Month 1 - Trials and Tribulations

IMPORTANT!

7lbs 1oz today!!!

This first month has been a little overwhelming. It's just been one thing after another. My poor baby.

• The O2 tank - apparently hospitals do what's called a "carseat challenge" for preemies which consists of making your child sit in his car set in a room for a whole hour while his O2 saturation is monitored. Poor Jaxen failed round one because he dipped below the magic number 88 a couple times. We weren't worried because he always recovered fast and strong. Because he failed it meant we had to stay at the hospital longer and the had to hook him back up to monitors for another 12 hours like they did when he first came out. Needless to say I was in tears because I knew he was ok and I just wanted to GO HOME. He passed the second round but they kept on O2 for it. On to the "open air challenge" or sitting in a room for 40 min while monitored. Pass. They ended up sending us home with enough O2 to last for months. We ended up taking it off him about 12 hours after we got home because it was royal pain in the ass and it seemed to make him sleepy and docile so much so that he wouldn't feed properly. WE NEEDED HIM TO GAIN WEIGHT! He was dropping to under 5lbs!

• Thrush - We brought him to Dr. Berger, for his first check up and he was diagnosed with thursh (a yeast infection of the mouth.) This happened because the stupid hospital had me on anti-biotics every 4 hours for three days straight and it wiped out both our good gut flora. The worst part is they gave it to me FOR NO GOOD REASON only that because I hadn't had a GBS test yet (that's at 37 weeks) which I was going to decline anyways because I knew it would come back negative. It was frustrating to have to come home with YET another thing to give him but the medication (in combination with pro-biotic drops) did its job and we are both well and breast feeding exclusively although it's not entirely gone yet.

• Excruciatingly Sore Nipples - this was in part due to the thrush but let me tell you there is nothing easy or natural about learning to breast feed. It has been a long difficult road for us but we will stick with it because it is absolutely THE BEST nutritional option. It was so bad I was in tears a few times and I even developed a bit of mastitus but that resolved within 24 hours when Melissa told me to get Jaxen off the bottle completely and to nurse through it. Finally, it is starting to subside.

• Bad Placenta News - sadly, he was born early because I had a slow placental abruption. Since I have had none of the typical risk factors for this we don't really know why it happened. Melissa guesses that maybe between work, workouts and outdoor activities that it was too much although in my defense, any time I felt like an activity was too much for me I did cut it out. The pathologist also found some sort of infection but because I had no symptoms of infection at any time, they think I just got it at the hospital since I was in labor for so long and so many different people were checking my dilation. Next time around (if...) I'll probably have to have some more ultrasounds done and perhaps a few other tests as well.

We are slowly getting used to things but every time we think we know what's going on he surprises us with something new! The past two weeks I've had him outside walking the dog with me which he seems to enjoy and is one of the things that really calms him down quickly if he gets upset. So far we've only had one real bad night where he was frenetically nursing/screaming his brains out for hours. The only good thing about that was that after we worked the issue out he slept for 4 hours straight! He's been a little fussy since then so we picked up a baby swing and watched a great video that helped us out a lot!

Click here for a video of our first bath. 

Life-saving Baby Devices:

1. Side snap shirts
2. Moby wrap

I wish someone would invent a comfortable way to breast feed. It KILLS my back and my posture is getting terrible especially because I can't quite workout yet to balance things out.There is absolutely no comfortable position for me without compromising the latch :( All tips/tricks welcome.

"Set aside predictable, regular times to give full attention without being distracted by other concerns while also creating a safe, familiar place for baby to spend time playing alone."  

~ Magda Gerber

5/26 - My Early Bird

Welcome

Looks like we finished up those room decorations just in time!

Hand painted by yours truly.

It all started Wednesday night but I had no idea what was coming or even that it was starting at that point. Sierra was following me around like a mother hen and I started to feel what I thought were just Braxton Hick's contractions after I got off of work for the night. But I slept well (fabulously so). Thursday morning I had a few hours of work and by the time I finished the contractions were stronger but I was still not alarmed. It was that evening that I became alarmed and I texted Melissa. She recommended I do the following:

• stay off my feet except to go to the bathroom
• 1-2 servings of liquid Cal/Mag (500/1000)
• glass of red wine
• bath (= hot tub!)
• drink more water
• talk to Jaxen    

I did all of these things but still ended up calling her again at 3:45am with contractions 2 min apart so we packed up some things and went to Good Samaritan Hospital expecting an ultra sound and a bed rest conversation and then to be sent home. I was insanely upset about having to go to the hospital! Instead, they found me 90% effaced, 1 cm dilated, and +1 station so they hooked me up to all sorts of uncomfortable machines and made me lie in a TERRIBLE bed for hours and hours. Later that afternoon, nothing changed and so we went home. After resting at home for a few hours things were picking up so we drove to the Foothills Community Hospital in Boulder on a lead that I would be happier and more comfortable there. 

That was the toasted toads truth.

I barely recall entering the hospital in boulder (or any of this for that matter.) only that the car ride there hurt pretty badly. Exactly what I had been trying to avoid by having a home birth. By the time we got there I had been having strong contractions every 2 min for about 24hrs. I was already exhausted especially because the other hospital only allowed me juice and ice chips to eat. Ridiculous! I'm about to output the same energy expenditure as a 50 mile hike and all I get to fuel up is juice and ice chips?!?!? Archaic. Anyway, since I was still at 1cm they gave me a shot of morphine so I could rest. It was supposed to last all night. I got maybe 3-4 hours of full comfort out of it. When they check me a few hours later it had relaxed me enough so I was at 3cm. At 4 cm, they realized I was so exhausted I might need an epidural so I got one and luckily it bought me more rest and slightly more dilation. But not enough. In came a tiny amount of pitocin and an hour or two later I was pushing out a baby! That was difficult, more so than I thought but I buckled down and got it done in about 45min. No tearing or cutting necessary and really the next day I felt only slightly worse than after a workout muscle-wise. A slow Placental abruption is what they think caused early labor but we havent gotten the results back from pathology yet. Next stop, the NICU.

The NICU suite was just like a hotel room so we never had to be more than 10 steps away from Jaxen. They delivered me 3 meals a day with a small kitchen in the hall that provided snacks and drinks. Since Jaxen came out so strong and full of vigor, he was taken off the machines after only 8 hours of monitoring! The rest of our stay was very uneventful until we tried to leave. They had to do all these tests on him to make sure he was taking in enough o2 and long story short they ended up sending us home for 3 small tanks and one large one which we proceeded to take him off after 24 hours. It was making him docile and lifeless and impacting feeding too much. Minutes after we took him off we saw the life come back into him!

In summation, that was the longest and most fearful 3 days of my life. The exact opposite of the full term hypnobabies home birth I had planned. At the same time I feel good about it because I know I had no other choice and it brought me the most beautiful baby in the world.
 

Never got to take a week 35 photo :(

FOR BABY PHOTOS CLICK HERE

"'Predictable' means that, from the very beginning of his life, you tell your baby ahead of time when a change will happen -- even a tiny change, such as 'I will turn the light on,' or 'I will pick you up,' or 'I'll go to the bathroom now.' Although his immediate reaction may be to ignore or protest the change, soon he will become confident in the face of changes."
~ Magda Gerber