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August 24, 2003
Pregnancy
The beginning of my pregnancy was a bit rocky. I began to have some light spotting in week 6 and was told by the midwife I had chosen to see that the heartbeat was too slow (via ultrasound) in week 7. The midwife told us that I would miscarry and that slow heartbeats like my babies never sped up and we were actually just witnesses to a dying baby. (I get sad just typing this out and reliving this time again!) She was very comforting in our time of sorrow and instructed me on what to do when I miscarried (rhogam shot), how I would feel, when I could start TTC again, etc. She had me make an appointment to come back in one week for a follow up ultrasound to see where I was in the miscarriage process to discuss a D&C if I wasn’t miscarrying on my own.
Needless to say, the following week was one with many, many tears. One week later we went back to see the midwife for our ultrasound. I was kind of miffed when the midwife asked what we were there for as I sat in the ultrasound room…. Huh? I didn’t expect her to remember me from the week prior, but thought she would have at least glanced at my chart. So we get to the ultrasound and POOF! This week we were witness to the miracle of a baby who had properly grown to 8 weeks and had a perfect heartbeat. (BTW, the midwife did not apologize or explain anything – the only thing she said is that she had reviewed the previous week’s ultrasound with my regular Dr. at the OBGYN office and he agreed that I would miscarry.)
My husband and I walked briskly (ran!) from that office, never to return. I was referred by many people to another OBGYN office and had an appointment with a new Dr. at 10 weeks. He revealed a perfectly normal, healthy 10-week-old baby. I did continue bleeding until 18 weeks, but the Dr. was confident this was due to a migrating placenta. At the mid-pregnancy ultrasound (where we were adamant about not finding out the sex of the baby) the Dr. confirmed that my placenta had moved up as most do in early pregnancy.
After the early drama, I sailed through my pregnancy with my only complaint being that the baby had lodged a foot/knee under my right ribcage at about 30 weeks. Ouch! Everything with my pregnancy was textbook and I dilated to 4 cm and was 70% effaced by week 38.
Birth Story
My water broke during dinner on a Monday night (9 days prior to my due date) while watching Frasier at about 7:30. I threw my dinner onto the coffee table and ran to the bathroom. All of a sudden my cool calm vanished and I was shaking. My husband handed me the phone so I could call the doctor. The Dr. told me to go to the hospital and she would call and let them know I was on my way. I was finally going to have a baby! So exciting! So scary…
Labor and Delivery triage pushed me through to my room as soon as they were witness to the swimming pool of amniotic fluid I left on their floor. My husband and I walked the halls for hours, stopping 20 minutes of every hour to monitor the contractions. After 5 hours of pretty intense contractions, I was only at 5cm. I was very disappointed since I had been at 4cm for 6 days already… 1cm in 5+ hours of intense contractions is a huge letdown! I finally decided to get an epidural after looking to my sweetheart of a nurse for some sort of approval that I would not be marked as a failure for taking the epidural.
After the epidural, I dilated to 10cm in about 5 hours. I was so happy to begin pushing after 10 hours of labor. I pushed and pushed and pushed. The baby was not lying quite straight and after each push, the baby crawled right back up under my right ribs. The nurses decided that since I was relatively comfortable with the epidural, I could wait a while longer to push and would flip from side to side to help the baby straighten out. 3 hours later it was time to push again. After 2 ½ hours of incredibly hard pushing, Joshua was born at 10:48am on September 17, 2002, weighing 9 pounds even and measuring 21 ¼”. I was quite thankful he was 9 days early after seeing his measurements!!
Breastfeeding
Joshua nursed right away after delivery, but he was so tired that we did not nurse again for almost 16 hours. My only complaint of my stay in the hospital is the way the nurses reacted the day Josh was born since he didn’t eat for such a long period. The nurses threatened that I would have to give him formula if he didn’t eat by a certain time. Of course, I was emotional and since this was my first child I panicked felt like I was doing something wrong. (This 9 pound child just had a 15 ½ hour trip into the world… he was TIRED!!) So we did all the tricks to wake Josh up to nurse and he did eat for about a nanosecond before falling right back asleep. I ended up exaggerating the time of our nursing session to please the nurses.
I had bleeding, blistered nipples after nursing Josh wrong for the first days until I saw the LC. The LC guided me through proper holds and positions that worked for Josh. This worked like a charm and that was the end of the bleeding. The LC was like my partner in crime when the Pediatrician came in to tell me that I had to wake Josh every 3 hours no matter what to nurse him since he was leaving the hospital at a much lighter 7 pounds 14 ounces. The LC assured the pediatrician that my milk was coming in and the baby would be OK when it started to sound like the pediatrician may keep us another night. (Turns out the baby was OK and we were giant fools for setting an alarm for every 3 hours the first couple of nights home… I look back and those nights were our opportunity to get some sleep since Josh began waking to eat every hour a couple of nights after we got home.)
Joshua is still breastfeeding today and has never even had a single drop of formula. (I pumped while I was at work and was able to come home for lunches to nurse.) I am so proud of myself that I have given this tremendous gift of nourishment to my child. It wasn’t always easy in the beginning (far from it!) and I am so happy I stuck it out, especially since I am now reaping the many benefits. We have never had to buy any sort of formula, Josh has never been sick (no ear infections, colds, etc.), it is insanely easy to breastfeed these days (compared to bottle feeding), and I still enjoy our quiet bonding time together.
I was going to include some of Josh’s first year in this post, but time has gotten away from me and figured I should just post what I have so far. I would love to tell everyone to stop by my TTM board, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I have sent a couple of emails to iParenting, but no response so far – I know they must be incredibly busy with all these new diaries!
Thanks for reading!
Elisa
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