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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Valentines Day

Joe was sweet and got me flowers and a card for Valentines Day (daisies and roses, good boy). He also got us dinner so I didn't have to worry about it at all.

Michelle and Joe have secret conversations a lot so this must be the result of one of those =)

This was Michelle's v-day outfit just for daddy =)

( i don't know why blogger keeps turning my pictures.... just turn your laptop)

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Michelle is still doing great. We are getting increasingly tired but still doing well. She is a really good baby and for the most part just goes back to sleep after eating in the middle of the night (for which I am incredibly grateful for- even though I know it probably won't last). She is super cute, like seriously super cute you guys have no idea, pictures really don't capture it. She is getting to be more aware and usually has about two stints a day where she stays awake between feedings. It's fun to get to see her become more aware of the world around her and see her turn towards my voice.

I took these pictures on Thursday with the blanket my Grandma Cole made (love!!!). She is seriously soooooo cute!

grrr.... blogger keeps turning this pic... it's even cuter landscape.

Two weeks old:

"I'm sooooo over this!"

Saturday we had some newborn pics taken of her, they looked good as we were going so I'm excited! Can't wait to see them!

Michelle's first week

Some of you may know some of this already and to some of you this may all be news to you but Michelle had a rather eventful first week of life, being my daughter she couldn't do anything the average way. The afternoon of the day she was born Joe and I took her to the nursery for her to get her first bath.

sorry it's so fuzzy...

first bow! and for some reason the nurse gave her a mow-hawk...

While we were there the nurse noticed that she looked a little yellow and so she used a fancy machine to test her billiruben levels and told us she would have to wait for the results. We went back to our room while Michelle stayed for them to do some of the other newborn things. A little while later the nurse came to our room and explained that the reason that her results had not come back immediately was because her levels were off the charts.

Typically jaundice does not occur in babies until about 2-3 days of life (after you go home) but our little over achiever had it off the charts at 9 hours old. This meant that she had to go under the special blue lights. It is the blue hue of the lights that helps break up the billiruben so that she could pee it out as well as poop it out. The biggest bummer of it is that this meant that we couldn't hold her. The only time that she was out from under the lights was for feedings. Saturday morning the pediatrician came back and he explained to us that her type of jaundice was caused because of blood incompatibility. I am type o and she is type a and her body was attacking my remaining blood like it was an intruder which causes it to break down and form like three other things that if left to their own devices will end up staining the brain (ya know, generally a bad thing). Now please don't quote me as an authority on the subject and keep in mind I was sleep deprived so my retention may be lacking.

Here is our little blue angel:

The little mask is to protect her eyes so that the light doesn't burn her retinas (also generally a bad thing). Sunday morning her levels seemed to be stabilizing (rather than increasing like they had been) so the pediatrician decided to try her on the billi-blanket to see what her levels did. At that point he thought that she was doing well enough that she would be able to come home that night with the billi-blanket.

The billi- blanket isn't actually a blanket at all it is a lesser version of the same light therapy but it is small and so you can actually hold your baby while it is in use. The lights are facing down but you can see the blue glow coming from it. Unfortunately rather than continuing to improve she got worse which meant that that night rather than coming home she had to go back under the intense light therapy (read emotional mom that can't hold her baby). Thankfully my mom was able to come up from Salt Lake and spend some time with us. Even though I didn't need her to take the baby in the middle of the night or anything it was really nice to have her there for support. Monday morning the doctor said flat out that we would be in it for atleast another day because her levels went up yet again (if I remember correctly this is when she was at 15.9, if the get to 20 they have to start replacing her blood with blood that doesn't have any billiruben). Tuesday she was still under the intense lights but that night they tried her on the blanket again from 6 pm to midnight. At that point her levels were good enough that the doctor tried her without the blanket at all until 6 am. When he came in the next morning to talk to me about her progress he said that she had done well enough without the blanket that he felt safe letting her go home with the blanket since she hadn't done some major jump but she still needed the lights. So Wednesday she was discharged with a billi-blanket in tow! Joe booked it out of school to take us home. I was soooooo glad that she was improving and that I could finally go home. I had actually been discharged sat. afternoon but since I was a breastfeeding mom they let me stay in a "family guest room" (exactly the same as the postpartum room) so that I didn't have to come and go every two hours to feed her. It was a big blessing to be able to stay with her and the fact that it was free was even nicer. It was also such a blessing to have my mom there with me so that I wasn't sitting alone in the hospital all day staring at my baby that I couldn't hold.

Finally Going Home!!!!!

