Do I get to call myself a consistent blogger if I consistently blog less and less? Haha! Now that I am the mother of two, I find myself almost never turning the computer on. I check e-mail and Facebook on the iPad, but doing any major typing on that is a pain, especially since I'm usually one handed. So, here is the update of the last month or so.
February 10th was a day that I had planned to do my major house cleaning for the week. There were at least three loads of laundry to do, the bathrooms were in desperate need of cleaning, the floors needed to be vacuumed, and I had chicken deboned in the fridge to be made into pot pie. I lay in bed that morning thinking about all I had to do and then got up to help get breakfast on the table. 10 minutes later, I was standing at the stove stirring oatmeal when all the sudden I felt like I had wet myself. I thought it was a little strange, but didn't think it was anything until five minutes later when it happened again. I was pretty sure my water had broken and realized that cleaning was not on the day's agenda after all. We hadn't even finished packing our hospital bags. So after we called my parents to let them know we would be dropping Ben off soon, we rushed around packing and trying to figure out what was clean for Ben to wear. An hour and a half later, we were headed to the hospital, nervous and excited because we knew that we would be meeting Elijah in the next 24 hours or so.
When we got to the hospital, we were told to either have a seat, or take a walk, because they didn't have any rooms available. We walked for about an hour and then a small triage room opened up. The nurse came in and checked to make sure my water had actually broken, although at this point, I was positive it had. Then they hooked me up to the monitor and we got to hear our sweet little man's heartbeat. That sound became the background noise for the next 24 hours. Unfortunately, the monitor also showed that I was pretty much not have contractions at all, so they told me they would start a Pitocin drip. We tried walking for a bit to see if that would get things started, but when there was still nothing, they began the drip. I was scared to death of the pitocin. I had heard that it made labor a lot more painful and I wasn't sure how immediate that pain would be. Meanwhile, we were still in the tiny little room because all the labor rooms were still full. We were finally able to move to a labor room about 3 hours later and by then, I was starting to get some real contractions. They were nothing like what I expected. I expected my whole stomach to get hard and be painful, but these were very low and the pain was more in my lower abdomen and legs. After being on the pitocin for over three hours, the nurse checked me and i was still only one centimeter dilated. I felt totally discouraged, but also knew at that point that an epidural was in my future. Two hours later, I was barely at three centimeters and the pain was intense. I asked for an epidural. Things got a little crazy after that with my blood pressure dropping really low and Elijah's heart rate dropping too, so they took me off pitocin for three hours. Elijah's heart rate stabilized right away, but my blood pressure took almost three hours to be consistently normal. My body wasn't doing any work during this time, but once they put me back on pitocin, I started laboring again. Only this time was so much better because I was no longer in pain. It took nine more hours, but finally, I was fully dilated and ready to go. By this point, I was beyond tired and could not stay awake. The nurse told me it was time to push and I didn't feel like I had the energy. I asked if the mirror could be brought over because I figured if I could see progress, I could feel more motivated. I could see Elijah's head before I even started pushing and I started to get really excited. And then I fell asleep. The nurse told me how I needed to push, and then between each contraction, I fell asleep. I have never been that tired in my life. But 45 minutes later, our little man came into the world and was just perfect!! Praise God for such a healthy little boy!
Recovery was a bit harder than I had anticipated. I figured I'd be tired, but I didn't count on so much pain. But even in the midst of the pain, I knew I would do it all over again in a heart beat. Elijah was a pretty lazy eater for the first couple of weeks and we had to wake him up to make him eat. It was so hard not knowing if he was getting enough, but so desperately wanting to be able to nurse him. I'm really loving getting to nurse Elijah. It's something I didn't think
I would ever get to do and it has been amazing to experience. It has
come with challenges too. Matt and I switched on and off with middle of
the night feedings with Ben, and now it's just me. But it hasn't been as
tiring as I thought it might be. I think after not sleeping well the
last few months of pregnancy, I'm just grateful to be comfortable when I
am asleep.
Elijah is growing like crazy now. He is up to about 10lbs and he's getting too long for several of his 0-3 month sleepers. How is that even possible? Newborn sleepers were too big when we were in the hospital. I cannot believe he's a month old already. The newborn stage goes so quickly and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I'm still so amazed that God has blessed us with two sons!! Ben is adjusting pretty well to being a big brother. He has times when he gets too rough with Elijah or when he acts out because he's having a hard time with the change, but overall, he's such a sweet big brother. I can just picture Ben doing all sorts of things to make Elijah laugh in a couple of months.
Well Elijah is awake and it's time to go get Ben from school. I wish I could say I will post more often, but life is kind of busy right now. And to add to the craziness, we just bought a house and will be moving in a little over a month. :-)
