Wednesday

Bills

I've been looking over my hospital bills online today. These are not bills I owe, but what is being billed to insurance first, so I still don't know what my out-of-pocket costs will be. I can't imagine how we'd pay the $7,200 bill if we didn't have insurance.

Speaking of insurance, I just added the babe to my insurance plan at work (which I'm thankful for!) to more than double the amount taken out of every paycheck. Dang, kids are expensive.

Sunday

Three weeks!


I can't believe I've already been off work for three weeks!! April 23 still sounds so far away, but it's really only 9 more weeks of time with my sweet boy.

This week has been the week of visitors. I am glad for the company during the week when the hubs is at work, but I was glad we only had one visitor today so we could have the day just for ourselves. I'm loving our little family and it's hard to imagine our lives without the boy already.

Wednesday

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm a day late, but whatevs.

The hubs and I didn't do much last night. Some of the neighbors came over to meet the babe and we ate frozen pizza for dinner. We are classy like that.

I did take some filets out of the freezer from our half a cow, but we didn't have time to cook them because we had visitors coming. We cooked them tonight instead.

I did get a surprise gift from the hubs though. I'm on lockdown and can't really leave the house, so I didn't get him anything. He bought me a necklace with the baby's birthstone - garnet. I love it because the hubs said "this is for when you miss him when you go back to work, you'll always have something to hold on to." How sweet!! He's so good at romantic gifts and I completely suck. Luckily, he doesn't care about getting romantic gifts so we work out. :)


Friday

Motivation

I really need to find some motivation. Tomorrow makes two weeks of little man being out in the world and I feel like I'm already slacking to get this weight off. He is a very skilled nap-taker, so it's not like I don't have the time. I just love having him take naps in my lap. :) He's so cute when he's sleeping because now he makes faces while he's dreaming. If he's not on my lap, I might miss it!

I also have no excuse because we have a treadmill. It was a life-saver while I was pregnant because I walked on it almost every evening for 20 minutes, or 1 mile - whichever came first. If we didn't, I could just say that it's too cold outside and I can't take the baby with me to go for a walk. (I'm only allowed to walk for another two weeks - doctor's orders.)

Basically I'm just writing this to try to motivate myself to get moving. These 30 extra pounds aren't going anywhere unless I make them.

Monday

One week later

I absolutely love my son, but I also really love not being pregnant. I don't even begin to pretend that I had a terrible pregnancy because I know some women have it really tough, but I just did not like it.

Reasons why I'm glad he's out:

  • I'm down 16 of the 45-ish pounds I gained (current weight is 226), so that's good news. 
  • I can also bend and breathe at the same time now. 
  • I can properly work out again (after four weeks of walking only)
  • I have energy, which is somewhat crazy considering the amount of sleep I'm still not getting.
  • I can eat chicken again without being disgusted.
  • I can shave my legs properly.
  • I can give myself a pedicure - which I did yesterday. I don't have the money to get one in the salon unless it's a special occasion. I think I do just as good of a job here at home. 
  • My clothes are already starting to fit. I'm wearing a size L t-shirt today instead of my husband's XL or XXL that I had been living in for the past few months. 
  • My legs are not cramping up at night while I'm just sleeping. I never did understand why that was happening. It's not like I was using the muscle!
Postpartum things I was unprepared for:
  • I'm still bleeding. It has been 9 days. I guess that's normal.
  • The skin on my stomach (the widest part that did the most stretching) still hurts.
  • My heel that developed plantar fasciitis still hurts.
  • My ring can get back on my finger, but it's still tight, so that means I'm still swollen a little bit. 
  • The mushiness of my belly. It's a little disturbing how much mush is there.
  • The amount of strength my hands and wrists do not have. Every muscle in my hands hurt and my wrists are killing me every time I pick him up. 
  • Breastfeeding is super hard work. I thought the little nugget would just have an instinct on how to do these things and it would just happen.
  • Our little nugget is very orally-fixated. He must have something in his mouth at all times - whether that's the pacifier, his fingers, his arm, our fingers, the milk truck, whatever. 

Thursday

The birth story

Friday night (Jan. 27), we were debating whether or not to go out to dinner or stay in. Of course, I was exhausted and didn't really want to go, but I knew we only had a few weeks left to easily go out. So, we called some friends and met up with them for dinner and drinks. Since I can't drink, I ordered a delicious dessert Scottish cake at a local brewery that ended up being the size of a brick! I secretly think it was the amount of cake that made me go into labor.

We went to bed around midnight that night. I woke up on schedule at 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom. When I sat on the toilet, a ton of liquid gushed out, but I realized I had not started peeing yet. I know what that means, and I was so thankful it happened on the toilet and not in the bed!

So, I jumped in the shower (to shave my legs and wash my hair so I look alright in the pics!) and woke up the hubs. He gets in the shower while I get ready, and I have my first contraction during this time - around 2:20 a.m. We leave the house around 2:40 a.m. and drive the 25 minutes to the hospital while my contractions are 3-4 minutes apart. They were fast, but not so terrible that I couldn't walk in to the hospital on my own.

In triage, the nurse had to verify that my water had indeed broke (broken?) even though I was obviously in a lot of pain. She tried twice to put some of my "wetness" on a slide and look at it to verify. She told me twice that she didn't think my water had actually broken. Nevermind the fact that I'm soaking the bed I'm sitting on. A resident physician came in and took one look at me down there and said she'd page my doctor and get my admission paperwork going. This was around 4:30 a.m. By this point, I'm in so much pain and contractions are so close that I cannot catch my breath or open my eyes, so these times are guesstimates. At this point, she said I was dilated 3-4 cm and was not completely effaced yet.

Now in the labor and delivery room, I'm waiting for anesthesiology to bring me that sweet, sweet relief - my epidural. There were several other births going on at the same time, so it was not my turn until around 6:15 a.m.  They had to give me two doses to feel any relief, and then my blood pressure plummeted. It was pretty tense in the room for a bit while they pushed a ton of fluids into my arm to regulate my BP. Once things calmed down and they left, I felt much better, and even took a tiny nap until my new nurse came in at shift change - around 7:15 a.m.

The new nurse was awesome. She decided since I hadn't been evaluated for a while she'd check to see how dilated I was. I loved the look on her face that said "OMG" when she realized I was 10 cm and ready to push! She went to page my doctor to make sure she was on her way ASAP. Then she said we were going to "practice push" for a bit until the doctor arrived. We practiced twice and she told me to just relax because the head was coming out already. YIKES!!

About 20 minutes later, my OB's partner arrived (my OB was not on-call this weekend) with another resident MD. For the next 45 minutes (7:45-8:32) I pushed. For most of this, the OB was chillin at the end of my bed, one glove on, and watched the head while massaging the area around his head. Then all of a sudden, she stood up and things started happening. She, and the other doc put on a lot of garb, half of the bed came off, and things felt serious in the room. I pushed a few more times and the baby came out! I felt no pain or discomfort even - thanks to that epidural. Once the baby started crying, they passed him to my bare stomach and let me cuddle him while he was wiped down and cleaned up.

After about an hour of bonding, he was weighed, bathed and warmed up before returning to me.






Overall, it was a quick, but intense labor - lasting 6.5 hours total. I have had very little pain/discomfort considering I have three stitches and he weighed 9 lbs. We are still recovering at home and trying to get more sleep.

Wednesday

He's here!!

I'll tell you the entire birth story soon, but for now, he's home and we are all doing well!

Born Saturday Jan. 28, 2012
9lb 1oz
21 inches