The Very FIRST time I looked at my precious baby. I was having a very hard time not balling my eyes out! I couldn't believe I had just pushed that little guy out!!!! This picture means more to me than you can ever know. I know it's gross. There's blood, vernix, all that yucky stuff. But unless you are a mom, you have no idea...
After some of the darkest hours of my life... reunited with my baby after 36 hours of not seeing him... I'll explain later. You can't tell it, but I'm balling here too.
Having a baby that's jaundice is very common, still doesn't make it less scary to a new parent! We just thought this was so cute!! It gave us something to laugh about when we were so scared for our baby and for myself.
I wanted to recount my experience before any more time goes by and it's too late to remember all the details. Might take several blog posts, who knows. I really need to clean my house right now, baby's napping, all that good jazz. But I wanna' start telling you my story. I've talked about it before and probably told most of you. But I'm not sure how many people GET the fact that the darkest, scariest time of my life was right after I had my baby. So I'll start at the beginning.
I was 37 weeks pregnant and on bedrest. I had PIH - pregnancy induced hypertension. High Blood Pressure. There. I said it. Scariest words ever... for me anyway. Throughout my pregnancy, every time I would go to the doctor they took my BP. (blood pressure). It was always through the roof, because I would get ANXIOUS and NERVOUS and my heart would start to pound outta' my chest. I could feel my BP rising every morning that I had a dr.s appt. What happened was that the first BP I took was 120/80 at 9 weeks. I asked if that was high and the nurse said, "Kinda, but you are probably excited." The next time I went, I got kinda nervous about it, thinking, "Well, what if it's high?" It was 138/80 something... don't remember exactly. And so forth and so forth. It would get higher at each appointment. I started expecting it. Started getting nervous and anxious before each appointment. This is called WHITE COAT syndrome. It's not that my BP ran that high all the time. It's that I ran it up myself thinking about my bp. It's a HORRIBLE catch 22 for me. My mom had very high bp during both her pregnancies and so did my grandmother. So I was terrified about it in the first place. Anyway, the dr. would always lay me on my left side and take it again and it would go back down to a safe or even normal bp. I would monitor my BP at home and it would do the same thing. Actually, at home it was pretty low. I was safe and comfortable. So that's kinda the background... what I'd been dealing with for 9 months. Basically, the biggest fear I had was getting preeclampsia. A synodrome where your blood pressure gets too high and can cause seizure, stroke, blurred vision, kidney failure, etc, etc. It was could HELP disease. Once you have seizures it is called "eclampsia". Needless to say, I didn't wanna' have ANY of that. Several times I saw spots, but I never had any liver pain nor did I get any severe headaches. BUT I am a hypochondriac. SO knowing symptoms for me was the hardest part. I always was terrified that I HAD the symptoms. Back to the story...
Again: 37 weeks and on bedrest. I was on bedrest because towards the end of my pregnancy my BP really did get high and stay high. Not just nerves. Saturday, September 11th, I prayed that I would not go into labor. 9/11 is such an important day in our country's current history, but I didn't want to celebrate my baby's birthday on that day. Kinda sad... but I definitely felt a few minor cramps and thought they were just braxton hicks contractions. I was 36 weeks preggo and new it would be very normal to start having contractions here or there. I'd went to the hospital the previous weekend thinking that my water had broken. They amniosure test that they did said my water had indeed broken and I was in labor and would get to have my baby. Alas, the test lied. I was sent home after an expensive over night stay at the hospital. False alarm. Needless to say, I wasn't in any hurry to go back to the hospital for any false alarms. Sunday, September 12th, I stayed home from church (being on bedrest and all).
