Back in Jackson

Well just as I was starting to feel like I was getting back to normal, I find myself back in the hospital. On Sunday, we went to church and then out to eat. The restaurant we ate at was at the mall and afterwards we took Caleb to ride the train. I remember thinking that I was keeping up pretty well (you tend to walk pretty slowly after a c-section!) and was feeling pretty good.

When we went home I went to the bathroom and suddenly I was wracked with the most horrible pain. It felt very similar to labor pains, but lasted much longer and was much more painful than the labor pains I had before I got the epidural. I knew almost immediately, that I would have to go back to the hospital.

Unfortunately all the tests, ultrasounds, and x-rays showed nothing was wrong. Eventually they saw that I was not going to the bathroom (mostly because that was when the pains re-intensified), so they drained my bladder and I started feeling better right away.

So we went home, but the next day I started feeling a different kind of pain. I thought it was just muscle cramps from all the horrible cramps I had the day before, so I was optimistic that I would feel better the next morning, but I didn't. My doctor told me to take ibuprofen, but to go to the ER if I felt like it wasn't working - in short, it didn't and we went.

This time they found elevated levels of creatine (sp?) in my blood which indicated a kidney infection. Once they gave me some antibiotics I started feeling less pain immediately. However, they want me to stay here until at least Thursday.

I am so thankful that my mom is still here. She is home alone now with Caleb and Annalise. I had no choice but to have my mom give her formula and I am pumping at the hospital to keep my milk supply up. I had never spent a day or night away from Caleb until Annalise was born (25 months), but now I have had to leave my tiny 11 day old infant for two whole days (hopefully no more). Still I am thankful that I am starting to feel better. I had been in so much pain that I could not sleep and nursing Annalise was very uncomfortable.

So that's my story. Please pray for us - the last two weeks have been pretty exhausting.

New Baby = New Car

We didn't really plan to buy a new car at the same time Annalise was born; it's more that our ability to coincided with her birth. Rob has long wanted a minivan and - more importantly - it's red, Rob's favorite color!

I also wanted to share this picture of my mom and Annalise sharing a birthday cake! My mom's birthday is the 19th and Annalise's is the 20th. The candles are for my mom and obviously she is not 6, but they do represent her age ;) Since it's a bundt cake, it's the shape of Annalise's age - zero!

Finally here are Caleb and Annalise enjoying "tummy time" together. He really seems to like his new sister, but it's a real challenge to keep him from bopping her on the head or mashing her nose. I'm pretty sure that's par for the course when you have a two-year-old and a newborn.

Caleb's Pumpkin

Rob and Caleb carved a pumpkin the other night.











Annalise is 6 days old and busy growing! We had her first pediatrician appointment yesterday and she has already gained an ounce over her birthweight! I am busy healing. The best way to describe how I feel is to say on Sunday I felt like I had been run over by a truck. Today, I feel like I ran into a truck. Such an improvement!

She's Here!!

She's here! Annalise Robbins - born Saturday night, October 20th at 9:41. Weighing in at 7lb 4oz (5 oz less than Caleb although she spent 3 weeks longer in the womb), and 19.75 inches long. Very dark brown hair, dark blue eyes - which I'm sure will turn brown in time. Yes, she has no middle name. We couldn't find one we really felt like fit and everyone I know who doesn't have a middle name assured me that it not having one didn't affect their life negatively. I have quite a birth story, and if you are one of those people who get ill reading medical things, just look at the pictures ;)

Annalise was born by c-section, which isn't to say I didn't have a somewhat successful VBAC attempt. Ultimately the reason I had the c-section didn't have anything to do with my previous one.

I started off with either pre-labor or false labor during Thursday night. I had contractions about every 20 minutes for most of the night, but they stopped after breakfast on Friday. Mom, Caleb and I went to the mall to walk, but I walked a lot slower than usual! The contractions started back around 3 or 4 that afternoon, and I was scheptical, since I'd had so many "could this be it" moments that were not. But I had contractions 10 minutes apart all night Friday night (so far 2 night - basically no sleep).

On Saturday morning, I decided to call the doctor to ask what to do. I had to wait more than an hour for a call back, during which time the contractions pretty much stopped, but they told me to come to the hospital anyway. I felt like such a faker on the drive to Jackson Memorial, but when I got there I had dilated to 4cm and was admitted.

