Gigi turns 10

Happy 10th Birthday to my beautiful, kind, hardworking, responsible Gigi!

A photo posted by mommidiary (@mommidiary) on Dec 17, 2016 at 6:28pm PST

Yesterday was Gigi's birthday.  I always struggle with her big day.  It is a week before Christmas.  When you are married to a student it was actually an awesome time to have a birthday.  It meant her dad had two weeks off after she was born.  Now as a student herself it means she often isn't in school over her birthday.  It also means that I'm busy and her parents friends are busy and a lot of time she gets kind of the shaft when it comes to a party but this year I asked her what she wanted and she decided she wanted to have a party at a jump place.  The jump place is pretty far from our home so we only invited a limited amount of friends we could drive down there but it turned out nice.  We had three little friends from three different places, one was from dance, one was from her class, one was her little friend from the bus.  Seriously it could have been a nightmare, someone could have been left out or felt awkward, but you know what I shouldn't have worried.  Turns out the girls were all like my daughter, and so they made instant friends and were running like a pack after about two seconds.

There are a couple downsides to this type of party.  One was just distance.  If it had been closer I would have invited a bunch more kids but because I felt an obligation to drive them all we were limited.  Secondly they split kids by height.  Technically Cheetah was suppose to stay in the under 48 area and the other kids were suppose to stay in the over 48.  They did plenty of switching around but there were some other kids who ended up narcking on them for being too big.  So then they were separated again.  She did not love being the tiny left out one.  The third thing is just places like this are dirty/gross.  I mean seriously.  Adults (mainly dads) why are you walking around barefoot.  Uck. There was wetness in the foam pit in the little kid area.  They got in and checked all the foam pieces, pulled a few and let the kids back in.  I kid you not in less than a minute a kid had puked in there and all the kids were kicked out again.  So gross.

The upside, it was zero work for me.  They provided the pizza, cupcake, and water bottles.  They provided the fun.  At one point they even took our group to the dodge ball area and kicked all the other kids out so that our group could play dodge ball alone.  You sort of felt bad for the other kids and yet their had been times when our kids were kicked out of areas for parties so we didn't feel too bad.  After our party was over we came home and did a brownie so we could blow some candles out and opened presents.  The best part for me was one the moms came and asked if the girls were ready to go and all the girls said, "NO!"  Haha.  Happy Birthday Gigi.  You are still stubborn about things that are important to you, you are kind to your siblings (most of the time), you love to play and laugh, you love to read.  You are good at school but don't worry about making a mistake here and there.  You are a super helper at home.  We are so lucky to have you as part of our family.

Fresh 48 Little Man Photos

One of the things that made loss of all my phone photographs from Little Mans first two weeks easier was the fact that the hospital had a professional photographer come to each room and take Fresh 48 pics and I happened to order ours.  These were the day Little Man came home, so he's probably 40 hours old and he is of course adorable!

Have I Been Your Doctor Before?

Sometimes the spheres of our lives overlap and we find ourselves totally disoriented.  A couple weeks ago my husband had a family meeting and the mother-in-law showed up.  He looked at her and she just looked so familiar to him.  "You look so familiar to me."  She smiles.  "Have you been a patient of mine before?"  "No," she says with a funny little smile, "you've never been my doctor."  "Ok," he says and goes on with the meeting.  It wasn't until a half hour later that it struck him that he was talking to our neighbor!  He comes back and ask the wife if her mothers name was ****.  She says yes.  "She's my neighbor," J says.  "I know," she laughs.  I haven't had an opportunity to talk to our neighbor about this since we normally meet at the fence and it has been so cold both of us are avoiding going outside but I can't wait to have a good laugh with her about it. 

First Day at the Hospital

I'm not a huge fan of hospital stays.  I don't like people walking into my room at all hours of the night and I think being home is more comfortable but there are certain things about being at a hospital that I can appreciate.

1) I can order food whenever I want...and I do.  Is it great food.  No, but it comes relatively fast and I don't have to clean it up.  Plus if I want a cherry popsicle at 2:30 in the middle of the night someone will go and find me one.
2) You don't have to worry about getting your clothes dirty.  Look having a baby can be messy work.  There is a whole lot of body stuff happening.  Get dirty, someone will come and help you change and that someone will put those messy clothes somewhere and you will never have to see them again.  This particular hospital does pink gowns in maternity which was fun.
3) And speaking of cleaning you won't have to clean anything in that bathroom either or the sheets so feel free to bleed without worrying.

The blessing of a C-section was no one came in to press on my uterus during the night.  Good grief that is torture.  I did have to have blood drawn and poor Little Man had to have quite a bit drawn as well.  Because he was technically a preemie they had a policy at the hospital I was at that they had to do a glucose draw on him every time he ate for the first 24 hours.  By the middle of the night his poor little heals looked like he'd been walking on glass.  Finally he got a reprieve.  One of the night nurses told that if I wanted to "forget" to call her when I was doing my night feeding we wouldn't have to do the draw.  Of course that is how she reported it in the morning to the incoming Ukrainian no nonsense nurse.  She was not impressed with me, although I'd like to think by the end of the day she had warmed up to me.  Some items of note from our hospital stay...

