Monday, May 16, 2011

My baby is almost 2 weeks old

The last 12 days have flown by, it does not seem possible that my baby could be 2 weeks old this week. We love every minute with our precious Niah. In fact Matthew and I go back and forth on who's turn it is to hold her and he is convinced that I use nursing as a reason to hold her :-) I find myself just wanting to look and watch this amazing little being all the time.

We brought Niah home from the hospital the day after she was born Thur, May 5. We walked her through her home and introduced her to her room. Our first diaper at home ended up in a wadrobe change and a huge mess. Daddy was changing her diaper and it just so happens the cold made her pee all over. Daddy who wore surgical gloves at the hospital to change diapers could not understand why we did not have any. The diaper resulted not only in a change of clothes, but we had to change blankets and the changine pad cover. That was not the last time an incident like that happen, just yesterday she was not done pooping when her diaper was being changed then she managed to pee as well. Daddy is getting use to getting a little bit of it on him now and his reaction is not quite as dramatic.

Niah hates to be cold and tends to shiver when laying by herself no matter how much clothes she has on and how many blankets she stays swaddled in. She loves body heat. We had to figure out a night time routine because she would just shiver in her bassinet. So now we rotate her from the bouncer seat (not on because it rattles her bones and hates it on), to her bassinet, to the carseat so that she will sleep through the night with out being held. She does really well at night now, at first she was waking up every hour but now she eats about 10, 1, and 5. I wake her up at 9. Sometimes she will have have a later feeding than 10 and not wake up till 4 and then gets up at 8:30.

Niah is a calm baby and only cries when she is cold or hungry. It takes awhile for her to work up to a cry and it is more like a high pitch squeel that is not very loud. Daddy hates it when she cries and when she was very upset with a bath, he said we are never giving her a bath again. I have to remind Matthew that sometimes she will cry, unfortunately. Matthew adores her and can not help but hold her when he sees her. Niah was laying on the ottoman and I was sitting next to her, Matthew said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Trying to see how long she will lay on her own." He said, "Well we don't have very much longer to hold her." Then picked her up.

Niah has had a well Dr. visit and a not well visit. The well visit went good, she weight 5 lbs 7 oz which the dr. was impressed she had not lost more than 2 ozs. She is healthy and the dr said she is beautiful. The not well visit was just this last Friday. Wednesday, her eye had discharge coming out of it, we called the hospital 2 and the dr.'s office twice. They assured us it was just a clogged tear duct and would get better. Friday, we called and made an appt just to make sure it was ok. They took a sample of it to make sure there was not infection and checked her over. Niah had gained 2 oz and now weighs 5 lbs 9 oz. She also lost her umbical cord at the Dr.'s office when I took her clothes off for the weight check. Dr. said she looks good.

We took Niah on her first road trip 2 hours away to Springfield for a wedding. Not so sure she was a fan of it. I think she was a little overstimulated. It will be awhile before I am ready to try that again. She did great friday but Saturday she was fussy for the first time ever. Matthew was at the point he said, "Let's go home she never cries at home." After the morning she did much better. We did learn that you have 3 times the amount the luggage you normally do and the trip takes twice as long with a baby.

We love Niah so much and can not imagine our lives without her now!!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Birth

Tuesday, May 3, we went to see the dr. to evaluate what the plan of action should be. He was either going to admit me that day to just prepare me to be induced or I would have to go in Wed. morning to start the induction. The dr. came in to check me and he gave me a face and I thought, "Oh no 41 weeks pregnant and I can't even dialate to a 1!" But the dr said, "I do not have bad news, your a 1, that is just enough for me to break your water, tomorrow morning!!" I was so relieved that one I made progress and 2. I did not have to spend an entire day in the hospital and not even be in labor. I finished my day with working, taking advantage of the warm weather by walking around the camp taking pictures, and painting the tabernacle bathroom. I do not think Matthew or I could sleep very well because we had to get up at 4:30 am but at 2:30 am I woke up to contractions. For the first time in my pregnancy, I had contractions, I never had braxton hicks or false labor but tonight I started having a few contractions and I lost my mucous plug.

