel or me right away so their advice really helped.
On one visit Thursday we were changing his diaper and experienced a close encounter of the gross kind. We had taken off the dirty diaper and were wiping Daniel's booty when he decided it was time to poop again. As we were cleaning up the new mess and laughing hysterically Daniel started spitting up so I left Kevin to tend to the diaper mess while I wiped up the spit-up (and yes, I would say I got the better end of that deal!). Before we could put a new diaper on, Daniel decided to add another bodily function to the mix and peed all over his shirt and Kevin's hand. We put a new diaper on quickly before Daniel could unleash something else then changed the shirt (which was quite hard with the hep lock and blue pad on the right arm and all the wires to work around). That would have been the end of the drama except that as Kevin was trying to fold up the dirty diaper he stuck his finger right in the poopy part! Needless to say during all of this Daniel was crying frantically, no doubt as startled as we were by all that output from 3 sources in such a short time!
Friday, July 23: Feeding troubles
While Daniel was otherwise doing well the NICU team was concerned because he wasn't eating 40ml of milk/formula at his feedings. Whatever he didn't take from a bottle they gave him through the feeding tube in his nose, aka "gavage." Sometimes he'd get close to taking the full 40 but other times he'd take half or less. It seemed like all of our time with him was spent trying to make him eat rather than getting to hold and enjoy him.
I remember one feeding Friday night when he was just not hungry and we had to give up and have him gavaged. We held him while the gavage was going and he seemed so content in our arms like he just wanted us to love on him instead of trying to force-feed him. It was hard because there was so little we were able to do as his parents at that point and it felt like we weren’t even succeeding at the main job we could help with.
The nurse on duty said even if the blood cultures came back negative and everything else looked good, they couldn't discharge him till he was eating well. It felt like he'd be there forever. It was especially frustrating because they even agreed with me that if he was rooming in with us he'd just be getting a little colostrum every day and that would be all he needed, but because he was in the NICU he was on what seemed to be an arbitrary schedule and dosage. I made it through 37 hours of labor and pushing with no medication and very little sleep and don't recall crying at all but the frustrations with feeding definitely brought out the tears.
Friday evening we were discharged from our hospital room but rather than go home we checked into a room at the hospital hotel. The room was certainly nothing to write home about but at least we were close enough that one or both of us could still make every feeding, even the middle of the night ones. Leaving our hospital room and going to the hotel rather than home was the hardest time of the whole birth and hospital stay for me. It hit me then that we didn't know when we'd get to take him home and just when it had looked like all we had to do was wait for the blood cultures, now the feeding issue was looming over everything and suggesting our stay might be extended again even though he was otherwise healthy.
The absolute low point for me came around 2:45 Saturday morning. I had woken up at 2:15 to pump some milk to take and feed him at 3:00. I sat on the edge of the bed pumping in the dark then walked the halls to the NICU tired but looking forward to seeing and feeding my son. When I arrived the nurse said Daniel had woken up early and while they tried to hold him off with a pacifier, he was hungry and she'd had to give him his bottle. He had sucked down the whole thing and was now sound asleep. I was so disappointed at having gone through all that and not even getting to hold him that I headed back to the hotel crying and it wasn't till I was halfway back that I realized the good news that he had taken a full bottle for the first time.
Saturday, July 24: Close but no cigar
As it turned out, Daniel wouldn’t need to be gavaged anymore from that point on. When Kevin went back at 6 Daniel took a full bottle from him, he nursed well from me at 9, and we went back at noon optimistic about the blood cultures and hoping this might be the day we got to take him home.
The good news was that the cultures were negative, so there was no infection. But in NICU fashion, there was also some less positive news. Another blood measurement for C-reactive protein, which had tested high the day before, had fallen significantly but hadn't yet dropped to the normal range. So, while Daniel had no infection and was eating well, he still couldn't go home. The doctor said they wanted to keep him till Sunday morning and check his CRP and assuming it was normal, Daniel would be discharged. While we were disappointed to be facing yet another day of staying at the hotel and seeing him only for feedings we were glad that momentum had turned.
