Cute video of Connor singing!

New Arrival

So, here's the whole labor and delivery story (without all the gory stuff!!).

After feeling rather slight and somewhat painful contractions since Sunday the 11th I woke up on Sunday a week later and told Dan that I felt it would be soon, possibly today as the contractions really changed and were very close and very painful. Well, we had plans Sunday to go out to breakfast, I was going to go get a pedicure (thanks to Becky and Nadine for that one:) and then head to Becky's because they had some presents to give us. Well, we actually made it to all 3 things then we left Becky's house and headed home to time some contractions as the doctor told us not to go to the hospital until they were 4 minutes apart. By around 5pm the contractions were that close so we headed over and waited 3 hours in the pre delivery room while they assessed me to decide to admit me or not. After an hour or so they couldn't figure out why my contractions were so close together when the baby hadn't even dropped down. They thought he may have turned position and was now breech. So, they had an ultra sound tech come in to check. He determined the baby was still in the head down position. After that the hospital doctor (after consulting mine) decided the baby was still too high and thus it was too soon to admit me. So, they gave me a pain killer and sent me home, letting me know if the pain killer didn't work and contractions got worse to come back but they were confident the pain killer would cause the contractions to subside.

We headed home, a little disappointed. By the time we were home, within an hour, it was obvious the pain killer didn't work and I was in some serious pain with some very fast and hard contractions. Dan decided to give the hospital a call to ask them what to do. They asked him how far apart the contractions were now to which he responds "I don't know she wont stop crying!!" The person on the phone told him to bring me back in and so we literally turned around and went back to the hospital! This time they admitted me around 11pm and put us in a HUGE delivery room with all the "perks" even a hot tub.

A little after midnight I was given an epidural and hooked up to about 6000 other machines. Well the next several hours, from midnight until he was born at 10:37am the details are very fuzzy but I will post what I remember.

1. The active labor was nice with the epidural! The epi didn't hurt a bit despite the nurse and anesthesiologist making it sound like it was going to be the shot from hell. And it helped so much that I didn't feel any contractions for many hours to come. In fact, my body felt them so little, that the contractions all but stopped and the nurses had to put me on Oxytocin to induce me and get the contractions started again.

2. According to what the doctor told me today, I should have had Connor 5 hours earlier than I did. Unfortunately, he was positioned wrong, facing my leg rather than my spine and it was soon determined that was why he wasn't dropping with the contractions because he was "stuck" behind my pelvis bone. The doctor decided to give it time and headed off to work for a few hours with a promise to be back soon. Of course AFTER he left was when everything went crazy...

3. I was suddenly in a LOT of pain, and I mean a lot LOT. I could feel everything despite the constant shots of epidural I was giving myself as boosters. They called my doctor and asked him to come back, even though he had just left as I had just jumped from 5cm dilated to 8cm (something I tried to warn them about before the labor that I stay at 5 forever and then just jump up to the pushing stage but no one believed me!!) I remember the nurse saying "wow I guess you were right I should have believed you."

4. Then the baby's heart rate dropped from the normal 150 beats to only 60 beats and next thing I know there are literally 20 some doctors and staff in that room. The lead resident doctor gave me all of 10 seconds to decide if I wanted an emergency c-section or if I would accept her reaching up inside of me and using the vacuum to try to shift his position to get his heart rate back up. So during all this chaos I agree to the vacuum adjusting and let me tell you does that hurt! She adjusted him and his heart rate immediately returned to normal but... then... I don't know what was wrong with her, I think it may have just been panic or stress or maybe lack of experience... Dan thinks she just decided she wanted to "pull" the baby out... but she reaches inside of me again with the vacuum and starts literally pulling on him. She pulled on him so so so hard that the suction cup POPPED off his head!!! I'm screaming out in pain and Dan is saying to her (I don't know how he was staying so calm) "if his heart rate is back to normal can't we just leave him??" The delivery nurse agreed so she stopped and the room cleared out again. I cannot tell you how angry and upset I am that she did that though and that Dan was the one that had to stop her as her actions caused #7