That morning I started having contractions. Only, I wasn't sure if they were contractions. They didn't hurt. They felt like slight menstrual cramps. I was expecting like WHOA BABY kinda pain. Oh and spotting. I had spotting. Sorry if you are a guy and reading this: but it's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I called the on-call doctor at my practice and asked her about it. She did NOT tell me I was in labor, but her exact words were, "When your contractions are 3 - 5 minutes apart c'mon in to the hospital." I was kinda wondering what she meant by that. I guess she knew that I was in labor. But I didn't know. Anyway, Sunday I stayed at home all day. I had this gut feeling I was starting labor. I kinda knew it. I got excited and started walking around the house. I fixed my hair. Around 1:00 p.m. contractions came every 3 - 5 minutes. But they didn't hurt. I could talk through them, breathe through them. I kept thinking that if this were the real deal I would feel more. Anyway, by 9 p.m. they started hurting a bit more. Enough that I started trying to talk Calvin to take me to the hospital. He was VERY hesitant to do so. He didn't want to go through all that to have another false alarm. He wanted me to go to bed. I couldn't sleep at this point. I was a good girl and only had a bowl of cereal for dinner, too. At 6 p.m....so I hadn't eaten for three hours. At this point, it really started hurting and still faithfully coming every 3 - 5 minutes. I took a hot shower (so much for fixing my hair and looking cute during labor). By 11:30, I was packing stuff in the car regardless of whether or not Calvin was taking me. At this point, I was having a hard time talking through the contractions. We got to the hospital around midnight (Cal came through for me!). Ha! They checked me into triage, where a labor and delivery nurse decided my BP was 170/110 (through the roof!) and wanted me to stay if only for that reason. They decided I was definitely in active labor though. BUT after laboring a whole day at home, I was only dilated to 3! Within an hour or so of arriving to the hospital and getting checked in and all the belts and wires and bp cuffs hooked up... I was offered my epidural. They lower BP...no one tells you that. Good thing for me.
Let me tell you something if you don't already know. EPIDURALS are God's gift to women! I coulda' had ten babies and I still might! haha. I didn't care how big of a needle they stuck in my back, as long as afterwards I was pain free. Which I was. You know, they tell you to sleep in the hospital, but if you are like me and you keep thinking about having to push a baby out in a few hours and not getting around it in any way, there's no way in the world my nervous self could sleep at all. Anyway, I got my epidural around 2 or 3 a.m. OH and I called my mom and told her to come to the hospital and my sweet mom was there ASAP and she held my hand all through the night. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have a mom do that. So, I "snoozed" (NOT slept), and just waited for the magic number. 10. The big one oh. Pitocin, snoozing, more pitocin. My BP was 130's/80's which was GREAT! Completely under control. Did I mention that I got a hot spot on my right side? The epidural wore off on my right side and I FELT the contractions on that side. It hurt really bad. I can't imagine feeling them on BOTH sides. Finally, it was time to push. I started pushing at 2 p.m. and had David out my 2:20. Woulda' had him out sooner, but we seriously waited for 10 minutes on the dr. Nothing like having a baby crowning and having to WAIT to push. Let me tell you, that did NOT feel good. Pushing itself felt GREAT. It was relief and I am glad I felt the contractions because I knew when to push.
Anyway, having that baby laid on my chest was the most amazing feeling ever!
I am SO thankful to God to get to be a woman and push out a baby. I'm not gonna' lie. With my BP situation, I was SOOOOOO grateful to have gotten to do a vaginal birth and not have a c-section. I was so PROUD of myself. Little 'ol me pushed a baby out. Couldn't believe it. My baby was finally here. I won't lie here either, the first time I saw him, I thought oh dear he's all smushed and not very pretty.
LOL! I know, horrible, right? I didn't love him any less, I was just thinking it. Anyway, it's amazing the transformation newborns go through because by that night, he became unsmushed and his features were so much prettier! He was beautiful and looked just like his handsome daddy!
So, that's the climactic part of the story. I had my baby. I can't blog anymore right now. I'll tell you more of the story later. The dark part...the part that I don't like to talk about or relive. The part that makes me terrified to have more babies. Keep in touch! ;)
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