Has it really been that long?!
According to my home page I haven't updated my journal for 7 weeks! OMG I can't believe it's really been that long. Well so much has happened since thing so lets see where do I begin? Oh yeah how about with my baby!
On March 27th 2009 at 12:25am I had a beautiful baby girl named Melody Ann who was 6 lbs 7 oz and 20 inches long. Now as some of you have guessed I didn't make it to 40 weeks. Again it was because of my blood pressure. How did this happen? Well lets go back to the Monday of that week. I had a wonderful baby shower that weekend and we got a ton of stuff but there were a few things we didn't get that we needed. So that Sunday we went shopping for a few things like a diaper bag and some cloth diapers for spit up rags. But everything was fine from what I know because I didn't feel stressed at all. Then monday rolls around and everyone at work asked me how things went with the baby shower and I hardly had time to get things done before I went to my doctors appointment. It was an early appointment and I told Shannon that they might pull me out of work today so she had been warned lol. Then I get to my doctors appointment and they take my blood pressure and it's like 161 over 101 or something like that and that's not good. I was seeing Dr Eigg since Colleen was out on vacation but he turned out pretty cool. But since my blood pressure was so high he didn't want me to go into shock or something so he sent me to labor triage at the hospital. I was upset but not because I was so hoping not to get pulled out of work that day and I was scared there was something wrong. So I called Shannon and let her know what was going on and I called Sandy and told him I needed him to be with me. Then I get to labor triage and get all checked in and what not. All I did was lay there in that uncomfortable bed for 4 hours while they checked my blood pressure, took blood, and monitored the baby's heart beat. When all the labs came back and my blood pressure went down they sent me home but not without making me get more tests done the next day and make another appointment with my regular doctors office. They also told me I was out of work till the baby came because of my blood pressure. Ok so no big deal and the next few days went pretty well....sort of. Tuesday I went to get my other labs done and I had to go to my non stress test and everything there went fine as usual. So everyone knew I was going to be home till the baby was born so everyone was like I'll come visit you if you want company blah blah blah lol. So Krystina was scheduled to come visit Wednesday and Tasha was scheduled to come visit Friday. Then Wednesday rolls around and Krystina comes over. It was nice to hang out with her and everything but I had to do some errands before my doctors appointment. Krystina said she didn't mind if she tagged along so we went and did all the banking I had to do. Then I went to my doctors appointment. Well guess what? My blood pressure was high again and Dr Eigg sent me to labor triage again. Only this time Krystina came along with me. She said she would come along with me anyway this way Sandy didn't have to get out of work early in case it wasn't the real thing like last time. So again I went to labor triage and got to sit on that uncomfortable bed while they monitored the baby's heart beat and my blood pressure, oh and did some more blood tests. Well about 4 hours later my blood pressure was still a little high and they said my blood test came back funky so they decided to induce me. I was thinking damn it! LOL I want my April baby but at the same time I was excited because my baby would be here before I knew it. So they I called the family and let everyone know what was going on and of course mom came rushing to my side and so did everyone else which is funny because I wasn't even in labor yet. Then they moved me to a labor room which was nice because it was bigger. I then went through all the formalities of telling me how things are going to work. First they gave me a pill to induce me called citotech. I took the first one orally and the rest of them were inserted vaginally. So after every two hours they checked me to see if the baby had dropped yet and to see how much I had dilated, if I didn't dilate that much then each time they would give me another pill. Well after 4 pills things weren't moving along that much so they decided to start a patocin drip. Then things really got moving. Dad decided to come visit right around the time my contractions were getting really bad so I'm glad he was there for the distraction but OMG did it hurt! Once he left I made Sandy get by my side and I squeezed his hands while my mom rubbed my back and while Jessie patted my head with a wash cloth and after a while her and mom switched. So since they were coming so close together I asked for an epidural. They took forever to get there because he was on another case so I had to wait which really sucked. But once he got there it took him a few minutes to get it in and then I was numb from the waist down. It was a really weird feeling. So