The Whole Story May 3, 2012

Disclaimer: This is a very detailed account of how Genevieve came into the world. I wanted to remember it all, so I recorded it all. I don’t think it’s one of those “too much information” things, but you might. So read with caution…

Well let’s see. I guess I’ve got to start on Friday morning. My mom flew in from seeing my sister in Vegas, so Gunnar and I headed out to pick her up from the airport. We spent a fun day together, then in the afternoon went to my doctor appointment. I saw Dr. H. Lee and she stripped my membranes. She also told me I was a solid 3cm, almost 4! I was loaded with anticipation that this would surely be the weekend I’d go into labor!

Saturday morning I woke up and was still pregnant. I didn’t have any contractions and my water was still intact. Booo. But right around 10am that all started to change. I began having some fairly regular contractions. They started at around 8 minutes apart and quickly moved closer to the 5 minute apart mark. I was about to call my doctor and head to the hospital when my contractions suddenly slowed.  Major booooo. I was really looking forward to getting this process underway.

Even though my labor had slowed we decided to call up our wonderful friends Judah and Candace to see if they could take Gunnar for the day and possibly the night. Candace came right over and picked him up, so Mom, J, and I decided to head out to the mall to see if my labor would pick up.

I was secretly hoping my water would suddenly break in the middle of the food court at the mall. What a story! And kinda gross. No such luck. My contractions were a steady 6 minutes apart, but weren’t getting any faster or harder. I was getting tired after two hours of walking so we headed back home for a nap.

My contractions slowed considerably during nap time. They were around 10 minutes apart, but they were also really, really hard. I couldn’t talk through them and really had to concentrate on my breathing. I had a stretch of about 30-40 minutes where I didn’t have any contractions, so I actually slept during that time. I decided to get up again after a couple really hard contractions. I needed to get my mind off of the whole labor thing.

After sitting on the couch for a while, my contractions picked up, then slowed, then picked up, then slowed. It was so frustrating! I just wanted something to happen! So we went on another walk around the neighborhood to see if they’d get more regular or if my water would break. Again, no such luck.

It was around 8pm when we got back home from the walk and boy was I discouraged. I hadn’t been able to eat hardly anything all day because of all the contracting (it really doesn’t make for a good appetite) and I was super grumpy. We watched a few episodes of America’s Funniest Videos on Netflix to get my mind off things. It actually helped. And the laughter made me feel a lot better.

I called the doctor to let her know what was going on and see what her advice was. She said I could come into the hospital if I wanted and they could check me and monitor me, or I could stay home and that was fine too. I opted to stay home for a bit longer because I was afraid I’d be put on some sort of countdown if I went into the hospital.

Around 10pm J and I headed up to bed to see if we could sleep at all. J had no problem sleeping, but I was having a really rough time. My contractions were still 8-10 minutes apart, but they were really, really, really hard, the worst I’d had all day. There were a couple times where I grabbed J’s arm and woke him up so I could at least have a witness to the craziness in my belly.

Around midnight, after a couple hours of no sleep for me, I finally decided that I wanted to go to the hospital. Either I was going to get an epidural so I could sleep, or I was going to have them break my water and get this thing over with!!

I called two of my close girlfriends and asked if they wanted to come along for moral support. They had been on call during the previous week just in case my mom didn’t make it in time to be with me for the birth, but I decided to ask them along anyway. Both Jonelle and Ashleigh hopped right out of bed and got ready to meet us at the hospital.

Well wouldn’t ya know it, as we were getting on the entrance ramp to the freeway, we saw flashing blue and red lights behind us. Yes, we were being pulled over by the police. J wasn’t speeding, so we knew immediately that the problem was our broken headlight that J hadn’t had a chance to replace yet. When the officer walked up to the car, J speedily announced that his wife was in labor. The officer responded that he certainly wasn’t going to keep us for a broken headlight in that case, and asked if we needed an escort or an ambulance. We said we didn’t and he wished us luck and sent us on our way. This was J’s first time getting out of a ticket! Woohoo!

We got to the hospital around 12:30 or 1am and Jonelle and Ashleigh arrived shortly thereafter. I never really thought I’d want other people at my birth, but it was actually awesome to have them there. I had been awake pretty much all day and was exhausted by this time, and it was just so nice to have their extra energy in the room to encourage me, pray for me, and spur me on.

