Evan Nicholas' Birth! Pic in Siggy

missanna811

Evan was born on Tuesday, January 17th at 1:15pm.

For those who remember the last post... I totally didn't poop on the delivery table. Though I did ask over and over if I had. 

I also made it through the whole stay without my boss and his wife visiting, though they begged. Score. 

 

Okay, for the good stuff.. I'll try and keep it short! Started having contractions at about 7am on Monday morning, but they were pretty regular (8-12 minutes apart). I had a doctor's appointment at 3pm, and figured we'd know what was going on soon enough. They were still 8-10 minutes apart by the dr appointment, but I was told I was 3cm dilated and fully effaced... sent away with a "See you in about 6 hours!"

A little more than six hours later (1am Tuesday morning) I checked into the hospital with 5 min contractions. Literally minutes after walking in, my water broke while I was peeing. Things slowed down after that... lots of me groaning... then about 11am they thought I was ready to push and the doctor came in. The baby was face up though, and my contractions started to slow, so I was given pitocin. Holy painful contractions. I had been given an epidural, but they failed to inform me that I controlled the amount and if I was in pain, I could give myself more. By the time the pitocin hit my system, I was in immense pain, and only able to give myself more medication every 10 minutes. LOTS of groaning ensued.

About 12-12:30pm (hell, you try and keep track of time when in labor!) I started the real pushing. I'm not going to lie. That was the most pain I've ever felt in my life. I believe at one point I looked at my doctor and said "Why do women do this to themselves??????" The baby actually coming out though was the most insane, intense feeling, I can't even explain, both physical and emotionally. It was amazing.

The baby was born healthy, 6lb 12oz. However, my colostrum wasn't coming out as it should be, and the baby wasn't eating enough. We couldn't figure out what the screaming was, and nurses kept saying it was normal, we had a fussy baby. By the second day, he was running a temperature and dehydrated. I was still nursing as often as possible, but it wasn't enough. I had lactation people working for hours with me, we were hand expressing and spoon feeding what I could produce, it simply wasn't enough. Finally, we hooked up a tube to my nipple and fed him formula while he latched and nursed, using a syringe to go a few drops at a time as he sucked. It was exhausting, frustrating, infuriating, and I was in tears trying to hook up the damn tube to my nipple to feed my constantly screaming child at 2am. I had maybe 5 hours of sleep between Monday morning and Thursday.

Because of the issues, we weren't discharged as planned. I was let go Thursday night, but they wanted to keep the baby. I stayed in the room with him as his guest (so did DH), and we made it through another night (barely). I can't even go into detail on what hell the 3 days after he was born were. By Friday morning, he was steady, healthy in the temp, and we were allowed to leave. Literally an hour after I left, we had an appointment with the lactation people. I'd been pumping since Wednesday so we were just playing the waiting game on my milk coming in. He was latching and knew what to do, he just wasn't being fed, so we were still using the tube.

FINALLY my milk came Friday night, and my son slept. It was amazing. No tubes, no special nipple covers, nothing. Within a day we were able to master breastfeeding. All I needed was my milk to come in!!! 

He's great now. He feeds every 3 hours or so, and let's us sleep at least 6 hours a night (in intervals, of course). He's happy, healthy, loves to pee when I take his diaper off, and has so much character. I can't express in words what the last week has been like. It was hell to get through, I think I've broke down and sobbed every day (talk about a hormonal mess), but we're getting through and I've never been more in love. 

Long, sorry... 

Picture in Siggy!