I tired to sleep but I had this pain in my leg, probably from the position I was in cause they made me sleep on my side. The nurse also gave me some oxygen for some reason. Then another few hours went by and the baby still hadn't dropped. In fact the baby had gone back up a bit so they said I might have to have a c-section. I was so upset. I didn't want to have a c-section I wanted to have a normal vaginal birth, so that got my emotions going. I asked the doctor if anything would change if we did wait and he said we could try and wait to see if anything changes but most likely it won't so your best bet would be to have the c-section. So I agreed and they started prepping me for the OR. I was balling though because I just didn't want to have a C-Section and I was totally scared. Then when I got in to the OR they started to give me my local but the doctor said he might have to put me under because when he gives locals after he's given epidurals sometimes they don't work. So he did his thing and we waited a good few minutes but it wasn't working so he had to put me under. It really upset me that none of this was going my way. Then about an hour later Dr. Eigg woke me up and brought Sandy in with my new born little girl. When Sandy walked in and told me it was a girl I was in such shock! I totally thought it was going to be a boy and you know what I said? "Oh my god are you kidding me?" LOL but I was excited because now all the girls in my family have had girls first. And I swear to god as soon as they put her down next to me she smiled. I can't believe I had a girl because we all thought it was going to be a boy. So that was my birth story but oh it doesn't end there. So after I came to and I saw my baby girl they had to let me recover for an hour. But before that they asked me if I wanted to breastfeed my baby and I said yes but the anesthesiologist wouldn't let me because I was still recovering from being under so they cupped her and let her have some formula for her first feeding. It was a little upsetting but I had no choice really. So they move me to my new room after being in recovery for an hour and it's one of the small rooms in the 3000 wing which totally sucked because it was barely big enough for me Sandy and the baby let alone visitors. Anyway so Mom, Terri, Jessica, and Matt came in to say good bye and congratulate us. Then they asked if I wanted Melody to stay in the room with us or not and I decided not because I wanted to get some rest for the last night of my life lol. So they took Melody to the nursery and let Sandy and I sleep. Well sort of Sandy got to sleep and I got woken up almost every hour so they could do tests of some kind or change the pad under me. Finally morning came and I had Sandy go get baby girl so when people came in they could see her and so I could start to breastfeed her. Because over night I had them cup her again because I did not want them to give her a nipple yet. So early in the morning before all the visitors started coming I called the nurse in to help me try and get her to latch. Well it didn't work. Every time we tried she got upset or angry and I just got frustrated to no end. So we decided to cup her for a little longer and try again later. Then everyone came visit which was nice. I was kind of surprised at how many people did come even Sara Manchester did which was great! Tasha visited twice because she works at the hospital. So then we tried to breast feed her again and again she just didn't want anything to do with it. I mean she did try but she didn't. She was latching but it wasn't for very long and if she didn't get anything at first she'd get upset. Sigh, so we stepped back again and cupped her a again. The nurse decided to give me a pump though because they wanted to help me get my milk in. So I tried to pump every 3 hours or so. I didn't get a lot because it's just the colostrum that I was pumping. The next day did not go so well. I apparently had lost a lot of blood in the last day because of the c-section so they wanted to give me 2 pints of blood to get me back to where I should be. So I ended up in bed longer then I wanted and I had lost a whole day of pumping because of it. They had a lactation consultant come in and talk to us too but she didn't help any. Then over that night I had a nurse come in and try to help us get Melody to get her to latch but she was no help either. The more people that tried to help the more frustrated I got and so did Melody. So in the end we gave in and decided to give her some formula with a nipple. I didn't want to but I wanted my child to get something in her tummy. And at that point we also decided that Sandy would feed her to associate him with the bottle and me with the breast. So the next couple of days in the hospital were spent trying to get her to latch on and pumping. The day I was discharged from the hospital my doctor came in to visit us. It was funny because she was on vacation the week things decided to happen and I said that to her and she laughed. So then we were about to leave but the lactation consultant wouldn't let