The nurse got me into a room and checked me and I was already 5-6 cm dilated without any consistent labor! Woohoo! I waited for about an hour and huffed and puffed through some more contractions, and I decided I needed to go potty so J helped me up to go. The nurse warned us that if I felt any pressure while going potty I needed to let her know right away. Well wouldn’t ya know I felt immediate pressure right when I sat down. She sternly told me to get right back in bed. Didn’t even get to go. She checked me and I was 6-7 cm dilated. Wowza! So this thing was really going!

I decided to get an epidural at this time. I was totally exhausted from laboring all day and needed some relief. The anesthesiologist came in and everyone except for J had to leave the room. It took the doc a long while to get the epidural in. I felt like I was sitting there forever! And J almost passed out. He’s still not sure why, but he just got really light headed all of a sudden. Weird. Anyway, so the epidural kicked in and I felt much better.

Then I got the shakes. Oh, the shakes. It’s a lot like the shakes you get when you go into shock. I guess it’s a normal side effect, but I don’t remember getting that with my last epidural. Then my blood pressure started to drop. What the what? At one point I was 94/36. Seriously?! I was scared so J came back to hold my hand. And then I got nauseous. Oh my word at the side effects!

When the doc and nurse finally got everything in balance I felt much better. My mom and Jonelle and Ashleigh got to come back in the room after that. They prayed for me, then turned out all the lights and I rested for about an hour or so. The nurse came back in because I was feeling a lot of pressure. She checked me and I was 8 cm dilated. Then she helped me turn from lying on my left side to lying on my right side and I immediately felt A LOT MORE pressure. So she checked me again and… BOOM I was 10 cm dilated just from turning over!

Nurses started running everywhere to get things ready. My water was still intact so they were waiting for my doctor to get there to pop it. Well, that didn’t happen. I had about four contractions after I was 10 cm and my water broke. And WHOA DANG did I feel the pressure then! My epidural had worn off a little and I hadn’t pushed the pain button in time, so I really felt it! I announced to the room, “My water just broke!… Or… I just pooped.” To which everyone responded, “No, it was your water.” Oh thank God. I really couldn’t tell.

My nurse had stepped out of the room for a moment and was nowhere to be found. And neither was my doctor. J ran out into the hall and yelled for someone to come. It was a funny scene and I totally would have laughed if I wasn’t in so much pain.

So my nurse finally came in and said the doctor was on her way. She got me into the leg supports on the bed and had me scoot down into the birthing position. She very sternly told me not to push and I very sternly told her that I wasn’t but the baby was coming out on her own! She was already crowning without a single push from me.

FINALLY my doctor showed up. She asked how I was doing and I replied, “Dr. Woodman, we gotta make this fast.” She got ready and at the next contraction she said, “Ok, you can push now.” So I pushed once and Genevieve’s head came out. I pushed once more and her shoulders were out. Then I gave a half push and the rest of her was out! Praise the Lord it was a super easy delivery!

Genevieve Elaine was born on April 22 at 5:03am. She was 7lbs 15oz and 21 inches long. My mom said she screamed just like me. Good set of lungs!

Genevieve shares a birthday with her Grandpa Les and her Great Grandma June. So far she’s been a pretty easy baby. She’s sleeping a lot, like newborns do. I usually get a 4-5 hour stretch of sleep at night, which is awesome. And she has a sweet little cry. I’ve found that I’ve bonded with her faster than with Gunnar because I know what it means to have a baby this time. Gunnar opened our eyes to the awesome meaning of the parent-child relationship, so we’re so much more prepared this time. I also feel a lot better with this recovery so that certainly makes things easier.

I’m doing my best to give as many hugs and kisses to Gunnar as I can so he doesn’t feel left out. Hopefully he will see Genevieve as a fun addition to our family, not a threat to his time with mama. I think he’s adjusting really well so far. He thinks she’s pretty cool. He likes to point at her and poke her in the forehead. He calls her “stah,” as in “si-stah” or sister. He’s even shared his toys with her a few times, putting them in her bouncy seat. This makes my mama heart totally happy! I love my two babes so much!

She’s here! May 2, 2012

And I’m finally getting up a post about it.

Genevieve Elaine arrived on April 22 at 5:03am. And if you’ve been paying attention to my previous posts, you’ll know that she shares a birthday with her Grandpa Les and Great Grandma June! What a great day to be born!