Thursday afternoon we had a pediatrician appointment to see how she was doing and he said that she was doing well enough to try it without the blanket again.

Friday morning we had another pediatrician appointment to check her levels and he said she was doing great. She still had jaundice but it was at a level that her body could handle it on her own now. Hooray!!!!

One week old:

(ok, I really need to remember to take these pictures during the day because once the sun goes down all I get are fuzzy pictures....)

And too cute not to share:

I promise I didn't put her like this, she just can't hide the super sampson-ness that is in her!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

The birth story

I have had several requests for the birth story so here it is!

She was born Friday (the 20th) in the morning, the night before at about 11:30 I started having pretty intense contractions to the point where I couldn't get comfortable in any position. At about 12:30 I woke Joe up because I was pretty confident that this was the real deal and I was at the point where I needed some help. He helped me try and find a comfortable position and started timing my contractions. At this point they were about 5-6 min apart and lasting 40 seconds - 1 min. Within an hour they were about 3-4 min apart and still lasting the same amount of time. By 2:30 I'm pretty sure all I was saying was "get the bowl" (I was puking a lot...) and " I can't do this." Joe was a great help but I wouldn't let him touch me I guess so that made it hard on him. By this point my contractions were 2-3 min apart but only lasting 40 sec and I was in an incredible amount of pain so we finally went to the hospital.

When we got there we had to go in the emergency entrance because it was the middle of the night, thankfully there were girl nurses working that desk who saw the amount of pain I was in and got me a wheelchair to take me up to Labor and Delivery because I'm not too confident that I could have walked any more at that point. From this point on don't ask me what anything looked like because I think that my eyes were closed most of the time just trying to get through the contractions. The admitting nurse was the slowest nurse that we worked with through the entire process ( I don't think she realized how much pain I was in), thank goodness we had pre-registered! But they still ask you a bunch of questions before sending you to triage, frankly at this point I don't think I even remembered my birthday (good thing Joe was so with it!). Once they handed us over to the triage nurse things went a little better, she could tell I was in pain and tried to work efficiently but they still have to ask you a million things before they can even check to see how far along you are. After she was with us for a couple minutes she realized that my contractions were right on top of each other and tried to go faster but the contractions were making it hard for her to get a normal blood pressure on me. I was either way high or practically dead. When she finally got to the point that she could check me I kept thinking that I better at least be at a 5 by now. I was at 9cm. No, I am not joking. I was in extreme pain and serious LABOR! I remember the first thing that I said after she checked me was " Can I still get an epidural?!" And you better believe there was some serious desperation in my voice. Thankfully I liked her response. She said that if that was what I wanted then yes.

Then man alive did the nurses start to move fast!!! They rushed me through the rest of what they had to do before putting me in a labor room and even saved some questions until later. One nurse tried to make me walk to the labor room- ha ha right.... not happening but they ended up wheeling me- thank goodness. When we got in there they were already unpacking all the sterile equipment (kinda surprised I even noticed this). At this point I was basically mobbed by nurses all trying to get stuff done so that I could get an epidural. I think I had two trying to get a normal blood pressure on me and two trying to get an IV in a vein that kept rolling away ( I had to have a full bag of fluids before I could get the drugs), as well as one putting bands on my wrist- now it is entirely possible that some of these were the same people, honestly I have no clue. Once they got the IV in they pumped it to full blast and gave me some paperwork to "read" so that I could get the epidural. At some point the doc on call from my doctor's office came in and introduced himself and then I guess he decided to let them do a spinal instead of an epidural (thank you!). A man named Joseph gave it to me and it was working within seconds- ahhhhhh.... =) It was while he was giving it to me that I started to feel the urge to push but that quickly went away. For me I never had any doubt that I could have done it naturally, I just had no desire to and even though the pain relief may have come a little bit later than I would have liked I was grateful for it.

At that point they let me rest a little bit, for which I was very grateful. A little after five the doc came back in and after four contractions (about 12 pushes) later Michelle Aubrey Bidwell was born at 5:25 am, 8lbs 2.5 oz and 20 in long, with a full head of dark hair!!! I was shocked at having such a big baby but more shocked that she had hair!!!! In total my labor was about 6 hours- big surprise to me. If you are wondering why I waited so long to go to the hospital here are my reasons- everyone says that first time labor is long so don't go too soon, my contractions weren't consistently lasting a minute they were more like 40 sec., but the biggest one was that I did not want to be that first time mom that goes in too early and gets sent home. So it was quite the adventure but now we have our little cutie pie!!!

And now a few pictures ( I promise more to come):