us leave until we had a feeding plan so she told us we should buy a pump because I was going to need one anyway for when I went back to work. But the thing was we didn't have the money for a $300 pump but she told us we could buy one with a FSA and Sandy was like hell yeah lol. So he went down to the apothecary and bought a pump and then we headed home. Baby girl was upset most of the way home but once we got home she was ok. I was still in a lot of pain but mostly in my back. Sandy was always making heat packs for me which was nice. My mom also came over for two days to help me around the house and to help take care of the baby. She also got us some formula since we were still supplementing. But I was pumping every 2 hours and my milk was coming in quite nicely. So we were able to give her some breast milk which was great but I was still upset that she wasn't latching. Then the day after she came home she had her first doctors appointment and she end up losing another ounce and a half since she came home. The doctor wasn't that concerned but he wanted us to come back in a few days to check her weight. So we had to put her on a schedule so she could put some weight back on. Well it worked because by the time she went back she was back up to her birth weight (oh and before I forget she lost 4 ounces in the hospital to put her at 6 lbs 3 oz so when she was at the doctors for the first time she was 6 lbs 1 1/2 ounces). But then we talked with one of the nurses there about getting Melody to latch on boy did that just frustrate me more. She tried to show me how and give me tips while she had me show how I did it and it was just not helping. So I tried a couple more times to get Melody to latch and she just did not want to. I didn't want to give up so early but I just couldn't take it any more. I so wanted her to latch but she didn't want to. If we didn't give her the nipple in the hospital it would be different and if I was able to have breast feed her after I gave birth I'm sure everything would of worked out. I've spent many nights crying about it and I really think I have a little bit of PPD. So as of right now we are officially supplementing and I'm exclusively pumping. All I have to say is I hate formula!!! It stinks, it stains and it's way too expensive. Oh and I had this horrible anxiety attack about the second week she came home because I got a call saying they were downsizing my office and as of May 13th I would no longer have a job. I'm still kind of upset about it but I knew it was coming just didn't think it would be so soon. Then I find out that my new landlord wants us to declaw our cats because someone had a cat that clawed up her carpet in one of her other places. So all of this combined kind of just set me off and I couldn't stop crying. Then to top it off Melody was being really fussy and nothing we could do would help her calm down, so Sandy text mom HELP, she called me while I'm balling and she's like "I'll be right there." Sandy then took Melody and made me go lay down so I could calm down. I went to bed and mom came upstairs to kiss me good night when she got there. I'm so glad I have her here with me. I don't know what I would do if she lived in another state. But things have gotten better and Melody is sleeping in her own bed with the help of a heating pad and having her sleep on her tummy instead of her back. We just couldn't get her to sleep on her back so we are going against the norm and putting her on her tummy. She loves it though cause we have a really nice blanket for her to sleep on and the heating pad helps a lot too. As for me I'm doing a little better. I actually only have 15 pounds to lose till I get to my pre pregnancy weight which is great. I'm glad I don't have to lose a ton cause I really thought I was going to have like 30 pounds to lose. So I want to lose that first and then I'm going for another 15 after that because guess what? We are going to Disney World with the family at the end of August! My mom got $12,000 from a workmans comp mess up and she's gonna take the whole family to Disney world. So I have goal to try and lose 30 pounds but I have 4ish months to do it so I gotta get my butt in gear. I'm going to get back to weight watchers and I have the wii fit right now as well as Krystina who wants to take lots of walks which I can totally do :-). So I'm going to get back to it! And no job lined up yet but I applied for unemployment and I'm going to try and get WIC and food stamps as a back up. I'm sure things will turn around but right now we are ok. It just comes at a really bad time because of me being on maternity leave and we had everything figured out when I was working. But I'm sure something will turn up. So that's about it right now. There are some other things going on but I'll make a private post for them. If anyone wants to see pictures you can see them on my facebook or photobucket. And this blog has taken 2 days to write! LOL that's what I get for having a child lol. Na I'm kidding I'm loving it!! Ok time to go play the wii fit before the little one wakes up. I'll ttyl!!!
