Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Little O'Cutie Pie

We have lots of Irish Digs!

Hello, Ladies.

"Rahr"

Welcome to my pad

Kung-Fu Baby - He can kill you with just 3 fingers

Is there a breeze in here?

Why yes, there is a breeze on my bum!

Joseph's Pediatritian Appointment

We went to the pedi yesterday for Joseph's 1 week appointment. He has exceeded his birth weight! He weighed 8lb3oz on their scale. Last Thursday he weighted 7lb12oz, so he gained 7oz in 4 days! Everything else checked out as well, and his newborn jaundice is pretty much gone!

I think Tante Teresa is right - this kid is going to be a bruiser! Who'd have thunk with parents like us!

Charlotte is coming today to weigh him with her scale and check us out, so it'll be interesting to see if there is a difference by the two scales.

Joseph is 1 Week Old Today!

Taking Daddy to work today

The Michael Jackson style is my favorite (one glove)

The Look: Blue Steel (almost - we just can't get it with the camera!)

Don't hate, I'm working on my tan!

Tiny toes

Pucker up, buttercup!

Mama is thrilled to not be sleeping!

I survived my first bath!

Wow - Look What I Did!

Wow - Look what I did!!! That is approximately 1.5oz of pure liquid gold. I am so proud of myself and my body, and amazed at what it can do for Joseph.


I am beyond thrilled that breastfeeding is going so well for us - it's something I really want to do and I feel lucky that it's working out. I attribute it to all the ice cream and chocolate I ate during pregnancy. Haha!

And if you think it's gross - I don't want to hear it. It's pretty much the coolest thing I've ever done after growing a baby, so keep it to yourself.

Joseph is so smart

He already knows how to do many things:

1) Trick daddy into changing a diaper only to immediately soil another
2) Look cute so mommy will take a bath with him, only to have a poo-splosion in the water
3) Detect the precise perfect temperature of dinner and then cry for attention
4) Give mommy "The Look" after eating so that she can do nothing but croon and shower kisses
5) Save all spit-up for when mommy has given up burping and laid him back down to maximize laundry accumulation. Especially proficient at this trick in the car seat!

Joseph is a very quiet baby, he rarely cries or fusses and loves to be held and worn by both mommy and daddy.

Birth Story - Part 3

See part 1 here

See part 2 here

I went back into the house and to my bathroom to be alone for a few minutes to cry on my own, where T.J. found me. I asked him to get Charlotte to check me again. I was still 7cm. At this point, Charlotte was done fooling around. She laid out my options:

I could have her break my water to see if it helped. My waters had been "bulging" since I was 3cm, and it could be preventing the baby's head from engaging and dilating me the rest of the way. The risk was that the baby was mispositioned, and this would essentially end our ability to get the baby correctly positioned on its own. We also talked about the risk of cord prolapse, which would result in an emergency transfer, and meconium in the water, which may or may not necessitate a transfer depending on how much it was.

Or, I could go to the hospital - where they would break my water, give me pitocin, and probably an epidural at this point. Let me tell you that I *so* wanted to say "hospital". I'd just had a terrifyingly hard contraction on the stairs, and now faced even worse if we wanted to get things going. Charlotte was willing to let me keep going as we were, but she was against it. It had been too long, I was too tired, and she was concerned about my uterus being able to contract down after the baby was born due to the prolonged labor.

After discussing with T.J. and Laura, we chose to break my water at 12:30. I had a couple contractions on the bed after that, then a few on the toilet, a few in the shower, and then I got to go to the TUB! I was so excited to try the tub, everyone said how wonderful and soothing the water was, and how much easier contractions were. Um, yeah. Not so much for me. I'm sure that it really does work well for some people, but after 3 contractions there I thought I was going to die. So I got out and ran for the bed again before the next contraction hit - everyone else scrambled to move all the birthing supplies into the bedroom, and the tub they worked so hard to fill sat, unused. Le sigh.

The only thing I remember about the next contraction was blinding pain - it was, as I said after it finished, a whole new world of hurt. I was in transition. And then Charlotte was checking me again and I was ready to push! I think it was around 2 or 2:30pm, but I don't know for sure. Pushing was hard work, the contractions changed some, but generally it was just so much better to push than to try NOT to push, which I'd been doing for about 6 hours. I do remember thinking though that every part of labor sucked - pushing was no real relief.

