Ask and ye shall receive!

Zoey slept ALL NIGHT last night! Holy cow! She went to bed at 10:00 and woke up at 6:45. I woke up so confused when it was 6:00 and I had yet to be disturbed by baby cries. My little girl is a champ! It's been so much easier to put her to bed lately too. Day by day it all gets a little easier. I love it. That's what helps me keep my sanity. I keep reminding myself that these many time consuming daily activities we have to do - eight to nine bottle feedings a day, pumping four times a day, hand washing bottles every night, the endless attempts at burping a nearly un-burpable baby, and the diapers (oh, the diapers!) - are all temporary. Eventually she will feed herself and will not require bottles, I will give up pumping, the gas will hopefully let up and then potty training will be just around the corner. Some of these milestones are a long way off but I tell myself what I have to in order to maintain my sanity. And this sleeping through the night thing sure is helping my cause!

Keep it up, Zoemeister!

Success!

Zoey slept seven hours straight last night! I just had to document this amazing occurrence. She's been sleeping about four to six hours at the first stretch lately, which hasn't been too bad. She will usually go to bed around 9:30-10:00, then wake up between 2:00am and 4:00am to eat, then back to bed for two to three hours. Last night she went to bed at 10:00 and woke up at 5:00. Score! Now if she can make it to 6:00 that would work great with my morning routine! Come on, Zoey, make mommy proud!

Parental lesson learned: It's the little things that count, and you learn to really appreciate these small wins.

Two Months Old

My little lady is two months old today. Wow. So much has happened in the last two months, it feels like it's been two years. What Zoey's up to now: she holds her head up really well, likes to kick and bat at the toys that dangle from her play gym, and makes the cutest little babbling sounds I've ever heard. She has us wrapped around her little finger.

My intention was to update the blog weekly, but in retrospect that was quite an ambitious goal with a newborn around. I'm going to do a look back at the past 8.5 weeks and try to document all the highlights in one post. Should be a doozy. Stay tuned.

My Birth Story

Zoey must be impatient like her mama because she decided to arrive two weeks early, on May 18. The past three weeks have been crazy and in retrospect have gone by way too fast. I think I'm sort of starting to get the hang of this mom/baby thing! But first thing's first - here's the birth story.

I was well into my 35th week and had not yet had one contraction. Not that I'm complaining at all. I think it was Saturday, May 15 when I first felt something similar to mild cramps in my back but that was it. On Monday the 17th Jimmy and I were relaxing on the couch, watching Friends, when I noticed a couple more back cramps. Jimmy said we should time them and I said that was ridiculous, there's no way these are contractions. They were hardly noticeable! He went ahead and timed them anyway and they were something like 27, 35, and 33 minutes apart. So I told him he was silly and to calm down, we still have two weeks to go! Sarah was returning that evening from a semester in Italy so Chase and I went to the airport around 9:30pm to welcome her home. Then I came home and went straight to bed because I was exhausted as usual.

For some reason I woke up at 3:15am. I decided to go ahead and go to the restroom, since I had been getting up two to three times a night for that anyway. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure at this point I had my bloody show. Then as I'm sitting on the toilet I hear a 'pop' sound, which is a very unsettling thing to hear coming from your body. I sit there for a minute just in case, but nothing happened. So I went back in the room to see what What to Expect has to say about this. I had been to 12 weeks of child birth classes but I could not remember what to do when I saw the bloody show! The book didn't say to run to the hospital so I went back to bed and told Jimmy not to panic but I think I just had my bloody show. He sounded concerned but quickly fell back to sleep. Not 20 seconds later the flood gates opened - my water broke in our bed! I hurried to the bathroom where I continued to leak. I yelled to Jimmy that my water broke, at which time he sprang out of bed and started darting around the house, preparing for our dash to the hospital. It was like something out of a movie - pregnant lady is calm and collected and the father-to-be is panicky and anxious. I couldn't help but laugh at him a few times. Luckily I had my hospital bag packed and ready to go. Jimmy, however, had to scramble to get his stuff together, plus type up our birth plan (which we kept putting off). He also synced the iPod, which is another task we had delayed in completing because our iTunes was being finicky. While Jimmy tried to get things together I showered, made the bed, cleaned up the kitchen a little, packed the cooler and tidied up the living room. At around 4:30am we were ready to go. We were both so excited and in disbelief that this was actually happening!

I was definitely excited to be in labor, but not so happy that it had started with my water breaking. The plan all along had been to labor at home for a while, until my contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart, and then go to the hospital because the longer you're in labor at the hospital the more chance you have of the doctors wanting to intervene to move things along. Well when your water breaks you pretty much have no choice but to go to the hospital right away. Usually doctors won't let you go longer than 18-24 hours after your water breaks, plus since I'm group B strep positive I needed to have time to get two rounds of antibiotics before the baby was born. So it was off to the hospital we went.

