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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Worth Every Penny


What is this you may ask...this is my new best friend...a swing that Riley LOVES. She will actually sleep in it for hours. It swings side to side or you can set it to swing back and forth. The movement is smooth, it has a mobile that turns, a light show, and all sorts of sound settings. And it plugs into the wall and has a removable tray. The seat also reclines to just nearly flat for newborns so that they can sleep in it. I love this thing. I can now shower, wash dishes, do my hair, change out of my clothes that have been spit up on or peed on...it's great.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

4 am

So it's 4 am...and I'm up, but its not Riley's fault, she's been asleep on my chest for the past hour +, she's an excellent night sleeper, thankfully. Why am I up, you might ask...I'm having some discomfort from my stitches, well, actually I would assume the stitches are gone by now, but that general area. I can go days with no problems but then BAM, it hurts again. I think this is because of me squatting by the bathtub earlier when we bathed Riley, it just put a lot of pressure on the "area." Well, enough about that...the discomfort will be gone shortly thanks to lortab :)

Being a mom is just a crazy, overwhelming, wonderful, amazing experience. If you think you love someone or something as much as possible and there's no way you could love more, have a baby. If you already have, you KNOW what I'm talking about. What brought on this gush you might ask? Well, its a ridiculous time of the night and I'm quite happy to just sit here and watch her sleep so sweetly on my chest, with one little arm stretched up towards my neck, while she makes all those sweet baby sounds. I do look forward to sleeping in my bed again someday, but to be honest, I will miss our nights snuggled in the recliner. But something tells me, I probably have some time left in the recliner before I make it back to bed on a regular basis.

And PS what is with MTV and that Schwayze guy? Every single commercial is of him and Cisco Adler doing that Buzzin song. And btw MTV is one of the few stations that doesn't play informercials in the middle of the night. Ok seriously, the date my mom marathon is on and the guy asked a mom what her daughter did for fun and to relax and she said "she likes to smoke." Seriously. OMG. And the guy was a firefighter. He passed.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Day 21


Well, so far so good. We have mostly done great, only a few really hard days here and there. Riley kind of has a routine down...I feed her at night at 10:30, then she sleeps til about 3:30 and then she sleeps untile 7 or 7:3o...this morning, our schedule was a bit off and I fed her around 5:30 and we slept til 9:30...so nice! The only trick is we sleep in the recliner, which is the best thing we got for the baby. She's getting better about the crib, but she still would rather sleep with you...I can totally see why people take babies to bed with them, not that I'm going to.
And I got to go get a pedicure today. It was heavenly.
Riley is very definite about what she likes and doesn't like...she likes being held and fed, her little tummies drops, and going in the car...she does not like her swing. Or the bouncy seat. Or the sling. Or her crib very much. And baths...she thinks those are tortorous.




Friday, July 11, 2008

Day 3 - Homeward Bound!

Dr. Tadvick let me go home on Wednesday after two nights in the hospital. I felt up to it by that point and I was getting around pretty good, better than I would have thought.

Mom and Gladys came and dressed Riley for going home:



After we got all dressed and the wheelchair came for us, we headed out to meet Jody, who had gone on to get the car...we managed to get her in the car seat without too much trouble (I do think there is a learning curve though!)....


When we got home, Zoe was happily awaiting our arrival. She seems to like Riley alot and was maybe a little overzealous in greeting her:

After we got home, I kind of felt like getting out for a bit, so I went to the pharmacy to pick up my pain pills...I also had decided I didn't need a bassinet, but for some reason, I got home and decided there was no way I could put her in her crib in her room by herself...so I was very graciously loaned a great bassinet from some of our good friends.


Day 2

Most new mommies that have vaginal deliveries get to go home on day 2, just 24 short hours after giving birth...not me. Dr. Tadvick elected to keep me for two nights for two reasons: I had all those tears and I had a big baby that they wanted to keep an eye on...night 1, Jody spent the night. I felt kind of bad for him. Those chairs that make into beds look like some kind of torture device...you wouldn't believe how early he got up and took off for home to take care of our four legged kiddos....



I got my catheter out mid morning and still had an IV for antibiotics. Around 11:00 they put in the last bag of antibiotics and said in about 30 minutes I could be rid of the IV and could shower "connection" free and go for a walk if I wanted. I waited til about 12 and by that time I had to pee and was thinking I would be able to get the IV out and go to the bathroom all at once. I paged for help and the nurses aid had to be the least helpful person I dealt with during my stay. She wouldn't take the IV out, said it wasn't empty, even though it clearly was...she did help me get out of bed and wheeled the IV to the bathroom and then she literally went "here are some mesh panties and here is a pad." And walked out. I was like are you effing kidding me? I'm standing in the bathroom, IV attached, hospital gown held up on my shoulders only, holding this huge pad...anyway, I told Jody I needed help and he got my real nurse. She was not happy with the treatment the aide gave me...there was NO WAY I could have stepped into those panties on my own...I was doing good just to stand and not fall on my face at that point!



My dad brought my Mama Jo to meet Riley:



I just love this picture! She turned 90 years old two days before Riley was born...it's so wonderful to get to share Riley with her.

After they left, I had several friends visit and then I decided I was up for showering and putting on a gown I had brought with me. I was totally over the hospital gown thing. So I dressed in my gown, put on my house shoes, and Jody and I took a walk. I actually passed Dr. Tadvick...I think he was impressed, because he said he didn't even need to ask how I was doing!

