Birthday Blog...mine, and Beanie's
I'm 30 today. The big 3-0. I told my mom after I was married 2 years ago that I would have a kid before I turned 30...mostly so she would just take that and shut up about my biological clock. Lo and behold, I was right.
Beanie wasn't an accident exactly, but she wasn't exactly planned either. I had quit my hideous job in December, after only 4 months. Before that, I worked 6 years at a job I absolutely loved. So I was doing what I could with tutoring and random consulting when I found out I was pregnant. I was worried that the other half would react badly, as we had just lost my income fairly recently, but he was fabulous. Immediate reaction: big huge grin. This is why I love him.
The birth of Beanie--a retrospective.
Two weeks before she was due, I was at my weekly prenatal checkup, and instead of the familiar dub-dub, dub-dub sound, her heart sounded like it was skipping a dub every three or four beats. My OB went on with the checkup, and then mentioned that the heart sounded irregular. I agreed, I had heard it too. She sent me over to the maternity ward for a non-stress test. They just put me on one of the fetal heart monitors for a while to see how she was doing. At the time, the irregularity sounded fairly regular. My OB and the nurses didn't look too concerned, but I went home kind of freaked out, and with no real answers. I was scheduled to come back about three days later to check on it again. I came in two days later instead, worried that she wasn't moving as much. (This is normal, of course, since she was 39 weeks and running out of room), but they humored me, told me it was the right thing to do, and did an ultrasound for me to check on her. The heart arrhythmia was still there, but she was doing fine. The scheduled a level II ultrasound at Baystate, the big teaching hospital about an hour away, where they told us that it didn't look like anything was wrong with the structure of her heart. At that point, the arrhythmia wasn't even that regular. It only happened once about every 50-100 beats. The OB at Baystate asked me if we had discussed inducing. We hadn't, so I asked my OB about that a few days later. She explained that we wanted to avoid a caesarian at all costs, since sqeezing through the birth canal could actually fix the arrhythmia, but she didn't want to induce me until I was already a few centimeters dilated so that we would be pretty sure it would work and I wouldn't need a C-section. Meanwhile, my mom arrived on Beanie's due date, ready to help, and two days later, I was feeling some cramping and measured 2-3 cm dilated at the checkup. My OB asked, so, you want to come in tomorrow morning then? 6:30 am? Did I! We didn't want to wait much longer because natural labor may have taken us into the weekend, with fewer doctors on duty at the hospital, and I wanted everyone who might be necessary to be there just in case.
So, we arrive at the hospital at 6:30 the next morning, me, DH and my mom. The pitocin got started around 7:30, and I amused myself by watching Buffy on FX (every weekday morning at 7 and 8, and afternoons at 1 and 2. Yes, I'm obsessed.) My OB came by to break my water, and they noticed meconium in the fluid. This meant they wanted to put a catheter in to rinse out the fluid, to ensure Beanie didn't breathe any of it in. All I wanted was a healthy baby. I agreed.
This meant I was kind of stuck on the L&D bed the whole time. I had imagined walking, sitting on the birthing ball, changing positions, etc. But the fact is, any position other than on my back was excruciating. Labor started really strong before the second Buffy was over. This was good, as the ones at 1 & 2 repeat the morning, so I wasn't bored with them later. *geeky grin*
I labored strong from around 9am until about 12 or 1, and my mom was a great labor coach. All the same, I was starting to feel dizzy with the pain. At some point they put an oxygen mask on me, but I'm not sure when. I began to ask for an epidural, feeling rather guilty about it (especially because my mom disapproves of them), but I honestly felt like I was going to pass out. It turns out this little girl's head was 15 5/8 inches, more than an inch more than average.
I finally got my epidural, which helped a lot, though I could still feel pressure and pain in my hips. Quickly, it began to get intense again, and I began to mention it to my mom and the nurses. The nurses seemed to think that the epidural would slow down the labor enough that there was no reason to be concerned, and took more time than I would have liked before checking me. When they finally did, around 5pm, they were surprised to see it was time to push!
The one thing I made absolutely clear while I was there was that I didn't want an episiotomy. It didn't really matter, since I only pushed for about half an hour or 45 minutes, with DH holding one leg and a nurse holding the other, while my mom wiped my brow. The nurses didn't call my OB until after I started pushing, thinking it would still be a while, but when she finally did get there, and got all scrubbed up and everything, she only arrived just in time to catch the baby. There was this huge splash of the fluid that had backed up behind Beanie's HUGE head, and then, "It's a girl!" I was crying and laughing at the same time, and so were DH and my mom.
