I Will Never...

Before I was a mom, I tried to stay away from the, "I will NEVER do ____ when I'm a parent!" statements. First, because I felt like I couldn't really make a judgement on such a thing until I was a parent myself and second because I didn't want to end up being wrong. :)

BUT, there was ONE statement that I felt was the exception to this rule...

I will NEVER let the baby sleep in MY bed. Babies belong in their cribs from the FIRST night home from the hospital, right?!? A baby in your bed is not only dangerous. (You could smother your baby while you sleep!) A baby in your bed will interfere with your marriage. No privacy for... ya know?! Your child will end up sleeping in your bed until they start kindergarten. Your kid will be that one that is needy and clings to mommy and refuses to socialize because you've made them completely codependent.

I don't want to RUIN my baby.

FIRST night home from the hospital... Baby monitors are set up. We got the high tech ones, but not the highest tech with like video monitoring (We're not THOSE parents!) We're in bed by 8:30pm and Leah is sleeping peacefully in her cradle IN THE NURSERY. She hasn't stirred, she's warm, her belly is full, her diaper is clean, she's been burped, etc... I've set the alarm for 3 hours so I can wake up and nurse her if she doesn't wake me up first. I can now enjoy a peaceful nights' rest in my own bed without all of the noisy interruptions from the hospital.

8:32pm - Wait?! DID YOU HEAR THAT? (Check on Leah, who is still sleeping peacefully.) I decide to stay and watch her sleep for about 5 minutes just to make sure. She's fine. I can go back to bed. Can I turn up the sensitivity on these monitors? They're already at their max setting, huh? Well, I guess I can sleep with it on my ear instead of on my night stand. Back to sleep. (I'm not going to be one of those crazy moms!)

9:30 pm - Wait?! DID YOU HEAR THAT?! The monitor is registering no sound. I'll just go and check on her to be sure. The second I open the door, I hear choking and see Leah struggling in her cradle to breathe. Her face isn't quite changing colors, but she definitely has a spit-up like mucus in her mouth that is preventing her from breathing, I grab her in one quick scoop and frantically pat her back to get her breathing again. She is fine within seconds. Immediately, the picture of a cold, still infant flashes in my brain. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I'm no longer the least bit tired. What if I hadn't checked on her???

I calm Leah down by cuddling her and then nursing her to sleep. I google on my phone for infants choking on spit-up. One article come up that says it's impossible because a baby will turn its head to the side before it chokes. I feel relieved, but keep on searching. I come upon a babycenter message board. Several mothers are in a discussion about the same thing. One is staying that she had to call an ambulance to resuscitate her child after a similar incident. Oh my gosh! How am I going to sleep knowing that my child could choke any second and I wouldn't be able to hear it on the monitor?

Wait, she had mucus in her mouth. Could that be a sign of cystic fibrosis? (My brother passed away from cystic fibrosis unexpectedly as an infant.) I tested positive as a carrier. We don't know if Doug is a carrier. Her results will not be back for two weeks... I remember my grandma saying that my brother's skin was salty. (Taste Leah's skin... not salty) Okay.

I bring a blanket into the nursery and "sleep" the rest of the night on the floor next to the cradle.

Doug wakes up around 4:30 am and finds me in the nursery. He sends me to bed, takes away the monitor, and then promises to stay in the nursery. I am asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

9:30 am - I wake up in a panic. Has it really been 5 hours?!? I run into the nursery to find Leah perfectly content and Doug getting ready to do a diaper change. I let Doug know about the 3 hour nursing rule and he looks at me like I'm crazy.

Doug - "You mean that while she is nursing, you will have no longer than 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep?!?"

Me - "Yeah, 1-3 hours. That's what they say you should do."

Doug - "I say they're out of their freaking minds! If a baby is sleeping, you don't wake it up!"

The cradle was in our room by the next night. Right now, Doug only sleeps in our bedroom on nights where he won't be working the next day. His job is such that he needs to get a full night's rest because mistakes can mean rather serious consequences. He's sleeping two floors down in the guest bedroom in the basement. (Lucky him! ...I'm actually okay with this situation and came up with this solution myself.)

Tuesday morning, he came up to shower and found Leah in bed with me. It had started innocently at first with me just wanting to nurse her in bed. She would wake up each time I tried to put her back in the cradle, so I just ended up moving her about a foot from me after finishing nursing her and then going to bed. Doug then tells me this horror story about a guy that he works with. Apparently, this guy's wife fell asleep with their newborn son in bed and accidentally smothered him in her sleep. Doug said that the guy talked about how he would never forget the wailing sobs of his wife or the cold feeling of his son.

OH MY GOSH! I almost killed my baby! What was I freaking thinking?!?

Tuesday night... Leah WILL NOT sleep in her crib, in her cradle, in her swing, in her bouncer. She will NOT sleep anywhere! Oh my gosh, is it possible for a child to nurse for 4 straight hours?!? (The answer to that question unfortunately is YES.) I give up around 4:30am and erect a fort of pillows around her on our king size bed. I nurse her and lay her down and she... STAYS asleep. I watch her sleep peacefully for a little while and then pass out myself on my cordoned off portion of the bed.