We used the toilet for a few pushes, but that tired out my legs, so they set up the birthing chair. I really liked that. It was comfortable on my legs and knees, and I could rest easily in between contractions. They moved me to the bed for a few side-lying pushes, but baby's heart rate dropped a little (from like 150 to 110 - still quite high) so it was back to the chair.

Baby was crowning around 4pm, and shot right out when I misinterpreted a look from Charlotte after the head came out. She had told me when I started that at some point she would tell me to keep pushing, and I should push really hard no matter what. Once the head was out, I saw a look on her face that I thought meant the baby was stuck so I asked (cried? shouted?) "Do I keep pushing" and she said yes, so I *really* pushed and baby came flying right out! Laura actually said she missed it because she blinked. It was 4:09pm - 41 hours into labor.

Charlotte gave the baby to me, and I looked and saw that it was a BOY! I was amazed at how big the baby was. I still am. Not that I knew how heavy or long he was, it just seemed, well, unnatural for something so big to come out of me! He was quiet at first, but not in a bad way, and then he started crying. There was light meconium in the amniotic fluid, so Charlotte did a lot of suctioning in his mouth to make sure he didn't aspirate anything. He was all full of mucus, and was having trouble with his breathing normally, so they had the oxygen out for him, and stuck a tube down his throat to try to get it out. He was very pink though, and was breathing, clear lungs, good heartbeat - just not the kind of chest compressions they like to see I guess. He scored an 8 and an 8 on his Apgars. They focused on him for quite a while, checking periodically to make sure I wasn't bleeding out and to see if I was feeling contractions for the placenta. I'm not sure how long that took to deliver - maybe 20 or 30 minutes? T.J. cut the cord sometime before the placenta was delivered and after the cord stopped pulsing so they could work on baby some more.


After that things calmed down a bit. Once baby got the all clear, they wrapped him up and gave him to T.J. so they could check me out.

I was given some herbs to help control the bleeding, though Charlotte said I was doing fine. I felt really good, not dizzy or anything, so that was a relief. Laura reported back to me that T.J. was showing baby around his new place, which made us smile.

I was pretty much stuck on the bed so that Charlotte could stitch me up. I won't go into details, except to say that I'm glad she had anesthesia, because it was a LOT of stitches. Then I went to have a shower and they finished cleaning up the bedroom and remaking the bed for us. Charlotte and Melanie did the newborn exam (weight, length, etc... there was a whole list) and then they helped me try to nurse, but he was having none of that. Poor kid, he was pretty angry about the suctioning. He did suck on my pinky for a bit though.



Everyone got ready to go and left between 8 and 9 pm, and we were on our own! We called our parents finally to let them know about the baby, ordered some pizza, and settled in.

T.J. was so amazing through my labor. I can't believe I ever doubted his interest/ability to help me through labor. I've never been more proud that he is my husband than I was last weekend. The labor might have been worth it just to experience how he took care of me.

My birth team was incredible. I think we could even have used another person! It was amazing how much work went into it. I'm so thankful for all three of them for taking good care of us.

Birth Story - Part 2

See part 1 here

At that point they knew nothing was going to happen soon, so they brought my rocking chair into the bedroom for me to sit in and try to sleep, and everyone hunkered down for the night. I slept for an hour or two, just breathing through contractions before they picked back up again and I wasn't able to sit in my chair through them. I labored on my own for a few hours so that everyone else could sleep, finally getting in the shower around 3:30am. Then I woke T.J. for some more help. He went and got Charlotte and Laura, and I was "around 6cm". I think at that point Charlotte was adding on to what she told me to keep me from being discouraged. It didn't work. Labor was so painful, and I was so tired and sad, I truly didn't know how I could continue with things moving so slowly.

There was a lot of discussion as to whether the baby was properly aligned in the pelvis and what we could do to fix that. Charlotte and Laura had me lie on my right side to try and realign the baby in the pelvis. Charlotte also called her assistant, Melanie, at that point.

The side-lying position was really painful and difficult to breathe through. I'd also been feeling the urge to push, so Laura had me add in the "Eee" sound to help me cope with that. I was excited to see what happened after a couple hours of that, as I'd read about people flying through transition and just pushing the baby out. Not me - though I was 7cm! It took two hours, but heck, I was making progress! The sun was coming up, too, making it seem like things were possible again. It was about 7am - 32 hours into labor.

