I’m choosing to blog over showering.

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Posted 18 Nov 2009 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, baby business, motherhood, The Hubs

I’m sure I’ll regret that decision this afternoon.

Anyway, Abby is sleeping soundly in her bassinet, and I’m back to being alone during the day. My bestie A was here for FIVE WHOPPING DAYS over the weekend and I miss her terribly already. She was so much help…and so much fun! (A – move here. DO IT.)

Other than having visitors, not much is going on. (Warning, poop talk fast approaching.) Abby’s on a good schedule of pooping every other night, so that’s good, I suppose. She’s eating a lot and getting a little chubby in the cheek area. I also noticed she’s getting some awesome eyelashes, so I think we can add another tick in the “mommy trait” column.

Speaking of mommy…I’m exhausted. I get through the days okay, but it’s getting more and more difficult to be a smiley mommy. I’m not so much depressed, just totally wiped out. The hubs has promised me a couple nights of real sleep this weekend, and I cannot effing wait. I think it’ll make a huge difference. I don’t know if our weeknight routine is working. Maybe this is just what people do in the first few months…daddy sleeps more since he’s working and momma just turns into a zombie that forgets to brush her teeth and lives on Slim Fast shakes because they’re easy. What do/did you do during the first few months to survive?

Luckily, the hubs and I scored on the H1N1 flu mist last week (thanks, Chris!) so, at least I don’t have to worry about getting that. I have a feeling I’ll be getting a cold or something soon with the little amount of sleep under my belt. Fingers crossed I don’t.

And finally, a week from today, Abby will be taking her first trip back home with us. Five hours in a car with a 4 week old baby. Am I insane? Oh well. I can’t WAIT to go home. It’s been a long time. And TURKEY!

Two weeks.

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Posted 11 Nov 2009 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, baby business, motherhood, paparazzi, The Hubs

It’s been two weeks since we had Abby – it seems both like yesterday and like we’ve always had her. Things for the most part are going well. I have a call in to the doctor about her newest development – screaming inconsolable crying that lasts for about 60-90 minutes, complete with stiffening, arching body and coughing, and crying to the point of breathlessness. I’m suspecting a slight case of reflux. Or colic. Or “I hate you Mommy” syndrome. At any rate, I spoke to a nurse, and I’m just waiting to see what they have to say.

She’s getting stronger by the day – holding her head up on her own a few times a day (viewed during burps), hanging onto her pacifier (and also ripping it out of her mouth) and I’ve learned that she smiles (sometimes) when both her cheeks are tickled. She is the light of my life, even if she did make me cry last night because I couldn’t calm her crying.

Side note: the hubs was baffled that my overly emotional self was still around (“You’re crying because she’s crying?”) and wondered how much longer I would be in this state. I assured him that this was still normal and I was probably going to cry again at some point. I’m sure his concern is more towards PPD than the fact that I’m a blubbery mess without even trying. I’m definitely not depressed. Just tired. REALLY tired. And hate seeing my baby seem to be in pain.

And also – in case anyone wanted to see…and well, frankly…I’m so effing stoked at wearing my “normal” jeans – I’ve included a belly shot of where I’m at today.

Booya.

Oh, and here’s a picture of Abby. Because how could I not?

So far, so good.

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Posted 09 Nov 2009 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category baby business, motherhood

Today was the hubs first day back at work. Last night seemed to go okay, I think he slept enough. I actually slept a little more as well – maybe like 3-4 hours total. And Abby, well, she slept too. Not through the night or anything, but we all did okay.

Today, I ventured out of the house BY MYSELF WITH ABBY. And it didn’t blow up in my face. Granted, we were only gone for about an hour, but she barely stirred and pretty much slept the whole time. Remind me to write the following in her baby book:

Baby’s first trip alone with Mommy: To UPS Customer Center in NE Minneapolis. Grandpa left his VERY IMPORTANT laptop at our house yesterday…and instead of hopping in the car for a 10 hour round trip delivery, we drove to UPS and had it packaged and delivered to him. Abby slept. Momma – although unshowered, with ratty hair and still practically in her pajamas – beamed. Momma was very proud.

