Our girl is three

What. How is this possible?

This year I definitely wasn't feeling up to throwing a big party like previous years, but we still wanted to do something special for Em's third birthday. We asked her what she wanted and she said "red balloons" and "birthday cake." Well, easy enough!

We invited a bunch of her friends and met at the park for some light breakfast (donuts and fruit) and some delicious cupcakes that somehow ended up with all their frosting licked off. Seriously, did any kid actually eat a cupcake? She ran around like a maniac with her best friends all morning and couldn't be happier.

In the evening we had a little family celebration and opened some presents. This kid is so spoiled and has so many toys we really didn't want to get her any more "things." Books, of course, are always welcome so she got some of those and some things that she needed (a couple pairs of shoes!) and her present from us a soccer team sign-up. Oma got her a soccer ball to help get her excited. I can't wait to see her play!

One special present from my parents - my mom dug up a bunch of my old clothes from when I was Emma's age. She's a lot bigger than I was at that age, but we are all getting such a kick out of seeing her rockin' these duds from the 80s. Model baby, huh?

Happy Birthday, Punkito. We love you to pieces.

Newborn photos!

Somehow fortune favored us and we managed to book our newborn photo session on a date that fell between James' NICU stay and my second hospital stay. Our friend Sarah is a fabulous photographer and we have done family photos with her before (the bluebonnet ones that we LOVE!) Between her and my parents, we were gifted a wonderful newborn photo session. The photos turned out PERFECT and we couldn't be happier. Thanks mom, dad, and Sarah!

Photos: Sarah Brown Photography

Hospital Part III

Pretty sure I never want to go to Seton again.

We came home from the NICU on a Monday and the rest of the week was a blur of sleep and feeding and trying to settle in at home. It was blissfully uneventful. My mother-in-law arrived Friday night and it was so good to have her.

On Sunday I felt kind of weird. But it's so hard to know what's normal "just-pushed-a-nearly-10-lb-baby-out-yer-who-ha" weird and what's "not right" weird. I felt a lot of bad cramping in my lower back and lower abdomen and my bleeding got a heavier. I looked at the list of bad symptoms the doctor sent me home with, and I didn't really have any of them. I figured if I still felt poorly on Monday, I'd call the doctor.

Monday morning I felt much improved. I even made it downstairs to make a smoothie with Em.  All morning I was cold and kept piling blankets on. It was early February and the downstairs of our house is pretty cold so I didn't think anything of it. But then I noticed that James, lying on my chest, was sweating. I gave him to my mother-in-law and said I was going upstairs to lie down. I got in bed with a sweater on and put three blankets on and fell asleep. When I woke up I was still freezing, but I could feel that my cheeks were warm. After locating the thermometer, we discovered my temp was just under 101. Mind you, I was still taking tylenol round the clock for pain from delivery, so I figured my fever was actually a lot higher. I immediately called the doctor and they asked how fast I could come in.

We had to find someone to watch Emma and we took James (my mother-in-law had to take me because they told me not to drive) so it took us a bit to get in there. After a veeerrrry fun exam (seriously, not what you want to do one week postpartum) the doctor diagnosed me with endometritis, an infection in the lining of my uterus. She said I needed to be admitted to the hospital right away where I would get 48 hours of continuous IV antibiotics and I had to be fever-free for 24 hours before I'd be released. I cried. We had only been home a few days after the NICU and that had been so stressful being away from Emma and I really didn't want to go back. They told me to bring James so I could feed him and that I could go home and get my things before heading to the hospital.