Now we all thought things were really going. There was a flurry of activity - T.J., Charlotte and Melanie were working furiously to fill the birth pool. Apparently it's 150 gallons (I think we filled it 120 worth), and our water tank is 30 gallons. Huh. So they would drain the tank, then have to wait an hour or so for it to heat up again. They started boiling water to add to the pool, which really amused me as "boiling water" is such an old fashioned birth thing. While they were boiling water, Laura and I were working on labor, doing pelvic tilts (good grief that HURT) to try and keep things going. And they were for a while, but then things slowed down again. And by slow, I don't mean they stopped or became weak - they were just more like 5-7min apart instead of 3-4. I still got pushy sometimes, but was mostly able to control them.


I suppose it was around 10:30 or 11am that Laura suggested another walk. I dreaded them, as they always made the contractions come stronger and longer, but I trusted Laura would do what's best for me - so we went. She was extra hard on me this time, insisting that I do squats and lunges instead of just allowing the contractions to work over me while I tried to relax. I was so exhausted by that point that point that I was quite whiny and I'm sure Laura was reconsidering this home birth as much as I was. I whined about having to do squats - I was 50lbs overweight darn it, and my knees hurt! I whined about having to do lunges, I whined when she wanted me to use the stairs to labor on the way to the apartment (lunging during contractions). Then I had 3 HUGE contractions and I wasn't whining anymore, I was crying, for the 3rd time during my labor. I really cannot express the despair and hopelessness I felt on the stairs. In fact, every time we have come home from an outing this week I nearly cry while going up them. I literally cry now just thinking about them. It was about 12pm - 37 hours into labor.

Birth Story - Part 1

Labor began Friday evening, with painful contractions around 11pm. I'd had some irregular contractions since 5pm, and started timing them at 9pm, but they were weak. I slept through them until around 1am, when it became more and more uncomfortable to just lie down through them. So I began timing them around 1am. At 3:45 I woke T.J. because I wanted some help with them, and to see if I could "talk through them" - one of the signs of active labor is that you can't. I could talk through them, but they were quite painful and coming every 3-5 minutes for 45-60 seconds. I called Charlotte around 5am because she'd asked me to let her know when they were about 7 minutes apart, and obviously I was well past that. We were confused that I was still doing OK with the pain management, so she agreed to come and see what was going on.

She arrived around 6:30am and checked me - I was 1.5cm dilated, but the cervix was really posterior. She advised that I lie down with my leg pulled up high to get the cervix to pull forward. This was very painful, but I labored like that for about three hours, after which Charlotte checked me again - only 3cm dilated. I felt really deflated. I'd coped with the pain by using the yoga sounds I'd learned during my prenatal yoga class, and T.J. helped by applying pressure to my back and just being there for me. I was 12 hours into labor.

We decided to call Laura (our doula) around noon, and asked her to come in a couple of hours. T.J. and I went for a walk around the lake in order to help contractions along, and Charlotte left for a while as nothing was happening. The contractions had slowed a bit now, and I took a small nap between when Charlotte left and Laura arrived, being able to just breathe deeply through the contractions.


Laura, T.J. and I chatted for a while and went for another walk to get things going again. I had some really powerful contractions while we did that, and felt renewed and excited that something was happening. We took another short nap (waking to sound through the contractions of course), and then went for another walk around the lake. Charlotte came back and everyone ate lasagna, while I drank Gatorade and ate trail mix and fruit. Around 9:30pm Charlotte checked me again, and I was still at 3 or 4 cm - 22 hours into labor.

We call him Joseph

When Joseph was named (the day after he was born) the first thing people wanted to know was what we call him! The answer was "baby" or "it". Hey, we'd been calling him baby for 9 months! After a few days we've settled on using his whole first name - Joseph. He doesn't look like a Joe to us, or even a Joey.

So, if you were one of the inquiring minds, that's your answer! Joseph is just that - Joseph. Until he hits school I guess! Ha!

Picture updates

I think we're switching to this photo sharing site. It's pretty awesome - you can share, download (full size images I think), and buy prints directly from their site. Let me know if you need help with any of the features - you know who you are.

http://domerbaby.smugmug.com