fiona's birth and the bed-in

Introducing, my daughter, Fiona Ruth; born at 3:14am, July 29th.

 She was 7lb. 4oz., 19 in. with lots of fight in her!

Birth Timeline:

July 13th - Cervical cerclage removed at 36.5 weeks. Go out to Buffalo Wild Wings after. Leave the restaurant, and realize baby has DROPPED. Looks like that little stitch did it's job!
July 17th - Doctor declares me 3cm dilated, 80% effaced, with baby's head engaged! We expect to go to the hospital any minute.
July 18-27th - Nooooothiiiiiiing haaaappeeeeens.
July 28th 7:30am-1:00pm - What a nice chill day. Maybe I'll shave my legs and blow-dry my hair for the fun of it. Heck, let's paint our nails. Huh, I'm having more Braxton-Hicks than usual.
2:00-3:00pm - Yeaaaah, I should start writing these down. And maybe clean the kitchen.
3:00 - Call Zach on his way home from work to say I hope he wrapped everything up cause they might tell me at my doctor's appointment today that this is it. Contractions are 10 minutes apart but completely painless. Just a tightening and release. Jaina and I speed-clean the living room.
4:00 - Put bags in car on the way to doctor's appointment just in case.
4:20 - Doctor doesn't think I'm in real labor yet, but, hmmm, blood pressure is elevated... we're gonna send you to the hospital anyway.
6:00 - Meet Dad at York Hospital, say goodbye to Jaina, head upstairs. Contractions are 6 minutes apart and utterly painless.

6:30 - My good friend, Meredith, is my nurse. Yay! Labs for possible preeclampsia all come back negative, as expected, but they decide to have me check in anyway. Contractions are 4 minutes apart, moderate intensity, but still just feel like a blood pressure cuff tightening. What the what?
8:30 - We get set up in our own room. I find out that because of my prior c-section I'll need to be hooked up to a monitor constantly to record Baby's heartbeat. That's kind of a bummer cause it means I'll have to stay within steps of the bed rather than shower or walk around which I had been planning on to manage pain. I bounce on the birth ball for a while while Meredith holds my monitor in place since Little Lady was being stubborn and making it difficult for us to hear her heart.
9:45 - Midwife comes in and breaks my water. Woosh! Here we go.
10:00 - Um, yeah, this isn't comfortable.
10:05-11:45 - I AM EARTH MAMA, HEAR ME ROAR!!!! Do. not. touch me.
11:45 - Still only 4.5cm dilated. Epidural requested.
12:15 - Anesthesiologist arrives
12:45 - Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh..... Dim the lights. Zach falls asleep immediately. I close my eyes and settle in for the night.
1:15 - Nurse switches me to my other side and has me put on oxygen to help Baby's heart rate stay where it should be. I sleep between each contraction, but they're getting uncomfortable.
2:00 - Why does my butt hurt?
2:15 - I think I'm supposed to call if my butt hurts. If it still hurts at 2:30 I'm calling. ZZZzzz...
2:30 - Heyo! Baby's very ready to come out. Wake up Zach. He basically has a heart attack.
2:40 - My bed magically transforms into a piece of gym equipment, and they watch while I do a practice push. Midwife and nurse immediately gown up. For some reason I become very concerned about Zach and keep asking if he's okay.

3:14am - Roughly 10 contractions later I manhandled this baby out of me. Seriously never been prouder of any accomplishment. She was born face up (!!!!), and presented forehead first which is supposed to be quite a bit harder to push out. She also had her cord over her shoulder and across her body - Miss America sash style.

I had the most amazing epidural. I couldn't feel any pain, but I felt all the pressure and knew right where she was. That helped so much. Also the handles. Once they brought the handles up on the bed I rocked it.

She was so healthy and ALIVE when she came out, and it was pretty amazing to have her right up on my chest immediately. There were lots of perks with Jaina's planned c-section, but man, nothing beats that immediate contact with your kid.