The details are being written in what is turning out to be a very long post, but wanted to let ya’ll know she’s doing well and so am I!

Here’s a pic for ya!

 

I spoke too soon April 17, 2012

Disclaimer: This is long, but I wrote it so I could have a true history of what happened the week before Genevieve got here. Maybe she’ll read it someday and we can all have a good laugh about it.

I actually wrote my update for today last night. Yep, I’m a cheater.

I had some extra time on my hands because J needed to head out to Home Depot for some things, so I thought writing my update ahead of time and scheduling it to post today would be an awesome idea. And truth be told, it was, considering I could not have written it this morning.

You see, my “worst moment of the week” had not quite concluded…

At around 9 pm I started to hear Gunnar cry up in his room. It didn’t seem like a big deal and he wasn’t screaming or really upset, so I let it go for about 10 minutes. Normally I would have just continued to let it go, but something told me I should go check on him.

I walked upstairs and opened his door and was immediately hit with THE STENCH. Oh the stench. And that’s when you know either there’s poop all over the place or there’s vomit all over the place.

Oh God please let it be poop.

Nope. No such luck. Vomit was everywhere.

Now, luckily I’m the type of gal who can just pull it together when it comes to bodily fluids and get things done. So I picked up my sad little guy, stripped him down, and threw him in the bath, much to his delight. He was tired, but playing happily so I had J sit with him while I dealt with THE STENCH.

I stripped the crib, cleaned the carpet, and re-made everything in lightning fast fashion. I gave J some new PJ’s, lotion, and a towel and he took care of things in that department.

As J was putting the new PJ’s on Gunnar, he started to cough and then vomited all over the bathroom floor. Fantastic.

So we threw those PJ’s into the growing laundry pile and got him some fresh ones. Then I sat down with him in the rocking chair and hummed to him. He threw up a couple more times, but then fell asleep on me.

“Sweet victory!” I thought to myself, and began cleaning up the mess in the bathroom.

A couple minutes into that I heard it again – the retching and coughing followed by crying. Oh my poor baby!

I rushed in once again and picked him up, changed him out of his PJ’s (this time there wasn’t much that came up so I just used a diaper wipe to clean him up), and changed his sheets. By now the laundry pile had reached the two-load size. Yippy.

I took my sad little guy downstairs and set him down. He immediately began playing with his toys like nothing was wrong. And nothing was wrong except that it was now 10pm and my kid is throwing up and there is no end in sight and he should be in bed and mama should too! So I turned on Netflix to Sesame Street and we watched an episode, because what else do you do with a sick kid when you don’t want to put him back in bed for fear he’ll vomit again and you’ll run out of sheets and blankies and teddy bears?

And he continued to vomit about every 10-15 minutes. Nothing big as his stomach was almost empty by that time, but man it was sad to watch.

J, my strong and faithful support, finally went to bed around midnight or so and I stayed up with sick-o.

All in all, we watched about 5 hour long episodes of Sesame Street. It’s not bad TV. Pretty educational. Sometimes funny. And Gunnar really enjoyed an episode that had balloons in it. He kept saying, “Boon? Boon?” He was pretty excited about that.

Around 2 am he seemed to be slowing down on the vomiting and he was yelling at me for water, so I decided to give him a little Pedialyte. I gave him just a taste and he swallowed it in no time at all and handed me his sippy back, demanding more. Uh-oh. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I gave him a little more and let him guzzle it again. About 10 minutes later it all came rushing back up. The good part of this was that he learned his lesson. He didn’t ask me for any more water.

I waited for a while longer to make sure he wasn’t going to throw up again, and around 3:15 am I finally dropped him peacefully into bed. He was exhausted and went right out.

I cleaned up a couple more things and hopped into bed around 3:30 am, thinking I was safe to sleep till at least 9 the next morning.

Again, nope. No such luck.

I first heard the chatter around 7 am. I rolled out of bed and walked into his room around 7:15. And my sad little guy from the night before had suddenly turned into a crazy fireball of spunk and fun and energy. Yay. Oh yay.

J had to head off to work, so I was on my own. But before he left he pointed out to me, most encouragingly, that it’s better to have a crazy fireball of spunk than a crazy fireball of vomit. Yes, J. Good point. Good point.

