Saturday, October 27, 2007

Another picture! Ok, two!




Here is Miss Stephanie, having a snooze right next to me, and along comes Cookie, our new puppy we got this summer. Cookie has sprouted like a weed and is now the same size as Max, though she is 2 years younger than he is. She is longer than the baby is, and here she is laying next to her, (down a little since she knows not to be in the baby's face) protecting "her puppy."
ETA: another picture, this one is a close up of paws and feet!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Finally, a picture...

Here she is, just waiting for her Hogwarts letter to arrive! She was about 2 weeks old when I took this, so it is a week and a half old. I must get some current pictures uploaded! She is the size of a loaf of bread and weighs 5 pounds--as much as a bag of sugar! Her foot is as long as my pinky. Her hands are small, her butt is the smallest I've ever see, even her cry is small! The only thing that's big on her are those fat cheeks!!! I can't believe she will be a month old on the 30th!

Saturday, October 06, 2007

She is here!

I will add pics tomorrow, or look at my Myspace or FaceBook.

Grab the popcorn, it's long:

OK, so off we went to the Khaki Ball on Saturday night. I got to wear my pretty dress and eat a yummy dinner. There was another pregnant lady there, and she actually delivered her Eliza Jane on Wednesday October 3rd. But people were taking bets on which one of us would go first, that night. Steve asked how I felt, and I said fine. So he had a few beers with oh, everyone else except me and the other pregnant lady there. I drove back to the hotel. Yes, we were away from home that night! I gave myself my insulin injection at 11. Steve went to sleep and I had quite a lovely shower with a rainfall showerhead. Must acquire one for home...but I digress.

At midnight I crawled into bed, achy in the back. A niggling fear was in the back of my head, but I went to sleep. Or rather, I tossed and turned. At 2 AM, I kinda shifted my weight a bit and felt a small, warm, wet gush. Holy crap, I am in a hotel bed, did I pee again? Is this a repeat of 29 weeks? I go to the bathroom and wipe, no blood. OK. I go back to the bed, where thankfully I had been sleeping with a pad on so it is soaked and so are my undies, but not the bed! I thought perhaps I just peed. But I have these pains that come and go, and now they have teeth. They're not just a backache. And then there is that odd trickle down my leg. Well, crap! I wake Steve and ask him if his two hours of sleep had been enough? He is not amused. Neither am I, since I will now have to drive the damn interstate to get to the hospital! Me! I don't drive the interstate--I am a huge chicken! And gee, I am in labor! My contractions are every 3-4 minutes. And they have teeth! Sharp ones!

In denial, I lay down with a towel between my legs. If it was water breakage, I will leak a little. So I lay down for a bit, tensing with contractions under Steve's bleary and narrowed eye. He and I inspect the now-wet towel. It is streaked with pink. This is it. So I call the doctor's answering service, and am instructed to go to the hospital. We pack it up and check out. I drive the interstate with Steve telling me where to drive, since I have no idea where I am going.

We arrive safely, thank goodness! I am triaged and deemed to be truly in labor. The nursing staff think that I am amusing, since I am laughing and joking. By about 5 am I am in a room--they kept me in the triage area for a while. This is my first labor without Pitocin-they decide I don't need any, and we will see how my labor goes. Ok! And I am allowed to use a birth ball, and am allowed intermittent monitoring, despite the baby's "young" age! Whee! I feel free! I can walk and stretch and do whatever!

I can also swear like a sailor on shore leave! We now know that she took what felt like forever to descend because she was bent in half. Remember the 3d ultrasound pictures where she was grabbing her feet? She descended that way, headfirst. I feel like a huge whiner, but Steve says he thinks I did good. He says I was louder than when I delivered Katie, but he didn't think anything of it. And my language was foul, but that seemed to amuse the nurses. Gone was the laughing, happy patient. She had been replaced by an angry woman who wanted to know why the M-F the urge to push wouldn't come, because she was at her G-D limit!

Did I mention my MIL was there? She called to ask if she could come. I thought for sure I would deliver by the time she got there, and I knew she'd want to see the baby, and plus I was in pain and didn't give a hoot who was in the room. Yeah, I must have been delirious. And guess who drove her? SIL! The two women who are the bane of my existence were there. And I didn't even care. When I was in transition, I threw up. I gave a warning retch and MIL held the barf tub for me. It was the only time she came near me, which was fine. The nurses in the room were trying to take the tub away and she said she was a nurse and it didn't faze her. And I threw up all of my lovely dinner. I was mad. I want another plate, please!