On my own, I made it to 5cm, then they broke my water and eventually started a pitocen drip. I wasn't in too much insane pain at that point, but they encouraged me to get an epidural because of my prior c-section - that is, in case I needed another one. After all those hours in childbirth class, I thought for a minute about saying no, but I was scared silly of pictocen and caved. Which ended up being really good - I felt great and according to the monitor, the contractions got more than twice as bad. I had to have an internal monitor (because of the previous c-section) - basically after they broke my water, they put a little tiny screw into Annalise's head to monitor her heartbeat (which was dipping during each contraction - also ultimately not why I had the c-section).

I stayed at 5cm for a long long time, so they increased the pictocen drip and I went to 9 in less than 2 hours. I started feeling like I needed to push and a doctor checked me and said I was at 9cm and it would probably take another hour. Although I couldn't feel the contractions, the urge to push was so uncomfortable, since I couldn't do it. I got to a place where I was unable to keep from being noisy - like really noisy. I'm not sure if I was screaming. Rob said I didn't say anything mean to him! But I can't remember what I did say, regardless, I was loud ;)

It wasn't a whole hour, but the doctor came back in and said I was at 10 and could start pushing. I can't say how incredibly good it felt to push! I stopped screaming and starting thinking I would actually see my baby in a few minutes. My doctor was on call that night and came in around that point. I pushed for about 8-10 minutes before things got kind of crazy. There was a huge crowd of people in the room (maybe medical students - Jackson is affliated with the UM Med school). Annalise was very near crowning, but hadn't gotten that far; my doctor pulled out a vacuum (if you haven't watched much TLC, it's a little cup that they put on the baby's head to assist with delivery - basically vacuum the baby out.) To get it to her, he had to do an episiotomy. I wasn't crazy about that (who is?), but felt really alarmed when I heard someone in the crown say, "He cut twice!"

It wasn't much later and my doctor said she was not moving any farther and I had to have a c-section. So in a sense, the VBAC part of Annalise's delivery was a total success - if there had been enough room for her to fit, she certainly would have been born naturally. What was hardest at that point was that I kept having contractions, but had to stop pushing.

So they wheeled me off to the OR and it seemed like a really long time before they got her out. I was so exhausted from being in labor all day and all night and not sleeping the two nights before I didn't care much! They took a long time to sew me back up - my doctor seemed to think that they might not have been too careful sewing me up after Caleb because there was a lot of scar tissue and my bladder was in the wrong place (I thought THAT was alarming!). So Annalise came out perfect and pink and now it's been two days and I'm still pretty tired, but a lot less sore - yesterday I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. Today it's more like a bicycle - maybe a tandem bicycle...pulling a baby cart.

Annalise is presently in the nursery, which is another long story - and a long walk when it's time go and nurse her! But hopefully she will be back in my room with me soon and hopefully soon after that we'll all be home :) We've had a really good experience here at Jackson. Some people had given me the impression that it was not a good place, but the nurses and doctors have been fabulous. They are all very friendly and seem to like working here. There were some parts of the labor process (after the epidural) that I got into chatty conversations with people and really felt like I was enjoying my time!

Caleb was happy to meet his new sister! He really wants to hold her and I told him he could when we get home. He is handling my being in the hospital much better than I expected. My mom has been a huge help too and I am so proud of Rob! He made it through all the icky stuff without even looking the slightest bit nauseaus!

Overdue

Last night, Meredith called me on Rob's cell phone. She had called the house and we weren't home. "Where are you?" were the first words out of her mouth.

"Starbucks," I said.

And then we both giggled for a while because we both knew where she thought I might be!

So here I am, still pregnant - 40 weeks and 3 days. They're giving me one more week to go into spontaneous labor and unlike the last 2 weeks, this week I have no signs or symptoms that make me think it is imminent. If I have made progress (i.e. begun to dilate), they will induce me, but if not, I will have another c-section later next week. So there is light at the end of the tunnel, it just doesn't necessarily involve me waking up Rob in the middle of the night saying, "It's time..." I mean, I guess we could still go through that scenario, but I'm starting to imagine some other very likely realities. One way or the other, Lord willing, it looks like we'll spend the final week of October getting to know our little girl.

In other news, I have another telemarketing story involving Rob. Today a telemarketer called and asked for Rob and instead of blowing her off, he played along. She said, "How are you?" and Rob said, "Pretty good, I stayed up late last night to get some work done, then slept in this morning and had meatloaf for lunch..." I guess that ruined her train of thought because she hung up on him!

