Another Update from the Hospital

Today will hopefully be my last night in the hospital, as long as nothing more comes of the "crackling" sound that they could hear in my right lung this morning.  And I'm really, really hoping nothing comes of it, because I'm more than ready to go home!

Patrick is the quietest of our little ones so far (which is saying a lot, since Mae was really quiet too!).  Unlike our two girls he wants to be swaddled all the time, so he's pretty much living inside of his little monkey swaddler.  

Here are the latest pictures from the last two blessedly uneventful days:

Grumpa and Patrick hold hands.

A kiss from his adoring big sister.

Mae gets snuggles with Mommy.

Snuggles while Mommy works on being on her feet again.

Cuddles with both girls with lots of pillows to protect my stomach...
There was an unfortunate incident the day after the c-section involving my stapled stomach and a enthusiastically thrown bag of Huggies from one of my little helpers.  Let's just say that I managed to stop crying after a ridiculous amount of narcotics and several hours of wondering how that could possibly hurt as much as it did...
And so now... now I am surrounded by pillows.

The baby bump is slowly looking less baby-bumpish.
I made Paul snap a picture of the progress.
I still have a ways to go however since Sadie's first reaction, upon seeing me was to ask
if there was another baby in Mommy's tummy.
When she found out there wasn't she launched into a speech about how there should be.

Here's the Daddy bed.
This is where we've discovered that Daddy could easily sleep
18 hours a day if no one woke him.  

And here's the little guy, enjoying being swaddled.  I'm glad I learned how to sew swaddlers because I have a feeling we're going to need quite a few to keep up with Patrick's desire to be swaddled all the time!

Patrick's Arrival in Pictures!

I'm too exhausted to write up our birth story yet... but I just had to share the pictures from yesterday.

Here they are:

Patrick Xavier

Patrick Xavier was born at 11:10 pm!  He was our littlest baby so far, weighing in at 8 lbs 12 oz and measuring 22 inches.  His head was 14 1/4 inches around.  His face and head are a little smooshed at the moment from the 34 hours of labor before the c-section!

So far he's a super laid back baby.  He let out a few little cries when he was born, and a few more when he heard my voice. He didn't make a sound when hey gave him a shot.  He's nursed for one hour of his two hour life and is now dozing peacefully.

And... somehow... he was transverse (although when labor started he was head down, which was confirmed in triage with an ultrasound).

We're so excited to be blessed with this little guy.  I'm feeling surprisingly good.

I'll write more later, but I just had to give you an update tonight and thank everyone for the prayers!  They helped carry me through this day!

C-Section...

Here's the latest for those of you not on facebook... After laboring all day (33 hours now...) and trying pretty much everything (walking the halls, birthing ball...) baby is still at -2 and 5 cm (all day long).  They think he's really, really big...  So they just ordered c-section #3.

We tried it naturally.  We tried with a little bit of pitocin.  We  tried with a lot of pitocin and no epidural.  We finally tried an epidural (since that is when I dilated with Sadie.  Nothing got labor to progress... so....

I'm pretty at peace with this though.  I feel like everyone did everything they could.  The nurses and doctors have been so awesome.  They've really tried to make this work!  Now to meet Patrick.

Prayers are appreciated!

The Unexpected Pitocin Experience

The pitocin has been raised six times and....
still feeling good!

I'm hanging out on the birthing ball again, watching as the monitor tells me that I'm having crazy, constant contractions.  The pitocin has been raised five or six times now and has definitely kicked in.  Things are rolling right along.  And I'm a little bit shocked... because apparently I was pretty skeptical about whether or not my Hypnobabies program would actually work when I was in labor.  It wasn't that I was skeptical of the program itself.  It was more that I was skeptical of my five week dash to complete the program and then my ability to actually use it while I was in labor.

Added to that was my fear of pitocin.  I've had it before.  It's nasty stuff.  I remember it from my labor with Sadie and would wince when it came up in conversation with any of the doctors.  But when the formerly consistent contractions came to a stop this morning I knew that my chances of a VBA2C hinged on getting things started, so I reluctantly agreed (after timing my own contractions while pacing the halls and realizing that they just weren't starting again...).  After all, now that my water has broken (if you missed the post, it broke on its own, without any help!  Yay for that!), it's not like they'll be sending me home.  And the threat of a c-section if nothing happens is... well... it's definitely here.

So the pitocin drip began and I braced myself for the worst.  The contractions picked up a bit, but were virtually painless.  There was more pitocin and more contractions and the cycles continued.  The contractions are around three minutes apart now.  They're around a minute long.  They feel incredibly intense. There's pressure and an ache.  But it's certainly bearable.  And more than that I feel really happy every time I have a contraction, which is a hypnobabies suggestion that I was totally skeptical of originally, but which seems to be set into my subconscious after listening to the tracts many, many times.  And that happy feeling is during the contraction, which is really, really strange.

I know we aren't guaranteed smooth sailing from here, but I'm cautiously optimistic.  I just saw in the nurses report on the computer as she typed it in that I'm making good progress...

And that's the latest update!  Could it be that I'm actually not going to have a birth horror story this forth time around?  I'm cautiously optimistic!

No Induction Needed!

So far the Hypnobabies thing is working for me pretty well!
And I'm still really excited that my water broke on its own!

Good morning!

I was pretty happy last night when, shortly after my last post, my water broke on its own.  My doctor came into the room about 15 minutes later to break it, so the timing couldn't have been better.