Amy Sue *^_^*
On March 27th 2009 at 12:25am I had a beautiful baby girl named Melody Ann who was 6 lbs 7 oz and 20 inches long. Now as some of you have guessed I didn't make it to 40 weeks. Again it was because of my blood pressure. How did this happen? Well lets go back to the Monday of that week. I had a wonderful baby shower that weekend and we got a ton of stuff but there were a few things we didn't get that we needed. So that Sunday we went shopping for a few things like a diaper bag and some cloth diapers for spit up rags. But everything was fine from what I know because I didn't feel stressed at all. Then monday rolls around and everyone at work asked me how things went with the baby shower and I hardly had time to get things done before I went to my doctors appointment. It was an early appointment and I told Shannon that they might pull me out of work today so she had been warned lol. Then I get to my doctors appointment and they take my blood pressure and it's like 161 over 101 or something like that and that's not good. I was seeing Dr Eigg since Colleen was out on vacation but he turned out pretty cool. But since my blood pressure was so high he didn't want me to go into shock or something so he sent me to labor triage at the hospital. I was upset but not because I was so hoping not to get pulled out of work that day and I was scared there was something wrong. So I called Shannon and let her know what was going on and I called Sandy and told him I needed him to be with me. Then I get to labor triage and get all checked in and what not. All I did was lay there in that uncomfortable bed for 4 hours while they checked my blood pressure, took blood, and monitored the baby's heart beat. When all the labs came back and my blood pressure went down they sent me home but not without making me get more tests done the next day and make another appointment with my regular doctors office. They also told me I was out of work till the baby came because of my blood pressure. Ok so no big deal and the next few days went pretty well....sort of. Tuesday I went to get my other labs done and I had to go to my non stress test and everything there went fine as usual. So everyone knew I was going to be home till the baby was born so everyone was like I'll come visit you if you want company blah blah blah lol. So Krystina was scheduled to come visit Wednesday and Tasha was scheduled to come visit Friday. Then Wednesday rolls around and Krystina comes over. It was nice to hang out with her and everything but I had to do some errands before my doctors appointment. Krystina said she didn't mind if she tagged along so we went and did all the banking I had to do. Then I went to my doctors appointment. Well guess what? My blood pressure was high again and Dr Eigg sent me to labor triage again. Only this time Krystina came along with me. She said she would come along with me anyway this way Sandy didn't have to get out of work early in case it wasn't the real thing like last time. So again I went to labor triage and got to sit on that uncomfortable bed while they monitored the baby's heart beat and my blood pressure, oh and did some more blood tests. Well about 4 hours later my blood pressure was still a little high and they said my blood test came back funky so they decided to induce me. I was thinking damn it! LOL I want my April baby but at the same time I was excited because my baby would be here before I knew it. So they I called the family and let everyone know what was going on and of course mom came rushing to my side and so did everyone else which is funny because I wasn't even in labor yet. Then they moved me to a labor room which was nice because it was bigger. I then went through all the formalities of telling me how things are going to work. First they gave me a pill to induce me called citotech. I took the first one orally and the rest of them were inserted vaginally. So after every two hours they checked me to see if the baby had dropped yet and to see how much I had dilated, if I didn't dilate that much then each time they would give me another pill. Well after 4 pills things weren't moving along that much so they decided to start a patocin drip. Then things really got moving. Dad decided to come visit right around the time my contractions were getting really bad so I'm glad he was there for the distraction but OMG did it hurt! Once he left I made Sandy get by my side and I squeezed his hands while my mom rubbed my back and while Jessie patted my head with a wash cloth and after a while her and mom switched. So since they were coming so close together I asked for an epidural. They took forever to get there because he was on another case so I had to wait which really sucked. But once he got there it took him a few minutes to get it in and then I was numb from the waist down. It was a really weird feeling. So I tired to sleep but I had this pain in my leg, probably from the position I was in cause they made me sleep on my side. The nurse also gave me some oxygen