-They didn't put a shirt on Little Man.  They had a wrap thing for him but no one got him dressed.  I had some clothes for him but I didn't bother either so for the first two days of his life he was jut a kid in a diaper wrapped in blankets.

-The Olympics were happening so when I was all alone of even sometimes when people were there we spent a lot of time watching the Olympics.  Can anyone say synchronized diving, Gold Metal soccer match, Usain Bolt and gymnastics.  It was lovely.  If you are going to have to be stuck in a tiny room for two days do it during something interesting, like the Olympics.

- Our room was super tiny but was still one of the bigger rooms.  The hospital is downtown and while it is the biggest one in our area it really has no place to grow.  As a result they've gotten the rooms down about as small as you can.  For the most part it wasn't that big of a deal but when you put J, our four other kids, my mother-in-law, my mom and her hubby in the room with us, well you can imagine it got really crowded.

-The kids loved meeting their little brother.  I happened to lose most of the pictures of them doing it along with all the pictures of J holding him at the hospital when my dumb phone died a week after Little Man was born, a fact that I'm still super sad about, but believe me, they loved him.

-My mom and her hubby showed up on the second day I was there and just did not leave.  It was nice to have her company and it was fun to watch Men's Volleyball with Rhys (he played college ball himself) but two things that were not lovely, with such a tiny room I just didn't feel like I could shower with them there and secondly she just kept trying to adjust my gown so that my boobs weren't falling out.  If you read my previous post you happen to know I'm not shy about nursing in full view in my own hospital area so this obviously got on my nerves, but we survived. 

-This was the first time I'd ever sent a baby on purpose to the nursery.  J didn't stay the night...there was this terrible, I mean just the worst chair that theoretically folded out but it was so uncomfortable he headed home both nights.  So there were two, two hour stints where I sent the baby away after he fell asleep and to be honest it was lovely.  Little Man was a very noisy newborn and I could sleep really well during that time and then when he woke up I could nurse him somewhat refreshed.  It was the first time I'd felt comfortable/exhausted enough to ever do that and you know I'm sorry ladies I judged for doing it before because it just wasn't half bad.

-I just did not love the resident who was taking care of Little Man.  He had a student who he was teaching but he just came off so condescending to her, I just didn't love him.  He then asked me why they'd delivered at 36 weeks.  I gave him the full run down and while I'm speaking his eyes get super big.  "Are you in the medical profession?"  "No," I told him, "but I do know a lot about what is going on with my own body."  "Hmmm..." "Also my husband is a doctor."  "Uh-huh."  In the end it ended up ok and I do appreciate that he let us leave with Little Man at exactly 48 hours even though the Attending wanted him to make us stay and feed him a couple more bottles, so sorry resident for my earlier judgement. 

A Cesarean Birth Story

Seeing as my little hammy is almost 3 months old it seems really late to be posting this but can we forgive a mother of five for being super busy.  

I knew I was going to have to have a c-section from day one.  During the c-section I had previously with Cheetah when they couldn't get her out the doctor made  a t-incisions.  That means he started with a lateral cut (the way most c-sections are now performed) but because she had wedged herself up and he just didn't want to or couldn't spend the time to get her out he then made a transverse cut.  I will never know why he did that but when he did he told me then that if I had any more children I would have to do it via c-section.

My new OB knew this and had a conference with the other OBs in the office.  They consulted text books and current OBgyn recommendations.  They decided that not only did I have to have a c-section but because the risk of rupture with a previous T cut is almost 8% (the risk of rupture after a typical c-secion is .1% and the risk of rupture after the much more "dangerous" transverse c-section is 1%) and because Cheetah had come so early that I'd have to be on progesterone shots starting at 16 weeks and that they wanted to deliver at 36 weeks.  This was a big deal for OBs to decide.  There was a time when it was not uncommon for OBs to induce labor for convenience or mothers choice as early as 37 weeks, but evidence showing that was harmful to babies has now made it so that typically even in scheduled c-section they try to make it all the way to 39 weeks and in inductions they make most woman wait until due date.  To choose to birth at pre 37 weeks was a huge deal but looking at all my risk factors they decided that it was the safest choice for baby.  A possibility of a few days in the NICU was preferable to me going into preterm labor, having my uterus rupture and having the baby die due to the cord herniating out of the rupture before I could make it to the hospital.  It was a hard choice, one that my husband as a pediatrician felt extremely uncomfortable with but ultimately we decided it was the safest option.  To prepare I received two steroid shots to help his lungs develop and we scheduled the c-section. 

August 19th we sent our three oldest off to school and kissed our youngest who was staying with Grandma.  We stopped at Hobby Lobby on the way to pick up some number 4 pencils our son needed for art class.  We had chosen to deliver at the largest hospital in our area, the one that has the biggest NICU, but it meant we had to pass five hospitals on the way.  I was scheduled for noon so we arrived right around 10.  I wore my "This is my last one, seriously" t-shirt and insisted Dr. J take a picture of me outside the hospital.  The nurses found it hilarious. 

