big day

Earlier this week, in the space of 5 minutes, Milo:

shot poop across the changing table and hit his laundry basket at least three feet away;

peed all over himself;

lost his cord stump.

big day.

pediatrician's appt

We had two pediatrican’s appointments last week, one on Wed and one on Friday to check on his weight gain. On Wednesday he weighed in at 6 lb 11 oz but by Friday he was up to 6 lb 13 oz, hooray! We have been continuing to supplement his feeding with pumped breastmilk on the advice of the lactation consultant at the hospital and that seems to be working, which is great. We can’t have our peanut losing weight!

We’ve been home for a week now and are sort of starting to get the hang of things. Sort of. He’s eating every 2-4 hours but we still usually have to wake him up and remind him that he’s hungry. Right now it works out fine to get up every couple of hours at night as I can just go right back to sleep and stay in bed until noon (with food breaks for Milo of course) if I want to. Going back to work will be a completely different story though.

We have our two week appointment next week on Thursday, fingers crossed for additional weight gain!

And as an aside...I got a belt on today. Granted it’s on my maternity pants and I still have quite the tummy, but still! Whooooooo!

details

Our little bird was born on 12/3 at 5:43 pm at St John's Hospital here in Jackson.

I wrote out all of the details already in an email to my friend Kris, so I’m going to indulge in a little cut ‘n’ paste action.

so let's see....I went in to the dr on Monday afternoon because my hands had felt super weird and swollen all day and I'd had a lingering nagging headache since the night before. When I got there my BP was something like 150/109, another sign of possible pre-eclampsia. they drew some blood and had me pee in a cup and then hooked me up to the maternal/fetal monitor just to make sure that milo was doing ok in there and to check and see if i was having any contractions. dr george ordered me to bed rest and sent us home.

Tuesday i spent all day in bed watching movies (rough work!!) and checking my BP every couple of hours. it was pretty consistently around 155/100 all day so I called the dr office around 3 to get their advice. i talked to one of the other doctors on the staff and she thought it was probably time to think about going to the hospital this week. She conferred with dr george who then called me and recommended we come in that night to start induction. so we did!

I called nate to come and get me and then sort of wandered around the house, trying to wrap my head around the whole baby thing. we grabbed some quick dinner on our way and then checked in at st. john's around 8 pm or so. They checked my cervix again (still at 2 cm and hardly effaced at all) and then gave me the ripener to let things progress overnight with some medical assistance. at 5:30 am they came back, took the ripener dealie out and re-checked me...still 2 cm, but about 50% effaced and apparently much softer all around. They started running in pitocin at 6:30 am. I'd been having really wimpy contractions all night but probably just as a side effect of the ripener.

Dr. Anthony came in to check me around 10 or 11 am, STILL 2 cm and not even enough room for her to break my water. grr. around noon or 12:30 the contractions were lasting about a minute and were only a minute apart and really really strong - strong enough where I couldn’t stand to have Dr. Anthony examine me.

I totally started to panic around 1 in the afternoon. The contractions were so fast that I wasn't really getting any chance to catch my breath or try to focus on anything to calm down. I thought about getting in the whirlpool and even had them start to fill it for me but then couldn't stand the thought of standing up or walking down the hall to get in it. I think my exact words were something along the lines of 'f&$% the tub, i don't want the tub, give me the shot' and poor nate was doing so good and trying to be soothing and suggest other things that could help and all i could think of was 'give me the drugs no I do NOT want to try a different position or the tub...DRUG ME RIGHT NOW!!!!'

I asked for the epidural probably around 1:15 or 1:20 and he was in my room and ready to go by 1:30. it was definitely a weird procedure...the initial numbing agent is all hot and itchy and then you can feel them in the space trying to find the right spot for the tube....not painful but for sure uncomfortable.

anyway, by 1:45 I couldn't feel a thing and was soooo much happier. Nate thinks they may have given me a bit too much - my legs were completely asleep until about 4 hours after the delivery and I couldn't even feel an urge to push when it was time. Whatever though, it was totally worth it and I will do it again if I need to.

Nate and I both slept until about 4:30 when the nurse came in to check me again and I was 10 cm and fully effaced. She said later that she was really surprised - the whole staff on call that day was convinced I wouldn't deliver until either late that night or even the next day since it took me 7 hrs of pitocin to progress from 2 to 4 cms. They called dr george who was on his way back from pinedale (about an hour away, they see patients down there once a week or so) and was very surprised to hear that i was ready to go. :) heh, I fooled them!!! Milo was at +2 station so it was probably good to wait a bit to push until he was a little further into my pelvis. plus since I had no urge to push it was not a big deal to wait at all.

dr george got there around 5:10 and I started pushing maybe around 5:15 or 5:20....thank goodness even without being able to feel anything I was able to push correctly. Apparently some women have trouble with that...seemed pretty obvious to me but then again breastfeeding doesn't seem like it should be that hard either.

after about 4 or 5 rounds of pushing the nurse said 'wait wait stop! I should really get your dr to deliver this baby' - he had stepped out a sec to do some paperwork and get into his scrubs, expecting the pushing to take 2-3 hours since I was a first timer and completely numb from the waist down to boot. He came running in and threw his gown and gloves and everything on with Milo's head partway out...one more little push and I was done. Dr george put him on my chest and they rubbed him down and he was just perfect and amazing in every way.