for some reason. Then another few hours went by and the baby still hadn't dropped. In fact the baby had gone back up a bit so they said I might have to have a c-section. I was so upset. I didn't want to have a c-section I wanted to have a normal vaginal birth, so that got my emotions going. I asked the doctor if anything would change if we did wait and he said we could try and wait to see if anything changes but most likely it won't so your best bet would be to have the c-section. So I agreed and they started prepping me for the OR. I was balling though because I just didn't want to have a C-Section and I was totally scared. Then when I got in to the OR they started to give me my local but the doctor said he might have to put me under because when he gives locals after he's given epidurals sometimes they don't work. So he did his thing and we waited a good few minutes but it wasn't working so he had to put me under. It really upset me that none of this was going my way. Then about an hour later Dr. Eigg woke me up and brought Sandy in with my new born little girl. When Sandy walked in and told me it was a girl I was in such shock! I totally thought it was going to be a boy and you know what I said? "Oh my god are you kidding me?" LOL but I was excited because now all the girls in my family have had girls first. And I swear to god as soon as they put her down next to me she smiled. I can't believe I had a girl because we all thought it was going to be a boy. So that was my birth story but oh it doesn't end there. So after I came to and I saw my baby girl they had to let me recover for an hour. But before that they asked me if I wanted to breastfeed my baby and I said yes but the anesthesiologist wouldn't let me because I was still recovering from being under so they cupped her and let her have some formula for her first feeding. It was a little upsetting but I had no choice really. So they move me to my new room after being in recovery for an hour and it's one of the small rooms in the 3000 wing which totally sucked because it was barely big enough for me Sandy and the baby let alone visitors. Anyway so Mom, Terri, Jessica, and Matt came in to say good bye and congratulate us. Then they asked if I wanted Melody to stay in the room with us or not and I decided not because I wanted to get some rest for the last night of my life lol. So they took Melody to the nursery and let Sandy and I sleep. Well sort of Sandy got to sleep and I got woken up almost every hour so they could do tests of some kind or change the pad under me. Finally morning came and I had Sandy go get baby girl so when people came in they could see her and so I could start to breastfeed her. Because over night I had them cup her again because I did not want them to give her a nipple yet. So early in the morning before all the visitors started coming I called the nurse in to help me try and get her to latch. Well it didn't work. Every time we tried she got upset or angry and I just got frustrated to no end. So we decided to cup her for a little longer and try again later. Then everyone came visit which was nice. I was kind of surprised at how many people did come even Sara Manchester did which was great! Tasha visited twice because she works at the hospital. So then we tried to breast feed her again and again she just didn't want anything to do with it. I mean she did try but she didn't. She was latching but it wasn't for very long and if she didn't get anything at first she'd get upset. Sigh, so we stepped back again and cupped her a again. The nurse decided to give me a pump though because they wanted to help me get my milk in. So I tried to pump every 3 hours or so. I didn't get a lot because it's just the colostrum that I was pumping. The next day did not go so well. I apparently had lost a lot of blood in the last day because of the c-section so they wanted to give me 2 pints of blood to get me back to where I should be. So I ended up in bed longer then I wanted and I had lost a whole day of pumping because of it. They had a lactation consultant come in and talk to us too but she didn't help any. Then over that night I had a nurse come in and try to help us get Melody to get her to latch but she was no help either. The more people that tried to help the more frustrated I got and so did Melody. So in the end we gave in and decided to give her some formula with a nipple. I didn't want to but I wanted my child to get something in her tummy. And at that point we also decided that Sandy would feed her to associate him with the bottle and me with the breast. So the next couple of days in the hospital were spent trying to get her to latch on and pumping. The day I was discharged from the hospital my doctor came in to visit us. It was funny because she was on vacation the week things decided to happen and I said that to her and she laughed. So then we were about to leave but the lactation consultant wouldn't let us leave until we had a feeding plan so she told us we should buy a pump because I was