baby story
Naomi's here!! She came on February 18th, ten days before her due date (you know how I am an impatient person), and she's perfectly healthy. I'm not going to apologize for making it such a long story for you because I know I pored over the details of other people's birth stories while I was pregnant. I hope the pregnant ladies here will get something good out of it. (Crossposted to Feb08babies.)
All the anticipation and anxiety that builds up over nine months for the arrival of a baby is something you can't imagine unless you've been pregnant. Toward the end, I got impossibly irritable, emotional, and nervous about details of our apartment - was the carpet clean enough? too much dust in the air? I saw some cat fur on her crib sheet... Plus, I was bored. I stopped working and all the baby's things were ready and waiting. I'm sure I was making Franco wish for a different scenario altogether. But he was more sensitive to my moods during that time than I could have hoped for. (Now it's a different story. Why am I still so emotionally sensitive now that the baby's here...?)
So I had gone to the doctor's on Thursday and was told that I was 2 cm dilated and that my cervix was very thin. I tried to hide that this made me very excited because those details can mean very little. And then I lost my mucus plug (along with a whole lot of harmless-looking mucus) before the weekend even started. Then things got moving on Sunday. I had what I would equate to mild cramps the entire day. I felt more anxious than usual. But I didn't think much of it, really. We went out for a big pizza dinner at 7, and I realized that something was off when I threw that up a couple hours later. But it wasn't until midnight that I actually felt a contraction strong enough to make me pay attention. I walked around for a while, called my family in Alabama many times, and then finally called the doctor. We left for the hospital at 1:30 am.
Now. I'm going to give a good guess that most 3rd trimester ladies have packed their hospital bag with care, have planned phone calls, and have put in place all the countless other details of their baby's homecoming. But one thing I was completely unprepared for - and they likely are too - was the drive to the hospital. I'm going to say that my contractions went from manageable at five minutes apart to direly intense every 2 minutes during the car ride. I brought my pillow, sure, but you have no idea how every bump or turn when you're trying to focus on not hyperventilating through a contraction can be memorably annoying. I personally wish I had thought to put down the backseat so I could lay down... stocked more pillows in there... informed my driver even better for directions so that he wouldn't DARE ask me when I was trying to concentrate...
But alas, Franco and I made it to the hospital in record time even if it felt like forever. I apologized as soon as I could afterwards for all the yelling on my part.
We pulled up and Franco went in to grab the nurses and their heavenly wheelchair. Somehow it only took him three seconds or so to park the car and find us three floors up. The nurses left me alone in the bathroom to change into a gown which turned out to not be a good idea since I promptly laid down on the floor and curled up to have another good contraction. It's pretty blurry, the time between leaving my house and the baby's arrival. I can understand how easy it would be to give into pain medicine, really, since I would have agreed to do almost anything. You lose your head a little bit, I think. Luckily Franco knew what I wanted when it came to most of what they asked me. I remotely remember him being by my head the whole time constantly talking to me. There were definitely times though when I would have given everything if only all the people in the room would be quiet so I could concentrate on trying to breathe... but like I said, my head wasn't really working enough to get that order out at the time.
Looking back I would say that I don't remember pain from most of the last contractions. The nurses kept asking me to relax and wait, that my doctor wasn't there yet, but... I don't know how else to explain that my body wanted me to have the baby, therefore it did. You know how in the movies they have a turning point in the labor where the woman is told it's time to push and everyone gets ready for it? I swear I did not even push the baby. Because they kept saying not to I think I was even working against the contractions to hold the baby in. But she popped out anyway at 3 am. Cried right away. She was bright red, had a distorted head, and to me she looked really skinny. But I was told everything was perfect. She was just under 7 pounds.
In a lot of ways I'm relieved that it went so fast. I can't imagine having to spend hours with contractions that intense. The only thing that isn't so wonderful is that I tore a lot, and the stitches (3 weeks later when I write this) have been the yuckiest part of the whole experience. My advice for others who are dealing with stitches on the part of the body that you need to spend most of your time sitting on when you're recovering from labor is this: put a little bit of salt in the peri squirt bottle they give you - I think it softens up the stitches and moves the dried blood and whatever else from them as your skin is healing. Also, I'd advise taking at least one shower every day - getting clean and fresh has been saving my sanity so far. Ha, and between the waddling I did because of the stitches, the swelling of my feet (they looked like hooves), and the extra stomach that I still have... the positive feeling after a shower was also extremely refreshing.