Luckily we did our hospital preadmission two weeks earlier so check in went quickly. When the nurse examined me in triage I was 3cm dilated and they verified that my water had indeed broken. Jimmy called his parents and I called my mom to let them know they would soon have a new granddaughter. Jimmy and I were so excited that this was the day we were going to meet our daughter!

I was moved to a labor and delivery room and was instantly hooked up to the fetal monitor, IV and blood pressure cuff. My birth plan stated that I wanted intermittent fetal monitoring and a heplock, not an IV, but since I had to have the antibiotics I really didn't have a choice. My first nurse was really nice and explained everything that she was doing. She read over my birth plan and said it shouldn't be a problem to accomodate our requests, however my doctor may want to give me pitocin if I don't make any progress soon. I really didn't like that she felt the need to bring that up so early into labor but I just stayed positive and assured myself that I could do this completely naturally. At this point and for the next several hours my contractions were very irregular, very far apart and not very strong. After I had the first round of antibiotics I was allowed to walk around for a bit. I got a new nurse who was nice but not very interested in my birth plan. She too mentioned the possibility of pitocin, and at this point I began to get a little concerned. Then again they can't force me to have any medication. I just kept a good attitude and walked the halls to get things going. My doctor came in around 9:00am to check me and I had only dilated about 1 cm. Again, the "p" word was brought up and I asked if I could walk some more and they agreed to give me more time to let things progress naturally. Although they let me walk around I had to go back to the room frequently to hook up to the monitor so they could make sure the baby was okay. The nurse checked me about an hour or so later and I had not made any progress. The contractions weren't getting any closer together either. Then came the talk I was dreading.

I had been in labor for 7 hours and had only progressed 1 cm. Since I had group B strep and my water had broken my doctor was concerned because I wasn't dilating. She suggested pitocin to move things along, since my uterus "wasn't catching up" which can be the case when someone's water breaks prematurely. At this point I understood where she was coming from, but I wasn't totally on board with taking meds. This is not because I wanted to brag that I had a totally med-free birth, but more because I have heard that pitocin makes you have really really awful contractions which leads most women to take pain medication. I certainly wasn't going to have any pain meds so I was in for a guaranteed several hours of excrutiating pain. Jimmy and I discussed our options with the nurse, who didn't really seem to care about our preferences in this situation, and then talked alone for a while. We decided to do the pitocin, and then I cried for the next 30 minutes.

Let me stop the story for a minute to tell you how great Jimmy was this whole time. He really stepped it up as my labor coach, putting into practice all the techniques we learned in our Bradley classes. His job was to keep me relaxed every time I had a contraction - this involved finding any areas I was tensing up and basically giving me a full body massage the whole time I was in labor. Not only that, but he somehow managed to stay so positive throughout the whole experience, even when I was crying like a little baby because the contractions hurt so bad. Jimmy was amazing and there's no way I would have been able to do this without him.

So now it's 11:15am and the pitocin fun has begun. The contractions definitely became more regular and more painful. Plus they wouldn't let me off the fetal monitor because the baby's heart rate was dropping during contractions. Super. So I'm stuck in this very uncomfortable bed with wires and tubes all over the place and I cannot get into a comfortable position. My mood had changed from optimistic to pissed off in a matter of minutes. The nurse checked me around 1:00pm and I had dilated 1 more cm, so now I was up to 5. If I was going to dilate 1 cm every hour like they say should happen, I was going to lose my mind! These contractions were so painful - it felt like my pelvis was going to explode. That was definitely the worst pain I have ever experienced, and now I completely understand why people get epidurals. At this point I am not the Bradley 'A' student I thought I would be - I'm flexing my feet, tensing my shoulders, wrinkling my forehead, holding the bed rails for dear life. And there's good ol' Jimmy, telling me how great I'm doing and massaging my feet (Jimmy hates feet more than anything in the world) and being totally awesome. I just really wanted to go to sleep and put this labor thing on hold for a while. Things were getting really intense and my contractions were really close together. Then around 1:50pm I'm having a contraction and I feel the urge to push. Of course I think this can't be right, I was just 5cm less than an hour ago. Jimmy paged the nurse and she checked me, only to discover that I'm 9 1/2 cm! Holy crap! No wonder the contractions hurt so bad, my uterus was making real progress that last hour!