going to need one anyway for when I went back to work. But the thing was we didn't have the money for a $300 pump but she told us we could buy one with a FSA and Sandy was like hell yeah lol. So he went down to the apothecary and bought a pump and then we headed home. Baby girl was upset most of the way home but once we got home she was ok. I was still in a lot of pain but mostly in my back. Sandy was always making heat packs for me which was nice. My mom also came over for two days to help me around the house and to help take care of the baby. She also got us some formula since we were still supplementing. But I was pumping every 2 hours and my milk was coming in quite nicely. So we were able to give her some breast milk which was great but I was still upset that she wasn't latching. Then the day after she came home she had her first doctors appointment and she end up losing another ounce and a half since she came home. The doctor wasn't that concerned but he wanted us to come back in a few days to check her weight. So we had to put her on a schedule so she could put some weight back on. Well it worked because by the time she went back she was back up to her birth weight (oh and before I forget she lost 4 ounces in the hospital to put her at 6 lbs 3 oz so when she was at the doctors for the first time she was 6 lbs 1 1/2 ounces). But then we talked with one of the nurses there about getting Melody to latch on boy did that just frustrate me more. She tried to show me how and give me tips while she had me show how I did it and it was just not helping. So I tried a couple more times to get Melody to latch and she just did not want to. I didn't want to give up so early but I just couldn't take it any more. I so wanted her to latch but she didn't want to. If we didn't give her the nipple in the hospital it would be different and if I was able to have breast feed her after I gave birth I'm sure everything would of worked out. I've spent many nights crying about it and I really think I have a little bit of PPD. So as of right now we are officially supplementing and I'm exclusively pumping. All I have to say is I hate formula!!! It stinks, it stains and it's way too expensive. Oh and I had this horrible anxiety attack about the second week she came home because I got a call saying they were downsizing my office and as of May 13th I would no longer have a job. I'm still kind of upset about it but I knew it was coming just didn't think it would be so soon. Then I find out that my new landlord wants us to declaw our cats because someone had a cat that clawed up her carpet in one of her other places. So all of this combined kind of just set me off and I couldn't stop crying. Then to top it off Melody was being really fussy and nothing we could do would help her calm down, so Sandy text mom HELP, she called me while I'm balling and she's like "I'll be right there." Sandy then took Melody and made me go lay down so I could calm down. I went to bed and mom came upstairs to kiss me good night when she got there. I'm so glad I have her here with me. I don't know what I would do if she lived in another state. But things have gotten better and Melody is sleeping in her own bed with the help of a heating pad and having her sleep on her tummy instead of her back. We just couldn't get her to sleep on her back so we are going against the norm and putting her on her tummy. She loves it though cause we have a really nice blanket for her to sleep on and the heating pad helps a lot too. As for me I'm doing a little better. I actually only have 15 pounds to lose till I get to my pre pregnancy weight which is great. I'm glad I don't have to lose a ton cause I really thought I was going to have like 30 pounds to lose. So I want to lose that first and then I'm going for another 15 after that because guess what? We are going to Disney World with the family at the end of August! My mom got $12,000 from a workmans comp mess up and she's gonna take the whole family to Disney world. So I have goal to try and lose 30 pounds but I have 4ish months to do it so I gotta get my butt in gear. I'm going to get back to weight watchers and I have the wii fit right now as well as Krystina who wants to take lots of walks which I can totally do :-). So I'm going to get back to it! And no job lined up yet but I applied for unemployment and I'm going to try and get WIC and food stamps as a back up. I'm sure things will turn around but right now we are ok. It just comes at a really bad time because of me being on maternity leave and we had everything figured out when I was working. But I'm sure something will turn up. So that's about it right now. There are some other things going on but I'll make a private post for them. If anyone wants to see pictures you can see them on my facebook or photobucket. And this blog has taken 2 days to write! LOL that's what I get for having a child lol. Na I'm kidding I'm loving it!! Ok time to go play the wii fit before the little one wakes up. I'll ttyl!!!
Amy Sue *^_^*