Gunnar sucked down a couple sippies full of Pedialyte and was happy as a clam. I turned on the Today Show, put up the baby gate in the living room, and stretched out on the floor with a pillow. Right around 8:30 am Gunnar whined, crawled up in my lap, and put his head down. I asked him if he wanted to go night-night and he nodded, so I carried him upstairs and he knocked right out. Praise the good Lord!!

I crawled into my bed at 9:30 and knocked out too. Around 1:30 pm I heard some chatter again, so I checked my phone and called J real quick to update him. By the time that conversation was done Gunnar’s chatter was gone and my buddy was out again. So I took a shower and got ready. Kiddo was still out so I just waited.

Finally around 2:30 or 3 Gunnar woke up. Yep, that’s a 6 hour nap!! I went in to grab him and again smelled THE STENCH.

Oh God, please let it be poop. Please let it be poop!

And it was!!!!!!!!

It wasn’t all over the place, but it had leaked out of his diaper, so I changed that along with his pants and the sheets and we were once again good to go.

He didn’t eat much the rest of the day, just a couple bites of toast and a little bit of rice and beans, but he kept sucking down the fluids and hasn’t thrown up at all so I’m going to guess we are out of the woods now.

And he went to bed at 6 pm. Out like a light. Nice!

What a week this has been!!! I need my mom to get here. And I need J to stay healthy. He’s been doing a fantastic job keeping me sane and well. He’s been cleaning and running errands to the store and fixing meals and more. What a guy!

Lord, please protect my family from any more sickness and disease. Keep us all healthy so we can be ready for the new baby. Amen.

TWOsday Update Week 39! Woot! April 17, 2012

How far along?:  39 weeks and counting. Only 1-ish left! Wow, my due date is in one week. ONE WEEK. Wow. Wow. Wow. Am I ready? Who the heck knows? Like I said last week, it’d be real nice of Genevieve to wait until at least tomorrow so my mom will be here by the time we’re out of the hospital. But hey, if she comes today, whatevs. I’m getting so excited to meet her!

Maternity clothes:  Well I’ve been in sweats the past four days, so not much to say here. I was sick over the weekend (see “Worst moment this week”) and I’m mostly recovered now, but not to the point where I want to change out of my sweats.

Stretch marks:  The ones I had with Gunnar are beginning to slowly (very slowly) grow. But it’s ok. I’ve settled in my mind that they’re my battle scars. I’ll be proud of them.

Sleep:  Slept like a rock on Friday night, but I’ve had a hard time falling asleep for the past two nights. And last night I had a horrible dream that Gunnar was diagnosed with some sort of breathing disease and that he died. It was terrible! I was bawling in my dream. Just horrible. When I heard him cry through the monitor this morning I said a huge thank you prayer to God that he’s still alive and breathing and just as fun as can be! He really cheered me up after my bad night. Here’s hoping I sleep better tonight. I need it!

Best moment this week:  Honestly, my best moment was probably hearing that I was not in labor and Genevieve was surely not on her way on Friday night. Another great moment was on Sunday when my friend Kelly stopped by and dropped off a sweet card, some beautiful flowers, and some ginger ale! So thoughtful of her! And so nice to see someone outside of my family since I’d been cooped up for a couple days.  (Thanks Kell! ) And if you’re confused about what I just wrote, see my worst moment…

Worst Moment this week:   See my last post by clicking here. Because of this, I lost about 5 lbs. Don’t worry peeps, not a big deal for me. And who knows – I may have it back by the end of the week.

Movement:  Genevieve kept me up for a good while last night. She was excited about something. Not sure what. She was poking at my belly so hard I thought she might break my water! No such luck. Needless to say, for the most part she isn’t moving quite as much cause it’s so tight in there, but when she does, boy howdy do I feel it!

Food cravings/aversions:  Cranberry juice. Weird, I know. But after the weekend I’ve had it totally makes sense. My body just wants fluids and cranberry juice sounds sooo good! I don’t really crave food quite yet, but there are certain things I definitely don’t want to eat.

Belly Button in or out?:  Just continuing to get flatter and flatter. Boy it looks weird. Gunnar still loves it though!

What I miss:  Eating. Ha! But it’s not baby girl’s fault. It’s the sickness.