We have some visitors today, and I might even attempt to give Abby a bath before they arrive. Or, I’ll do the old sponge bath…and at least change her out of her spit-up covered pajamas she’s been in all morning. (I don’t wanna hear it – this kid hates being changed – diaper or otherwise – more than anything on the planet. You’d swear I told her Santa wasn’t real and that her clean diaper was full of poison oak.)

Speak of the devil – someone needs to be changed. Cue the waterworks.

Tuesday night FAIL and irrational fears of baby vomit.

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Posted 04 Nov 2009 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, baby business, I am a moron, not so much, The Hubs

Well, last night the hubs and I attempted to sleep in the same room as the baby…all three of us together instead of the 4 hours shifts staying up with her that we’d done the previous two nights. (Worked awesome, BTW (we got 5-6 hours of sleep at a stretch) but not really an option once he goes back to work on Monday.)

We went to bed around 2ish. Abby was due for a feeding at 4:30.

Wait…let me pause here to also add this tidbit. Abby’s butt was backed up for a good 36 hours, until last night when she had an awesome poop on her own. (Yep – I called poop awesome. I’m done for.) We were just about to use the ol’ lubed up thermometer on her booty when she did it all by herself. I thought – yay! The path had been cleared, now back to regularly scheduled pooping. Not so much. She hasn’t pooped since then, and she’s CLEARLY trying to finagle some out of her little body but it’s not working.

Back to the story at hand. We went to bed, and Abby WAS asleep…and then started grunting and fidgeting and doing all sorts of sounds and aerobic tricks to work her poop out (or so I assume). Did I sleep? Maybe…if dozing for 3 minutes and waking up to look at her is called sleeping. Finally at 4am I changed her diaper and fed her her bottle, and headed back to bed. She was SOUND asleep…and started up with it all over again. By 5:30 or so, the hubs woke up and asked if I’d slept. I gave it an honest “I don’t know” and he got up with her to change her diaper again and get her settled in the living room so I could sleep. I kept insisting that she’s trying to poop, he thinks she’s just making typical baby noise. So, he took her in the living room and I cried. (Of course, I had also just had a brief dream that I “tried again” with a new Abby who’s intestines worked correctly but ended up having weird deformed hands instead. That probably didn’t help in the crying department.)

Today is a new day.

Also…Abby spit up for the first time last night. And I’m not ashamed to say it freaked me the fuck out. (Pardon my french…sailor’s mouth is too easy when you’re sleep deprived.) We had just fed her a GIGANTIC feeding which I know is to blame…we let her sleep too long and she was starving so my brilliance decided, YES! Let’s give her nearly a whole ounce more than she usually eats!

Anyway, maybe it was the trick in getting her to finally poop on her own, because she did shortly after downing that bottle, but then promptly spit up after I had just changed her entire outfit since she’d peed on herself. It was no biggie to me, until she did it again, but MUCH more. And then I got scurred.

I know it’s just baby barf, and I didn’t mind it for the most part, but I just have this thing with barf. I cannot watch another human being vomit. It makes me get shaky and I get nervous and scared of having to watch it again. It probably stems back to when my cousins and I got dropped off at the movie theater when we were young, and one of my cousins ate like 3,495,751 sour patch kids or something and didn’t feel good. In my young, trying to be an adult mind, I thought – HERE! Put your head on my totally rad leather jacket with fringe I was given as a first communion gift! And then….BARF. All up in that fringe. I’m pretty sure I cried for days about that one. I took it to the bathroom and tried to clean it up, it was dry cleaned, but never was the same again.

