September 2008 Archives

First of all, big thanks to Meghan, who reminded me about swaddling. We'd been good about it for awhile, but then stopped when Henry started wearing some warm footie pajamas and we thought he might be too hot all swaddled up. But we tried it again last night and holy bejeezus if the guy didn't sleep like SIX hours in a row. Then he woke up to feed and fell back asleep again. And again! Having mornings available to shower and eat cereal go a long way in making me feel like I can handle the day.

Yesterday was J's and my third year anniversary. We celebrated by having my mom come over and babysit for a couple hours while we went out for dinner. It was weird being out of the house without the baby, but also nice to be able to concentrate on each other for the first time in a couple weeks. Also, big news, I had a lovely glass of pinot noir with dinner and felt like an adult again. Being able to have the occasional drink with dinner makes me very happy. Who knew I had such a love affair with alcohol? It wasn't a huge deal to abstain for nine months, but it was a joyful reunion with that glass of wine last night.

Here's the part in the post where I would update you on new things I saw or did, but, uh, I haven't really left the house all that much. Krista brought me some Jamba Juice! I did another load of laundry! I'm reading American Wife and enjoying it quite a bit! It's very nice and warm outside, though I only get out there every once in awhile.

Henry is starting to track things a bit with his eyes, which is fun. It's almost like playing. His eyes are a lovely blue right now and I'm hoping they stay that color in defiance of genetics.

Hey! Still alive and hanging in there. As you can imagine, my time is a bit more compromised these days. Under any other circumstances, major abdominal surgery would mean you'd be ordered to sleep a lot, stay in bed, and do nothing but eat ice cream and watch Tyra interview teens who are embarrassed their mothers dress like 15-year-olds. Except of course if the surgery is a c-section, in which case you're expected to carry around a crying baby and feed/change him every two hours around the clock. This makes recovery a bit difficult. I mean, thank god for J and my family or I would have lost my mind by this point. This gives me a whole new respect for anyone who has to take on a newborn by themselves.

I'm only exaggerating my exhaustion a little, and I'm only able to do that because Henry had a very good day full of naps and sleepy feedings that allowed me to take a 20-minute nap and read a little of my book. If you had checked in with me on Wednesday, we had a whole different story on our hands with the screaming for no reason and extreme fatigue. Henry crying for apparently no reason for long stretches of time makes me cry and then we're in a bad place. I don't know who invented this breastfeeding cycle, but it's a bit out of hand: baby feeds every two hours for 30-40 minutes at a time. Which leaves you about an hour and a half between feedings to frantically get done anything you might want to get done, including personal hygiene, eating, and sleeping. Of course, you only get that hour and a half if the baby wants to snooze for a bit or be docile after eating. Otherwise, you get stuck in an eating/crying cycle that slowly kills you. We're figuring it out slowly, though. A little pumping, a little bottle, a little timing--we might be getting the hang of it.

Sometimes I just wake up and can't believe we have this little baby and he's all ours and we made him!

That's pretty cool.

Tuesday morning, I went in for an ultrasound so they could check the fluid and see how the baby was holding up in there. The results weren't promising--the technician could only find a few small pockets of amniotic fluid, which isn't great. The baby was otherwise doing okay, but my doctor told me that it should be my last day of work and that I should spend the rest of the week resting and drinking lots of fluid. Being in a holding pattern at work was a bit stressful, so it was fine by me to have a start date for my leave. Aubrey and I went out to lunch and shared the biggest plate of nachos I've ever seen in my life. So if I'm going to credit a food for starting off my labor, it would have to be the ginormous nacho appetizer at Racine's. Can't go wrong with jalapenos, cheese, and beans!

At first I wasn't sure I was feeling contractions because I'd been so uncomfortable the whole week that a few more aches didn't seem out of place. But then they became more distinctly cramp-like and I began suspecting this was the real thing. By the time I got home, they were strong enough for J and I to get excited. They were mild most of the night, but by 11:30 they had progressed into holy-shit-ouch territory. I took a couple hot showers, watched some Chelsea Lately while on the pilates ball, and breathed through them until about 2:00 am, when we headed to the hospital. I know all about the importance of laboring at home as long as possible, and the last thing I wanted was to get to the hospital, have them tell me I was one centimeter, and be sent home. So you should know that by the time we got to the hospital, I was in some crazy pain, the contractions were a couple minutes apart and lasting over a minute each.

The main thing I was concerned about was that the pain was mostly in my lower back. Imagine the worst back spasm ever, concentrated into a small area above your tailbone, that grows in pain and just KEEPS HAPPENING. Anyway: awful. The L&D ward was actually full when we got there and I was admitted into triage where a very nice nurse checked me out and told me I was exactly ONE centimeter dilated. Meaning I had progressed not at all from, like, two weeks ago. I would have been more concerned if I wasn't in mind-numbing pain. She told me to walk around the halls a bit to see if we could get this going. "Walk" is a very general term for what we did, which was shuffle a few feet and then double over in pain. I do pretty good with pain and did the lamaze classes and am all about yoga, but there were contractions where screaming was as close as I could possibly get to "breathing through it."

After the walk, I was still at a centimeter, but they told me they couldn't send me home in this much pain. Back labor is some serious shit, man. At that point I was desperate, and this is what they offered me: morphine. This is how they described what would happen: I would get a shot of morphine, I would pass out, wake up several hours later all well rested, and be much further along. At that point, anything that offered relief sounded good. Unfortunately, a shot of morphine got me exactly nowhere. An hour after the shot, I felt exactly the same and was delirious from lack of sleep and pain. Next option: epidural. Again, this was something I had hoped not to do, but I was past the point of images of my natural birth and signed on for the drugs before they could finish the offer.