Daniel continued to eat well throughout the day, nursing from me and taking bottles of pumped milk from Kevin. We woke up Sunday feeling very optimistic.
Sunday, July 25: Free at last!
Sunday morning the doctor said the CRP hadn't quite dropped to normal but was close enough and showing sufficient progress that they were ready to discharge him. We set about packing up our room, loading the car, and getting Daniel's car seat and going-home outfit ready.
Here’s Daniel in his going-home outfit, which reads “Daddy’s #1 draft pick.” The hospital photographer suggested this pose and as she was taking her professional pictures I was snapping away behind her with my camera.
The discharge seemed to take forever but soon enough he'd had (and passed) his hearing test and gotten his picture taken, we'd packed up all the contents of his bassinet tray (along with keepsakes like his wristband and blood pressure cuff), and it was time to go. We put him into his carseat and we were finally on our way home. As we pulled out of the garage I pulled out my sunglasses for the first time in 5 days.
On the way home we pointed out landmarks to a sleeping Daniel telling him about places we wanted to take him. Once we got him home I carried him around all the rooms and then sat rocking him for a long time in the recliner in his room, so happy to finally have our little boy home.
Daniel received wonderful care in the NICU and the nurses and doctors there were great, but being separated from him for so much of the day and being limited in what we could do with and for him was a rough way to begin parenthood. Looking around the NICU certainly gave us a lot of perspective though. Daniel was among the healthiest babies we saw and over some of the bassinets we saw signs wishing the baby occupant a happy 2-month or 3-month birthday. Some of the parents waited weeks and even months to take their baby home while others were just praying that they would ever be able to take their baby home and most of the other NICU parents would have happily traded places with us. I know that by comparison 4 days, during which his health was never at serious risk, is a small inconvenience. But I also know that someday when we give Daniel a little sister or brother if we're lucky enough to have an uncomplicated birth and room in with our baby, I definitely won't take it for granted.
And the NICU experience did have a few silver linings (aside from the obvious one of ensuring we took home a healthy baby). I hadn't planned to bottle feed for the first few weeks because I was worried introducing a bottle, even of expressed milk, too soon might derail my attempts to get breastfeeding established. But since Daniel took bottles in the NICU and it didn't seem to interfere with nursing we have a schedule that lets Kevin give several feedings in a row of expressed milk every night so I can get some sleep and Kevin and Daniel get some boy bonding time.
Also, before we had Daniel I had imagined that when we left the hospital we might be feeling overwhelmed and anxious about how to care for him. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they're actually going to let me leave with this baby!" But after 4 days of worrying about him, getting up at all hours of the night to walk the long halls, just to take advantage of every chance I could to see him, feed him, and even change his diaper, I realized I wasn't nervous when it was time to take him home. I may not have known how to do everything (and still don’t, and never will) but I knew the mother instincts were there and that we’d be fine.
And almost three weeks later, we are doing just fine. We're still learning on the job and there have been some hard hours and days but on the whole things are going quite well. Daniel has been perfectly healthy since we brought him home and the little boy who had to be gavaged because he wouldn't eat is now quite the eater and getting bigger, weighing 7lb 8oz at his checkup last week and measuring 21 inches, up from 7lb and 20in at delivery. Looking at him now you wouldn't believe he was ever anything less than completely healthy. And when I have to get up early to feed him, or he won't go down for a nap, or he pees all over the place when I'm changing his diaper, I can remind myself that at least I am lucky enough to have him to take care of round the clock in my own house rather than having to scrub in to visit him in the NICU every few hours.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Daniel rolling over
The other night Kevin was holding Daniel and discovered that he can roll himself over from his tummy to his back. Granted, being in the swaddler probably helped but I think it's still pretty impressive for an 11-day old! We've also found that if we lie down and put him facedown on our tummies, he'll kind of army-crawl up to our heads if we support his feet. It's funny to see him moving like this now and think of him doing similar movements inside of me for the past few months.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Look who's swinging!
