Mr. Stumpy is Dead! Long Live Mr. Stumpy!

Today Mr. Stumpy, Gaz's beloved umbilical cord stump, was painted with silver nitrate. He just wouldn't leave on his own due to Gaz's belly button having sunk in faster than we expected so that it was impossible to keep the bottom of Mr. Stumpy completely dry. Dr. C. said that Gaz just wanted to keep her ticket so she could get back in. Well, about seven hours after the silver nitrate, Mr. Stumpy popped right off! Our baby has a genine bona fide unmarred belly button now for all to apreciate as one of the cutest tiny belly buttons in the world.

blog interrupted

Imagine that--tending to an infant taking up all a person's spare time! Such is life these days. Gaz continues to eat up hours and hours, and all she has to do is be cute in order to get me to drop everything else for her. That or cry, but we try to keep that to a minimum.

She's two months old as of yesterday and she's quite the large child. She just weighed in at 14 pounds 14 ounces today and she's 25" long now. She's currently wearing mostly 6 month size clothes and stage two diapers if anyone is considering buying anything for her. I've already started a box for the clothes she's grown out of and then had to upgrade to a larger box. I know we didn't get her in everything we were given, but I had no idea that she would (a) be so big at birth or (b) grow this fast. Hopefully there are some more girls waiting to be born into the family somewhere that can use some of this stuff.

So basically Gaz is wonderful, all hugeness aside. She smiles and giggles and coos, especially first thing in the morning when I'm changing her diaper. The gal loves her brief naked time. Her waking up so happy makes those few days when she's generally inconsolable easier to take. I can't remember or imagine life without her now; she's taken over my higher brain functions and I don't care one whit. I'm beginning to wonder if the reason I never had any particularly monumental career ambitions is because some part of me knew that this was going to be the really important work for me. I still love being a secretary and I really, really love copyediting, but if given the option I would choose Gaz over everything. If only that job paid.

I went back to my part-time office job last week and it was pretty rough on me. Gaz fared better, although for a while she was dead set on not taking the bottle from Babysitter Lisa. Now that she seems to have figured out that she can get milk out of a bottle when Mama's not around, hopefully she'll develop a more normal apetite. I pump on the days I'm away from home enough to keep my milk supply up and since Gaz hasn't been taking bottles well I've been filling the freezer with bags of expressed milk.

Right now she's sleeping off the angst of having four shots this morning and I'm trying to maybe catch up on email and blogging. I'm going to go back and fill in some of the blanks now, like with labor and delivery and such. Soon I'll be sleeping off the angst of trying to figure out where to get a flu shot. Tis the season.

a Gaz is born

It all began with contractions, a very sleepless night, and some vomiting.

I had gotten used to always being warm because, well, I was hugely pregnant. On July 31st, a Sunday, I was especially miserable. I felt weird, I was throwing up, and I couldn't pee to save my life. Turns out I likely had a urinary tract infection, but I didn't know it at the time. I spent most of the night lying on the couch (the better to race to the bathroom)and groaning.

Monday morning my contractions were getting more regular, so after consulting with one of the doctors in my OB's office I went to the hospital. The checked me out, found that I had a fever, was dehydrated, and Gaz's heartbeat was elevated. I was scheduled to check in to the hospital the next evening for induction (1 week past due + my high blood pressure = a nice, unnatural induced labor, apparently), so they admitted me early. I was given plenty of IV fluids and, when that alone did not relieve my fever, antibiotics. Then came the pitocin and breaking my bag-of-waters, the latter of which revealed meconium stained fluid--Gaz had crapped fetal crap, which usually happens when the baby is distressed. I was told that they would try to keep her from crying at first and I wouldn't be able to see her immediately after birth, as she would need to be examined by some special doctors who would suction her lungs to make sure she didnt' breathe any crap in. I was upset, but you can't really argue with wanting to make sure the baby is healthy.

Hours passed and the pitocin contractions on top of back labor were killing me, despite trying all the tricks we knew (back massage, changing positions, birth ball). How much had I progressed? A grand total of half a centimeter beyond where I was dialated when I first got to the triage floor. Enter the epidural. Yes Mr. Anesthesiologist, the epidural I said I didn't want four hours earlier. I can't describe the pain, but every woman who has ever been unmedicated while getting pitocin knows what I mean. Now we're into Monday afternoon and now I can finally doze a little off and on. I'm a complete mess, covered in sticky green amniotic fluid underneath my thin hospital blanket. I'm cold and I'm hot and I sometimes get IV bags changed or more antibiotics or someone checks my progress.

At 11:00 or so Monday night I was at 7 cm. When I hadn't gone beyond that point around 4 or 5 Tuesday morning, my doctor suggested that it might be time for a Cesarian. We could continue with the pitocin, but there was no guarantee that it would make anything happen and there was no guarantee that Gaz's vitals would continue to stay as good as they were. By this point I had had my epidural refueled twice, and the last dose had all but made my legs comepletely useless. If my labor did manage to progress, I would have had a seriously hard time pushing. Considering how messed up things had been up to this point with my blood pressure, the infection, the dehydration, and Gaz passing meconium, I opted for the quickest route to getting Gaz out of my uterine bastille. Mark was upset--I might have been upset if I hadn't been so exhausted--but we talked through why this was the lesser of who knows how many evils.

I was wheeled out of my room to get prepped and Mark and my mom got all our stuff organized. He was going to be with me in the OR and Mom settled into the waiting room with our luggage and accoutrements. I did get to see him don his fancy biohazard suit thing, and I had him stuff his pockets with our camera and my spectacles.