Ninth Month Belly Picture

It struck me today that it would be really cool if BabelFish could translate your text into Old English. Oh well, modern English will have to do...

And now, the picture I never hoped to take:

NINE MONTHS PREGNANT!

Yes TODAY is my offical due date. I didn't realize how spoiled I was getting to have Caleb at 38 weeks. For the last two weeks I have on and off had hints that my body is preparing to have this baby, but it just seems like every time something clues me in, it disappears before anything really happens. As irrational as it seems to all you not pregnant people out there - I feel like I may just be pregnant forever. And I have a bad attitude about it too! :( I told someone at church yesterday that I just wished I had a button that read, "Don't Ask!".

I have my 40th week appointment scheduled for Wednesday morning. Last week, I had to wait THREE HOURS to be seen. So please pray that I will either have this baby before Wednesday at 10:30am or...no that is my prayer request!

And Caleb says...

"Again! Again!"



(Actually, Rob made a show of pretending he was going to do the same thing to Mako, which Caleb loved of course. Then he said, "Throw Mama!"...right!)

Uterine Psychology

We use reverse psychology on the dog all the time...with a lot of sucess. I'm just wondering if it works on internal organs.

Since my mom has been here, I've had enough help around the house to veg a little, time to reflect, if you will. And it struck me that putting your feet up is what they tell you if you are at risk for going into pre-term labor...and maybe not what I need to be doing if I want to encourage things along. So I was wondering what else I should be doing - perhaps horseback riding? Jumping on a trampoline? Standing on the top rung of a ladder and changing a light bulb? Carrying Caleb around? Or even better, picking up Mako! I guess that might not be reverse psychology to my uterus, but maybe it will get the message....

Well regardless of old-wives tales and such to induce labor, I read that one job of the placenta is to produce ever increasing amounts of progesterone to sustain a pregnancy. Once it's time for the pregnancy to end, the progesterone production shuts down and you go into labor. Interestingly, this is basically what a woman's body does on a regular monthly basis - except of course then, it's your body producing the progesterone and not a placenta*. If all this is the case, I just don't see what I could do externally to make much of a difference.

This would all be more fascinating if I weren't 39 weeks 5 days pregnant with no signs of labor approaching!

(*This is not exactly true, there's another little temporary "structure" that makes progesterone during a regular month, but it's complicated and only distantly related to all this.)

Just off the Nightstand: Memoirs of a Geisha

Not all that long ago, I went to the library and picked up 3 books and laughed at myself - thinking there was no way I could read all 3 of them before the baby was born and there'll be no time to read them once she's here. Well I've finished two of them and have made headway on Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind as well. But most recently...I read Memoirs of a Geisha.

I'm not sure what to say about this book because I think to make a few comments on it would really give away most of the book. The title really explains it - a geisha recounts her memories of life. Still, there were some things I found really interesting about it. For one, the introduction of the book is deceiving - intentionally. The introduction is voiced by a professor who claims to have written the memoirs on behalf of Nitta Sayuri (Nitta being her last name as Americans would understand it.) Then the book launches into a first person account of a girl named Chiyo and how the circumstances of her life propel her into a career as a geisha in pre-war Japan. Here is what is so interesting - the introduction is complete fiction. The whole book was dreamed up by Arthur Golden - an American man, but is written is such a compelling woman's voice that it's incredibly impressive.

The overarching theme is that you aren't in control of your life. Chiyo (Sayuri) is said to have a personality full of water, which as far as I could understand it meant that she was the sort of person who goes with the flow and allows her life to be directed by whatever it runs into - kind of like how a trickle of water would be diverted by a rock. Other characters are said to have more wood in their personality, so I guess they would be more stubborn sorts of people.

Briefly, geisha are women trained to begile men. They are not exactly prostitutes, but they have similarities. They are more like mistresses for hire. Their objective is to getting taken in by a married man (called her danna) who will take care of her. I guess that sounds like a prostitute. It's sort of like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Richard Gere would have been her danna.

Saying that, I see the contrast between Chiyo/Sayuri and her sister Satsu, who is sold into prostitution. Chiyo's personality is water, while Satsu's is wood. Chiyo adapts to her (unchosen) life as a geisha; while Satsu runs away.

