Tag Archives: c-section

*Baby Blueberry Birth Week* Her Big Brother's Birth Story

Posted on by

Tomorrow morning MM will become a big brother. By tomorrow night I will have experienced my second “delivery” and soon I will have two birth stories to share with the world. To celebrate the birth of little Baby Blueberry, or BB, I’ve planned a week’s worth of guest posts for you with a myriad of fabulous guest posters – you’ll see a bunch of great birth stories, a Wordless Wednesday style collage, 13 semi-fabulous tips for mothering more than one and more – there might even be a surprise appearance from my fabulous husband.

Today I’m featuring the birth stories of first borns and I thought I’d kick things off by sharing MM’s birth story, which up until now I’ve only outlined in memeish form – which you can see here. I’m going to try and do him a bit more justice now and write it out as a real post, but we’ll see how that goes…

MM’s Story

MM was one week late when the doctors decided to go for an induction. After experiencing his birth and becoming a bit more well informed, I sometimes wish we’d simply waited another week, but at the time I was tired of being pregnant and trusted my doctor (who I now like to refer to as Dr. Evil or Do Not Let Her Be Your OBGYN EVER) – and when she suggested an induction date of April 7, I couldn’t pass it up – you see four and seven are my lucky numbers – and that had to count for something, right?

So at 6:00 am we arrived to be induced – then after spending about two hours doing paperwork (how is there always more paperwork?) and waiting around, they came in to give me some petocin. I began dilating, though it was a slow process and I never got terribly far in that process… Around 10am they gave me something – maybe more petocin, maybe something else, to be honest I’m not sure but I bet my husband or mother-in-law could tell you – they weren’t drugged up at the time after all. At some point after that I went into what we call “labor” – something resembling serious contractions and my eyes rolling into the back of my head permanently. She (Dr. Evil) broke my water (by force) sometime in the afternoon.

Then I spent the evening being all in labor except not so much, as I never progressed past 2 or 4 cm or something – they gave me pretty much every drug the hospital had in stock that day, trying to move things along, ease the pain of this, and make up for that but by midnight it seemed pretty clear that not much was happening – except of course for MM trying desperately to come out – when his heart rate dropped they immediately called for a c-section – at which point I think I thought, “Hurray” as I simultaneously puked everywhere. Or that might have happened later, I’m not sure. Did I mention the drugs?

MM was delivered 10 minutes before midnight, if he’d waited any longer to drop his heart rate we would have missed the 4/7 Lucky Numbers Birth Date – so that was kind of sweet of him I guess? I remember that the operating room was hotter than hell – hot enough that my husband got light headed shortly after MM was “born” and had to be moved to a wheel chair for a little while – although I like to think that he was making me feel better or trying to share in my pain or something – either way we all got wheeled out of the operating room and into the recovery room, where I stayed for like a week. I can’t remember exactly how many days I was in the hospital but it was somewhere between four and ten probably. Over that course of time I had lots of visitors, far more than I ever expected to show up – never mind the continuous comings and goings of nurses and doctors who helped me and didn’t help me and bugged me and ignored me in turn until were finally allowed to leave.

There were some nurses who were extremely helpful and kind, unfortunately I don’t remember a single thing about them – what I remember is the anti-nursing nazis who seemed to decide, “If she ain’t figured it out yet, she never will – give the kid a bottle.” Thanks nurses.

Learning to breastfeed was a long, arduous adventure made worse by the length of my labor and recovery. I was barely conscious when they delivered MM and I opted to let them give him the first feeding but specifically requested to have the next one. This of course didn’t happen. I don’t think they handed him back to me for a feeding until about 4 or 5 meals in – and being a nursing newbie I had my own sea of troubles, i.e. I had no idea what I was doing and unfortunately neither did MM. It would take months to figure that out. Anyway…

My son had the pointiest head in like history or something for all his efforts which is really too bad because most kids born by cesarean have nice perfect round heads – but MM wanted to try a little bit of everything for his birth so he got the cone head to prove it, minus the movie deal.

And that’s how our little MM was born. Check back later today for the first guest posts of the week from Krystyn @ Really Are You Serious? and Jen @ Our Daily Big Top!

Bump Report: 34 Weeks

Posted on by

So I’m now roughly in my 34th week of pregnancy (I say roughly because depending on my actual “due date” I might be a bit under 34 weeks or I might be halfway through my 34th week, but you get the idea. This week I had two doctors appointments – the first one was on Tuesday with my new OB, we’ll call him Dr. Dude because he’s a man and a doctor. My second appointment was this morning to have an ultrasound done, just to be sure things were developing okay from inside what with the whole, “I still haven’t gained any weight thing.

The office that I went to is pretty huge – it’s like the Big Deal Clinic where just about everyone seems to go, whether they are seeing a pediatrician, OBGYN, dermatologist, primary care – basically anything – I won’t embarass myself with my lack of knowledge of all the different kinds of doctors, you get the idea – it’s a big place. I was pretty impressed with the clinic overall, it’s well laid out, good parking, good vibes overall. I can see this being our family’s doctors office in the years to come, which is good because that is the plan. The receptionists in the OB area were super nice and Dr. Dude also seemed like a nice guy. He wasn’t too young or too old or too McDreamy or McSteamy, he was just like a doctor, you know? I felt comfortable around him, which is always nice. We’ll see how comfortable I feel after my next appointment when he’s had to do an internal or whatever they call it. You know.