So overall I'm very pleased with how it all went - I think it's funny that I was going so slowly for the first 6-7 hrs and then all of a sudden my body decided 'hey, let's do this thing!' and shot him out. Now of course everyone is saying how easy the next one should be. Yeah...i'll get right on that.

He never really cried until he was one or two days old - dr pockat (the pediatrician) was a little worried that he may have some sort of respitory distress but his oxygen levels were awesome so it looks like his gruntiness was just him talking at us. His bilirubin levels were high on day 2 which is why we ended up staying two extra nights.

We were discharged Sunday afternoon and have been home since then getting used to each other. The feeding thing is starting to come together a little bit...or at least we’re starting to get a bit of a routine together. Norm is confused but has been really good about the new little attention hog in his life, which is a relief. He’s never really been around little kids so I was a bit worried as to how he’d react. Of course Milo doesn’t really do a whole lot at this point, but still.

milo charles gray

He's here!

And he has his own website!

check it out!

36 weeks (well, almost)

Crenshaw melon. Is that a cantaloupe from the 'hood? A gangsta' honeydew?

He's most likely approaching 6 lbs now and is about 18.5 inches long...coincidentally that is the approximate height of the ledge I drove off as I picked up Nate for the appointment today. We're all fine, I was turning the car around and didn't see it - there is some damage to the charcoal filter in the exhaust system but I think that is about it. That didn't stop me from going into a hysterical crying fit or sending my blood pressure through the roof (it had returned to normal by the end of the appointment).

Other than that, everything went fine. Dr. George recommended that I cut down to 4 days a week at work and try to lay down at least 3 times a day while I'm here, so from here on out I'm working Mon-Thurs (ooo gotta change my voicemail!) until I deliver. Except for next week, when I'll be working Mon-Wed and taking Thanksgiving off. But working a halfday on Sunday to train the cashiers.

It's all very complicated.

At our appointment next week he'll start checking on my progression to see if there is any dilating or effacing going on, that'll be so cool. Of course the answer will most likely be 'no', but whatever. The more you know, and all that.

Some more pictures from our weekend outing:











1-4 weeks to go!

35.5 weeks

this week he is the biggest honeydew melon on earth at 5 1/4 lbs and 18 inches. his development is pretty much done and he's going to spend the next few (....very few....) weeks putting on weight.

not much else to report really, other than i wholly agree with the idea of the last few weeks being the most uncomfortable. we had an all day seminar thing at work on friday and I could not make it through the morning session without getting up and walking around because it hurt far too much to sit in a chair for 3 hours. plus i think i hit the restroom about 5 times in that same time frame.

yesterday we took a trip to an abandoned school house and took some more belly shots, including a story-type sequence that is pretty cool (but will remain under wraps until the unveiling of the new website - after the goober is born). nate has been doing an amazing job setting up and taking pictures; he's got a real talent.

this is one i took though - all i can see of my feet at this point -















there are more on flickr, plus i'll be adding EVEN MORE tonight, so check back!

4.5 or (eek) 1.5 weeks to go!

edited to add - new pictures are up on flickr, just follow the above link to see them all.

34 weeks

This week he is a cantaloupe, weighing approximately 4 3/4 lbs and is almost 18" long. Not all of those tenses are correct but I don't know how to fix it. You all know what I mean.

He is putting on more fat layers and his nervous system and lungs are continuing to develop. The risks of pre-term labor are dropping as I get closer to 37 weeks - babies born between 34 & 37 weeks with no other health problems usually do just fine. If it happens he may need a quick stay in the neonatal unit at the hospital but that'd be about it.

I am also putting on more fat layers, although Dr. George says it's just water weight (hooray!). Still, it's a little depressing to watch that scale jump every appt...oh well. Pretty soon I'm going to lose 12-15 lbs in one day! Won't that be neat! Plus then the water weight will disappear as well and before you know it I'll be svelte as all get-out.

Dr. George also mentioned that I should probably start cutting back my hours at work a little bit to allow me to work closer to my due date. It's nice to have a medical person telling you to work less. Then you don't feel like such a slacker just going home early because you're tired! He also reinforced the fact that I should be laying down every few hours for about 20 minutes, so I will definitely make a concerted effort to do better at that.

In fact....perhaps I should do that now!

3-6 weeks to go!