I'd been looking forward to trying out Daniel's swing since we brought him home after friends said how their babies enjoyed swinging. When I first put him in the other day he didn't seem too into it, but yesterday and today he's enjoyed it. Here he is, swinging away:
I created an account on Youtube to upload videos to. I'll post some on the blog but they can also be acccessed directly on Youtube by looking for my username, txwilliamsonfamily or by my Gmail address, ellendwilliamson@gmail.com.
I created an account on Youtube to upload videos to. I'll post some on the blog but they can also be acccessed directly on Youtube by looking for my username, txwilliamsonfamily or by my Gmail address, ellendwilliamson@gmail.com.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Daniel is here!
We have our baby!
Daniel Scott Williamson was born at 11:16am on Wednesday, July 21. After a 4-day stay in the NICU we got to take him home on Sunday. More on all that later, but I'm happy to report that he's quite the healthy little boy now.
We've started to get into a little bit of a routine now at home and I'm starting to see patterns in his sleeping and eating schedule. I'm home with him during the day but Kevin comes home to see us at lunch and takes a few feedings in a row at night with pumped milk in bottles. It lets both of us get some sleep and spend some time with Daniel.
Here's a picture of the little guy. I admit we're slightly biased but I think he's super-cute:
Birth story
So, here's how events played out last week once labor started. Get comfy, like the labor itself, the story is long!
First contractions
I went to work on Monday the 19th still feeling much as I had the past week or so, crampy but no definite contractions. That night I felt the first distinct contractions, which started becoming regular around 11:30 or so. I was able to sleep intermittently through the night but not well. The contractions continued on through the morning and I timed them with my handy iPhone contraction timer app...yes, there is an app for that!
Off to the hospital...
As morning turned to afternoon we called our doula, Maria, to come over. She and Kevin rubbed my back during contractions and she suggested some positions that might help speed things along. I should mention that the contractions were never really that painful, just uncomfortable, mainly in my lower back. Firm massage and deep breaths really did make them quite manageable. The main irritation was not getting to sleep. If I had a pause button so I could get naps in I could have gone on much longer and felt okay.
By around 7 that night I'd been having contractions 1-2 minutes long every 5 minutes for at least 2 hours. We'd been told to go to the hospital according to the 5/1/2 rule-once contractions were coming at least every 5 minutes, lasting at least 1 minute, for at least 2 hours, so we thought it was time to head in. I thought after all this time surely active labor was well underway.
However, once we got to the hospital, my midwife, Cecily checked me and found I was only 2cm along. She suggested we walk around the hospital for a few hours to see if we could move things along but alas, I was still 2cm after that. During those few hours though I did manage to eat and then throw up some chicken noodle soup and green jello from the cafeteria, and yes that made a pretty yucky looking mess on the floor. Green jello might not sound good to me for awhile.
...and back home again
The hospital won't admit a woman until she's at least 4cm, so Cecily recommended that I take an Ambien and go home. She said what I was experiencing was false labor, real contractions that weren't doing anything to dilate the cervix. The Ambien would help me sleep unless the real thing started, but in any event she thought I'd likely be coming back the next morning. She said we'd know it was the real thing when I couldn't sleep and when I became really bitchy extremely grouchy. Kevin said I didn't really ever get grouchy, she said, just wait!
We headed home frustrated and tired. Tired as I was, I couldn't sleep because the contractions kept coming. I was half-asleep so not paying attention to how often they were but it seemed like I'd barely get to lie back down from the hands and knees position that was most comfortable and then they started again. Kevin would hear me moaning and reach over half-asleep to massage my back then fall back asleep again.
After a few hours I noticed an unpleasant side effect, I kept feeling like I had to, um, go #2, but to no avail. That made the contractions more uncomfortable, as if I didn't have enough to worry about with lower back pain now I had this issue to deal with too!