I have to say, epidurals are maaaagic. Within minutes, my legs were tingly and I couldn't feel the contractions anymore. Bliss! On top of that, with the added numbness my doctor was able to go in and stretch me to 3 centimeters. There was some sort of scar tissue that had been impeding the dilation, so after that was taken care of, I did okay. I slept a little and felt like I could handle the situation again. It was like returning from a vacation my body took. The television in the room was turned to cartoons, which was fine, though I finally drew the line and made them find a remote when Dora came on. I was not going to give birth with Dora and that monkey staring at me. Luckily, J brought the Wes Anderson collection and we got through Bottle Rocket, Royal Tenenbaums, and half of Newsies (not Wes Anderson) when I got the discouraging news.

Though I had made it to 6.5 centimeters, I had stalled out. The baby was in a weird position, lodged against the pelvis bone and wasn't responding well to the contractions anymore. I had the option of taking some pitocin and seeing that would progress me enough to try to push, but the doctor worried that I'd do that and still be in the same position I was in with the baby and we'd have to do an emergency c-section. So, I could get the section now, or they'd let me try if I was really gung ho about it. Everyone was really nice about it and the doctor especially was incredibly sympathetic to the fact that this wasn't the labor I had envisioned. However, I am not crazy. I just wasn't willing to sacrifice everyone's health and sanity for the small chance I'd be able to deliver vaginally. Really, I was so excited to finally meet the little guy that had been kicking me in the ribs that I was ready to sign on for whatever option got him to me the safest. So c-section it was.

It happened very quickly from there and I was whisked away. After they up the epidural, I really didn't feel anything going on, though the sensation of a team of people cutting a baby out of your abdomen is VERY WEIRD. Actually, the weirdest part was the delivery, where they told me I'd feel "a lot of pressure," What I felt was my chest being compressed rather severely, like I was getting CPR. It was intense enough to make me go, "UHHHHHHHGGHHH" involuntarily. But then! Baby Henry! He was bigger than everyone thought, at 8.5 pounds and had a little dent in his head where he had been pressing against the bone, so the section was the right decision. J was taken away to watch over the weighing and cleaning and I was stitched up and sent to recovery. I was a little sad I didn't get to see him directly afterward, but they brought him to me pretty quickly to feed and hold. I don't think it matters how a baby gets there: when you're holding him or her for the first time, it's really overwhelmingly amazing.

So I'm home now and things are going well. I'm a bit sore from the surgery, but healing just fine. Feedings are going well, even though this whole "eat every two hours" thing can be very exhausting. I feel incredibly lucky to have my family and friends here, who have all been great. My mom's already filled our freezer with food and my dad came and did about million dollars worth of yard work. J goes back to work next week, so we'll see how it goes flying solo.

Lucky I got this cute one.

Back from the hospital and enjoying being in my own house again. I'll give you the whole story later (short version: lots of awful back labor, morphine that didn't work, epidural that did, stuck baby, c-section), but here's a couple pics to tide you over.

Hi all!
I have the happy job of reporting that Liz gave birth to a beautiful baby boy this afternoon! Henry Kahl Kellermeyer came into the world weighing a healthy 8 pounds 5 ounces. He is 20.5 inches long. Liz and baby are doing quite well.

Can you all believe it?!? Hopefully we'll have pictures soon. I'm sure he's cute as can be.

Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby!
Congratulations Liz and J!!!!

Love,
Willow

I'm not sure why my blog is wonky right now. Alls I know is my blogroll was imported to MT4, I tried to edit it and add a widget (to designate me as a contributor to the new Cringe book--go buy it!), and then attempted to save everything. What I apparently did was screw up so badly that my blog lost everything fancy and wound up back at the default template. Anyway, sorry if you miss the bee and the blogroll. How 'bout this awesome maroon banner!

So tomorrow, the 8th, is the official due date for this little guy. Krista and I had a nice talk with him about the virtues of being on the outside of the womb, so I hope he took it to heart. My doctor doesn't seem very confident that this baby will coming close to the due date, however, so we may still be in for another couple weeks. Typing that makes me feel discouraged. I'm mentally prepared for one more week, but two seems like a lot to ask at this point (even though I know it's totally within the norm). Anyway, I go in tomorrow for a nonstress test to see how he's holding up in there. If everything still looks good, another ultrasound on Wednesday will give more detailed info. The emails and texts are starting to trickle in, making sure I didn't go and have the baby in secret. Don't worry, I'm highly efficient. I have Krista on the email front, J calling family, and Willow will be handling the blog announcement. So you don't even have to wait for me to be near a computer!

The nursery is finally near completion. I only say "near" because there are a few finishing touches that would be nice. The mural, however, is complete and totally gorgeous. We painted the bottom of the room orange, the top yellow, and then got some of our friends to create little scenes in a white band we left between the two colors. Like so:

You should click on that pic to see the rest of the set, because it's pretty wonderful, in my opinion.

We've had to work hard at keeping Max out of the nursery and bassinet and car seat. He can't quite understand why we've bought him all these wonderful things and yet won't let him use them. So cruel!

Funny story to tide you over until there is any baby news:

How dyslexia can win you Apples to Apples

[The adjective is "awkward"]

G: Let's see, I guess I choose "chickens" because they are pretty awkward birds. [Throws down "chicken" card, along with "incense."]

J: More awkward than incest?

Just popping in to let you know there's no baby yet. However, today is the due date the ultrasound technician gave us, so maybe we're looking at sooner rather than later.

Can you read the desperation in there?

Spicy foods, long walks...