Zack and ShaNae

Our little baby turned 8 weeks old yesterday. Wow!
We went to the doctor yesterday to discuss some issues she has been having. We didn't get all her measurements but we did get a weight... 12 lbs. 12 oz. Way to go little girl! She is in the 80th percentile for weight, which is just fabulous. We adore her chunky cheeks, the folds on her arms and legs, and her delightful Buddha belly.
She started smiling socially this past week. See photo above. Too cute, right?
She is an excellent sleeper, and often sleeps 8-10 hours at a time, waking up a couple of times to eat and then going right back to sleep. Unfortunately, she does that sleeping during the day and then stays awake all night. We are usually up with her from 1 or 2 AM until at least 7 AM. It has been a bit of a challenge, but it is hard to stay mad at that cute face for too long. We are working to try and get her to sleep during the night and stay awake in the day, but babies do what they're gonna do, and there's often not a whole ton we can do about it.
She hates being strapped in her car seat. If she is in it and she is awake, chances are she is screaming.
Nicknames: Babycakes, Bugaboo, baby burrito, chunkalunk

Warning: This is a REALLY long post (made even longer by this little preface) and it involves some of the nitty gritty details of labor and delivery. I recorded it this way because I want to remember and because I think Clara might be interested in reading it someday. If you don't want to read it, I promise I won't be offended. In fact, I won't even know. So feel free to sit this one out if you feel like it. I put some pictures at the end if you want to just skip to those. Thanks.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

I got up at the crack of dawn for work, excited to only have 7 more work days until my maternity leave. Work was fine-- fairly uneventful. I spent an hour and a half in a training class for a new computer system we are getting at work, but still got all my work done in time to cut out a little early in order to make it to my weekly doctor appointment on time. The appointment started with the usual stuff... pee in a cup, weight, blood pressure. My blood pressure reading was high, with the systolic reading in the 140s. I am usually in the 100s to 110s, so the doctor was concerned. They checked my urine for protein and sure enough, there was a little. So the doctor mentioned the term preeclampsia and said she wanted to send me over to the hospital for monitoring, and I kinda felt all flip outty. Of course, she wanted a repeat blood pressure, and this time the reading was in the 160s.

So I headed home just long enough to change out of my work clothes and to pick up my hubby and we went to the hospital. While there, I spent the next several hours sitting in a chair while a machine took my blood pressure every 10 minutes. The readings were still high for me, mostly 130s, but didn't seem too bad. Oh yeah-- and I got to find out what it is like to be straight catheterized. Basically, they stuck a tube up into my bladder and drained all the urine out and then pulled the tube back out. Ouchie. Not my favorite thing ever. But they wanted to make sure that the protein in my urine was actually in the urine and not from some external source.

After the several hours of monitoring, we were expecting to be sent home with orders not to go to work anymore and to take it easy. The doctor sat down with us and explained that the protein definitely was in my urine and my pressures were still too high, so they were diagnosing me with mild preeclampsia and wanted to go ahead and induce labor. I was blown away. It felt like it came out of nowhere. I wasn't ready. I still hadn't packed my hospital bag. I was scheduled to work in the morning. I was supposed to have a baby shower on Saturday. We still needed to pick up a ton of stuff for the baby before her arrival. We hadn't for sure decided on a name. We thought we would have at least a couple more weeks to deal with all of that. Just then, the machine took my blood pressure. The reading was in the 180s.

By the time they checked us in at labor and delivery, it was after 10 PM. I hadn't eaten since like 1 in the afternoon. I was nervous and stressed and it felt like reality was suspended. I had my cervix checked 2 or 3 times and each person said I was not dilated or effaced at all, so I knew I was facing a long induction. After a little bit of time, I was able to calm down a little and realize that my baby was going to come and that I could be not pregnant anymore. My husband got me something to eat and I felt much better so I settled in to do the labor thing.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