5. Of all the friendly and wonderful nurses we met on this journey, there was one that I wanted to seriously punch! Here I am in a HUGE amount of pain and some anal nurse decides that is the time to fix the 5000 tangled wires coming off the machines and plugged, taped, stuck into my body, so they would be "organized." Organized?? Are you @#%@! kidding me?? For the next... I don't know... felt like 5 hours she was turning me and pulling at me and adjusting me and driving me crazy! Oh heaven forbid that some wires were crossing and twisted. Actually, I complained about her later on that evening (after the birth) to another nurse who responded "Oh that was Laurie... yea we all make fun of her too." So, really, I'm not exaggerating! And the whole time she's adjusting my wiring I'm screaming "I have to push" and she's like you can't push until your doctor gets here. Yea, right... that was impossible. I swear it took my doctor 8 hours to drive the 20m to the hospital.

6. Finally, my doctor was in the room with me, and pretty much all I remember after that was a lot of screaming my lungs out as the baby was still sideways and not really fitting but eventually I delivered a 9.14 lb baby boy.

7. When they brought him over to me I was informed that due to the other doctor's actions, Connor had a very swollen head and lacerations to his scalp in the shape of a big suction cup. He spent the next 3 days in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Connor is now at home with us. He has a huge circle scab/bruise on the back of his head and bruising all the way down onto his neck which makes it very hard to nurse him as I can't touch his head or neck without hurting him. :( But, we are finally able to rest and heal as Dan and I have spent the last 3 days living in the waiting rooms of the hospital so that we could feed him every 3 hours. I was discharged from the hospital that same night at 11pm we went and fed Connor then left the hospital around 1am and were back by 8am and staying until 1am again. We spent Tuesday and Weds like that and brought him home on Wednesday. Although, we have to keep bringing him back every day at 9am so they can check to make sure he doesn't have jaundice.

I am so swollen everywhere and sore and tired, our house is a mess with baby and hospital stuff everywhere, we have absolutely no food and no time to even shop and when we have the time we are so exhausted all we can do is go home and sleep! I am soooo looking forward to the day at home in bed enjoying the new baby. When that will happen is yet to be known...

On a positive note, though, I must say how impressed I was with my doctor. He was so patient and he was there almost the entire time. He didn't come rushing in as the baby was crowning, but was there to walk me through and calm me down during a huge portion of my delivery, almost the whole thing. He is very kind and understanding and even delivering a baby that big and mispositioned I didn't need any stitches and had absolutely no "common" birth issues. And even better... today when we took Connor to his office to see him we found out that he charged us LESS than HALF of his fee for the delivery!!! The guy is amazing. Period.

I'm sorry here's some flowers

So, Monday I went to the doctor for my weekly visit. It was a "semi" holiday... the day after Easter... so it was only the doctor and one receptionist working. I am assuming I was the last appointment of the day at 3:15 because they called me at 1pm asking if I could come in earlier as early as possible. Problem was, I was waiting for Dan's mom, Carol, to come over at 2pm as she was going to go with me to the appointment. So, I tried to call them back, to let them know but because of the "holiday" they weren't answering the phones and their message said such. So, we showed up around 2:45 which was the earliest we could get there, so I guess they still got off work half an hour earlier! It was weird not having the nurse there, the receptionist was filling in for her and seemed rather frazzled and ready to go home after a day of doing 2+ person's jobs.

I had gained 4 pounds in the week, which I knew I had already because my hands and feet keep swelling up like balloons (well they feel like that anyway) so I knew before I went that I was retaining fluids. I also knew that the combination of 4 or more pounds, high blood pressure and protein in the urine all mean preenclampsia and could mean some serious bed rest for me or inducing labor.

Well, when the doc took my blood pressure it was creeping up 140/88 but I explained to him we had been running around a lot in the past few days and I hadn't slept at home the night before and you know... other things that make the BP go up. He was a little concerned that with the weight gain spike and the blood pressure I *may* have the beginnings of preenclampsia, even though I was lacking the 3rd piece (protein in the sample), and wanted me to come in on Weds again to get my blood pressure checked. Well, being that it's a good half hour drive for us to go there, I asked if I could just go check it at the nearby pharmacy and he was alright with that.