So I guess I'll leave it at that - to say much more would be to read you the book.

39 Weeks...and counting

I don't really have anything noteworthy to say, but here I am at 39 weeks. I want to moan, "and still pregnant!" but I feel like I can't do that - afterall, I'm not overdue. Still, somehow knowing that I could have the baby at any time makes the waiting tedious. My mom is here taking care of Caleb so that I can rest my back. She is enjoying herself royally and gorging Caleb on "grandma time".

According to many different sources, the process of labor is supposed to be as physcially taxing as running a marathon. I think it is funny that I'm supposed to be able to manage that at a time when I can't even touch my toes!

Ready When You Are...

I am officially pregnant-er than I have ever been. That is: I am 38 weeks 3 days pregnant and I had Caleb at 38 weeks 2 days. Oof...I feel like a stuffed turkey. We have everything ready to go, including new blank video tapes. Note to little girl: I'm ready when you are!

My mom is here now and it is so good! She's played with Caleb so much, picked up his toys, given him a bath, wrestled him into his car seat... We went out today to give my mom a test run driving to the hospital. I think after we were done, she decided she might give the MetroRail a try!

While we were waiting in traffic, we bought churros from a street vendor (read: guy walking through traffic wearing a styrofoam cooler on a rope around his neck). Generally I think standing in the middle of the street is a bad idea, but if you're selling warm sweet fried dough for a dollar, I'll let you slide.

Another notable event from today: Rob saw a bear!



Admittedly, this picture is "bigfoot" quality, but he swears it's the real deal. He said it looked like a big skinny dog. It seems strange to me that there would be bears in Florida, but I guess they have to retire somewhere.

A Coming of Age Movie

Have you ever played the game "Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon"? The basic idea is that any random actor or actress can be traced back to Kevin Bacon in 6 films or less. For example:

Emilio Estevez...

1 - Who was in The Breakfast Club with Molly Ringwald
2 - Who was in Pretty in Pink with Annie Potts
3 - Who was in with Ghostbusters with Rick Moranis
4 - Who was in with Spaceballs with Bill Pullman
5 - Who was in Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks
6 - Who was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon

To win the game, there's no need to list 6 films if they can be connected in less, but what's the fun in that?

Anyway, Kevin Bacon made a movie in 1988 called She's Having a Baby with Elizabeth McGovern and Alec Baldwin and it is a "must see" for any pregnant woman. Then again, I think it's a good movie to watch for just about anyone, but if you're pregnant, it will make you cry :')

I generally dislike the term "Coming of Age Movie" because usually it means a movie where some naive person experiments with sex, which I don't think is a sign of maturity. However, She's Having a Baby is a real "Coming of Age Movie" because it is about a man (Kevin Bacon) who struggles with growing up. His wife wants to have a baby and he's not sure he's ready define his life as "dad". So that seems pretty simple, but I still think it's a good enough movie to spend 2 hours of your time on.

Sad Sandbox News...and other Milestones

Sad news to report:
We've had an unusually dry wet season this year, but for the last week it has rained seemingly endlessly. I usually cover the sandtable with a contractor bag, but it still collects water. The table is on an incline, so the water weighed down the bottom end and you can see the result :(

But the rain is not all bad. We got a free Jackfruit tree from the county and it is looking great from all the rain.

Caleb has reached a sort of annoying milestone. He has learned how to take off his own diaper. For a very little while, I solved this problem by just keeping him in shorts all the time, but now he can take them off too. In a way I'm proud of him, I mean he does need to know how to undress himself, but this morning, he strutted his bare baby bottom into my kitchen and relieved himself. I mopped 3 times before I realized he'd also peed on the kitchen floor mat. Well, at least it doesn't smell in there now.

Today makes 38 weeks and I am almost as pregnant as I have ever been (Caleb was born at 38 weeks 2 days). For the last 3 days I've had some icky cramps - nothing debilitating, sort of the stuff you'd take Midol for regularly, but definately different than status quo. The first time it happened, I kind of felt panicked that we would have this little girl before my mom gets here to take care of Caleb (Wednesday, Oct.3), but so far it's calmed back down each time. Of course, all this sent me scouring the internet and it seems to me that although some women experience this just prior to going into labor, others spent a few weeks feeling this way. So I guess our baby will be here maybe in hours, maybe in days, maybe in weeks...but definately not months! Of that at least I am sure!