The next two hours were filled with surgery prep.  I had to give a pee sample which somehow I managed to catch only like three drops of.  My vitals were taken and I was gowned.  The nurse shaved my lady regions with what I can only assume was a piece of broken glass.  They insist in their pre surgery instructions you allow them to do it rather then do it yourself but because I followed that instruction I was left with three weeks of the worst razor burn ever.  I also had the indignity of hearing the doctors comment on it when I was on the table :)  The anesthesiologist came in and we chatted about my previous surgeries.  Then he and Dr. J started talking med school.  At some point during this Dr. J changed into scrubs and a little hat and I got an IV.  We have no pictures from this time because I took them on my phone and it died just a few days after this.  It also had every picture we had of Dr. J and Hammy after he was born a fact that even now I still morn.  My OB came in to chat and then she helped wheel me into the operating room.  

At this point I was starting to feel a little nervous.  Being cut open is not something I enjoy and I also was having a hard time shaking the fear and distress of Cheetah's previous birth and the bad outcome of my miscarriage two years before.  The staff helped me up so the anesthesiologist PA could start my spinal.  My OB came around and held my hands while I was bent forward.  At one point I cried out (having a giant needle shoved into your back even with topical isn't always pleasant) and my OB reached up with her hand and brushed my hair out of my face.  It was such a human gesture, so non medical that while it didn't remove all my fears I found it greatly calming and then I went numb.

They laid me back on the table and Dr. J came in.  Giving birth in a c-section is such a weird feeling, very surreal.  It is hard to feel connected when your body is so numb and so much of the talk around you is medical.  They cut through the layers of skin, fat, and connective tissue.  My previous OB had told me that my insides were ugly full of scar tissue.  He must have cleaned it out though because when Dr. Wallman got in there she said everything looked great.  

She came to my Jack O Lantern uterus and within probably a minute we had a crying baby.  I'd requested that they delay cutting the cord for a bit and milk it before they cut it so that Hammy could get as much blood as possible.  In those minutes though he was sitting on my belly I could neither see nor feel him.  Dr. J turned to me and with a chocking voice said, "He looks so good.  I don't know how much he weighs but it is well over 5lbs."  It was.  We had all been guessing he'd be 5 something but he came out at a whopping 6lbs 11.8 ounces.  A great weight for a 36 weeker.  The NICU team then had to check him over.  I wanted him with me as soon as possible but because he was under 37 weeks they had to give him a one over before he could be brought to me. 

 There is a picture of Dr. J just after a wrestling match in junior high that looks just like the above picture...well besides the giant glove and the nakedness but the face and hair, spot on!

 He got the ok, they threw a hat on him and brought him back over to me.  This moment was magic for me.  Sure it wasn't the beauty of pushing a child from your body and lifting him up onto your chest but after Cheetah's birth when she was almost immediately taken away and my only glimpse of her was through glass this was balm of gilead.  I could feel his warmth.  I could smell his skin.  I could talk to him and kiss him and gently pat him.

Eventually they would take him away from me again.  He was extremely grunty a potential sign that an infant is having some respiratory distress so they took him away to check his O2 stats and suction him out a little better.  Here he is hanging out on a warmer in recovery while they make sure his stats are high.  They were and so they eventually gave him back to me.  The staff had a quick discussion about whether or not to send him to NICU for observation.  It was heartbreaking news for me to hear because it was a minimum 8 hour sentence.  I kept my mouth shut though and just listened.  I will forever be grateful for the nurse who promised that she would keep an eye on him and kept reiterating that his O2 stats were great.  It was because of her that I got him back and was able to take him to my room with me.  They asked me if I wanted to try nursing and I said yes.  The nurses helped me up into a sitting position because I still couldn't feel my legs and wouldn't be able to until long into the night.  I was holding him and mentioning how I couldn't feel my toes when suddenly he jumped right on to nurse.  The kid had a perfect latch and knew exactly what to do.  Be forewarned that below are pictures of him nursing.  In our home we are very open about breast feeding but if topless pictures of me will disturbing you you might want to stop scrolling now.

 I feel for all my kids when they get to this right boob.  It is just so much bigger than the other one that I seriously worry that one day it is going to suffocate someone.  Haha,  I can't be the only person who has experienced this.  All of my kids have been breastfeed and they almost always know how to latch but that doesn't mean they do it right.  When Captain E was a baby he actually sucked almost all the skin off my nipples before my milk came in.  Peach always had a terrible latch and every time I breastfeed her for the next two year it was painful.  Hammy was an angel.  It never hurt, I never got chapped, and he just seemed to instinctively know what to do.  I mention it because while I'm a strong advocate of breastfeeding it isn't always easy and it doesn't always go this smoothly.  Sometimes you are going to need help and sometimes it is not going to be possible.  This isn't a failure by the mother it just sometimes comes down to luck.