I spent the night by myself, which was fine. I told Jody there wasn't much point in him being miserable as long as the nurses would give me a hand with the baby. And they did.


Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Riley's Here - Day 1

During the last week of my pregnancy, I had two goals…not to have the baby until at least Monday, June 30 since my doctor was out of town the entire week before and to make it to work for even 5 minutes on June 30, as we accrue our leave on the last day of each month. The good news is, my doctor came back on call at 7 am the day I went into labor…the bad news is I didn’t make it by the bank, so I missed out on an additional 18 hours of paid time off for maternity leave.

I got up for about the fifth time Sunday night at 4:30 am to go the bathroom and as I got out of bed I noticed I felt a bit more wet down there than usual…I honestly figured I had wet myself a little (the joys of late third trimester pregnancy)…when I sat down on the potty, I had a small gush of fluid that I was pretty sure I had not initiated. I woke Jody up by telling him I “thought” my water had broken, but I wasn’t 100% sure, because I wasn’t, and it just all seemed so surreal. I was also not having contractions. I called L&D and they told me to come in and they’d check me out…so I gathered up the rest of my stuff and got dressed. I was walking through the living room when I got my first contraction, which made it abundantly clear that my water had broken, as I had about three HUGE gushes right there. I am so glad it didn’t happen at work, because there would have been no disguising it. I guess Jody was expecting me to flood his truck, because he had about 10 towels in the seat for me to sit on. I can’t say I was thrilled with his choice to take the truck because I was starting to have more regular contractions by this point and getting into his truck was no easy feat, but I wasn't exactly in the best shape to argue.

We got to L&D about 5:30 and the nurse had me change and said we’d get the monitors hooked up, go over some questions, and make sure I was really in labor…I sent Jody to get me some water (that I couldn’t drink) because he was just a bundle of nerves and I couldn’t handle it at that moment. The nurse did the test strip to check for amniotic fluid and it came back negative…I KNEW my water had broken. However, the L&D nurses said they see so few women that actually have their water break, I guess they wanted to make sure. Then she did an internal and decided she needed a second opinion, so she got her charge nurse for a second opinion. Second opinions seemed to be the theme of the day, by the way. Apparently, I have a bit of an unusual cervix and the outer part of my cervix was more dilated than the inner, but they decided I was dilated to a 2.5 around 6:45 am. They also took an internal sample to put on the test strip and it still didn’t 100% confirm that amniotic fluid was present. At that point, they decided to call the doctor on call as my ob/gyn wasn’t officially back on call until 7 am and it was about 6:45 by this point…the on call doc ok’d a definitive test where they swab you for a minute, then put the swab in a solution, and then they have results in about 10 minutes…and it came back that my water had broken. They put my iv in and started the fluids and pitocin and we did even more paperwork.

Dr. Tadvick came by about 9 and my weird cervix was now dilated to a 2.5 and 3…I’m not sure what he did, but it hurt like hell and then he said, now you’re a 3 all the way around. And then the contractions picked up. He went ahead and let me have my epidural (thank goodness for that) and then I had some company, which was nice…the nurse checked me again about 11:30 and I was a 5 and then she checked me again about an hour later and just looked shocked because I was already a 10…Dr. T came by and told her to start me pushing in about 1:00. At this point, I realized I was really going to have a baby…it seems like it should have been abundantly clear to me before this, but it became very real when they said I would start pushing shortly. I pushed with the nurse for about an hour and a half before she (and her second opinion) decided the baby was facing the ceiling and wasn’t turning…so they called Dr. T to come by to try to turn her. He got her turned, said for them to have me push some more and he’d be back shortly…by this time I had pushed for over two hours and was just about worn out as was my epidural – I was starting to feel things on the left side, namely my left hip…the nurses and my doctor had a pow wow by the door and then all of a sudden, there were nursery nurses and three L&D nurses in there and he was explaining to me how the forceps delivery would work…by this point, I just wanted to be done, holding my baby. He had told me I had to listen to him very carefully with the forceps delivery and as soon as he said to stop pushing, I had to stop pushing…the next part is a bit of a blur, but he delivered her head, but her shoulders were stuck and I had three nurses jump on top of me, holding my legs, pushing my belly, and telling me to push as hard as I could…

Riley Paige was born at 3:22 pm on Monday, June 30, 2008, weighing 9 lbs 4 oz and measuring 21.75".

Since she was had been stuck for so long, was a forceps delivery, and her shoulders got stuck, Jody wasn't even given the option to cut her cord, the got to work on her immediately and Dr. Tadvick got to work on me...I had third degree tears, so it took a bit to get me stitched up good, but Jody got to hold Riley the whole time, so I got to look at her. Unfortunately, I didn't get to hold her for a bit becuase I was shaking so hard, which is apparently a side effect of the epidural. After holding Riley for a while, the nurses needed to take her back to the nursery for newborn stuff and I needed some food.

My L&D nurse Nancy was just the best. She knew I was starving and brought me this huge sandwich tray. It was like the best thing I've had in ages. Seriously. Then Nancy brought Riley back to me and we had our first breastfeeding session/lesson. I really owe that woman a big thank you. Her husband works at the bank, so I may try to arrange for him to be given a thank you card for her with a picture of Riley.

The rest of the evening was busy, I think I was going on adrenaline. We had lots of visitors that afternoon and evening.

And here's another birthday picture of Riley, after being cleaned up a bit:


 

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