Life with a Newborn

...is overwhelming! Sometimes you're feeling overwhelming joy and pride, sometimes it's overwhelming frustration and desperation. There's no "preparing" for it - it's 100% on-the-job training. And I'm not talking about the practical aspects of diapering and feeding and dressing and generally caring for a newborn - those things, you can sort of prepare for. Exposure to newborns through friends and family, child care classes... there are ways to prepare oneself. What you absolutely cannot prepare yourself for with your first child is the complete and total TAKE OVER that occurs as soon as that little life enters yours. I can tell you all about how Eli has taken over our lives - how our schedule revolves around his, how our sleep schedule directly correlates with his mood and temperament during any given hour, how our conversations and activities have suddenly become 97% baby-related. But that really doesn't even begin to address the ways that he has changed my life.

Suddenly, my future is completely wrapped up in him. Whether I'm thinking about the next hour or the next 10 years, he is a part of it and will most likely dictate how things will go. Even while I was pregnant and knew he was on the way, that reality never set in for me. At least not like this! When I'm feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of breastfeeding or sleep deprivation, I also have to accept that these challenges are ours and ours alone to bear - no one is coming to take him to his real parents (which is what it sometimes feels like - like surely they wouldn't give us a baby to take care of!)... we're it! I also have to accept that I have little control, in the grand scheme of things, over when these challenges will get easier. I can do my best, ask other moms and doctors for advice, but at the end of the day this tiny little boy is in control of it all... and he's not even in control of himself! Scary, right?! It's a lot to handle, particularly in the wee hours of the night when he's screaming his head off for no apparent reason (which, admittedly, has only happened once or twice)! You very quickly learn to force yourself to live in the moment and to banish all thoughts pertaining to the future, because honestly, the future is just too much to handle right now. We're new at this and very unfamiliar with the course of how things will go - our only reference is this past week of our lives (which has been one heck of a roller coaster!), and thinking about moving or starting back to work or going back to medical school is WAY too overwhelming within that context. We just have to trust that as our little boy grows and we settle into a family routine, those things will become more and more manageable. People do this every day, right?!

All that said, we are truly in love with our beautiful baby. I don't mean to sound all "Negative Nancy" about life with a newborn... just being realistic about the massive changes that he has brought to our mindset and to our everyday lives. Looking at him in all his glorious perfection... it doesn't necessarily make you forget all about the challenges and the moments of complete and utter frustration, but it does put those things into a different perspective. Looking at him makes it all OK. It makes it all so "worth it"... beyond "worth it". It's not really a feeling that one can describe in words. In my experience, I think the closest I could come is to describe it as a calming effect. It's not so much the overwhelming love I feel for him (though of course I do feel overwhelming love for him!), but rather the calming effect that he has on me that has the power to alter my perspective. His perfect little face as he sleeps... the ways his little lips move or how his forehead wrinkles up from time to time or the little infant "smiles" that completely light up his face out of nowhere... it just relaxes the tension right out of me and recharges my ability to handle the next challenge. "It's a good thing you're so darn cute" is something that parents often say because it's completely true - if they weren't able to affect us in that way, we'd reach the end of our pitiful ropes in no time!

I can't say yet whether I think that Eli is a "high maintenance" or "low maintenance" baby. For one thing, I have no reference point to compare him to. We also haven't had much time to really detect any patterns. So far things are definitely on the upswing, but I can imagine that that might change at the drop of a hat! Our first few nights with the little guy were definitely rough - more waking than sleeping. Getting used to breastfeeding was a big part of that. He'd wake up hungry and it was such a struggle to get him latched and feeding that he'd get hysterical in the process and we'd keep having to calm him down. He was also having formula in the NICU, as I mentioned in my last post, which I think contributed to a lot of gas and fussiness as that worked its way out of his system. Now that he's nursing better and hasn't had any formula for almost a week, he's doing much better. He wakes up every 2 1/2 or 3 hours to eat (or we wake him up, to avoid him waking up truly starved and already hysterical!), and now that eating isn't such a struggle we're only up for 40 minutes or an hour to feed, burp and change him. Every now and then he'll get a little fussy after eating if he needs to burp (or fart!) again and I'll have to bounce or rock him a little more to settle him down, but he usually eats and passes out. It really only works out to 2 or 3 wakings a night, since we tend to stay up until his 11 or 12 o'clock feeding. He'll wake up in the 2-3 o'clock hour and again in the 5-6 o'clock hour, and then his next waking is pretty much "morning". He'll usually go back to sleep again after that too, so we've been staying in bed until as late as 11 (which is how we can stay up til 11 or 12 at night)!