She looked great. Apgar of 9. They told us the arrhythmia could resolve itself during birth, and at first, we thought it had. The first pedi on call who looked at her didn't detect it. He had even done an EKG. The nurse, one that I loved, could still hear it when they checked her vitals though, so a second pedi checked her the next morning, did an extended EKG, and then ordered a 24-hour Holter monitor. We had to stay in the hospital until that time was up, so our new little baby was held constantly with a bunch of wires attached to her chest at one end and a little box at the other, which we could also carry. We had to chart everything she did so they could match it up with the readouts. Meanwhile, breastfeeding was not going well. She was a tongue-thruster, as it turned out, and the first time I had her to nurse in the delivery room, while the nurse helped me to latch her on, neither of us noticed that she was ending up only on the nipple. Not knowing any better, I let her nurse that was for 15 minutes on each side. Ouch! The next day I was blistered and bleeding. Fortunately, we have a lactation consultant that visits every mom in the northern part of our county in the hospital and at home, if they want it. She helped us set up a routine of pumping and feeding her with the SNS. DH was responsible for that part, so he was able to do most of her earliest feedings--great for their bonding. We showed her how to keep her tongue down with the SNS, and I kept pumping until I healed.
We went home before the results of that Holter came back, and six days later, when we went to see our pediatrician (an early checkup because of the heart concerns), she had just received the report. It was concerning enough that she sent us to a pediatric cardiologist the very next day, and that cardiologist sent us to Baystate's pedICU to start her on a beta blocker. For three days and two nights DH and I lived by her hospital crib. I could nurse her, and hold her. I soothed her with my finger in her mouth while they inserted the IV (four different tries before the NICU ladies were finally called to get it in). It was traumatic for all of us.
It turns out that Beanie has an extra electrical focus in her heart, that tries to take over the beats, but only when her heart rate is high. This results in some occasional scary runs of beats at a rate of 200 or higher. The medicine keeps her overall heart rate low, so that the occurance of these runs is much lower. She's been on this medicine since she was a week old, and she's doing great. The latest Holter monitor about a month ago showed no more runs. The plan is to keep increasing her dose as she grows until she's 8 months old, and then stop increasing it as she grows out of that dose, then check to see if it's fixed itself by then.
In the meantime, I'm off caffeine...or at least, reducing it as much as humanly possible. No caffeinated drinks, and minimal chocolate.
We had strawberry-rhubarb dessert for my birthday.
me on my birthday, Beanie on hers
Beanie wasn't an accident exactly, but she wasn't exactly planned either. I had quit my hideous job in December, after only 4 months. Before that, I worked 6 years at a job I absolutely loved. So I was doing what I could with tutoring and random consulting when I found out I was pregnant. I was worried that the other half would react badly, as we had just lost my income fairly recently, but he was fabulous. Immediate reaction: big huge grin. This is why I love him.
The birth of Beanie--a retrospective.
Two weeks before she was due, I was at my weekly prenatal checkup, and instead of the familiar dub-dub, dub-dub sound, her heart sounded like it was skipping a dub every three or four beats. My OB went on with the checkup, and then mentioned that the heart sounded irregular. I agreed, I had heard it too. She sent me over to the maternity ward for a non-stress test. They just put me on one of the fetal heart monitors for a while to see how she was doing. At the time, the irregularity sounded fairly regular. My OB and the nurses didn't look too concerned, but I went home kind of freaked out, and with no real answers. I was scheduled to come back about three days later to check on it again. I came in two days later instead, worried that she wasn't moving as much. (This is normal, of course, since she was 39 weeks and running out of room), but they humored me, told me it was the right thing to do, and did an ultrasound for me to check on her. The heart arrhythmia was still there, but she was doing fine. The scheduled a level II ultrasound at Baystate, the big teaching hospital about an hour away, where they told us that it didn't look like anything was wrong with the structure of her heart. At that point, the arrhythmia wasn't even that regular. It only happened once about every 50-100 beats. The OB at Baystate asked me if we had discussed inducing. We hadn't, so I asked my OB about that a few days later. She explained that we wanted to avoid a caesarian at all costs, since sqeezing through the birth canal could actually fix the arrhythmia, but she didn't want to induce me until I was already a few centimeters dilated so that we would be pretty sure it would work and I wouldn't need a C-section. Meanwhile, my mom arrived on Beanie's due date, ready to help, and two days later, I was feeling some cramping and measured 2-3 cm dilated at the checkup. My OB asked, so, you want to come in tomorrow morning then? 6:30 am? Did I! We didn't want to wait much longer because natural labor may have taken us into the weekend, with fewer doctors on duty at the hospital, and I wanted everyone who might be necessary to be there just in case.