On Weds I went and checked my blood pressure and all was back to normal. Phew. I am refusing to be induced with this baby, I went through that with Tyler, granted it was at 8 months and this baby is full term now so it would be different. But my labor and beyond with Tyler was so traumatic for me, I swore to myself I would forever choose bed rest over induction for any other kid (unless of course it's life threatening).

So, past few days I've been taking it pretty easy, laying down a lot. I use the laptop to keep myself entertained. I think going on bed rest at 6 months when I was pregnant with Tyler would have been a heck of a lot easier if I had had a laptop. Been drinking fluids like crazy as well.

This month is going so so so slow I am not due until the end of the month but it already feels like I am overdue! Yesterday, I was sure it *must* be close to the end of the month only to check the date and see it was only the 8th! I am NOT looking forward to the labor at all. Once again, I have now opted against an epidural, being that since we are paying out of pocket for this baby an epidural starts at $800 bucks. Not to mention, I really want to be able to walk around and the thought of a needle in my lower back freaks the heck out of me. So, I figure I already did it before epidural free and I can do it again. I told Dan to be prepared to make a lot of apologies to nurses and staff after the birth! Those of you that were with me for my first birth know what I'm talking about :) I got pretty... mouthy... angry... whatever at the nurses!

Well, I'm hoping that this birth will be easier than the first, mainly because I wont be medically induced and go through a month of pregnancy in a few short hours like I did with Tyler. But, the doctor said it won't be all that easy because it's been 10 years not 2 since I had Tyler.

I think I will just buy thank you/I'm sorry cards, candy and flowers for the staff now...

Home Stretch!

Well, my doctor appointments have changed to once a week now!! It's a half hour drive to his office, but it's a nice outing :) My belly is so huge and awkward now, I knock stuff over with it and I'm really paranoid about people running in to me in the store. I also get tired and tired of standing super easy and feel very off balance. On Sunday, I was 36 weeks. At 36 weeks was when I had Tyler, so it was no surprise to me when on Monday I felt contractions. Fortunately, I was heading to the doctor that day, so after all the routine questions, I told him that I was feeling sporadic contractions since the middle of the night before but nothing that seemed regular. He, of course, asked how my first labor went to which I answered that I was induced at 36 weeks so I really had no idea. Actually, I had never felt a contraction until I was in the hospital being induced with Tyler and I wasn't even sure if it was contractions or just pelvic pressure. He had me undress, gave me this... napkin... to cover up with and then checked me. His answer was that I was not in labor, although everything was "soft" and he could feel the baby's head. Then he let me know that if I felt these contractions get longer or more regular to head over to the hospital and they'd contact him. He ended with "lets hope the baby stays in there a week or two more!" By the next day I was feeling fine again so I'm assuming this was just Braxton Hicks.

One thing that is nice is that the baby has dropped low enough that he's not kicking my internal organs all day and night. Also, seems like he grew large enough that he doesn't have much room to move around in there, so the movements are more slow pressure of him "readjusting" himself than sharp jabs. Good news is that I have been feeling a lot less sore in the upper abdomen area :)

I was reading that only 5% of women actually give birth on their doctor set due date and anything from 37 weeks to 42 weeks is considered a full term birth. This of course set in the fact that I'm now over 36 weeks and the baby could come in less than a week! I am sooo scared of the whole birth process and am hoping it won't be as bad. My first was a horrible experience, I showed up to the hospital for a "routine" checkup, they made sure the baby's heart rate wasn't distressed because of my high blood pressure and next thing I know I'm being induced and going through a months worth of pregnancy in a few hours! Anyway, the whole experience was horrible. And with one month or less, the thoughts of the previous birth, 10 years ago, have set in again. Maybe some day they will invent teleporting and be able to just teleport the baby out of your stomach... that would be nice!!

Well, I really hope the baby stays in for the babyshowers which are all planned for April and are really late. But we wanted to wait until all the snow birds in the family had flown back from the southern US states. I guess it's not a huge deal to have the baby at the shower (that's how Tyler's baby shower was and it was so fun!) but with all the running around we need to do in April, it'd be easier to do it without a baby in tow! Not to mention, without that baby shower, we have virtually nothing... hmm there is still a whole list of things we need to buy as well for the arrival. Frozen dinners so we don't have to make food and diapers come to mind right away... where has all the time gone!! Argh.