During the day, he's having more and more "awake and content" time, as I like to call it. For about the first week, if he was awake and not eating he was mad, and he pretty much slept between feedings. He still naps a lot during the day, but he's doing a lot more peaceful observation of the world now. I think he's starting to adjust to life outside the womb and the fussiness is dropping off a little as a result. That seems to be helping our bonding process too, as he spends more time checking us out and getting more and more familiar with our faces and voices. He seems to prefer Ben when he's upset, which sorta hurts my feelings if we're being completely honest! I think he just associates me with food (and I probably smell like it!), so if I'm holding him he thinks he should be eating. I've heard many women lament the early days of breastfeeding and feeling like they've become nothing but a food source, and that's definitely where I find myself at this point. I'm SO glad that Ben can comfort him and that they're bonding so well, but I'm also selfishly looking forward to the day that he shows a preference for mommy ;-)

That pretty much sums things up, I think... and this post is long enough. I'll leave you with a cute photo, just for fun :-) This is Eli with his great grandma yesterday...

Our (Horrific) Birth Story

Our sweet baby boy is here! Baby Eli was born on Tuesday October 18th at 4:18am, weighing 7 lbs 14 oz and measuring 20 inches long. He's utterly perfect, as I'm sure you expected ;-)

Our birth experience, however, was far from "perfect". Ironic how I had just written a post about our birth plan, approximately NONE of which held up in the end. It is what it is, and I knew from the get-go that things don't always turn out the way we hope they will... but this was just horrific. I'll start from the beginning.

I woke up at about 4:45am on Monday morning to my water breaking. It wasn't a gush, but I could feel that something was leaking (and it wasn't urine)! YAY! In retrospect, I really wish that wasn't how my labor got started, but at that point I was so excited to get things underway that I was thrilled with the progress. I called the midwife who told me to get some more rest and come in to the office to be checked out at 8:30, since I wasn't contracting regularly yet. I let the hubs sleep until his work alarm went off, and then informed him that he wouldn't be going in to work that day! Of course we didn't sleep much more, and around 7:30 we packed up the car, left extra food for the cats and headed to the office, where my water breaking theory was confirmed. I was told to head over to the mall or something and do some walking for a few hours, since my contractions were still irregular and infrequent (I was only having about 3 an hour), and to check in at the hospital around 11am - so that's what we did. We made a Build-A-Bear for him while we were there :-)

Around 11:30am we arrived at L&D and got settled into a room. When the midwife on-call came in to talk with us around 1:00pm she let us know that we'd probably need to start Pitocin soon to get things rolling, since there was still no real pattern to my contractions, I was dilated less than a centimeter, and my water had been broken for over 8 hours. For those of you who aren't super-familiar with labor complications, the goal is to deliver within 24 hours of the water breaking, because the risk of infection in the uterus increases dramatically once the amniotic sac is ruptured. Keep that little factoid on the front burner... it will come up again later. So we started the Pitocin, which certainly got things going. I really didn't want Pitocin - I had heard that it produces super-intense contractions and wasn't looking forward to that - but I certainly understood that it was necessary at that point. I did some walking in the hallways with my IV pole, but the monitors kept slipping around and they kept losing the baby's heart rate, so that didn't last long. By 4:00pm I was definitely in a regular pattern and the contractions were... uncomfortable. I won't even begin to use the term "pain" at this point.