So time passes and once again, I am yowling, swearing and begging the baby to please drop and give me the urge to push. Please? My OB comes in and wants to check me, maybe add some Pitocin to my IV to finish things up, and also wants to put a monitor in the baby's head. OK. Just please check me quickly, because it hurts. He checks me and then screws the monitor in the baby's head. He steps back and I freak out, yelling his name! He is cool as a cucumber, "I'm right here."

"Catch her! Catch her!" I scream. Loudly. Because he jostled her right into postion by putting in that monitor and she came flying out like a freight train. He stared at my hoohoo as if it were a good TV show to see that she was descending, and ever so calmly reached for his gowns. The nurses saw him gowning out and freaked--it was a slow day and I had quite a few nurses popping in, and a student nurse who was learning, too. They hit the "get down here right now" button for the NICU because of Stephanie's age, and I am still yelling for my OB to catch her.

What I didn't know was that he was supervising another doctor, and she was going to help deliver. So I am shrieking at him and thinking he is not taking me seriously and then I look and see the lady crouched, catcher's mitt in hand. He was right there at the ready, but she was getting a turn first.

I know now why this delivery seemed so much more painful than my other two, but right then I couldn't figure out why in the hell I didn't get the relieved "it feels good to push" feeling. She had a tiny little head but her body was all balled up. Friggin' ow! She popped out and I was *sure* I must be tearing. The doctor was telling me to push small pushes and Steve was saying the same. I had a death grip on his hand the whole labor, and he says at this time I started punching him in the neck/chest while gripping his hand. I don't remember that but I do remember telling him No! No! No! so I might have been whacking the hell out of him at the same time. Out she flies, with only a small tear that doesn't even merit stiches. Steve gets to cut the cord.

Stephanie Juliet was born at 10:53 AM on Sunday September 30, 2007, weighing 4 pounds, 9 ounces and measuring 18.5 inches.

Stephanie's legs were horribly bowed. She looked like an anchor. Her legs appeared rotated and her knees bent backward too. Holy hyperextension, batman! The NICU arrived just after the birth and thought she was a breech birth. No. They also gave her oxygen in a nasal cannula as a precaution, and took her upstairs. We had to wait a few hours to see her. I had penicillin in my IV since I had only had my GBS test that Friday and the results weren't in yet. She got her own batch of antibiotics in the NICU. She was taken off the oxygen but sugar water was put in her IV because her sugar was low, from my diabetes. We were really freaked out about her legs--were they broken? Would she need surgery? Would she ever walk? We cried.

Steve had to go home to relieve our sitter--she thought she had the kids overnight for the Khaki Ball and got them for a bit longer! So he didn't get to see that within 8 hours of birth, the baby voluntarily put her legs down straight. If you disturbed her she would flail her legs and bend the knees the wrong way. As the days have passed, she has retained a normal position and keeps her knees bent the right way. She is very flexy and I call her Gumby. Steve is not amused.

They stopped testing her blood sugar so frequently. She finished her round of antibiotics and her IV was removed. She regulates her temperature just fine now. She moved from the big flat wide open bed for sicker babies, to the box bed with hand holes for less sick babies, to a regular crib. She is currently trying to decide if she wants to be orange like a pumpkin. Also, she has a tube down her nose since she likes to sleep rather than eat. So I pump my milk, which has come in nicely, and if she won't nurse, or drink my milk from a bottle because she is too tired, they put it down her tube. She is getting tons of rest and growing, and is more actively trying to nurse now. As soon as she eats without the tube long enough to make the doctors happy, we can go home. She only lost three ounces since birth, which is fantabulous! And she was moved from teh NICU to the Continuous Care Nursery, which is one step closer to home.

That's about it. I love her to pieces, and so do many, many people across the globe. She is popular! My weenie dogs are very protective of the blanket we brought home for them to smell. Jonathan & Katie have met her and then Katie was diagnosed with strep so now both kids are not allowed back until she is better.

She is cute, tiny perfection with huge cheeks. I miss her and cannot sleep but I am going to try now here in a minute. It was very hard to leave her "all alone" and that's why I stayed in a family room in the hospital for a night after I was discharged. But I needed to come home. And since I came home, I have gotten squat done. Sigh.