Wednesday, May 4, we left for the hospital at 5:00 am, I was still having contractions, they were pretty far about and really short. We got to the hospital, I think we were both nervous, anxious, and excited all at the same time. We filled out our paperwork and took us to our room. They started pitocin around 7:15, they started with a very low dose and the contractions were not bad at all and were around 4 or 5 minutes apart and about a minute long. Around 7:45 the dr. came in and checked me and I was between a 1 and a 2. He then broke my water, which took about a minute and felt very weird. At that point my contractions were getting much stronger and closer together. The part I hated most was that they had to have this stupid heart moniter on the baby and everytime a contraction came on and I moved the heart moniter or the baby would move and lose her heartbeat. So they would come in my room and tell me about how it had to stay on the baby. By this time my contractions were 2 mins apart and 120 seconds long and they were very painful. I would usually jump out of bed with the contraction and try to get in a comfortable position standing leaning on something which then brought a nurse to my room due to the heart moniter. The heart moniter made me stressed and very irritable (well probably the contractions made me irritable) The babies heart rate started dropping lower with some of the contractions which made the nurses worry. By this time I was having some contractions right on top of each other with no break and then I would get like a minute break. The dr. came in and decided to put an internal moniter on the baby to keep her heart rate and get a better reading. Let me tell you having to lay on a bed through several contractions not being able to move was very difficult, I was almost in tears. At this point he checked me and told me I was a 3 or maybe between a 3 or 4. I was horrified that it had not gotten further than that with such strong contractions. The baby was face up and it needed to be face down so he tried to see if he could move it with his hand. That was very uncomfortable especially with having contractions while he was doing it. The contractions started to make me sick and I then began to throw up. I had gone through almost 4 hours of terrible contractions of being 2 minutes apart and 120 seconds long and decided to get the epidural. I got the epidural around 11ish. The nurses were very happy because as soon as I relaxed the babies heart rate stayed consistantly higher. The dr. came in around 12 or 12:30 and checked me again. He told me I was between a 7 and an 8 and he thought we would have a baby by 3:00. The baby was still face up but this time as he was trying to aide in moving her I couldn't feel it thank goodness. I was now in transitional labor.

At 2:00 the nurse came in and started having me push, the dr. would be in soon. He thought it would be awhile of pushing since she was face up. I did hard pushing for 15 mins and she was not moving down and I had to put oxygen on because the babies heart rate was not recovery after the pushing and I took a couple minutes off from pushing. The dr. came in and realized that the baby did not have enough room to come down and began to cut the skin that was blocking her. I was so glad that I had an epidural at this point. After he was done cutting, I began pushing and she still had limited space so he decided that we would need aide in getting her out and they had to use the vacumn after I had pushed for 20 more minutes. Finally, after 10 more minutes of pushing her head came out. The dr. then told me one more push, after him telling me to push so hard for the head I started to push and he was like woa not that hard. There she was laying on my stomach crying, it was a very emotional wonderful moment for me and Matthew to finally see our little girl After Matthew cut the cord they took her over next to my bed to clean. Then I began to lose an extreme amount of blood. My room filled with more nurses and activity than I ever thought. All I remember was the dr. who is usually a patient calm man was giving quick orders and the nurses were not moving fast enough for him. Finally after 45 mins, the dr then began to fill me in on what was happening and that they may have to take me to an operating room if the bleeding did not stop. I just began praying, thinking the last thing I want to do is leave my baby and go to an operating room. Again, thank goodness I had an epidural for all of that!! Then within ten minutes then told me the bleeding was under control and as long as it stayed that way, there would be no operating room. Praise the Lord!! The room calmed down and I finally got to hold and feed my baby.

Somewhere in there Matthew was holding our little girl and said, "She has to be Niah, she does not look like any of the other names on our list." Niah Beth King was born at 3:02 pm, weighed 5 lbs 10 oz. and was 19.5 inches long. She is doing very well and we both love and adore her.

This is a picture of her that I took just today. I realize she is my baby so I am partial but I do believe she is the most beautiful baby.