Hope everyone is doing great :) And I will try my best to keep the blog updated after every doctor appointment, which should be once a week... but no promises!

Dino Sore!!

I realize it's been quite a while since my last post but my pregnancy is so "normal" that I find it hard to find things to talk about... although my mom always said "no news is good news" so I think I'll go with that quote here!

Dan and I have been working on the room and it's still coming as of tonight there is one last dinosaur to finish before beginning to set up the room. The room is sooo cute, Dan drew all the dinosaurs based off my designs and he's hand painting them. He's done such a spectacular job that when we show people the pictures they think it's a wall sticker. He is so talented and I cannot wait until the whole room is complete. I'm sure most of you saw the pics on facebook, but I'll post them again here just in case you didn't. The pictures are big so they are cut off in the blog (and possibly email) but if you just click on the picture it should open up the full size pic...

Here is the most recent addition to the dinosaur nursery:



This is the first one Dan completed, the baby dinosaur:



In this picture you can see one of the entire walls including the palm tree and the brontosaurus (which apparently are not a dinosaur anymore). The purple one didn't capture on the camera alone properly because the window is near it and causes a huge glare, so we just took it as the entire wall. I'll try to get a picture of it again at night sometime.



This is a picture of the footprints up the side of the wall that the lightswitch is on. I got a nice little matching dinosaur lightswitch cover from Ebay for $3.50 you can see it in this picture too.







Well, it's hard to believe that I'm now 34 weeks along and the baby will be here in just a few more weeks! We went to the doctors today and again everything was, as I said before, normal. My only real problem is how painful the baby kicking is!! I mean the baby lays in, what seems to me, one position, with his feet up under my right ribs. He never, ever stops moving! My right side is so incredibly sore! I never remembered Tyler moving about so painfully like this but maybe I just forgot... I seem to remember enjoying Tyler's movements while pregnant not clutching my side in agony!! I actually told the doctor about it and asked if it was ok for me to push against my side to try to "move" the baby out of a specific spot. I was worried that maybe I would squish him or something so I figured I should ask. The doctor laughed at me and said it was fine to do but the baby will probably just move right back into the same spot anyway.

And sleeping is so difficult, I got some little wedge shaped pillows specifically designed for pregnancy and those really help but I am still awake the majority of the night. I am either getting up every hour to go to the bathroom or being woken up from the baby wiggling around. I have been playing endless suduko on my cell phone in the middle of the night to wait for the baby to settle enough for me to sleep. Ahh well I know after he's born it'll be even less sleep :)

My next appointment, in 2 weeks, starts all my weekly appointments... the final stretch!

The Thin Green Line

So, Tuesday was my latest doctor appt. Everything was still nice and normal. Andrea (Dan's sister) went with me to this appointment and got to hear the heartbeat... These are all kind of uneventful appointments in my opinion :) But, it was nice to have someone else in the family come along!

On Saturday we started to paint the base layer of the baby's room. The blue went on very nicely and I painted the old, white dresser to match: Blue with green drawer fronts. This went so smoothly I had no doubt we'd finish it before it got dark. However, that wasn't the case because it was after the blue that we started to have problems. The first was the tape. We taped at about waist high for the marker as to where the green line would go after. First the tape wouldn't peel off and the drips of blue made it stick to the wall and we had to go around the room scraping it off with our finger nails because when you just peeled it straight off it tore into little shreds. I said it was because of the tape we used but Dan reminded me that he had bought actual painting tape. So, that was annoying but no big deal, all the little pieces eventually were cleaned off the wall. Next was the ugly, off-white paint in this place is obviously very cheap and as we peeled the tape off it started to peel the paint right off the wall and revel the previous color of the bedroom which was pink! Well, this was no big deal though as the green stripe was still going to be painted there to cover it over. However, this meant that we couldn't tape the bottom portion of the green line because if it peeled up the white again we had no way to fix that on the lower portion of the room.