Monday night was a total nightmare. We got to the hospital to check in and they were so confused about who we were and what we were doing there and where we were supposed to be. It took two hours of us sitting in the waiting room (me still miserably shivering and freezing, but my face flushed from fever) for them to finally get us admitted. They took us to the room only to discover that it wasn't clean. We literally just stood in the hallway for 20 minutes while they cleaned a new room for us. We thought that since this was related to my delivery and we were being treated by an OB and we had a baby with us, we'd be in the maternity services ward. Nope. We were on a general observation ward. The room was half the size of a maternity room and there was no bed for either Hans or James. The nurse comes in and says "So you're here for nausea and vomiting?" No... I'm here for fever and horrible cramping pains. She looks all flustered and says I was admitted wrong and she'll go investigate. Quite a bit later she comes back and says it was sorted out and she "paged Dr. Zeb who will be by soon to consult." Hans and I looked at each other alarmed. Dr. ZEB is the PEDIATRICIAN who treated our son in the NICU. We should be seeing Dr. SUMMERS, an OBSTETRICIAN for a uterine infection. More flustered, more trying to figure it out. Finally get everything sorted and go to start the IVs. Massively blew the vein in my left hand. Try again on my left arm and get it. At this point I haven't taken any Tylenol in several hours and my fever is up to almost 103 and the cramping pains have become really bad. I didn't realize how much the Tylenol had been hiding the infection symptoms. Yikes. After 4.5 hours we're finally where we should be. But still no beds. It took another hour for a bed for James and another two for one for Hans. It was not a good experience. We got a few hours of sleep and the next morning Hans is getting ready to walk out the door to go to work when they come in and say "Oh, by the way, you can't leave." Ummm... what? When they explained it made total sense. I was the patient and James was just a visitor, so I couldn't be the primary care giver for him. If I needed to be taken for additional tests or if for some reason I was unconscious or something, someone needed to be there to take care of James while they doctors treated me. I get it, but I was really frustrated that at no point were we ever told that. We could have made arrangements! We spent the rest of the day scrambling to find someone who could come sit with me so Hans could go to work for a few hours (Thank you, Mandy!)

The second IV attempt worked, but main, what an inconvenient spot.

So. Much. Fluid. I peed so much.

The next three days were really rough. I was really low. I felt terrible, I hated being hooked up to the machines, it was hard to nurse without getting tangled in IVs, I missed Emma and we were so stressed trying to figure out how to get people to come sit with me so Hans could work. It was just terrible. My mother-in-law definitely saw my ugly cry for the first time when I just had a total break down one day.

Someone didn't seem to mind the hospital at all.

Em came to visit my in the hospital and brought Chickfila for dinner. But didn't want to share her precious milkshake.

The worst part was that I mentioned a couple times to my nurse that my IV hurt and she kept looking and saying it looked fine but we'd "keep an eye on it." Finally on Wednesday morning, a new nurse actually took me seriously. She took one look at my arm and told me the vein was infiltrated and the fluid was going partially into my tissue. She told me she'd need to do a new one (more ugly crying). However, this angel nurse decided to give me a little break from the IV. She took out the bad one and I instantly felt relief. So. Much. Better. She told me I could have a couple hours off it since I wasn't scheduled for more antibiotics until 5. I was able to take a shower and change clothes for the first time in three days! I was able to nurse without wires! Go to the bathroom without wires! It was so wonderful and did so much to improve my mood. When they tried to do the next IV, they blew that vein, too. After three bad sticks, the nurses were done with me. They went and go the pros from the PICU department who came in, took one look at my veins, and slipped it right in flawlessly. I just stared at them with jaw dropped before blurting "where have you been for two days?!?"

The fourth IV - finally a good one!

The last night went much smoother (we asked to NOT have that first nurse again) and Thursday morning I was finally cleared to go home. I don't think I've ever been happier to go home.

Let's get out of here!

I'm feeling much better now, but I think I have some kind of trauma from the experience - I am so on edge just waiting for it to come back. My doctor assures me that they used the most aggressive treatment and caught the infection early so it's gone. But every little "weird" thing I feel now makes me so paranoid. This was the pregnancy that kept on giving and I would not wish endometritis on my worst enemy. So glad to be done with that. Peace out, Seton, let's not do this again.

Hospital Part II

James was born in the wee wee hours of Friday morning, so we expected to go home sometime on Sunday. As I mentioned in my last post, I tested positive for Group B Strep which is not usually a big deal. They give you an antibiotic during labor and that's it. However... it needs a few hours to work. And as you may have realized, I didn't have enough time. Ideally you get two doses of the antibiotic, but my doctor and I were hoping to even get one. They gave it to me, but not with enough time to be effective. It was probably an hour before he was born. So the standard protocol for that is to keep the baby for a full 48 hours for observation. That would make 2 am Sunday morning our all clear and ready to go home.