I was transferred to a very tiny table in the very cold OR. I couldn't help everyone move me, my legs being like unto giant pieces of cooked spaghetti, but I giggled along with my nurse when my legs kept falling off the table. They were finally wrapped in blankets and strapped down, then my IVs were sorted out and both my arms were strapped down. I asked if I was being restrained so I didn't slap Mark, and was told that it was to make sure I didn't try to "help." I still wonder how many women try to "help."

Mark finally was brought in to sit by my head. I don't remember what we talked about now, but we might have made references to the final episode of Coupling. I could feel things happening, but couldn't feel any pain.

At 6:11 AM on the morning of Tuesday, August 2nd, Gaz came out and didn't care what the doctors wanted--she announced to us all that she was out and breathing. She also peed all the way out, apparently. She was moved nearby to be suctioned and cleaned up. I had told Mark that as soon as he was able to, he had to go greet her for the both of us and so he did, taking pictures and helping give her her first bath.

I, meanwhile, was getting very sleepy and losing a lot of blood. There were a nurse and an anesthesiologist by my head who were trying to start another line on my right arm. I guess someone finally decided that I might need some blood and they better be ready. They blew a vein in my right hand and bruised the hell out of my inner arm before getting a catheter set in the bend of my elbow. It turns out that I didn't need any blood, of course.

Mark brought Gaz over to see me when she was at last all clean and swaddled. He even held her over by my hand so she could hold one of my fingers. It was then, as I was laying there looking lovingly at my precious daughter that I felt I had to throw up. I turned my head the other way, toward the nurse, and barfed up this foul-tasting stuff I had been given earlier that was supposed to neutralize my stomach acid and keep me from throwing up. It tasted no better for it's having been in my stomach for an hour or so.

I finally got to hold Gaz in the recovery room. I was so exhausted I kept almost falling asleep with her in my arms. But I was finally able to give her a good look and give her her first shot at nursing (after she first had to be given a certain amount of formula to combat low blood sugar, as apparently is often the case with large babies).

It took us forever to be allowed up onto the postnatal floor since the anesthesiologists had to debate what painkiller I was going to be allowed to have in light of my blood loss (I ended up with Fentanyl), but we eventually got to go rest, all of us together.

Three days late

Well, the child is slow in coming out. We keep telling her the coast is clear, but I may have said "cheese it, it's the cops!" one too many times within the past nine months. Last night, while watching Queer Eye with Mom, Gaz was doing a little jitterbug and seemed to be protesting the cramped state of her present accommodations. I keep telling her that there's much more space on the other side of the womb. Keep your fingers crossed that she heard me and that an escape plan (preferably a speedy one that doesn't involve drugs or scalpels) is amenable to her.

For the past few days I've been gingerly going about a toned-down version of my daily life, saying all the time ". . . provided Gaz doesn't show up today. . ." Well, that approach just makes me irritated that she's not out yet, so now I'm back to making evening plans (not much outside the house, but I'm starting things I know I can't finish in one night now, like knitting a Mobius scarf) and generally looking at the world like Gaz is going to be in utero until her induction date of August 3rd.

One of these days there will actually be a little someone to comment on here. 'Til then, stay tuned.

drive-by

Just cruising by since it's been so long. The fetus continues to gestate, although she could make her grand entrance (or exit, depending on perspective) any day now. We continue to be textbooky in our progression.

I've decided that this will be the kid journal so that friends and relatives can peek in on our silly little postnatal lives. I'm sure it will be a hoot for all (except me, as I'm sure I'll be exposing my embarassing mamma goofs here more often than not). For blogging purposes, our daughter's name shall be Gaz (actually, that's one of the nicknames she's acquired so far). There will probably be pictures, too. We're having a keen time with our new digital camera, but we have yet to attempt to move pictures from the camera to the computer, so please don't hold your breath. We're notoriously slow about anything involving the computer these days.

The past few months I've given up Aztec dance, at first because I found myself with a lot of freelance work to do (We'd still go to dance, but I'd sit on the sidelines and copyedit while Mark danced for the lot of us), and eventually because my legs don't bend so well when they're swollen to roughly twice their normal size. We've just touched base with our compadres this weekend, though, and judging by how hard it was not to dance along with them even in my bloated and lumpy shape, I'll be back to that as soon as Gaz is out and the doctor gives me the all clear for hopping about again. For those who lack similar perspective, I can honestly say that dancing in the full heat of summer for an hour or two at a pop is much more taxing than simply being pregnant in the summer. So don't cry for me, Argentina; I continue to hold up reasonably well.

The novel has also been back-burnered in favor of knitting and an endless search for the quintessential banana bread recipe. I finished a shawl I started last year (for myself) and I've nearly done with the second chenille hat for Gaz. The first one is much too large for a newborn and I found some other chenille in one of my many yarn bags, so I started another. After this I may just go back to being a lazy bum, though, as I've managed to strain one particular muscle in my arm with the knitting. Don't ask how, I'm really not sure. I can tell you that it definitely doesn't feel all that great. And I'm not sure what my deal is with banana bread all of a sudden. Even the brick that was my first attempt at the stuff didn't taste bad, so long as there was a lot of coffee on hand to help wash down the unbearable dryness of it. Always check to make sure you've got enough all-purpose flour, because whole wheat is just mean in banana bread. At least the way I made it.