The contractions were about 4 minutes apart after that and I'm up walking around in the halls and (at the moment) bouncing on my birthing ball.  I even managed to sleep quite a bit last night.  The pain is definitely still manageable, which brings me to a conversation with Paul yesterday, while walking around Macy's (the mall has been a major center of walking for me since it's been so cold outside!  It's in the 20s right now!  And while I love the cold the coughing fits don't help my progress!).

Me:  "Oh.  There's another contraction.  What was that?  Two minutes and thirty seconds since the last one?  Under three minutes now.  I just wish they really hurt.  If they hurt I'd know.  I'd know it was time to go to the hospital."
Paul:  (chuckles to himself)
Me:  "What?  What are you laughing?"
Paul:  "It's just that you've spent months listening to that lady telling you every single night, all night that labor isn't going to hurt.  And then you go into labor and it doesn't hurt and you're worrying about how it doesn't hurt enough."

Yeah... he's right.  I would put my current hypnobabies track on the computer and listen to it on a loop all night long.  And yet I find myself looking to how painful things are as a reflection of how they're going.

In other news, things are actually slowing down this morning and while I've already refused the epidural three times (since I've been admitted), but am realizing that I may lose the pitocin battle soon.  I've already refused pitocin once, but since the contractions have spaced themselves out (walking or not now) I think it's a battle I'm going to ultimately lose.

Ah well.  Sadie's labor was pitocin + no epidural (not by choice that time... the epidural caused her heart rate to plummet) and I survived.  At least this time I've spent time mentally preparing for non-medical pain relief.  Last time I was quite simply shocked that the epidural wasn't going to be an option.

Now, on to have this baby.  And to glare at Paul's back.  I do this when he's asleep and I'm awake (like he is at the moment).  I especially glare after hearing words like:  "I think you're looking at this as some kind of competition in suffering" followed by some words about why he needs more than the seven hours of sleep he just got last night.  I'm not particularly sympathetic to the varying levels of comfort on the recliner in the room (guys, word for the wise that's something you might not want to comment on while your wife is in labor...).

At least this blog post bought him another half hour of me not bugging him so I'll have someone to talk to.  I'm a little bit bored at the moment.  I guess I'll go search for more memes like this one (my favorite of this morning's search):

Admitted

I was dreaming of pizza.  And my new favorite restaurant, Cheddar's.  We were minutes away from heading out the door to the triage room, which considering the minute and a half apart contractions didn't really seem like the greatest idea in the universe, but hey, I was hungry and that was making the idea sound better and better by the minute.  Sure I might end up having the baby in the car or on the sidewalk between the car and the house, but at least I would have (hopefully) gotten in a good meal first (because that's how quickly things pick up when I'm not laying down.  I'd been cleared by the resident and it was time to go.

Until... she reappeared with a new nurse and it wasn't time to go anymore (by the way, despite the hunger, logically I totally agree with the decision...).  Someone had finally informed my own doctor that I had come in to labor and delivery and he vetoed the release and had me admitted.

The next news was that the nurse who told me that I was actually GBS negative was wrong, and that not only am I not negative, but it's apparently a strain that's immune to every single antibiotic in the world (okay, slight exaggeration).  But it's not resistant to vancomycin, which is apparently like "killing a bumble bee with a baseball bat" so at the moment I'm sitting on the birthing ball, in my new, very nice labor room, hooked up to an IV.

The current baby weight estimate is right around 9 lbs.

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I just had a blogging break while I was hooked up to the monitor holding very, very still, while Patrick didn't cooperate with having his heart rate monitored.  I'm unhooked again and about to take a nap.  Hopefully I'll be able to sleep for a little while before things get too crazy.  

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And of course, I have to show off one of my "quick the baby's coming" sewing projects.  I made this hospital gown earlier in the month, complete with matching snood.  It has snaps all the way up the back and at the shoulders.  

For some reason polka dots always cheer me up!

Thanks to everyone for the prayers being sent up for us!  I'm a little bit nervous at the moment and they're a great comfort!  

An Update from Triage....

By the time we walked to the hospital I was pretty glad that we'd decided to go in.  The contractions were a minute and a half apart, lasted for a minute (which means a thirty second break between them) and were far from the cute "oh look a practice contraction" type.

We've been here for a couple hours now, being monitored.  The Boy looks good.  I'm having contractions even when laying down.

This is it, right?  I mean, the doctor said he wants me here for any and all contractions because that's the only way they'll agree to let me try a VBA2C (hence coming in, for anyone who wondered why I was considering it, albeit reluctantly, so early...).

Um... nope.  It looks like I'm going home.  There are contractions.  They are real contractions according to the monitor.  They feel real.  They're pretty constant.  But it's crowded and my doctor isn't here and I'm progressing slowly.  So I'm waiting to be released to go home to wait for them to tell me to come back so that they can break my water.  Even without the water breaking I think, at this point in labor, leaving probably means coming back in the very near future (this happened with Sadie and Mae... with Mae I was sent home and told I wasn't in labor and I was holding her about 18 hours later and that was with those icky contraction killing drugs slowing things way, way down).

It seems a little silly.  But at the same time, I'm kind of relieved because we headed over without eating lunch (which was dumb) and I'm starving right now and starting this whole thing on an empty stomach does not seem like a particularly good idea.

I'll keep posting updates.  It seems like Patrick is going to be here very soon.  But I think I get one more trip home before that happens!