Anywho, I was scared to feed her again. But she’s eaten 3 bottles since sans spit up so that’s good, but has added the “gagging face” to her repertoire of sleep faces that immediately makes me hide under her burp cloth.

And all that was just Tuesday.

The best and most horrifying day of my entire life.

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Posted 02 Nov 2009 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, baby business, marriage, motherhood, paparazzi, The Hubs

Please note: what you are about to read is a birth story…of EPIC PROPORTIONS.

(cue random Tenacious D music now.)


It will be graphic and I will leave nothing out. You’ve been warned.

This story picks up where this one left off. We arrived at the hospital around 1pm on Monday, where we got settled into our birth room, and I put on my fabulous hospital gown. I got checked in, and after 2 unsuccessful attempts at placing my IV (apparently high blood pressure makes your veins less than awesome), it was in, and I was started on saline. the hubs’ folks arrived around this time.

At 4pm, they started me on magnesium sulfate, which acts as an anti-seizure kind of medication used for pre-eclampsia. It’s a smooth muscle relaxer, meaning it was going to make me feel like a lop. It also meant I might not contract well on my own since it was going to slow everything down. Around 4:30, they broke my water (which was an awkward sensation to say the least) and determined I was now about 6cms dilated on my own. In my mind, I’m PRAYING I don’t have the baby in the next hour – I was convinced everything was moving so quickly (and painlessly) that my parents wouldn’t make it in time. I had no idea how wrong I was.

I had a couple real contractions before the epidural arrived. They weren’t spaced well, but I finally knew what a real contraction felt like. (Meaning – I hadn’t actually had one yet. When they say “you’ll know” they effing MEAN IT.) The anesthesiologist arrived and gave me my epidural. It kind of hurt, and he used about a hundred yards of tape to secure it to my back. Immediately I could tell that it wasn’t working right. I had full sensation on my right side, and not much on my left. I was checked again – still 6cms, and the baby was in a bad position (I assume since I’d been laying on my left side for roughly a month) – so they had me roll onto my right side to move the baby, and maybe help activate the epidural on that side. It sort of helped, and later they had me roll almost onto my stomach on my right side to help things along more. This seemed to get the epi working on both sides, so even though the anesthesiologist would come back later and check to see if I wanted it redone, instead of monkeying with it – I said to leave it. Bad idea.

Our differing views of labor.

My parents arrived not long after the epi was in place. I was so relieved. John the Midwife decided that I wasn’t contracting well enough on my own to progress, so they started a slow drip of Petocin. (So, contracting agent AND muscle relaxer now pumping through my veins.) I was starting to fall asleep between contractions because of the mag sulfate. It was weird.

By 9pm, I was ready to push. Excellent – let’s get this show on the road, shall we? So, I started pushing. I also issued a blanket apology to everyone in the room for the large amounts of profanity I would at some point be spewing forth. I could feel all my contractions in my butt and was getting only a little pain relief. But I pushed. And pushed. AND PUSHED.

Around 11pm, I was so puffy from, well…everything and so out of it from the mag sulfate that my eyes were pretty well closed and not to be opened again. I just remember my eyelids feeling so heavy and thinking my eyes had swollen shut. My mom was getting worried – I’d been pushing for 2 hours and there was no talk of any sort of assistance. Apparently around 11pm John the Midwife had to leave to deliver another baby down the hall, leaving his Student Midwife Julie to take over. I was so tired, and felt the worst pain, but kept pushing anyway. Luckily (or maybe unluckily?) my contractions were 3-5 minutes apart so I had some resting time between, but it was just drawing the process out further. Nurse Ratchet was now in the room, yelling at me to grab my legs and pull, but I was too tired and my hips kept cramping so NO I WILL NOT GRAB MY LEGS THIS POSITION IS JUST FINE. I made a comment around this time as well that wouldn’t it be great if I could just have the baby right past midnight so that it’s birthday would be on my grandmothers? Wouldn’t that be great internets…to prolong this suffering at LEAST one more hour? I clearly was not in my right mind at this point.