I had family in the room all day, since I wasn't in a ton of pain and we were more-or-less just hanging around waiting for things to progress. Both of our moms and Hubs' oldest sister were there, which kept us entertained for a good while. His other sister came around 7 and brought me an exercise ball, by request, as I was hoping that being able to shift my weight around would relieve some of the back labor that I was having. I don't know if it was the exercise ball or if the timing was just coincidental, but within about 20 minutes of sitting on the exercise ball, I was suddenly in AGONY. Crying, nauseous agony. By 7:30 I was requesting an epidural, which was fine with me - I had planned to labor without it as long as possible, and I had certainly waited a long time at that point and was rapidly approaching the end of "possible", as far as laboring without pain medication was concerned. My wonderful midwife was more than happy to help me out, and started things in motion for the epidural right away.

Fifteen minutes later - by which point I was in SERIOUS pain and getting maybe 30 seconds of relief between contractions (damn you, Pitocin!) - my midwife comes at me with "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but... the anesthesiologist just got called in for an emergency c-section, so it may be another hour." HOLY HELL. I cried. We were offered Nubain (a general narcotic) to take the edge off which I was originally going to take, until the nurse informed me that it could depress the baby's respiration after birth and he might very well land in the NICU for a time. I cried again, but had to reject it. As much as I needed that relief, I wanted him with me (and NOT in the NICU) more. My husband was a fantastic labor partner and helped me breathe through the agony for a while. I'm pretty sure that without him, I would've just hyperventilated, sobbed and died. Luckily, my SAINT of a nurse was able to get general anesthesiology to send someone to stand-in during the c-section once it was started so that my anesthesiologist could come in and get my epidural placed. It was still 8:30pm by the time I was finally comfortable, but BOY did that thing work fast! It was like magic! At that point my midwife checked my progress, and I was 5 cm dilated and 100% effaced - perfectly satisfactory to me.

From that point on, I labored comfortably for several hours. I could see the contractions on the monitor, but couldn't feel a thing! We visited with family a little more, got some rest, and geared up for the big push. Every now and then I'd start to feel twinges during contractions and back pain on the side of me that was propped up (I was on my back, partially propped with a pillow under one side), so I'd switch sides and click my medication button to get another dose through my epidural. When I finally started feeling that "urge to push" pressure around 2:00am Tuesday, my midwife came in and checked my progress again - 10 cm and ready to push!

And so we started pushing. At first it was fine - I really wasn't feeling anything - but by the 4th or 5th contraction I was starting to feel them, and it HURT. A few more contractions later, I felt like I was back at square one, as if I'd never gotten the epidural. I was in SO much pain... I can't even describe it. I wondered if it was even possible to survive it. Again, thank God for my husband breathing through the contractions with me! My midwife had the anesthesiologist come back in and give me another "bolus" dose of medication in my epidural. After giving it about 15 minutes to start working, it became clear that it wasn't going to help.

By this point I had vomited from the pain and was reaching my breaking point. It was then that my nurse took my temperature, to find that I had spiked a 101.3 fever. Apparently the standard diagnosis for a fever during labor with ruptured membranes for nearly 24 hours is uterine infection. The midwife then informed us that, as a result of this "infection", the baby would automatically be sent to the NICU for a minimum of 3 days, possibly as many as 7. As if the overwhelming pain wasn't enough, now we were both falling apart over the news that we would be separated from our baby for days - that we might not get to take him home when we left the hospital. I tried to push through one more contraction, but the pain was simply unbearable. I felt like I could barely breathe through it, much less actively push through it. The baby's head was SO low, I was fully dilated, but I just couldn't physically (or emotionally) do it. I was practically hysterical by this point between the pain of the failed epidural, the emotional blow of the NICU news and the brimming realization that I was going to end up with a c-section. I felt like a failure, and I cried over it a lot, but we elected the c-section. My super-supportive husband did a great job of making me feel good about the decision, but it's so hard not to feel like a failure when so many other women seem able to do it with no problem.