So, we arrive at the hospital at 6:30 the next morning, me, DH and my mom. The pitocin got started around 7:30, and I amused myself by watching Buffy on FX (every weekday morning at 7 and 8, and afternoons at 1 and 2. Yes, I'm obsessed.) My OB came by to break my water, and they noticed meconium in the fluid. This meant they wanted to put a catheter in to rinse out the fluid, to ensure Beanie didn't breathe any of it in. All I wanted was a healthy baby. I agreed.
This meant I was kind of stuck on the L&D bed the whole time. I had imagined walking, sitting on the birthing ball, changing positions, etc. But the fact is, any position other than on my back was excruciating. Labor started really strong before the second Buffy was over. This was good, as the ones at 1 & 2 repeat the morning, so I wasn't bored with them later. *geeky grin*
I labored strong from around 9am until about 12 or 1, and my mom was a great labor coach. All the same, I was starting to feel dizzy with the pain. At some point they put an oxygen mask on me, but I'm not sure when. I began to ask for an epidural, feeling rather guilty about it (especially because my mom disapproves of them), but I honestly felt like I was going to pass out. It turns out this little girl's head was 15 5/8 inches, more than an inch more than average.
I finally got my epidural, which helped a lot, though I could still feel pressure and pain in my hips. Quickly, it began to get intense again, and I began to mention it to my mom and the nurses. The nurses seemed to think that the epidural would slow down the labor enough that there was no reason to be concerned, and took more time than I would have liked before checking me. When they finally did, around 5pm, they were surprised to see it was time to push!
The one thing I made absolutely clear while I was there was that I didn't want an episiotomy. It didn't really matter, since I only pushed for about half an hour or 45 minutes, with DH holding one leg and a nurse holding the other, while my mom wiped my brow. The nurses didn't call my OB until after I started pushing, thinking it would still be a while, but when she finally did get there, and got all scrubbed up and everything, she only arrived just in time to catch the baby. There was this huge splash of the fluid that had backed up behind Beanie's HUGE head, and then, "It's a girl!" I was crying and laughing at the same time, and so were DH and my mom.
She looked great. Apgar of 9. They told us the arrhythmia could resolve itself during birth, and at first, we thought it had. The first pedi on call who looked at her didn't detect it. He had even done an EKG. The nurse, one that I loved, could still hear it when they checked her vitals though, so a second pedi checked her the next morning, did an extended EKG, and then ordered a 24-hour Holter monitor. We had to stay in the hospital until that time was up, so our new little baby was held constantly with a bunch of wires attached to her chest at one end and a little box at the other, which we could also carry. We had to chart everything she did so they could match it up with the readouts. Meanwhile, breastfeeding was not going well. She was a tongue-thruster, as it turned out, and the first time I had her to nurse in the delivery room, while the nurse helped me to latch her on, neither of us noticed that she was ending up only on the nipple. Not knowing any better, I let her nurse that was for 15 minutes on each side. Ouch! The next day I was blistered and bleeding. Fortunately, we have a lactation consultant that visits every mom in the northern part of our county in the hospital and at home, if they want it. She helped us set up a routine of pumping and feeding her with the SNS. DH was responsible for that part, so he was able to do most of her earliest feedings--great for their bonding. We showed her how to keep her tongue down with the SNS, and I kept pumping until I healed.
We went home before the results of that Holter came back, and six days later, when we went to see our pediatrician (an early checkup because of the heart concerns), she had just received the report. It was concerning enough that she sent us to a pediatric cardiologist the very next day, and that cardiologist sent us to Baystate's pedICU to start her on a beta blocker. For three days and two nights DH and I lived by her hospital crib. I could nurse her, and hold her. I soothed her with my finger in her mouth while they inserted the IV (four different tries before the NICU ladies were finally called to get it in). It was traumatic for all of us.
It turns out that Beanie has an extra electrical focus in her heart, that tries to take over the beats, but only when her heart rate is high. This results in some occasional scary runs of beats at a rate of 200 or higher. The medicine keeps her overall heart rate low, so that the occurance of these runs is much lower. She's been on this medicine since she was a week old, and she's doing great. The latest Holter monitor about a month ago showed no more runs. The plan is to keep increasing her dose as she grows until she's 8 months old, and then stop increasing it as she grows out of that dose, then check to see if it's fixed itself by then.
In the meantime, I'm off caffeine...or at least, reducing it as much as humanly possible. No caffeinated drinks, and minimal chocolate.
We had strawberry-rhubarb dessert for my birthday.
me on my birthday, Beanie on hers
posted by kouredios at
9:57 PM
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