Next came the green line. Dan swore it'd be easy and his hand was steady enough that we wouldn't need to tape anything. Then he dunked the new brush (a flat square one made for painting edges) in the paint and slapped it again the wall. Only problem is, he didn't squeeze out enough paint and as soon as it hit the wall it dripped copious amounts of paint down into the other section!! Argh! So trying to fix it, he wiped it with a dry papertowel which just made it smear all over the wall. Fortunately, this was at the top portion of the wall so he just needs to repaint the blue section again. After that he got the hang of it and with only a few other drips (which by the way wipe cleanly off with a magic eraser) and a few wavy areas (since we couldn't use tape) we... well mostly Dan... got the job done. Needless to say, however, painting the lines ended up being a huge chore and, while it looks awesome, it was a lot of work. But Dan has such a great attitude and never said one word of complaint! He's awesome.

Next weekend we are going to finish it up with the actual artwork and Andrea is coming over to help with that. I'm really excited to get it finished as I am now 31 weeks along and have only a few weeks of pregnancy left so I'm getting antsy for completion :)

Baby room design

So, designing a baby room that is not your typical nursery is proving to be a bit of a challenge, we have been browsing store after store and website after website and because it's not only baby items (already overpriced) but "specialty" baby items (not Winnie the Pooh or Racing Car themes) the prices at the stores are very steep with items being few and far between and almost never matching.

But, today I finally had an idea. I logged on to Ebay (probably the only site on the entire World Wide Web I forgot to check) and typed in "dinosaur" into the baby search section and hundreds and hundreds of items came up!! And sooo inexpensive! I mean there's everything: dinosaur bibs, stuffed animals, curtains, toys, clocks, pillows, borders, stencils, growth charts, bedding, pacifiers, artwork, drawer knobs... everything!! I was worse than a kid in a candy store. There are literally hundreds, heck probably thousands of people and ebay stores that sell every possible dinosaur nursery item you could need and there's even people who, if they don't make it WILL make it for you! I even found a dinosaur light switch cover that someone hand paints! I wish that I could register with Ebay.com instead of the "standard" (and very overpriced) stores *coughbabiesruscoughcough*

Anyway, after being very very inspired for nursery ideas, I got into Photoshop and designed the layout I want Dan and Andrea to paint for the nursery walls. I am really in love with this theme because it's a theme that can grow with the child too. So, later on, the room can be converted into a more of a child's room rather than a baby's room. Right now though, it's pictures of cute, little baby dinosaurs. I tried to keep it simple to save on time and paint costs but still give it that playful, bright baby room feel.

Basically, there are 2 full walls, one wall with a big window and the 4th wall is all entire closet door. So, this gives me 3 walls to work with. With the largest wall, I wanted to find some cube shaped (or at least half square/modern looking) shelves to display a few items on the walls. Also, the shelves will help to fill some of the extra space in without it looking overly cluttery.

The wall with the window on it cannot fit as much, but I figured the narrow space between the wall corner and the window can be some dinosaur footprints and just hanging a simple green curtain (although the curtain idea may change if I can find matching or near matching curtains) You may also notice the two tones to the room separated by the green borders, which will be at about waist height. This was because I didn't want to have all these beautiful decorations on the walls that would then be covered up by furniture! I figured this way we can put the furniture around the room without taking away from the design.

And on the final wall, the last of my two favorite dinosaurs in cartoon format, triceratops and stegosaurus.


I plan on painting the built in shelves in the closet to match as well and I may throw a volcano into the mix somewhere but these were my basic plans so far. Of course there is always the fear that the ultrasound maybe was wrong and we'll end up having a girl... but I figure that if she's anything like me, all of my "imaginary friends" as a child were dinosaurs, this will still be an appropriate room for her, which is also why I tried to keep the colors very pastel... just in case.

Other than that, my health is still great, went and got a gestational diabetes test the other day, Wednesday and boy was that painful. The nurse didn't know what she was doing and ended up poking me ALL over until she was finally able to draw the blood out of my hand, leaving my hand aching the rest of the day. Doc said that as long as I didn't hear from him everything was normal and so far I haven't heard anything. My belly is also horribly heavy feeling and weighing on my muscles like crazy making sleeping, sitting, standing and walking or doing anything a pain and I'm thinking of going out and buying one of those maternity back/belly braces tomorrow if I can find one.

Well goodnight to everyone, I hope the day finds you all healthy and in good spirits. :)