At midnight, John the Midwife came back. My mother and my mother in law were giving him the evil eye for not helping. I was screaming bloody murder with every push now and could not see an end in sight. I just wanted this baby OUT. I didn’t care how or why – just GET IT OUT NOW. Deep down I didn’t want to hear C-section, but I wanted to hear SOME kind of plan B, because seriously, I couldn’t push anymore.

(I’m quite sure it was around this time that I yelled “I’M NEVER HAVING ANOTHER FUCKING BABY EVER AGAIN” as well as “GET IT OUT OF ME! FUCK!” and “I CAN’T PUSH ANYMORE IT HURTS TOO FUCKING BAD.” Hey – don’t look at me – I warned you I was going to swear. THAT’S why I apologized ahead of time.)

John the Midwife then gave me this – if within 5 pushes (which I later learned meant contractions) the baby wasn’t out they would get the vacuum. THANK GOD. A PLAN! So I kept pushing. And I could feel the pushes where I pushed correctly. AND IT HURT. So John gave me some sort of a local numbing shot IN MY VAG. Yes, internets – I agreed to have a needle placed in my vagina to numb up the area because THAT sounded better than the pain I was feeling. I kept pushing, and knew I was doing it right, and let out a scream that would make a harpee jealous every single time. And I didn’t care. I had to scream. Nurse Ratchet kept telling me to use the screaming energy for pushing and had I not been so knocked out I would have knocked her out. I was so tired and amped up that I started feeling like I was starting to black out every time I pushed. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. John made me focus and said that the baby was RIGHT THERE just push again. He was stretching me the whole time to help make way. And then I did it. I decided I didn’t care how much it hurt, I was going to push the baby out. And so I did.

At 12:49 am, on Tuesday October 27th – my late grandma Rita’s birthday – Abigail Rita was born, weighing 6lbs 6ozs and 20 inches long.

Turns out, she had her hand up next to her face the whole time, forcing me to force her and her stinking hand & elbow out WITH HER HEAD. And thus, a second degree tear. I didn’t care. I was so happy to have her out that I nearly passed out from exhaustion and elation. Thanks to the Mag Sulfate, I totally missed her being born, my eyes were shut the whole time. She was a little out of it at birth as well, scoring only 6 on her initial APGAR, but quickly rebounded to a 9 on her second.

And yes, I did tell John the Midwife and his trusty Student Midwife Julie to go ahead and sew up my vag completely while repairing my tear because I had no use for it anymore. Seriously. Why would I ever want to get pregnant again? It nearly KILLED ME.

I could hear everyone cooing and talking about how beautiful she was (and that sadly, she DID end up with my toes) and I couldn’t get my crap together enough to realize they were talking about my daughter. The one I just gave birth to.

When they finally brought her over and laid her in my arms – I cried. I did it. I actually survived nearly FOUR HOURS of pushing, and 38 weeks of pregnancy…and I had a baby girl. She was so awake and alert, and upon hearing my voice looked directly at me. It was the greatest moment of my life thus far.

A puffy, crying hot mess. Not the baby – me.

The next 24 hours I was still out of it from the mag sulfate. I held onto my little girl for a bit, but the hubs had to do a lot of work, including her first diaper change. Once they cut the dose in half, I felt MUCH better, and then when shut off completely Tuesday, I felt like a million bucks. Even with a pad the size of Texas between my legs. I stayed in the hospital until Thursday morning so they could monitor my blood pressure, which is still a little high.

And I’m bringing this novel of a blog post to a close. The hubs just handed Abby over to me, and I can’t do anything but stare at her, tears welling up in my eyes. Yeah, yeah, hormones. But my god, she is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Every moment of pain, frustration, and sickness of this pregnancy was worth it. You really don’t ever know how much you can love someone until they’re placed in your arms in the first moments of their own lives.

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