Within about 20 minutes, we were rolling into the OR for the c-section. Those 20 minutes were pure agony, and all I wanted was to get in there and get whatever medication it was that they were going to give me to finally numb me up. I vomited again when we arrived in the OR. When they finally gave me the whopping dose of pain medication (which made me feel very light-headed and slurred my speech for a few minutes - which scared the crap out of me), it did numb me up - temporarily at least. It was wonderful to have some relief, and for a moment I finally had the time and energy to get excited about the impending arrival of our baby boy. He would be here so soon! Ben came in and sat by my head, and they got started with the first incision.

Much of the story from here on is Ben's account, because I was so out of it for most of the procedure. I was still quite groggy from the massive dose of pain medication, but I was trying my best to stay awake and present. But as the pulling and tugging went on, I started to feel more and more pain. I tried to tell them that it hurt, to which they responded "I know honey, it's a lot of pressure", to which I responded "NO, it HURTS! I feel PAIN!" I'm 25 years old, and I know the difference between "pressure" and "pain". I could feel burning at the edges of the incision, like flesh tearing. I felt pangs of sharp stabbing pain where they were pulling and tugging. It was PAIN. The nurse anesthetist started giving me extra doses of pain medication through the epidural line, but it just got worse and worse. According to Ben, I would go from out cold and snoring to suddenly yelling out in pain. I was actually pulling my legs up in reaction to the pain (umm... should I be able to move my legs...? I think NOT!). They just kept pumping me full of more and more pain medication, and I just kept sobbing and suffering. At one point Ben had to yell at them to do something when the anesthesiology team had stepped away from the table and I started crying out again. He was in total shambles himself, watching me go through it all, but I remember him being right there talking to me and breathing with me through the pain. The OB wouldn't even stop briefly to let the medication set in when the nurse anesthetist asked her to. I think she knew that the epidural had failed and that her only option was to hurry up and get the baby out so that they could safely knock me out altogether.

When the baby was born (at 4:18am), they didn't even bother to lift him up over the drape so that we could see him. Neither of us even knew that he'd come out until he finally cried over in the other corner of the room and someone asked Ben if he'd like to go see him. Ben went to take pictures, and they kept working on me, and it kept on hurting. They quickly brought the baby over to me so that I could see him, give him a few kisses and take a few photos. I have only very vague memories of meeting my little boy for the first time, which is probably the worst part of all of this as I look back on it.

I was so full of pain medication that I had to fight to keep my eyes open to look at him. The nurse had to hold my hand on him for me to touch him.

I feel so robbed of that "first moment" - I never got to have him come out of me and see him immediately and make that instant connection. I felt like it took days for me to really "bond" with him, especially with him being in the NICU. I didn't even get to hold him for the first time until about 5 hours later.

In the recovery room, the B**CH obstetrician that did my surgery oh-so-casually informed me that all of my future deliveries would have to be c-sections, because once they got in there they could see that the opening in my pelvis was too small to deliver through. So it turns out that I made the right choice - it would have been a c-section eventually even if I had continued trying to push. But of course I didn't know that when I made the decision, so I still feel like a bit of a failure for not trying harder. The sane part of me knows that I did all that I physically could. And it's not like I saved myself any suffering by electing the c-section from HELL!

When B**CH OB left the room after about a 30-second conversation and Ben followed her into the hallway to ask her a question about the procedure, she found it necessary to let him know that, by the way, she didn't think that he did a very good job in the OR, and he should have held it together better for me. ????!!!!!!??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is no string of expletives long or strong enough for my feelings about that comment. I thought he was absolutely amazing. He fought through his own tears to talk me through the pain, every step of the way. He never once turned away from the entire horrific scene, he advocated for me when I needed him... he was an absolute rock for me. So what if he cried. I remember being comforted by the fact that he was experiencing it all with me and that it was affecting him so much too. She's just mad that
he yelled at her. The hospital and the OB/GYN practice will be getting a strongly worded letter from me.