Emma came up to the hospital on Friday and met her baby brother. She immediately wanted to hold him and kept cooing over his "little nose" and "little eyes" and touching them softly. It was adorable and I was melting seeing the two of them together.

Everyone was tired on Friday - even our visitors! (Well, not Emma over there watching Netflix, but she's never tired).

James gave Emma a special gift - a baby of her own to take care of while Mama was taking care of the new baby. 

She was pretty thrilled. The magnetic bottle was an especially big hit.

Saturday evening, it was just James and I hanging out while Hans was home with Emma. A nurse that I didn't particularly like told me she was concerned about James' breathing. She said it was too rapid and shallow - he was kind of panting. I didn't hear it and thought she was making something of nothing. She even called his pediatrician who basically told her the same thing - it's just normal baby breathing. But then a few hours later, I heard what she was talking about and it scared me, too. He kind of sounded like he was hyperventilating. I took off our clothes and got skin to skin with him and after a short while, his breathing returned to normal.  I thought that was the end of it. But it started again, later after Hans had come back for the night. We both heard it and were worried. The night nurse looked at him and thought he was just congested. She sucked some junk out of his nose and cleared it with saline and again his breathing returned to normal. I was so relieved. She offered to take him to the nursery around midnight so we could get a couple hours sleep.

At 1:30 we were both shaken awake by the night nurse who looked very concerned. She told us we needed to come to the nursery because James had taken a turn and needed to be admitted to the NICU. The weird breathing had come back, worse, and had not gone away and they'd had to put him on an oxygen machine. They were concerned that he had gotten a Group B infection.

I was so sleep deprived and there was so much information coming at me and it was so terrible and scary seeing all the things being done to my 48-hour old baby. He had blood work, IVs, an x-ray, all kinds of stuff. I was a sobbing mess. They went ahead and preemptively started him on IV antibiotics to fight infection while they started a blood culture. They told us we would be there 3-7 days.

Guys, Sunday was one of the most stressful and emotionally taxing days I could have imagined. I was discharged, but James was still in NICU. Since we had expected to be home, we had no arrangements for Emma and we were scrambling to find people to watch her for the next few days. The hospital, thankfully, had a "nesting room" available for me to stay in so that I could go up to the NICU every few hours to nurse. It's like squatting at the hospital. It's an old wing of the hospital that's not really in use. It was remote and dark and the room was so bare. Basically just a room with a bed and that's it. I felt like I could scream and no one would hear me! Creepy. But at least I could be there and go up to the NICU. I tried to sleep when I could and dragged myself to the NICU every few hours to scrub in and sit with him and feed him.

At least we got lots of sweet baby cuddles

His x-rays showed that his lungs were "murky," but there was no obvious sign of infection. He didn't have a fever and his breathing actually improved enough to take him off the oxygen machine. By Sunday afternoon he seemed totally normal, we just had to sit there and see what the blood culture would show. It was a little strange being in the NICU with my nearly 10 lb, totally healthy looking baby. All the other babies in our bay were so teeny - one little girl was so small, she still had translucent looking skin. I'm guessing she was 25-26 weeks gestation. I don't think any of the other babies were over 5 lbs and most were on one kind of machine or another. It was a good reality check that however scary our experience might have seemed to me, our baby was pretty dang healthy and we were pretty dang lucky.

Hooked up to lots of monitors, but they don't seem to bother him

At noon on Monday, we were awaked (again!) by a doctor who came in to tell us that Surprise! He was clearing us to go home. We were half awake and shocked because we were prepared to stay at least through the end of the week. He told us that nothing was developing in the blood culture, James had had no breathing issues for over 24 hours, and he'd received a full course of precautionary antibiotics. He said given all that, he was inclined to believe it wasn't Group B strep, but rather just a bunch of fluid that was stuck in James' lungs because of the quick delivery. He didn't see any point in keeping us any longer.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind. They whisked him off for his circumcision (he did so well!), we were scrambling to make arrangements for Emma and pack up our room and get ready to go. Finally around 6 we left the hospital and headed home, exhausted, but relieved and happy.