Back to the hospital, Wednesday morning
After a rather sleepless night we called Cecily around 7 and she said to head to the hospital. After a quick breakfast of a peach, a tortilla with honey, and Gatorade, we were off. I told Kevin on the way there that as committed as I was to the whole natural birth idea if I was still only 2cm I might have to really consider the epidural, not because the contractions were that bad but because after no sleep in 2 nights I was exhausted! We had been so optimistic and excited on the way there the day before, but that day I was more tired and frustrated and not really even thinking that we might have our baby within a few hours. I imagined we still had a long road ahead.
At one point I was in the middle of a contraction and Kevin reached over to rub my stomach. That did not feel good but rather than explain that in more detail all I could get out was "Don't touch me!" Kevin later said that was as grouchy as I ever got in labor.
Cecily checked me when we got to the hospital. I was fully expecting her to say I was still only a few centimeters along so I was surprised and glad when she said I was actually 8cm along! She predicted Daniel would be born by noon.
We quickly got to a room and Kevin and Maria got to work setting up the birth tub for me to labor and deliver in. The nurses had me lying on the bed hooked up to a fetal monitor and on an IV for fluids since I was a bit dehydrated. It was at this point that I experienced one of the hallmarks of the transition phase of labor as I threw up my breakfast. At least this time it wasn't green jello all over the floor!
Daniel's heartbeat was showing a little low and when my water broke it was stained with meconium, indicating fetal distress, so Cecily called in a NICU team to be ready to care for him as soon as he was born. Because of that, delivery in the tub was no longer an option but they said I could stay in and push till he crowned then deliver him on the bed. Before I got in the tub Cecily checked me again to see how far along I was and I was fully dilated and at +2 station so stage 1 labor was over and it was time to push.
Time to push!
We cued up the Push playlist on my iPod and into the tub I went. I wanted to push as I felt the urge rather than be directed to do it. I remembered the pushing exercises we had learned in our Bradley classes and once I realized it really was just like trying to have a huge BM I figured out what to do. The books had made it seem like this was the best part of the labor process because you finally had an active role instead of just withstanding the contractions. Active maybe, comfortable, no. Once I really got the hang of the pushing I was making these loud grunting noises with each push, no doubt scaring anyone in the nearby rooms. Kevin later said I was turning red with the effort too. I'm sure it was an attractive picture!
At one point Kevin was leaned near the front of the tub and I was in the opposite end and he said "you're doing great, you're really close!" I thought if he could see something from where he was the baby must be starting to come out so I said "really, I am?" Later he admitted he didn't really know and I had called his bluff, but then Cecily checked and then showed me I could feel his head. It felt like a ripe peach, fuzzy and a little soft. Turns out Kevin was right...lucky guess!
Shortly thereafter it was time to get out of my comfy tub and crawl over onto the bed. Pushing was a lot harder there than it had been in the tub. At the end I was sitting up in a modified squat with my back against the raised back of the bed, knees pulled apart and Kevin pushing back on one leg and a nurse on the other. They'd tell me to tuck my chin over my chest to add more power and I asked, how am I supposed to breathe like that? Answer: apparently, with an oxygen mask strapped to your face.
By now the NICU team was assembled in the back of the room but I don't remember them coming in. You'd think in such a state of undress that I'd have been very self-conscious every time another stranger came in but I didn't even notice. You could have led a tour group through the room at that point and I might not have seen them!
After a few minutes Cecily said Daniel's heart rate was dropping and she needed to do an episiotomy to speed things up. When she said that, I remembered reading that an episiotomy only saves about 5 minutes of time but looking at her face and at the NICU team in the back of the room I knew that was 5 minutes we needed to save. All these people were there to help Daniel and none of them could do anything for him till I finished my job of getting him out.
Dr. Bradley's book says when the baby's head is crowned the pressure from the head keeps an episiotomy from hurting. Dr. Bradley is a liar has obviously never been on the receiving end of an episiotomy. I'm told I had some colorful language at that moment!
And here comes Daniel!