It is a week later and we are now practicing co-sleeping. I've decided that for the next couple of weeks we are going to treat this like a fourth trimester... Life as similar as possible to life in the womb. I'll try on weekends to get her back into the crib, but for right now, we're working for survival.

I've decided that there isn't just ONE right way for this mom stuff. We will do what works for us.

Being a mom is definitely a challenge, but I love it anyway... In a crazy, sleep-deprived loving way.

Leah's Birth Story

Leah was born last Wednesday, April 10th a little before midnight! Her actual due date wasn't until April 11. This was very unexpected considering that everyone in my family so far has had their babies late. (I, myself, came 3 weeks late!) I've been meaning to get this up here for some time, but it turns out babies are actually a lot of work!

I'll start on Tuesday, April 9. My mom and I had been working on a nursing gown that I could wear in the hospital once I had Leah. I figured that was high priority since it was to go in the hospital bag, so I headed over to my parents' house to "help" my mom work on it. Once I got there, I discovered that my mom's visiting teachers were over, so I just had to sit on the couch and wait. I was feeling pretty restless and finally decided that I was going to vacuum and clean out the interior of my car... 9 months pregnant! It was actually a pretty hot day and I stopped several times to get a drink of water. I believe it was then that I was feeling a "tightening" but I figured it was just Leah stretching out.

Each Tuesday, my friend Caitlin and I do a "Girls' Night Out" while her husband is doing a duty shift as a volunteer fire fighter. We had some extra invitees from work, so Caitlin made a delicious chicken dish and I made strawberry shortcake for desert. After dinner, we were sitting around chatting when I realized that I had consistently been feeling a tightening in my abdomen. While we were in the middle of talking, I grabbed my friend Trisha's hand and said, "Can you feel that?!?" She said she could, but since I wasn't in pain we just decided that it must be Braxton-Hicks contractions.

As I drove home later, I realized that I was having these tightening feelings pretty regularly so I voice googled on my phone what the difference between Braxton-Hicks and real contractions were. I read the article at a stop light and that's when I thought I might be in labor for the first time. Once I got home, I decided to download a free app that would allow me to see the timing between these mysterious tightening sensations that were starting to hurt a little more each time. When I started timing around 10pm, they were about 7 minutes apart and continued at pretty regular intervals all through the night waking me up each time.

Doug had already been asleep whenever I got home, so I didn't want to wake him until I knew for sure that this wasn't false labor. It was around 2:30 am when my contractions were around 5 minutes apart and lasting about 45 seconds to a minute. I called the advice nurse hotline and the lady told me that I should continue to labor at home for 2 hours. 2 hours?!? The contractions had worsened to the point that I couldn't talk during them. I thought there would be more urgency considering that I had followed the directions so well and waited to call. I kindly let the woman on the phone know that we lived an hour away from the hospital thinking that she might have me leave earlier, but she gave me the SAME directions...

Fast forward an hour and a half... OUCH! Contractions hurt! I woke Doug up at 4 am and told him that I was in labor and we needed to leave in 30 minutes and that he might want to shower. He got right up, without panicking one bit, and listened to my directions. Once he was out of the shower, I had him load everything into the car while I showered myself. We got in the car and drove to the hospital obeying all traffic laws... Well mostly anyway.

I remember thinking the whole time that I thought it would be more intense and exciting and well... more fast-paced, but there we were just hanging out, talking in the car, driving to the hospital to have a baby.

We got to the hospital around 5 am and went in the emergency room entrance since labor and delivery wasn't open yet. The whole place was empty and they had me checked in and in a wheelchair and carted to labor and delivery in no time. I got in the gown, peed in the cup, and they started an IV on me with antibiotics since I was strep B positive. There was a shift change right after we got there, so we ended up getting a new nurse and doctor barely after meeting the first ones. When we were admitted, I was 2 and a half centimeters dilated and 70% effaced. The nurse asked me a million questions and after that we were to just hang out and wait. I let the nurse know right off that I was going to get an epidural when the time was right, but I wanted to be 3-4 cm dilated before doing so. (Because I had read that was a good time.)

Funny side story... While we were "hanging out" waiting for me to progress, I started gagging during a particularly painful contraction and Doug couldn't find a barf bucket anywhere. I was making pretty horrendous gagging sounds and there were no nurses in sight and he frantically tried to call one down. He saw behind my bed two different buttons, one said CODE and he knew he shouldn't push that one, so he pushed the other one that said ASSIST. Within a few seconds, we had every nurse on the floor rushing into our room. We were taken care of rather quickly and then shown this handy dandy little remote dangling next to my bed that had a nurse call button. Oops! Our first nurse had not shown us how to get a nurse before her shift was over.

