Now, going back to the beginning of the story...
Sunday, August 19th, I wake up in the morning and get up to use the restroom, which is where I noticed I was bleeding. I realized I was in the beginning of labor and went to wake up my husband. I don't think I've ever seen him get out of bed that fast.
I called the doctors office and they said to wait until the contractions were about 5 minutes apart. So we waited......and waited.....and around 2:30 p.m. we headed down to the hospital. They hooked me up to the monitor and checked me out and said that I was still only about 1 cm dilated and maybe 75% effaced. My blood pressure was high so they decided to keep me overnight, especially since I was getting induced in the morning. So they gave me some meds to help me sleep and that was the last night I slept.
The next morning my contractions had gotten MUCH stronger and when they checked me at around 11:30 a.m. they said that I was 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced. They decided it was time to move me to one of the labor rooms. When I stood up and walked to the room, it threw me into full blown active labor. By the time I got into the bed, I was in tears, begging for the epidural. I had the worst back labor and was on the verge of blacking out. Finally, around 3:30p.m., I got the epidural and the doctor gave me Pitocin because my contractions were very irregular. I was able to sleep through the rest of the labor until it was time to push. I slept for about 3 hours and woke up when the doctor came in to check me and told me I was fully dilated and effaced. I waited a little longer to labor down before we started pushing.
My husband stood next to me the whole time and then he suggested watching in the mirror. I really didn't want to, but he said it might motivate me. I decided to try and as soon as I saw that image, the first thing I thought was "Get this kid outta me!". So, yeah, I guess it did motivate me. With two pushes her head came out (and she was screaming already, I might add). One more push and she was out. It was amazing. Definitely a life changing experience and I'm so glad she is with us now (even though I'm soooo tired).
The first few days was really hard because she wouldn't stop screaming. And she wanted to eat constantly. I'm breastfeeding and I was feeding her non-stop. I was on the verge of tears. We called the hospital and they told us that she was just cluster feeding and that it was normal. We had an appt. with the pediatrician on the 3rd day and when they weighed her, she had gone from 7 lbs. 11 oz. to 6 lbs. 5 oz. It was then that we realized that she was not cluster feeding. She was starving because my milk had not come in.
The doctor told us to supplement with formula and come back in 5 days. The day after the appt., a visiting nurse came to the house and weighed her and said she had already gained 5 oz. back. We were so happy. What I was not happy about was the lack of information the hospital had actually given me. Apparently, while I was at the hospital, the lactation consultant there had made note that I did not have a lot of glandular tissue and could possibly not have the milk ducts to exclusively breastfeed. Had they told me this, it could have saved a lot of issues with Alice losing weight and could have caused a lot more issues had we not seen the doctor when we did.
We ended up going back to the doctors this past week and Alice is now up to 7 lbs. We have an appt. on Wednesday and we are hoping she will be back up to her birth weight by then. She is doing so much better with the supplementing. I'm still having issues with having enough milk but it has come in and she's at least getting some.
I can't believe that tomorrow she will be 2 weeks old already. Time flies when you don't get any sleep. :)
Introducing Alice Olivia -
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