What I am looking forward to:  My mama getting here on Friday morning! Then I’ll have my doctor appointment Friday afternoon and they’ll strip my membranes to see if we can get things started. Woohoo!

Milestones:  Genevieve is about 7-8 lbs and 19-21 inches, plus or minus on both those stats. She’s definitely not going to grow any bigger from here on out, so the good news is she’s at max capacity. And so am I! She’s still developing in there, but she’s not doing anything that she can’t do from the outside now. She’s just waiting for the perfect moment to make her entrance…

Symptoms:  Still nesting! Not quite as much the last couple days because of the sickness, but I did do the self-clean thing on my oven. Whoo! Also cleaned the floors and the living room and did a little laundry. Hoping to finish cleaning my stove top tomorrow. Whatever I can do without over-doing it!

Oh what a night! April 16, 2012

Friday night was exciting. Yep.

I woke up Friday morning around 4am with a pretty serious stomach flu. I won’t go into detail here, but let’s just say bodily fluids were violently coming out of me at rates never before seen.

I struggled with this bug all day. I didn’t leave my room except to run to the bathroom at least once an hour.

(J stayed home and took care of Gunnar and me, and he was super sweet about it too. Praise God for good husbands!)

Well anyway, it was about 5pm and I finally got some fluids down and they stayed there… for a while. Then around 8pm those same fluids came rushing back up and out. I was so discouraged!

J had left around 6:30 for our Young Marrieds Bible study group. I told him to go because I thought I’d just sleep and be fine.

Well, right around 9pm I started having some pretty regular contractions. I began timing them and they were around 3 or 4 minutes apart. NOT GOOD. Especially since that was the way my labor started with Gunnar.

I called J and told him to hurry up and get home. When he was home we timed my contractions and they were 2:40 apart. Really NOT GOOD!

I called my doc and told her what was going on and she told me I’d better get to the hospital. She also said it was probably just false labor caused by my serious dehydration, but that I needed some fluids to make those contractions stop.

My good friend Candace came over and picked up Gunnar and took him to her house for the night (thanks Candace!) and J and I headed out on the road to the hospital. Another good friend of mine, Ashleigh, who wants to be a doula someday, met us at the hospital for support. (I told Ashleigh that if I go into labor before my mom gets here I’m going to need a woman who I know in there with me and she was more than happy to be my support person. J’s great and all, but come on, sometimes you just need a girlfriend around. )

When we got to the hospital I climbed up in the bed and the nurse immediately hooked me up to an IV and started dripping a saline solution into my blood. Once that bag was out, my contractions began to slow and to ease up. I was so happy too, cause at that time of night (it was probably midnight by then) I would NOT have been able to push a baby out. And I really don’t want to end up with an emergency C-section because of something as stupid as a little flu bug.

The nurse was a lot happier by then with how I was looking, but she still wasn’t completely sure about our baby girl. So she gave me half a bag of glucose and we all crossed our fingers hoping that would do the trick.

And it did! Genevieve’s heart rate went back to normal (it was really high because of the dehydration) and she was kicking her heels up like a toddler on a sugar high.

PRAISE GOD! I did not want to have a baby in the condition I was in Friday night.

The nurse released us when she saw both mom and babe were doing well and sent us home. We pulled up to our house around 2am and J and I both crashed and had one of the best night’s sleep in a loooong time. (Gunnar stayed at Judah and Candace’s house and had fun playing with their little boy, Elijah, the next morning.)

Saturday I had mostly liquids all day, but right around 5pm I started to crave a spicy chicken sandwich from Chik-fil-a. I don’t even eat there a lot, but it sounded so good! So J, Gunnar, and I packed up in the car and went for a little drive. It was nice to finally get out of the house. I only ate half my sandwich, but it was so good! And it stayed down. The only negative – I got some pretty good heartburn from it.

Sunday I stayed home from church and slept in till 11am, so J took Gunnar to church by himself. J brought me home a donut, which I ate with glee! Then later on that night I had about a cup of homemade BBQ chicken salad.

This morning I ate a very small bowl of cereal and half an apple. So far, so good.

I’m focused now on regaining my strength for the labor that I know is coming soon! It could be anytime now! It’d be nice to hold off on it for a couple more days or more, but I could probably handle it now. Women have had to endure worse!

Thanks to all my family and friends for their prayers and support! I’ve needed it! Will let you know when she comes!!