Pregnancy

Today was my 2 week checkup with my OB.  As I've mentioned before, I LOVE our OB.  She's really great.  She said she thought I was doing pretty good considering what happened, which was good.  Anyway.  While we were there, she told Kris and me a story she heard at the hospital.  5 days after we had our baby and my surgery, a lady gave birth to her 5th child, and had the same post partum hemorrhaging as me.  She ended up going into get a hysterectomy, but she kept on losing tons of blood, and as if her body was giving up, nothing was clotting.  They ended up bringing in trauma surgeon and a vascular surgeon to patch her up, but after 4 hours of surgery, no luck.  So they couldn't even close her up - they packed her with stuff layer by layer, and ended up giving her 20 units of blood.  (Which we found out that average blood volume is about 11 units of blood.)

Aftermath:  Hence; that which happens after, that which follows. Has a strongly negative connotation in most contexts, implying a preceding catastrophe.

Okay, so it wasn't quite a catastrophe.  :)  But I broke into tears last night...  I'm just SO tired...  Of hurting, of second guessing how much food Alaise needs, of my cough that has lingered for three weeks...  I didn't even get to finish my tea last night, and that just really got to me!  Petty, I know.  But this DAMN COUGH is really shorting my fuse.  I've had this cough through the last week of pregnancy (I couldn't hardly get any sleep and had ribs that felt like they would explode every time I coughed), through labor & delivery (which did NOT help with the delivery part), and now through breastfeeding, sleeping baby and mom.

October 22, 2009 my first born, a daughter, entered this world.  Alaise Noelle Vanderwater was greeted by her parents and grand parents (on both sides).  She's a big baby, 20 inches, with a 14+ inch head, 8 lbs 13 ounces.  Ju's labor went pretty well.  The epidural did wonders for her.  The delivery, on the other hand, was quite difficult, and the size of the baby required the doctor to make a bit of room for her to come down the canal via an episiotomy.

From dad's perspective, I'm actually doing pretty good at this point.  I knew all of this was likely... did I mention the vacuum to get her out? no? well there was that too.  But all seemed to go pretty well.  Baby was healthy, I cut the cord, the doctors began the work of sewing Ju back up.  I flitted back and forth from Alaise to Ju and back again, checking on both of my girls.  Once she was sewn all back up, mom and daughter were introduced, grandparents came to join the fray and meet their new grand daughter.  After a while of this we shooed everyone away, so that mom and baby could get some feeding in.  It was at this point that my world started to shift yet again.

When you go to witness a child being born, you walk in expecting to see a miracle, what you don't expect is to find yourself in a situation asking for more miracles in that same night...

So, I will be getting induced at 5:30am tomorrow morning.  I really need to be going to sleep...  But it seems like there are endless loose ends I want to tie up before this little person really arrives in our life.  I especially want to journal in the book that I have been keeping. :)  Went to the doctor this morning and we scheduled the induction for tomorrow, so hopefully that goes well.  The final weight gain is about 35lbs, which isn't great, but isn't too bad.  About 5cm dilated already, but the baby's head is still cocked to the left, so there is still a good chance of C-section.

Hopefully this will be the last one of these for a while! :)  My due date has come and gone.  And I've been sick for a week now, with a sore throat and a terrible, awful cough.  Coughing has kept me up several days in a row, and I've survived by napping here and there during the day.  It's been absolutely terrible.  The doctor prescribed me stuff called Tussionex, which, if you Google, is very strong, and works wonders.  Well, apparently she prescribed 500ml, and the dosage is 5ml at a time...  And the stuff is really expensive, so the pharmacist wanted to call the doctor Monday morning to confirm.  She gave me 15ml to last me the weekend (which is complete bull, since it's twice a day, 5ml at a time, and this was Friday afternoon.).  Which cost me almost $5, so I really hoped it would work wonders.

37 Weeks.  It's hit me hard, in the last couple of days, that Kris and I only have 2 more weekends, just us.  My parents are coming in Oct. 6, so we have this weekend, and next weekend.  It's really really hit me hard.  I feel blessed with a marriage I really enjoy, and life sucks sometimes, but Kris and I always pull through together, and we really enjoy each other's company.  Well, it's really not easy to come to terms with the fact that we will only be just the two of us for two more weeks.  It's been a long ride together, but I've cherished it so much...  I just can't believe that this phase of our life is over, and I've been grieving.  I'm sure once the baby gets here, we will love it, and I hear other moms say "I wonder how I lived without you" kind of thing.  But I also think it's okay to feel sad about all the changes that will take place.  So here I am, mourning the passing of a wonderful era together.

Today is 36 weeks.  A milestone of sorts, according to our OB - she said that babies born after 36 weeks generally don't even have to stay in the hospital. :)  I skipped 34 weeks, which was a big milestone for us - babies born at 34 weeks have almost 0% chance of having any sort of long term complications.  So, we've hit both milestones, and we are so much more relieved.

I have, however, made the mistake of being on the Bump again.  It's one of those things...  Being on the boards, you most often hear about the bad cases, the worst case scenarios.  You don't hear about the normal, healthy cases.  One of the girls lost her baby at 39 weeks and 4 days.  3 days before her due date...  She went into her routine doctor's appointment, the doctor couldn't find the heart beat...  Went in for an emergency ultrasound, and found the baby dead with no amniotic fluid.

So, I hope Labor and Delivery Part II will only come once we have this babe.  But we did have Part I today.  I've been having bad Braxton Hicks at least since yesterday morning...  Some hours, I'd have them every 6-7 minutes for hours straight.  The doctor wanted me to go the hospital if I had 4-5 previously...  But the stubborn (and maybe stupid) person I am, I would wait it out, take a warm shower, eat something, and lay down.  That usually slowed it down, and Braxton Hicks wouldn't last more than a day on and off.  This time, I took a bath, and did everything I was supposed to, but it just wouldn't go away.  I was up at 4:30am because it bothered me.  Not to mention I was absolutely ravenous.  (nothing Korean ramen and rice couldn't fix!)

This week I have a belly photo!  I always thought I'd be really faithful about taking pics every week...  But the last photo we took was at 25 weeks, so it's been 8 weeks since I last took it.  And the size of my belly has like... doubled!  It's incredible how much me and the baby have grown.  I feel like a gigantic bloated hippo, but I guess that's okay for now.  :)

We had my brother with us for a couple weeks, and it was wonderful!  We dropped him off this past weekend...  I felt pretty empty afterwards, and worried a bit, but I am confident he will do well on his own, and I have to give him room!  Plus, it's good to be back home and be just Kris and me.  (and I can walk around naked again!  If I want to.  Hee hee.)

32 Weeks!  It's insane.  Really.  I can't believe I'm at 32 weeks.  I never thought I'd get here!  2 weeks more and we're at the "the baby will not have permanent disabilities" point.  We're pretty stoked about getting close to that mark.