So that's how the labor went... not half as terrible as I expected. Naomi really is worth any frustration or pain or sacrifice we've made so far. She looks much more like her Mexican father than like me (a gringa). And it took a couple days, but when she started getting more alert and really opened her big brown eyes... ah, it's perfect. She has thick black hair that got fluffy when I finally got the courage to give her a shampoo. She squeaks and squeals in her sleep. Has a certain smell that's (usually) very appealing. She has fussy times during the course of the day, but it's nothing intolerable. Mostly I find that if her tummy is full and she's clean, she seems to be at peace.
As far as breastfeeding goes... it was really tough to get started. And I think that had a lot to do with the fact that at the hospital, the nurses push so much for you to get milk into the baby the first day. But to be honest, the baby just wanted to sleep during that time. So she wasn't interested in the boob at all and just got upset that we were shoving it in her face. I started to feel like a failure because the nurses asked me twice an hour if I'd managed to get the baby to eat, and of course no. The baby and I were both getting upset about all the pressure. Once we got home and she woke up more, we were able to get things going. I would advise that you wait for when the baby actually gets hungry before you decide whether it's something that'll work for you or not. Of course it isn't a satisfying experience trying to feed a baby who wants to be left alone.
So anyway, I think I got pretty lucky with such a short labor and a fairly non-fussy baby. I don't even have to think about going back to work for six months, so I'm just going to take the time to enjoy the baby and watch how she develops. In just three weeks, she's changed so much.
Before I forget... one book I need to recommend is The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine. Reading it when I was pregnant definitely kept my sense of humor at a good level, and along with the standard What to Expect when you're Expecting, I actually began to feel like I knew what I was getting into.
Here are some pictures -
This is what the babe looked like for the first four days straight. We kept her as womb-like as possible, obviously.
Then she just was grumpy at the unfamiliar environment...
And eventually perked up a little bit...
BTW, this is Naomi's usual expression (even after a month or so).
All the anticipation and anxiety that builds up over nine months for the arrival of a baby is something you can't imagine unless you've been pregnant. Toward the end, I got impossibly irritable, emotional, and nervous about details of our apartment - was the carpet clean enough? too much dust in the air? I saw some cat fur on her crib sheet... Plus, I was bored. I stopped working and all the baby's things were ready and waiting. I'm sure I was making Franco wish for a different scenario altogether. But he was more sensitive to my moods during that time than I could have hoped for. (Now it's a different story. Why am I still so emotionally sensitive now that the baby's here...?)
So I had gone to the doctor's on Thursday and was told that I was 2 cm dilated and that my cervix was very thin. I tried to hide that this made me very excited because those details can mean very little. And then I lost my mucus plug (along with a whole lot of harmless-looking mucus) before the weekend even started. Then things got moving on Sunday. I had what I would equate to mild cramps the entire day. I felt more anxious than usual. But I didn't think much of it, really. We went out for a big pizza dinner at 7, and I realized that something was off when I threw that up a couple hours later. But it wasn't until midnight that I actually felt a contraction strong enough to make me pay attention. I walked around for a while, called my family in Alabama many times, and then finally called the doctor. We left for the hospital at 1:30 am.
Now. I'm going to give a good guess that most 3rd trimester ladies have packed their hospital bag with care, have planned phone calls, and have put in place all the countless other details of their baby's homecoming. But one thing I was completely unprepared for - and they likely are too - was the drive to the hospital. I'm going to say that my contractions went from manageable at five minutes apart to direly intense every 2 minutes during the car ride. I brought my pillow, sure, but you have no idea how every bump or turn when you're trying to focus on not hyperventilating through a contraction can be memorably annoying. I personally wish I had thought to put down the backseat so I could lay down... stocked more pillows in there... informed my driver even better for directions so that he wouldn't DARE ask me when I was trying to concentrate...