A few minutes later with one last big push Daniel's whole body came out in one big splash- head, shoulders, knees and toes and all parts in between. Before I could reflect much on the moment Cecily was cutting the cord (which turned out to only be about a foot long) and Daniel was off to the back of the room with the NICU team. I do remember that U2's Vertigo was playing, and one of the nurses noted that the time was 11:16 am.
With baby out it was time for stage 3, delivery of the placenta. First Cecily pushed around on my stomach to check for clots, which was as uncomfortable as she had promised. Then she pulled gently on the umbilical cord and out came the placenta, which looked huge. With baby, placenta, and umbilical cord everything must have been squished in there like a clown car. Next it was time for stitches. I remember my legs were shaking, not because I was cold but just from the exhaustion of it all as if I had just run an all-out sprint.
Through all of this I still hadn't gotten to see Daniel but they were suctioning his lungs because he was having trouble breathing. He was crying well though and had good color. His Apgar scores were 8 at 1 minute and 9 at 5 minutes, out of a max of 10, so he was in pretty good shape.
They swaddled him up and brought him over to me for about 2 minutes then he was off to the NICU. I had really been looking forward to holding him as soon as he was born and even getting to try to nurse right away, but of course with the meconium problem that wasn't an option anymore. I'm glad I got to hold him though, and within about 30 minutes the NICU team had taken pictures of him and made them into a little book which was brought down to my room. I was looking at the pictures before Cecily was done stitching me up. We got to see him in the NICU within about an hour, but I'll write about our NICU experiences in another post.
Post-game analysis
So, now that all is said and done, knowing how it would all play out, would I still go for a natural birth? Absolutely! I wish the whole process hadn't been so long (37 hours or so, but who's counting?), but an epidural on its own wouldn't have sped that up and if anything might have slowed it down. Pitocin would have sped things up, but if natural contractions were causing fetal distress then the stronger ones Pitocin causes certainly would have. Maria told me afterward that most OBs wouldn't have sent me home Tuesday night, they would have given Pitocin to speed things along. Knowing now about Daniel's fetal distress that could very well have led us to an emergency C-section.
And as nice as it might have been to have an epidural during the pushing so I didn't have to feel it, could I have pushed as hard as I needed to to get him out quickly if I couldn't feel myself pushing? Pushing in the tub would have been out as I would have had to be strapped to a continuous fetal monitor on an epidural, so I'd be pushing on the bed, a more difficult surface, and unable to feel my efforts. My best chance to get him out quickly was to be able to feel and control my pushes.
Also, after I was done on the bed, I got up and was able to walk unassisted right away, though I did ride longer distances in a wheelchair the first 2 days. I didn't need a painkiller stronger than prescription-strength ibuprofen either. And when we decide to give Daniel a little brother or sister in a few years, I'll still have all the options available to me and won't bring in an additional risk factor of a prior C-section. So for all of those reasons I'm very glad I was able to avoid that.
I'm also glad we chose to deliver at Baylor. Much as I would have loved a birth center birth it turns out this baby needed to be born exactly where he was, with a Level 3 NICU just 7 floors up. I'm also happy that I chose a midwife whose judgment I trusted so when she proposed a deviation from the plan, I was willing to trust it and not argue or question it. Maria told me later that in several births she'd assisted with Cecily she'd never seen her do an episiotomy before so it was definitely not done routinely or for the sake of convenience. It wasn't in my plan, but it was necessary. Had she instead said we needed to get to the operating room and grab an OB for a C-section, I'd have trusted her on that too.
While things didn't go exactly as planned, I feel satisfied that we were able to follow our birth plan as closely as possible while taking all precautions to ensure Daniel's safety. I know there's no medal for doing it all naturally, but if I had gotten the epidural I'd always have wondered whether I could have done it without one. I don't have to wonder now, and from what everyone says, the second baby is usually easier than the first. So if I could handle it this time I should definitely be able to do it the next time.
So after all that, now comes the hard part, taking care of a newborn...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)