Leaving the hospital as a family of four!

While it was a stressful experience trying to juggle Emma and scary not knowing what was going on, it was thankfully much shorter and less serious than we expected. The NICU nurses were AMAZING and really made the experience so much better than it could have been.

The greatest blessing of all is that we have truly amazing friends. Emma was well looked after and when we arrived home Monday night, we discovered that three of our mama friends had been to our house - one did some laundry and cleaned, one did grocery shopping for us, and one had left a hot meal on the table. I was truly touched and cried because I was so grateful. They are better to us than we deserve. So good to be home!

But stay tuned for Hospital Part III...

Baby James' birth story

January was a long month. We kept thinking baby boy would be joining our family any minute and we were scrambling to get everything done and in order before then. We had to move Emma to a big girl room (I should probably do a post on that...), get a new car, pull out and set up all the old baby things, make some freezer meals, pack a hospital bag. We had everything done by Jan. 16 because that was the date that our perinatal specialist estimated based on our monthly ultrasounds.

A little date night with my favorite milk shakes! 

New car: check! 

Last picture as a family of three

But the 16th came and went and no baby. So we just waited. I kept getting bigger and bigger and more and more miserable. And the waiting was really toying with us mentally.

Going a little crazy...

Finally it was Thursday, January 28th - 2 days before my official due date. We visited my regular OB that day and she didn't have much good news for us. I was dilated to 4 cm and 70% effaced, but having no regular contractions. I had had two or three times where I felt like labor started and I would have contractions (not very painful ones) for a couple hours, but they never got closer than about 7 minutes apart and then would just disappear all together. So by this appointment, I was feeling like he was never coming. On top of that, I developed PUPPPS, a really common and not serious fun symptom that can develop late in pregnancy. Basically it's a horrible, raised, angry, itchy red rash that spreads all over your belly. You kind of feel like your skin is on fire and you just want to scratch it off. There's really no cure for it, except delivery. So that's fun. When I walked into my appointment, the two front desk ladies, my nurse, and my doctor all reacted with surprise - apparently my stomach looked like it gotten remarkably larger in just one week, and had dropped impossibly low. My fundal height had jumped considerably, but my doctor insisted it was just excess fluid and she thought baby would still be about 7 lbs 13 ounces. It should be noted that the high risk specialist had been saying for months that baby would be huge. She predicted that if I went to term, he would be 9 lbs 8 ounces. My OB (and many other people) assured me that predictions based on ultrasounds are almost never right and he would be a "perfectly average size" (OB's exact words).

39 weeks!

Given my rapid growth, the PUPPPS, and my history of quick delivery, my doctor wanted to talk induction. She knew I didn't feel favorably toward induction - I've always heard it takes longer and is more painful and it just doesn't make sense to force my body to do something it's not ready to do - but she thought it might be a good option. We settled on a date one week out, Thursday, February 4.

We went home a little discouraged by the prospect of waiting a whole other week to meet our little one (and a whole other week of PUPPPS and getting bigger!) We had a lovely dinner provided by a very considerate friend (she just KNEW I would need a pick me up that day!) and then we went to Target to try and find something to provide some itch relief.

Lookin' like hobos at Target. Why she wanted a million of these I don't know

That night after we got Em to bed, I thought maybe an oatmeal bath might help with the itching. A little before 11 pm I got in the bath. Within just a few minutes I told Hans: "Something feels weird." "What do you mean weird?"
"These contractions... they actually hurt."
"Well just soak a bit. Maybe it'll help ease and relax your muscles."
A couple minutes later: "No, I want to get out. These hurt."

I got out and was getting dressed and we started timing them. Five minutes apart. Ok. Well, the doctor said I need to have them 5 minutes apart for an hour before going to the hospital. We started packing our bags and getting the car ready. After about 30 minutes they're getting more intense and move to 2 minutes apart. We called Josh to come over and stay with Emma. He got there about 12:15 am and we rushed out to the car. We are so lucky it was the middle of the night and Mopac was empty, because it only took us 10 minutes to get to the hospital (Hans was going fast :)). If it would have happened at rush hour, we would have been in trouble...