I never did spike a fever again, but I got a bunch of antibiotics anyway. I don't think I ever had an infection. I understand that they want to err on the conservative side and treat for the worst-case scenario, but putting a perfectly healthy baby in the NICU for 3 days is just horrendous. He didn't fit in at all. By mid-day he was out from under the warmer in a regular bassinet with nothing but heart rate and respiration rate monitors hooked up. He had an IV inserted but wasn't hooked up to anything - never needed any fluids - they just used it to give him his antibiotic doses to treat any potential infection that he may have been exposed to.

Given the state I was in post-surgery (traumatized and drugged, plus a 24-hour dose of morphine that I was given when I woke up at the end of the procedure which made me incredibly groggy for the entire day), I wasn't able to go and breastfeed him immediately and so he was started on formula supplementation. Exactly what I didn't want. I started pumping and breastfeeding when I could later that afternoon, but since they're super-hyper about feeding in the NICU, they still insisted on supplementing with formula. Maybe I should've been more insistent myself, but they told me that he'd be kept longer if he wasn't establishing a good feeding pattern (as measured by the amount he was taking in per day) and so he had to stick to a strict feeding schedule (no spending an hour fussing around with learning to breastfeed - 20 minutes max per feeding). Luckily my pre-milk supply was great and I was able to pump lots to bottle feed him, so we'd breastfeed for 20 minutes, do a bottle of whatever milk I had pumped to give him, and finish up with whatever amount of formula he'd take. Unfortunately, that whole thing introduced him to the wonders of bottle feeding (the "easy way" to get what he wants when he's hungry!), which would only prove to complicate things as we learned to breastfeed.

The other thing about this NICU is that they only allow 2 visitors per bedside, and Ben and I were included in that count. And if anyone other than the two of us wanted to visit, one of us still had to be there. So (a) Ben and I had to separate, and (b) it was pretty much limited to one visitor at a time. It sucked, a lot. Not to mention the fact that we were in a room in the "maternal-child unit" listening to all the other babies cry, with no baby in our room. Knowing how healthy he was and how well he was doing made it that much more frustrating - we knew he didn't need to be there. Luckily we had some amazing NICU nurses that we really bonded with and that made the experience a bit more bearable.

Before leaving the NICU he did have a renal ultrasound that confirmed the multicystic dysplastic kidney diagnosis, and a VCUG to assess his ureters for any urine reflux (backward movement of urine from the bladder toward the kidneys), which was negative. He was finally discharged on Thursday evening around 7pm and made it to our room, which was a huge relief!

Of course that night wasn't nearly as restful as the previous two, but we were so thrilled to have him with us... it was totally worth it. It was rough to be walking the floor with him all night while still healing from a c-section though, I'll say that! Of course Ben has taken to daddy-hood like a true natural, and has been an incredible help. I really shouldn't even say that he's a help to me or that I'm a help to him, because it's been such an even split of effort - he has stepped up in such a huge way from day one. He's such a WONDERFUL daddy, and I'm just falling deeper in love with him every day.

We were discharged late Friday afternoon and finally headed home with our handsome little man...

At his first pediatrician appointment on Monday, he had already gained over half a pound on his birth weight (the doc was quite impressed with our little porker!) and came away with a clean bill of health! We're so proud of him. He's just the picture of perfection, bum kidney or not. He's weaving his way deeper into our hearts every day, and his little smiles are quickly dulling the memory of his less-than-ideal birth. It's hard to believe he's finally here. He's all we were hoping for, and so much more.

Our Birth Plan

I'm gonna go ahead and get a little personal on ya today. Mainly because people like to jump to conclusions about a lot of things when they hear terms like "midwife" and "birth plan". Not that I need to explain myself or that it's anyone else's business, but I don't like misconceptions - I find them highly irritating, particularly when people cling to them - and I'm hoping that talking about it will clear up a few things.