After I finished the first dose of antibiotics (around 8am), they told me that Doug and I could walk around the labor and delivery wing for an hour to help me progress a little faster. By this point the contractions had worsened to the point that they were pretty terrible and an hour of walking did not seem like much fun, but I wanted Leah to get here, so we started walking. Doug was awesome at holding my hand and rubbing my back through the contractions. I figured that there would be several walking moms in labor in the hallway, but we were the ONLY ones. After about 30 minutes, I was crying on my hands and knees in the hall for every contraction and I was getting annoyed that everyone else in the wing seemed to be chatting happily with guests in their room. I kept on telling Doug in between contractions, "Why is no one else walking?! Are we doing this the HARD way? I want to do it the EASY way!" (Doug said I was getting "pretty grumpy.")

It was around 9 am and we were finally back in the room after all of my "hard work" and my nurse asked if I wanted the epidural. I said yes, but I wanted to be 3-4 cm dilated, but no one had checked me in a while. She then told me that the anesthesiologist was right nearby and if she didn't start the paperwork, it might be a while. This alarmed me quite a bit, so I just said, "Yes, I'll get it now." The anesthesiologist and nurse were in there in no time and Doug was out of the room rather quickly due to his needle phobia. They had me hang my legs over the side of the bed, hunch over, and then relax. I felt a little poking I think from them numbing the spot, but then nothing after that. The next thing I knew, it was in and I was laying down. My next contraction I only felt on the right side and then NOTHING. It was amazing! I could still move both of my legs unassisted, but I couldn't feel any contractions. I kept on looking back at the contraction monitor spiking like crazy with a big grin thinking, "I'm glad I can't feel that!"

The doctor for the new shift came in around 10 am and checked me and I was STILL a 2 and a half. I had been laboring consistently for about 13 hours at this point. It was rather depressing news. She said that they would start me on a low dose of pitocin. She gave me an estimate of about 10 pm and said that I should rest up because we would be hanging out for a while. Doug needed to set up some stuff at work, so he left for a little while and I took a nap. Apparently Doug got a lot if flack at work for being there while his wife was in labor. :)

I was making very slow progress all day long and the doctor had gradually been upping the dose of pitocin. It was 7 pm when the doctor came back in to check on me and I was 7 cm dilated. She broke my water and dialed the pitocin to its max dose. When they broke my water, they noticed that there was meconium (baby poo) in it meaning that it could be in Leah's lungs. She was also worried about the size of the baby and told me that I should start mentally preparing for a c-section. I was absolutely devastated. I cried as soon as she left the room. I was trying to think of the positives of having a c-section and the ONLY thing I could think of was that Leah wouldn't have a cone-shaped head!

After my water broke, I started feeling contractions again, but I'm sure no where near their full strength because of the epidural. There was a button that I could push to up the drugs for the epidural, but I refused to do so because I was determined to push this baby out and not have a c-section. I didn't want the epidural to dull the sensation to push when it was time.

I tried to relax. I looked at the contraction monitor and tried to visualize Leah moving down and my body progressing with each contraction. I prayed silently that everything would go okay and that regardless of the way that she got here (hopefully a vaginal delivery) that I just wanted her here safe and healthy.

Around 10 pm, my nurse left and told me that she was going to get my doctor to check me to see if I had progressed any. About 30 seconds after she left the room, I felt like I was going to get sick. I mumbled that I needed something to throw up in to Doug who responded, "Speak clearly, I can't understand you when you mumble!" Haha. I think he started getting it due to my body language and was able to get me what I needed just in time. (I was really regretting that yummy lemon flavored Italian shaved ice pop I ate earlier!)

The doctor and nurse came in the door a few minutes later and checked me and I was a 10!!! Leah was ready to come into this world. Pushing apparently can take a while, so the doctor left again (I think she had been napping somewhere.) and my nurse had me start pushing with each contraction. I realized that I was more in charge during this part because my pushes were more productive when I felt the urge to push. (I guess something that will help me next time!) Doug and I had discussed ahead of time that he would be "up front" at my head looking into my eyes and holding my hand. Well, no one told the nurse, so he ended up holding one of my legs with a front row seat to all of the pushing and the birth.

Soon after he had been enlisted to help, we made eye contact and our communication exchange was rather clear. He looked at me with this look that said, "I don't want to be doing this!" and I looked right back at him with the SAME look. We came to the quick consensus that neither of us would be getting out of our respective roles. Doug's facial expressions during labor were pretty unforgettable. :) He didn't looked sickened or grossed out like I thought he would be. He had this look of complete shock and amazement.

I pushed for about 30 minutes before Leah made her grand entrance into the world at 8 pounds 10 ounces and 21.25 centimeters long. Leah came into this world grunting from the meconium. They showed her to me and then rushed her over to a table in the room to be suctioned and checked out. They handed her back to me within a few minutes, so that I could try breastfeeding. She surprisingly latched right on a nursed voraciously for several minutes until the next team came in to bathe her, do the eye goop, and a vitamin D shot.

I love her!