We scheduled the appointment for my c-section – so far everyone is totally on board for me doing a cesarean for this birth, there are apparently even paperwork-related issues that are now easier because I want to do a repeat c-section rather than trying for a VBAC – whatever, I’m glad it works for everyone, because it’s what I want. The date? Mark July 21 on your calendars, I’ll be too busy to blog that day. :P Maybe I’ll line up some guest bloggers? I think I have a couple ideas for that, I’ll be posting about that in a separate entry later, possibly much later unless I get impatient.

This morning’s ultrasound was your basic ultrasound. The technician was nice enough, although not as superly awesome as my last one – she seemed a bit floored when I told her I hadn’t gained any weight yet, but wouldn’t you know it, everything checked out. According to babycenter.com, BB should weigh around 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) but according to my ultrasound, she weighs a teeny bit over 5 pounds. She’s obviously hoarding every bite I eat and leaving me with nothing – the litty fatty. I don’t have any pictures to share this time, as she is apparently at a stage now where it’s hard to get anything “keepsake worthy” – they mostly did a lot of measuring her head and her arteries and other things I didn’t recognize while MM roamed around the little room trying to find every last thing he shouldn’t touch while mommy was unable to chase after him. Good times.

After we left the lab, I scarfed down a granola bar, hoping to tide me over until we got home, but at about the time that I thought, “Damn lunch time is way too soon, I am not sure I’ll make it until we get home…” I see a little cafeteria right the frig in front of me – clearly this was meant to be. So MM and I shared a turkey sandwich and some apple juice, totally reasonable pricing and a good quality sandwich and luckily I didn’t remember until after I finished eating that I shouldn’t be eating deli meats that haven’t been reheated. Whoops. I’m gonna guess I’ll probably be okay but yeah, not my finest moment. Hunger clearly trumped common sense, but at least I didn’t let myself pass out on the way home from not eating soon enough. And you know, hopefully the hubby doesn’t yell at me for spending money but I actually think he’d be really proud of me for being sensible enough to not push it.

Okay, so you know, still feeling huge and nervous about this whole, “We’re having a baby,” thing per usual, but the doctors appointments went well, the baby is clearly healthy (unless that turkey sandwich did her in) and I should be in the clear for the next two weeks until my next appointment with Dr. Dude. Here are a couple more statistical tid bits to tide you over from babycenter.com:

“…Her fat layers (told you she was a fatty) — which will help regulate her body temperature once she’s born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you’ve been nervous about preterm labor, you’ll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.”

That’s all for now!

Bump Report: 33 Weeks

Posted on by

Another week has gone by and it’s pretty much status quo on my end – I’m getting bigger and more awkward by the hour but for the most part, not much has changed since the 32nd week began. But you know that baby is just growing and changing all the time, so let’s check in with babycenter.com:

This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds (heft a pineapple) and has passed the 17-inch mark. She’s rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and her skeleton is hardening. The bones in her skull aren’t fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for her to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don’t entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as her brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.

If all goes as planned (i.e. planned c-section), Baby Blueberry will be blessed enough to skip that whole conehead phase. MM had the world’s most ridiculous conehead after a full day of unsuccessful induced labor, robbing him of the joy of the perfectly round head that most cesarean babies get. I guess he just wanted to try a little bit of everything. Again, fingers crossed that things go mostly to plan this time!

We filled out the paperwork for our health insurance and we are technically covered but we don’t actually have like health insurance cards and numbers and stuff yet – I’m hoping they send that soon. I’m still planning to call the clinic I’m hoping to use and get an appointment set up with an OB or at least get an idea of when I should do that – at this point, I really don’t want to wait much longer because ack – I’m 33 weeks pregnant! So just as soon as that last batch of cookies comes out of the oven, I’m planning to call the OB about that bun in the other oven. ;)

- update –

The cookies are done and so is the phone call! The baby was kicking like crazy during the whole call, probably feeling every ounce of her lame mommy’s nerves – have I mentioned I hate talking on the phone? Like I hate it – small talk or business calls, doesn’t matter, I don’t like doing it. But it had to be done and the office receptionist people were VERY friendly and said, ‘Heck yes – let’s make you an appointment!‘ Or you know, some totally professional variation of that. Apparently I’m not the first crazy woman to move to a new state this pregnant because they were just like, “Oh, okay, here’s what we need to do…” Then they took my name and address and all that jazz and I was feeling so proud of being able to say, “I’m 33 weeks pregnant,” with confidence even though that’s only because I called JUST AFTER writing this post so I wouldn’t forget. :P I have my first appointment with my new doctor this coming Tuesday afternoon.

So now I’m mildly nervous because I have really no choice but to take my three year old with me and I’m totally at that point in my pregnancy where they’ll probably want to check down under to make sure I’m all dilated at the proper points, etc. (Sorry, I’m trying to keep this as non-gross as possible) and I know MM is gonna be all like, “What’re you doing mommy?” And ohhh yeah it’s not gonna be fun. But that’s okay, I really have no other choice. Also – this doctor is totally a man – I decided not to be picky what with my last minute, “Hey any of you wanna deliver my baby next month?” deal. But yeah – there’s that. I think part of me decided not to be picky because, I mean, a week ago I was pretty sure I didn’t like French Toast and now I do. And suddenly I love lemon meringue pie like there’s no tomorrow even though not long ago it was totally a take it or leave it dessert. Who knows? Maybe I won’t even mind a male doctor – maybe it’ll be awesome. I won’t know unless I try, right?