First things first... the issue of the midwife. I'm sure that at one point in time midwives were only used in crunchy-granola birthing-pool all-natural home-birth situations, but let me assure you that this is no longer the case. When a woman says that she's using a midwife, don't jump to the conclusion that she's giving birth in a tree in her backyard. I mean, she might be, but midwife does not automatically equal home birth or even "birthing center" birth. We're using midwives, and we're delivering at a community hospital. My entire pregnancy (with the exception of the kidney follow-up sonograms which were all done in the maternal-fetal medicine department at Johns Hopkins Hospital) has been managed by the team of midwives at my OB/GYN's office. In fact, I've never actually been seen by an OB/GYN in my life - all of my annual check-up visits have also been with the midwives at my practice. There will be doctors available on the L&D floor when I deliver, but barring any major issues, our baby will be delivered by the midwife on-call from our practice that day.

And for the record, guess what else "midwife" doesn't equal? "No Drugs". I have every intention of getting an epidural when it becomes necessary, thank you very much!

Moving on to the issue of the birth plan itself. This is where many older moms (or, for some reason, people who have never even given birth before) will laugh. "Wait til you get there! That "birth plan" will fly right out the window!" Yes, yes, I know... I'm fully aware that as a first-time mom I'm simply not allowed to have an opinion on anything baby- or birthing-related, since I'm completely clueless and have no basis for formulating such an opinion (I hope you detect a hint of sarcasm here). Don't even get me started down that path - I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of being told that I don't know anything, and that every opinion or feeling I've ever had is going to be flushed down the toilet as soon as my baby enters the world...

ANYWAY, birthing "plans" are exactly that - plans - and are written on paper as opposed to being carved in stone for good reason. Maybe some women are psycho about their birth plans but I, for one, am fully aware of the tentative nature of such things. I've never claimed to have an infallible birth plan, and I'm fine with some things changing if they need to. But is it really so wrong to think ahead and consider what I'd like to have happen in an ideal situation? Is it really so wrong to want think through the possible scenarios and outcomes so that I have considered how I'd like to handle things if x, y or z should occur, and to have a written plan in place so that my caregivers can proceed according to my wishes if I'm otherwise unable to communicate them? Call me crazy, but I call that being thoughtful and responsible about my own care and the care of my child.

Maybe you're not familiar with the types of issues that might be addressed in a birth plan. I adapted a birth plan worksheet that I found on BabyCenter.com, because I wasn't sure what all to include either. There were some things that I deleted altogether and some things that I added to make it reflect the issues that I feel are most important to me.

One of my biggest concerns, for example, is that my labor will be stalled or go on too long after my water has broken and I'll be forced into a c-section. With that in mind, I focused on interventions that I might want to have or avoid in order to help avoid that scenario. For example, I'd like to labor for as long as possible without an epidural so that I can remain mobile to help labor progress if need be, with the understanding that I do intend to get an epidural when it becomes necessary (and I don't want to miss that window of opportunity before pushing, either!).

Even more important to me is that my baby be placed on my chest immediately after birth, barring any complications, and that we be allowed to try to breastfeed as soon after birth as possible and before he is taken from the room (again, barring any complications). Also, since we plan to breastfeed exclusively, I specified that we do not want him to have any formula or be offered a pacifier, to avoid any confusion. That's one of those things that might inadvertently happen in the nursery if I hadn't taken the time to put something in writing in my chart. And it wouldn't be the end of the world if he did get a pacifier or something, but if it matters to me and I can do something to try to avoid it happening, then why not?

These are the types of things that I think are important to thoughtfully consider beforehand. If you don't feel strongly one way or another on most of these issues, then maybe a birth plan isn't a high priority for you. But if there are even one or two issues that you feel strongly about, particularly ones that may end up out of your control (like they're happening in an emergency scenario, or while the baby is in the nursery), then it's probably worth at least discussing them with your caregiver ahead of time, and maybe even putting it in writing. For me, since I don't know which midwife we'll be working with, putting it in writing is imperative. I don't know that the person I discuss it with in the office will be the person delivering the baby.

For me, having a birth plan isn't about having it "all figured out" - I'm not that delusional. It's just me doing what I can to ensure that if there are any questions about my preferences when I'm unable to communicate them, there's a resource for my caregivers to refer to.

My uterus is a big fat liar.