The nurse paged my doctor and called for the room to be set up for delivery and I am in disbelief that this is really happening. I am of course relieved that the hard labor only lasted a few hours, but now I'm freaked out about pushing this baby out. The nurse instructed me that I can push with the first few contractions but I may have to hold off on a few until my doctor arrives. I push a few times and it's not so bad. There was more of a break between contractions and pushing gave me some control, which I liked. Now about that holding off on pushing thing - are you KIDDING me?? That was one of the hardest parts of labor! I was trying not to push which made my breathing really weird and I almost hyperventilated. Thank god my doctor arrived fairly quickly and then things really got going. Pushing got harder and more painful. Once I felt the "ring of fire" I wanted to quit, but obviously at this point there was no turning back. I just went for it and pushed through the [excruciating] pain. I pushed for a total of 30 minutes and then Zoey Claire was here! The doctor placed her on my chest and that was the most amazing moment. I couldn't believe it happened so quickly and our daughter was here! She weighed 5 pounds 15 ounces, was 18 3/4 inches long and had a full head of dark hair. Other than the hair (and weird ears) she looked just like her papa.


The nurses took Zoey across the room to do the APGARs (on which she scored a 9, by the way) and Jimmy stood by her and took lots of pictures. I was so relieved that labor was over and I could finally relax. Little did I know I was far from relaxing. My two tears had to be stitched up, I had to be cleaned up, and a bunch of people got to push really hard on my stomach repeatedly to get all the blood clots out of my uterus (did not know about this part!). I screamed the first few times they did it - Jimmy said that was the most noise I made throughtout the entire process. Finally about 30 minutes later everyone was done routing around in my business and I got to see my daughter again. And she was perfect.

We had a whole waiting room full of visitors standing by: my mom, Pam and Jim had been at the hospital since about 7:00am, plus my dad, Rachel, Sarah, Jennifer, Austin, and Addison were all there to welcome Zoey. It was such a surreal day. I thought I would want to crash right after Zoey was born but I was so excited there was no way I could sleep.

In the end I think I had a pretty easy pregnancy and labor. Here are some of the highlights from the past nine months:

• I had awful morning sickness until about the 20th week of my pregnancy which caused me to drop 10 pounds and not even look pregnant until about week 24
• I gained 20 pounds
• I never really had any wacky food cravings, just really enjoyed sweets more than usual
• My belly button never became an "outie"
• My only "complications" were that I have group B strep and my and Zoey's Rh factor didn't match up
• Jimmy and I completed the Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth training one week before Zoey was born. This helped us focus on a goal of a totally natural birth experience.
  
• I had maybe only one or two mood swings the entire time (this is straight from Jimmy's mouth, people)
• I could wear my wedding/engagement rings throughout my entire pregnancy
• I developed a mild case of "cankles" in the last week or two
  
• I wanted a completely natural birth experience and I feel like I achieved that
• Labor lasted 11 hours, but only about three hours were hard labor
• I had dropped all the baby weight by 8 days postpartum (but I sure have a lot of tightening and toning to do!)
  

So there's my [very long] birth story! I hope if you're reading this and you have yet to have children that I haven't scared you off. The labor and delivery was a bitch, but of course the end result was well worth the work. Now stay tuned for Zoey updates and pictures!

Ash

This is how it's going down. 36 weeks 6 days.

Friday, May 28, 2010.

I get off work at 5:00, right after I set my Out of Office Assistant to read: "Thank you for your email. I am currently out on maternity leave. Please contact Ann in my absence." I just have a feeling that today is the day.

Throughout the day I noticed my belly tightening up pretty regularly, so when I get home I start timing the sensations and lo and behold they are contractions that are 10 minutes apart! So I go about my business, making cookies for the nurses who will be taking care of me at the hospital (have to butter them up so they don't tear up my birth plan!), making sure my bag is packed, tidying up the house. Contractions continue but aren't bad, so I go to bed to rest up. I wake up around 6:00am, and wow! The contractions are now four minutes apart! Off to the hospital we go!

Then I labor for about 2 hours, and suddenly it's time to push! My doctor is there to deliver the baby because I went into labor before she did - hooray! Zoey comes out after four pushes and she's perfect. Labor was a breeze - let's do this again next weekend! Then everyone comes to visit on this lovely Saturday afternoon.

I can dream, can't I? :)

Is that a hand poking out? 36 weeks 4 days

On Tuesday I had my first weekly doctor appointment and thus my first exam. I've been advised not to have exams done until absolutely necessary (39-40 weeks) because they can cause infections and because if any progress has been made then you tend to get overly excited for no reason. I agreed to the exam because, well, I'm impatient and excited and was really curious to see if I had made any progress. And good news! I'm 1cm dilated and 60% effaced! And now I'm really overly excited, and Jimmy even more so. I ask him at least once a week to go on a walk with me and he usually turns me down, but now he wants to go for walks every day to help move things along. Of course we both know it will happen when it's supposed to happen, but we're just so darn excited!