After getting admitted and getting something to eat, I was feeling much less freaked out about the whole induction. It was about midnight when they stuck a pill in to ripen my cervix. After that, Z and I tried to get some sleep. That was easier said than done. I still had a blood pressure cuff on my arm taking my pressure every 10 minutes. I also had an IV in my right antecubital (the area where the arm bends), meaning that if I bent my arm in the wrong way, it would send my IV machine beeping away-- not to mention the discomfort of that. And then there was the monitor that keeps track of contractions and the baby's heartbeat. I had to wear this band around my entire stomach that was so itchy, which was irritating to an already itchy and irritated pregnant belly. They tucked the monitors under the band. The gel from the monitors made things even more itchy and the monitors would slide out from under the band with some frequency. It seemed like every time I moved even a little, someone would have to come in and adjust something. I knew it would be a long night.

At about 3 AM, someone came and checked my progress. Not too much had happened, so they went ahead and stuck another cervix ripening pill in and we hunkered down again to wait for it to do its job. The next check was at 7:30 AM. The NP who checked me at that time was killer. I don’t know what it was about the way she checked my cervix, but it hurt like heck. Anyway, I was dilated to a 3, and having regular contractions, although I couldn’t feel them at all. We knew we still had a long while to go. I can’t tell you how happy I was when the NP suggested that I get up for a while, take a shower, and we would go from there. I felt like a new person after getting away from all the monitors and unwinding a little in a hot shower. When the NP came to check on me again at 12:30, she even commented that I looked more relaxed, and I really felt it. Another (painful) examination at that time revealed that I was dilated to a 4/5 and 50% effaced. The NP suggested that we break my water, which was fine with me. That was kinda weird but no big deal. The funny part was a little bit later when I decided I needed to get up to use the bathroom. As soon as I stood up, a TON of warm liquid ran down my legs and onto the floor. It felt kinda like I had peed my pants, except for I knew it was just amniotic fluid. The nurse made me get back in bed and use a bed pan because it was such a mess.

At some point along the line, I was given some pitocin, a medication to help progress labor by strengthening contractions. I can’t remember when exactly they started that. But sometime after that is when I actually started feeling the contractions. I had been having contractions all along, including the day before when I was getting my blood pressure monitored, but it was the pitocin that made them strong enough to hurt.

I wasn’t in too much pain, but I wanted to get my epidural before it did get too painful, so at 2:00, the anesthesia team came to give it to me. A resident did the first attempt, but when they injected a drug into it to test it, it was clear that it was in the wrong place. I think it had gone into a blood vessel or something. So the other anesthesiologist did a second attempt… same problem. Finally, after something like 45 minutes after the initial attempt, attempt #3 was successful. Yay.

5:00 check revealed that I was dilated to a 4, 80% effaced. I was happy that I couldn’t feel it when the NP checked this time.

Within the next few hours, I started to feel some contractions in the right lower quadrant of my abdomen. They hurt pretty bad and I was unhappy about it. I had 3 epidurals for goodness sake. Shouldn’t I be pretty much pain free? At around 8 PM, the anesthesiologist came to check on me and adjusted the epidural catheter somewhat, hoping that would fix the problem. 8:30 check revealed that I was dilated to a 9, 100% effaced. I knew it wouldn’t be too long now, and I felt a little frantic because I was still feeling pain in the right lower abdomen with each contraction, and I didn’t want to have to push through to the end like that. So, at about 10 PM, I got my 4^th and final epidural. It took a little while for the pain to subside all the way. I was nervous for a while that it wasn’t going to, but it finally did, and at 11 PM, I was dilated to a 10, 100% effaced, and ready to push.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Right at 1 am, 25 hours after the start of my induction and after 2 hours of pushing, our darling little Clara Marie Noyce made her debut into the world. She had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck 3 times, which is apparently very unusual. Thankfully that wasn’t harmful to her in any way and they got it off her really fast. Zack helped cut the umbilical cord close to her abdomen while I got all fixed up. And that was that. We became parents to an amazing little baby.

A view from our labor and delivery room. Philly skyline in the background, Franklin Field on the Penn campus in the foreground. The Penn Relays were going on.