We had our first (and God willing, our last) experience with "false labor" yesterday (insert super-peeved-looking face here). I was having contractions all night Sunday into Monday, starting at around midnight and waking me up two or three times an hour for the rest of the night. It was enough tightening+cramping to wake me up in discomfort, so I felt like that was promising. I had my regularly scheduled weekly check-up with the midwives on Monday morning so, given how things were going, I had Ben stay home from work and go with me just in case. We even packed our hospital bags into the car, but I was trying not to get too excited.

Sure enough, at my appointment I was 90% effaced (no dilation yet, but the midwife assured me that effacement usually happens first with first pregnancies) and after hearing my description of the night's events, she said that I was probably in early labor. Wahoo! She advised me to go home, take some long walks, take a shower, make sure I ate something, and come back when the contractions were 5 minutes apart for an hour and taking my breath away. We live about 45 minutes from where the doctor's office and hospital are, so rather than go all the way home we went over to my sister-in-law's (who lives in the area) and had lunch with her and her hubby, and then went to a local park to take a LONG walk. I definitely found that the walking increased the frequency of the contractions and they started getting more painful, so we started to feel very hopeful. They were still at least 15 minutes apart and rather irregular (sometimes as long as 30 minutes apart), so we decided to go home and shower and have some dinner. The contractions definitely slowed a bit while we were at home just sitting, so we went out again to an outdoor shopping area nearby to walk some more. Again, same result - the walking definitely increased the frequency and intensity - and again, we were hopeful. We were pretty convinced that we'd be heading to the hospital sometime in the middle of the night. We were SO excited to finally be on the verge of meeting our little guy!

Except that once I went to sleep for the night, that was all she wrote. I actually slept quite well, which I knew was bad news, and I haven't had a single contraction all flippin' day. I even went out walking and shopping for a good 3 hours and still, nothing :'( All I accomplished was spending some money on myself and the baby, and drowning my disappointment in a grande decaf caramel macchiato and an Auntie Anne's cinnamon pretzel. SWEET.

False labor is the worst.

Baby Watch: Week One

My first week at home was just lovely, as I'm sure you could've predicted. It doesn't much matter what I did or didn't accomplish, just being free to do whatever the heck I felt like doing was simply MAGICAL. Yet here I sit, begging my unborn child to come forth into the world and completely blow all of that sweet, sweet freedom out of the water. Crazy talk? Perhaps.

Nah... I'm ready. SO ready. Still not in the super-uncomfortable, get-this-baby-out-of-me way - just in the I'm-dying-to-meet-my-sweet-beautiful-perfect-little-boy way ;-)

On Monday, I had my weekly appointment with the midwife. Nothing exciting to report, unfortunately. Not sure what I did for the rest of the day, but... ah, who cares! On Tuesday, I slept in and then headed down to my Dad's for a lunch date and an afternoon of visiting. Always lovely :-) I'm a total Daddy's girl. Wednesday my big projects were grocery shopping and baby shower thank-you's - both successful - and I finally cracked the books on Thursday... while watching "Cruel Intentions" followed by "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer", because they were on. Today I slept in, hit Target to pick up a few toiletries for the hospital bag, got myself a heavenly pedicure, reviewed and submitted comments on a manuscript involving work that I did during my time at the National Human Genome Research Institute (my first potential publication, on which I will be 2nd author), and started on some light packing for our upcoming move. My productivity seems to have gradually increased over the course of the week!

Our weekends have been winding down as we approach our due date (is it really just over a week away?!), so we don't have too much on tap for the upcoming weekend. Dinner with some friends tomorrow evening, and probably the usual Sunday dinner with the fam. Probably some laundry too, and walking, and rolling my hips around on the exercise ball. Maybe we'll keep up the packing as well. Probably won't do a whole lot of studying though, if I had to guess. Just being honest!

See, you didn't really miss my blogging that much. It's not terribly interesting these days! But rest assured, friends... this is just the calm before the storm (of excitement)!

If I think it's been tough to blog BEFORE baby...