I've been having more of those stabbing cervical pains lately. I'm thinking the more pain, the more progress. The last couple days I've had quite a bit of these sensations so who knows maybe I'm 3cm by now! Sheeyeah, right. I can dream, can't I. I'm still feeling pretty well most of the time. It's getting harder to get comfortable when I sleep and I need help sitting up and tying my shoes sometimes. And today I noticed that my cankles are coming in. My legs and feet feel tight and a bit swollen, but I'm not waddling quite yet. I still haven't felt any contractions but apparently I could still be having them. My stomach does tighten up regularly so I guess this could be pre-labor contractions, they're just undetectable. Pain-free contractions - love it.


I cannot believe I only have three and a half weeks until my due date. It's so weird that Zoey can arrive pretty much any day now. Jimmy and I are so excited we can barely stand it.

• How far along?: 36 weeks
  
• Weight gain: 18 pounds
  
• Maternity clothes: blah. I miss real pants.
  
• Sleep: Lots of tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable and getting up to pee a lot.
  
• Stretch marks: I don't want to talk about it.
  
• Movement: Lots of big, weird movements and the stabbing pains down low and in my legs.
  
• Gender: Girl!!!
  
• Best moment of this week: Hearing I was 1cm dilated on Tuesday!
  
• Food cravings: Nothing notable really. I've actually had some nausea lately and haven't felt very hungry most of the time.
  
• Belly button in or out: In!
  
• What I miss most: Booze and real pants.
  
• What I'm looking forward to: My appointment next Tuesday. Anyone think I can get to 2cm by then? :)

Nighty night!
Ash

Now all I need is a baby. 35 weeks 6 days.

The nursery is all put together. Everything has been washed, sanitized, and organized. All the gear that blinks, shakes, or sings has batteries. We've attended a breastfeeding class and next week we learn about Infant Care for the First Six Weeks of Life. We have two weeks of Bradley classes left. I'm running out of reasons to go to Target. We are so ready for this baby, which means I'm super bored.

I use the term "ready" loosely, because of course you can always use more time in these situations. However I do feel like if I went into labor right now I would feel totally confident in our preparedness. We've been practicing the labor techniques we learned in class, so I feel like we have that down pretty well. The only reason why going into labor now would not be good is because I still have some projects to wrap up at work. My temporary replacement started this past week so I've been working on training her which is taking time away from my being productive in the final weeks. She's really nice and she's been in HR for something like 30 years. I really hope she doesn't do a better job than I do, otherwise they may not want me to come back! Must.. find a way.. to sabotage her...

I've been having those annoying stabbing pains more often. I asked my doctor about them a couple weeks ago and she said it's just the baby moving around, and since space is limited as she gets bigger that's why it's becoming painful. It feels like Zoey is headbutting my cervix, trying to break free! I don't think I've had any more contractions, and if I have then they aren't painful. My stomach does feel awfully tight sometimes so perhaps those are very mild Braxton Hicks contractions. Other than that I'm feeling really good lately. I'm not giant and swollen yet and I still have a good amount of energy. I do get tired pretty early - in fact last night (Friday) I started nodding off at 9:30. How lame am I! I used to be quite the night owl. Now I can't even make it through the local news.

I have a feeling Zoey is going to arrive early. Not really sure why, just a premonition I have. :)

• How far along?: 35 weeks
  
• Weight gain: 17 pounds
  
• Maternity clothes: So tired of the elastic waist bands that go up to my arm pits. I miss my old clothes.
  
• Sleep: I love to sleep, any time of day. I still have to get up two to three times a night to go to the bathroom.
  
• Stretch marks: Oh my god they are coming on fast and furious now. Every time I feel an itch on my belly I know another one is popping up. So very sad. :(
  
• Movement: I get kicked in the ribs pretty often, hiccups are pretty regular, and she likes to stretch and swim around a lot.
  
• Gender: Girl!!!
  
• Best moment of this week: 5:00pm on Friday when I could finally relax! It has been a long week.
  
• Food cravings: I have to have sweets almost daily, other than that nothing notable.
  
• Belly button in or out: In, and doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
  
• What I miss most: Booze. And a stomach free of blemishes.
  
• What I'm looking forward to: My appointment on Tuesday. I think I may have my first internal this week, so here's hoping for some progress!
• Words of wisdom: "There's no hope without dope." -Jake's dad, after I told him I'm having a natural birth