3:30 - The midwife calls an OB in to do my repair stitches, and - yay! - it's my favorite doctor at the practice. So I got to see her while she fixed me up.

4:00-5:30 - After they finished with me and got Fiona all weighed and cleaned up she came back to me and nursed like a champ. Baby instinct is pretty incredible.

6:00am - We got to our room over in maternity and realize a new day just started. Only we didn't get to sleep the night before... It's gonna be a long day.

It took me quite a while to get over pulling that all-nighter. The highlight of that day was watching Jaina meet her baby sister. She was so sweet and basically clobbered her with kisses.

I didn't get to sleep much that night either. It felt like people were coming in my room all night long. And never while we had Fiona up to feed her. Grr.

My fancy homemade hospital gown. ;)

Then the next night Little Miss wanted to eat literally every hour. Friday morning I finally had a nap for an hour and a half. That was my longest stretch since Monday night. Yuuuuuuck. 

 Her profile is already so different since her face has come un-smushed.

That's what coming out forehead-first will do to ya.

I saw a mom online compare that first post-partum week to John and Yoko's bed-in. I totally agree, except with a lot more bodily fluids. ;p I was only steps away from a bed or couch for over a week. You're in a whole different dimension. It's uncomfortably intimate, tender, and intense. You can be deliriously happy one second and in the very depths of despair the next.

We've been this new family for over two weeks now, and I just feel like I'm crawling out of the postpartum bed-in cave. I finally returned all the texts I received. I'm beginning to be interested in what's going on in the outside world.

I don't know if other women experience this, but I feel like my mind was operating on over-drive the week after Fiona's birth, but I had no strength or will to express all the thoughts I was having. What this results in is whole essays written in my head while I sat nursing Fiona all night and day but then not being able to get any of those words down even if I got to a notebook or computer moments later. You'll just have to trust me when I say I had so many glorious thoughts on motherhood, birth, mortality, and pain. I think I mentally solved a few women's rights issues too. Too bad the world will never know... ;)

 Dressed and ready to go home!

Here's one snippet of something I was trying to work out:

People often look on postpartum women as angels. These serene madonnas holding court from their hospital beds. But what if we changed our perception of new mothers from angels to warriors? Wounded warriors who've just fought the biggest battle of their lives. Madonnas are silent, stoic; a sweet facade against which a precious baby sits. 

Warriors have a story worth hearing. People ask a warrior about the wounds received in battle! A madonna sits there LITERALLY BLEEDING, in a haze of hormones and maybe narcotics, muscles aching, body alternating between sweating and shivering, and sweetly answers questions about her baby - glossing over any of the unpleasant details of her birth.

Not sure where that was headed, but that's just a glimpse of what a brain high on adrenaline and every other hormone sounds like. There should be a nursing app that also has a voice recorder to capture all of the musings women have while they feed their children. ;)

So that's Fiona Ruth's birth story! I was soooo happy with how it went. She's doing so well. Jaina's doing great. Zach and I are getting there. ;) I'm trying not to be impatient waiting for our routine to fall in place. We'll get there.

More about Fiona's name to come. It took me two weeks to write this, so don't hold your breath. ;)

the story of last week: in which i use the word "cervix" a lot

There are lots of reasons I haven't written in months. I co-ran a city-wide fundraiser in late September that nearly brought me to my knees. I got pregnant in November and spent almost the entire month of December in a horizontal position, weakly waving hello at any and all visiting family members. January I began to learn how to live again, but couldn't believe taking care of a toddler and keeping a house together was all my responsibility. "Really? This all comes down to me? This isn't fun at all!" February I made a little more effort to get out of the house despite the sub-zero temperatures (coldest February on record for PA, people!), and I made a major breakthrough when I put a chair in front of the sole window in our house that gets some afternoon sun. You will find me there every afternoon from 1:30-2 until the snow melts.

But I'm back, and we had the craziest, scariest few days last week.