But alas, Franco and I made it to the hospital in record time even if it felt like forever. I apologized as soon as I could afterwards for all the yelling on my part.
We pulled up and Franco went in to grab the nurses and their heavenly wheelchair. Somehow it only took him three seconds or so to park the car and find us three floors up. The nurses left me alone in the bathroom to change into a gown which turned out to not be a good idea since I promptly laid down on the floor and curled up to have another good contraction. It's pretty blurry, the time between leaving my house and the baby's arrival. I can understand how easy it would be to give into pain medicine, really, since I would have agreed to do almost anything. You lose your head a little bit, I think. Luckily Franco knew what I wanted when it came to most of what they asked me. I remotely remember him being by my head the whole time constantly talking to me. There were definitely times though when I would have given everything if only all the people in the room would be quiet so I could concentrate on trying to breathe... but like I said, my head wasn't really working enough to get that order out at the time.
Looking back I would say that I don't remember pain from most of the last contractions. The nurses kept asking me to relax and wait, that my doctor wasn't there yet, but... I don't know how else to explain that my body wanted me to have the baby, therefore it did. You know how in the movies they have a turning point in the labor where the woman is told it's time to push and everyone gets ready for it? I swear I did not even push the baby. Because they kept saying not to I think I was even working against the contractions to hold the baby in. But she popped out anyway at 3 am. Cried right away. She was bright red, had a distorted head, and to me she looked really skinny. But I was told everything was perfect. She was just under 7 pounds.
In a lot of ways I'm relieved that it went so fast. I can't imagine having to spend hours with contractions that intense. The only thing that isn't so wonderful is that I tore a lot, and the stitches (3 weeks later when I write this) have been the yuckiest part of the whole experience. My advice for others who are dealing with stitches on the part of the body that you need to spend most of your time sitting on when you're recovering from labor is this: put a little bit of salt in the peri squirt bottle they give you - I think it softens up the stitches and moves the dried blood and whatever else from them as your skin is healing. Also, I'd advise taking at least one shower every day - getting clean and fresh has been saving my sanity so far. Ha, and between the waddling I did because of the stitches, the swelling of my feet (they looked like hooves), and the extra stomach that I still have... the positive feeling after a shower was also extremely refreshing.
So that's how the labor went... not half as terrible as I expected. Naomi really is worth any frustration or pain or sacrifice we've made so far. She looks much more like her Mexican father than like me (a gringa). And it took a couple days, but when she started getting more alert and really opened her big brown eyes... ah, it's perfect. She has thick black hair that got fluffy when I finally got the courage to give her a shampoo. She squeaks and squeals in her sleep. Has a certain smell that's (usually) very appealing. She has fussy times during the course of the day, but it's nothing intolerable. Mostly I find that if her tummy is full and she's clean, she seems to be at peace.
As far as breastfeeding goes... it was really tough to get started. And I think that had a lot to do with the fact that at the hospital, the nurses push so much for you to get milk into the baby the first day. But to be honest, the baby just wanted to sleep during that time. So she wasn't interested in the boob at all and just got upset that we were shoving it in her face. I started to feel like a failure because the nurses asked me twice an hour if I'd managed to get the baby to eat, and of course no. The baby and I were both getting upset about all the pressure. Once we got home and she woke up more, we were able to get things going. I would advise that you wait for when the baby actually gets hungry before you decide whether it's something that'll work for you or not. Of course it isn't a satisfying experience trying to feed a baby who wants to be left alone.
So anyway, I think I got pretty lucky with such a short labor and a fairly non-fussy baby. I don't even have to think about going back to work for six months, so I'm just going to take the time to enjoy the baby and watch how she develops. In just three weeks, she's changed so much.
Before I forget... one book I need to recommend is The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine. Reading it when I was pregnant definitely kept my sense of humor at a good level, and along with the standard What to Expect when you're Expecting, I actually began to feel like I knew what I was getting into.
Here are some pictures -
This is what the babe looked like for the first four days straight. We kept her as womb-like as possible, obviously.
Then she just was grumpy at the unfamiliar environment...
And eventually perked up a little bit...
BTW, this is Naomi's usual expression (even after a month or so).