...I'm pretty much screwed, right?! Haha! I'm really sorry, friends. My blogging hiatus has really been a by-product of guilt more than anything. My evening/weekend to-do list is very simple: get some studying done. Oh, and write baby shower thank-you notes (yikes... a little behind on that!). After making dinner, of course. Having worked all day in my largely pregnant state and arrived home with little-to-no energy left for evening tasks, I'm sure it won't come as a shock for you to hear that I haven't been making amazing progress. So when I consider something like blogging, I immediately jump to "I can't very well sit here and waste time BLOGGING when I should be STUDYING" ...and so I don't blog OR study. It's dumb.

So, it would appear that I have quite a bit of updating to do! I'll give you the streamlined, bullet-point version:

• I'm 38 weeks pregnant! When did THAT happen?! I can't say I'm really feeling any "different" or any closer to delivering, and my midwives haven't done any "checking" yet so I can't really update you on where we stand. I will say that I'm still relatively comfortable and haven't hit that late-pregnancy wall that you hear so many women talk about (the "GET THIS BABY OUT OF ME!!!" wall). Sleep is getting more difficult (more aches + more heartburn + baby dropping onto bladder = more interruptions!) which is definitely getting irritating, so I won't be too heartbroken if he shows up a little early ;-)

37 Weeks

• Baby boy's bum kidney hasn't gotten any better or worse. His abdomen is a little bigger around than it should be because the kidney is enlarged, but it's not big enough to interfere with delivery or anything. As of our last sono a little over a week ago he weighed a whopping 7 lbs 4 oz, so we're looking forward to delivering a big ol' chunker of a baby! He's lookin' pretty darn cute, too...

Eli at 32 weeks

• The baby space is all set up and ready to go! Since we're still living in a 1BR apartment (more to come on the living arrangements!), we've had to "make do" with the space that we have. We're storing our dining room furniture at a friend's place and the dining area has become baby land, complete with dresser FULL of freshly washed clothes, pack n' play with changing table, newborn swing, and bouncy seat. 

 We decided to borrow Em & Josh's baby swing...

Baltimore-sports-themed mobile on the swing, courtesy of Uncle Josh

Yes, that's his dresser tucked away beneath the overhang of the kitchen counter!

• We're buying a house! Waaaahooooooo!!! After a LONG and disappointing experience with the short sale house (which fell through after 3 months of back-and-forth madness), we finally found an even MORE perfect home just when we were about to give up. It worked out well that the sellers are asking to rent back from us until mid-December, so rather than feeling pressured to rush and move before the baby arrives, we'll be staying put and getting to know our little man for a few months in our cozy apartment :-) 

• In case you were a little confused about the "studying" that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I'm also enrolled part-time in an independent study elective for medical school to brush up on my first-year material during this year off from school. It's mainly Step One-driven ("Step One" being the first board exam that I'll have to pass at the end of my 2nd year in order to move on to clinical rotations), so I'm not just going back through all of my old PowerPoints - I'm working with Step One study materials to focus on the stuff that I'll really need to have down for the exam. And as I mentioned before, it's... slow going!

• Quite possibly the best news of all is that I'M DONE WORKING!!! SOOOoooooo fabulous :-) I truly enjoyed the group of people I worked with and adored being a part of such an active, successful CF research program, but DUDE. I have been TIRED. It's so unfortunate that we live in a culture in which it is virtually impossible for most households to survive on one income, which ends up forcing pregnant women to work up until their waters break in the middle of the office. I'm so thankful that I could take some time to rest up and relax before he arrives and that I won't have to return to "work" until school starts next year, but I REALLY believe that it should be standard for women to start paid maternity leave well before they deliver. It just gets downright inhumane to expect women to continue being so active and productive when they have about as much energy and as many aches as someone who is coming down with the flu! Damn women's lib movement. Don't even get me started.

Over the next few weeks (if I have that much time left...who knows!), I plan to do some sleeping in, some studying, some thank-you card writing, some visiting, and lots of RELAXING. As we await the big event, please say a prayer for a calm, peaceful, relatively uneventful delivery for us, and for a negative newborn screening result on the CF front!!! Thank you all for your love, support and prayers :-)