I forgot to post the requisite stats, last time I updated. L was born at 6:50pm, Tuesday October 28th. He was 6 pounds, 8 ounces, and 19 3/4 inches.
He slept in his crib for the first time today.
It’s been extremely emotional for me and E both, this is one of those experiences that can’t be described in words. I always judged my feelings on children based on seeing other people’s, and proclaiming what I would and wouldn’t do or be like when I had one.
It’s completely different than everything I thought it would be like, my world and entire set of priorities has been turned upside down for the better. Everything is different now. He’s unlocked a part of me I didn’t know existed, and lives on a level of love I’ve never felt before.
A lot of instincts are kicking in that I didn’t realize resided in me or E. We both have some insane feelings of being very protective over L, and don’t want to be away from him for even a minute. I had trouble going to the store tonight, and E couldn’t even take a shower without feeling separation anxiety.
I have no idea what it’s going to be like going back to work in a few weeks, or when we both start working again.
I’m finally starting to upload some photos of L and the birth.
I thought I would be way more in contact with everyone throughout the last few days, but instead found myself just wanting to have private time with E and some of our family members.
The birth was rough and we’re all still a little shell-shocked. After he was delivered, and the placenta started to be delivered, E wound up with her uterus on the outside of her body. Apparently the way to soften the uterus and get it back in the body is to administer nitroglycerin, a relaxing agent. The anesthesia techs accidentally gave her 150 micrograms of nitroglycerin instead of 50 micrograms, so E immediately started crashing and was rushed to the OR. Every nurse and doctor in L&D was there, she lost tons of blood but wound up being okay in a very short amount of time.
I was left in the delivery room with Liam, who had fluid in his lungs and needed a little TLC to start coughing it up. They cleaned him up, and once E was stable and stitched up, we went in an OR recovery room to have the moment together we missed out on after the birth.
Everyone is in fantastic health now. L is quiet and feeding nicely, cooing and gurgling and acting very content. E was able to stand up and walk around late this morning, which was tremendous progress. All her IVs are out and she was able to start eating.
After that long day yesterday, everything today is very, very quiet and relaxed. They kept us in L&D overnight to monitor E, and now we’re up in a normal room in postpartum.
It feels completely normal and natural to have a son, all my fears went away when he came out. E is a natural at being a mom, as well, she’s doing great with him, and he’s breastfeeding fantastically.
We are very grateful and happy, childbirth is really an amazing and wonderful experience. Our son is beautiful and miraculous to us.
I’ve been meaning to make this post since Friday, everything has been a bit of a blur.
We saw the doctor Friday morning, and although the baby is in great health, E definitely has the beginnings of preeclampsia. She gained five pounds in swelling alone, in the three days since the last appointment, and her blood pressure is getting high. She has been on “bed rest” all weekend (the definition of this in E’s case, with E’s nervous energy, has been debated).
Long story short, she is being induced tomorrow morning, Tuesday. By the end of the day tomorrow (if everything goes well), we’ll be parents!
We had some scares this week, and almost had the baby yesterday. I haven’t gotten to update.
First, as you can see from the photo, E has preeclampsia, her legs and ankles have swollen to over double their normal size. She can’t get her wedding rings on, and has flashes of light in her right eye. So far it’s not caused anything major, and seems to be a mild enough case that she’s not even passing protein in her urine. This is good. The swelling went down enough over the last two days that it’s not as painful.
Second, we got a sonogram two Fridays ago that showed the baby as being small, and the fluid level around the baby measuring on the very low normal scale. From there it could go one of two ways.
On one hand, babies grow at different weights, and don’t always correspond to the textbook weight and size associated with the particular week of gestation.
On the other hand, there is the worry of “intrauterine fetal growth retardation (IUGR)”, which means that toward the end of gestation the growth is trailing off, and the baby needs to come out ASAP. This is extra scary, because the higher the presence of IUGR and the more the growth trails off, the higher the possibility of still birth.
I started to have a lot of respect for the mother/child bond at this point, because E was not worried. She couldn’t explain how she knew, she just knew there was nothing wrong with him. In addition, his movement level has been high, and on the sonograms he has been making breathing movements and chewing motions, both of which are good. His heartbeats have been strong, indicating a continuing good blood supply.
We went to the sonogram on Tuesday, which showed he was still small. The doctor was being extremely cautious at that point, and wanted bi-weekly sonograms. We made another appointment for yesterday (Friday), and fully expected that she would have to be induced.
We packed our bags Friday morning, put the car seat in the car and brought a change of clothes.
We did the sonogram, and it actually showed that he had gained half a pound, and the fluid level around him had increased to the point that there was no worry. He was double the bottom floor value of normality in terms of biophysical profile, and seemed to have picked up growth enough that there was no worry and no reason to induce.
So we’re back to waiting until labor occurs normally, but obviously super happy nothing was wrong.
We spent this past weekend finishing the nursery, since the due date is looming over the next few weeks. It’s brighter in here than it looks, we took the pictures at night since we were so thrilled with the progress.
The little one is just about ready to come out. We haven’t done a belly update in awhile, so I took some photos this morning.
As far as health goes, E turned out to be negative for preeclampsia. She’s also been great at managing the gestational diabetes, once the diet was corrected her sugar levels were all within normal range, and have been ever since.
We went for a sonogram this past Friday. Usually with gestational diabetes, the baby winds up being a lot bigger. We didn’t think that would be the case, since weight-wise he was on target a few weeks ago and E’s diet has been great. To our surprise, he was actually 10 days underweight/undersized. This is still well within the range of normal, but they’re going to do another sonogram this week to make sure everything is fine.
We finally got Liam’s room painted this weekend, it looks great and I’ll post photos when its set up properly.