For those of you who don't know, I had a lot of issues with Jaina's pregnancy. At my 20-week anatomy scan she just would not show her gender, so after trying to get a peek from every angle they brought out the vaginal ultrasound. The tech noticed right away that my cervix was pretty short for someone only halfway through their pregnancy and had a doctor check it out. Long story short, after a few weeks of monitoring, I needed a cervical cerclage - one stitch that goes around your cervix and cinches it shut. (I also had a low-lying cord and placenta which eventually dictated that I have an early c-section, but that's a whole other story.)

So this time around we scheduled a meeting with a maternal/fetal medicine doctor at 16 weeks to make a plan for how we might monitor my "incompetent cervix." (That is LITERALLY the medical term for it. Rude.) We talked about all the options for if/when it happened again, then we went to an ultrasound room to check things out. First she took a look at the baby, and we found out (a month before we expected) that we're having a girl! I was immediately ecstatic! The idea of Jaina having a sister was so exciting.

Then she took a look down below. I was already down to 2 cm of cervical tissue. Really?! Finding out her gender, which makes the baby that much more "real", but also that she wasn't perfectly safe was rough. But I don't want to live in fear, so I decided to be brave and started looking up baby names and nursery ideas anyway. We decided to try a week of progesterone (NOT taken orally, by the way) since that has been shown to help some women. We could only wait a week and find out how much it would help me.

So last Thursday was our appointment, and, thankfully, I decided to leave Jaina at a friend's house. We got all set up, the ultrasound technician brought up the picture, and I knew right away there wasn't as much left. She didn't even measure. It's kind of a blur, but I know she told the doctor there "couldn't be more than 6mm."

Half a centimeter between my tiny avacado-sized baby and the world she was nowhere near ready for.

Again, I was fuzzy, but instead of talking about when they would do the cerclage, there was some talk of "if". The doctor even did a visual internal check to make sure she couldn't see the amniotic sack.

They sent us to the hospital, and we had to stay in Labor and Delivery for an hour or two while they monitored me for possible contractions. Thankfully, there wasn't a peep from my uterus, so I could be moved to Antepartum on the much quieter and comfier Maternity floor.

Zach got Jaina situated with my parents and came back to spend the night with me. I watched about 10 episodes of Rehab Addict. I don't even like that show, she is so shrill. I didn't know quite where to put my brain. Should I be preparing myself to meet and say goodbye to my baby? Or should I be arming myself for battle in the OR tomorrow? There were tons of people praying for us, and the ladies in my mom's group sent me all these amazing messages of encouragement. I had to save them all for when I was pretty sure no doctors or nurses were coming since I completely lost it every time. I got a few little chunks of sleep, but not much.

In the morning they came to get me for another ultrasound. It was only a few doors down, and we walked on over. The picture came up, and it looked completely different from the day before. She took the measurement three times, and said she was confident my cervix measured at 1.3cm.

Double the day before.

That doesn't happen. Your body doesn't just regenerate like that. Not in a day.

I walked back to my room beaming. Sure 1.3cm is still teensy-tiny for a pregnant cervix, but it's something to work with. Zach and I hugged and cried and prayed for a while, then both furiously texted all the pertinent people with the good news. I felt so much more confident in the doctors and my body going into surgery now.

My team of doctors came in and congratulated me on the better measurements. Told me to "keep doing whatever I was doing", and that they were confident that they'd be able to get a good stitch in. I went in for the surgery at noon, legs were numb by 12:30, and the whole shebang was done by quarter-to-one. We got to go home that night, and now we'll do weekly checks.

Sit tight little baby. We don't need to meet you for a long time yet.

Thank you to everyone who helped us out and prayed for us. Thank you to everyone who's offered to watch Jaina during doctor's appointments cause I will be calling you. ; ) A big shout out to the nurses at York Hospital who mostly let me take care of myself and really treated me like "you got this, girl." I hope to not see any of you for at least four more months.

God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble. 

Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way

though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea.

Psalm 46:1-2