We pulled into the hospital a little after 12:30 and managed to contract my way to the maternity ward. In between contractions, the first thing I told the admitting nurse was that I tested positive for Group B Strep and I have quick deliveries so I needed the antibiotic as soon as possible. She responded with a very calm and nonchalant "Ok, ok. Let's get through this paperwork." After 45 minutes (!) of paper work, she *finally* checks my cervix and everything changes. "Oh! You're 7 cm!!" Yes. Yes, I am. I'm not kidding lady, this kid is about to be here. The whole atmosphere changed. Paperwork was cast aside. Extra nurses came in so they could try and get through things quicker.

They wheeled me (contracting too hard to walk at this point) to a delivery room around 1:30. I asked if I could use the restroom before I got in the bed, knowing once I got in I wouldn't be getting back up. As soon as I sat down on the toilet, there was a very loud POP! sound and then water was everywhere. When my water broke with Emma, I didn't feel anything and there was just a strong stream of water running down my legs. This was nothing like that. This felt and sounded like a rubber band snapping and the gush of water kinda went everywhere - like a water balloon had gotten thrown at me! The noise was so loud, the two nurses in the hall heard it and came running in. Apparently last time they heard water break like that, it meant the baby fell out in the toilet. They were worried that had happened. Fortunately, it was just my water. But after that happened, the contractions became nearly unbearable. They helped me into bed, but I was buckling over and screaming through each contraction. I don't remember screaming with Emma. I just remember being really focused on getting through the pain. This time I screamed. A lot. They called the anesthesiologist who came quickly and explained I was progressing so quickly it might not take, but he would try. No sooner had he put the epidural in, then my contractions actually sped up! I told them I needed to push. They checked and I was 10 cm, 100 percent effaced, and crowning. The nurse borrowed the anesthesiologist's phone to call the doctor to come catch the baby. The anesthesiologist promised me that one of two things would happen in the next 10 minutes - either the epidural would take or the baby would be here and it would be over. And the epidural took. Mostly. I could still feel pretty much everything, I just wasn't in excruciating pain anymore.

I could see a clock hanging on the wall right in front of me as I started to push. Because my labor was moving so fast and so hard, I thought surely it would take just a few pushes to get out. After about 20 minutes, I was pretty surprised. And I was pushing hard. I was getting so tired. I even asked for oxygen. I could see the doctor and the nurse giving each other a weird look and I started getting so worried. I was worried he was stuck or in distress or something. I thought "Oh my gosh, is this going to end in C-Section after all this?!" The nurse left and came back with more nurses. I pushed harder than I thought I could and after another 25 minutes I finally felt every inch of him leave my body. The mood in the room changed and the nurses were all relieved and laughing. They told me they had gotten nervous because they realized he was much bigger than any body expected and they literally needed extra hands to help. They were all betting on how big he was. Imagine my surprise when they told me he was a whopping 9 pounds and 10 ounces and 22 inches long! And had blond hair!! I swear, if I wouldn't have delivered him I wouldn't think it possible he was mine.

We hadn't been able to settle on a name and had hoped that when we saw him, something would jump out. We had a list of names we didn't hate that we took to the hospital. And we didn't immediately know what he would be, but we saw him and knew several things he was not. He was not a Theodore, or an Ezra, or a Finn. We mulled over the names and I felt like I kept coming back to James. It took us a day or two, but we finally settled on James Austin. Austin is my brother's name, my dad's middle name, and my great-grandfather's middle name, so I definitely wanted to incorporate that.

So far, he is the sweetest little chunk. Cheeks for days! I just want to kiss them all the time. Of course a baby that big, all he wants to do is eat. Surprise, surprise. I'm thankful for a quick, if not a little chaotic delivery and that all went smoothly. The delivery, anyway. Stay tuned for Part II, our NICU stay.

Welcome, baby James! We love you!