Nine Months Uncensored (and Beyond): April 2011

Brianna is now three weeks old. She's lost her wrinkly newborn look, and just looks like a tiny baby now (well, as tiny as you can look when you're roughly 10 pounds). She holds her head up on her own sometimes and loves to watch a toy that dangles from the arm of her car seat, which is where she goes half the time because she sleeps so well in there. Occasionally she'll give us smiles, though I'm pretty sure they're not happy smiles yet, just more of a "hey, I have muscles in my face, I wonder how to use them" expression, kind of like when she lifts her eyebrows and pouts her lips out after she finishes nursing. But while my mom would be happy to have me write about Brianna until my fingers fall off, I'm here to share what it's been like for me these past three weeks with all the gory details. Fair warning: it's not always gonna be pretty.

When I was still in the hospital, the biggest thing I had to face was how unbelievably tired I was. So tired I couldn't reposition myself in bed at first, and I pretty much slept if I wasn't nursing or cuddling with Brianna. Which made going to the bathroom all kinds of fun at first, since certain areas were understandably SORE. (Percocet is such a wonderful drug when you've just pushed something the size of a small cantaloupe out of your hoo-ha! Did I mention her head was 14.5 inches around? Oy-vay.) It was also slightly disturbing to have so much bleeding afterwards. Nine months without a period, and then it seems like my body wants to make up for lost time, with the added bonus of having to use pads. It's like being back in junior high, but instead of an egg baby to care for, I have an incredibly cute but demanding newborn. After a mere 36 hours, I am sent home with a sitz bath, water jug, and squirt bottle as parting gifts. We could have stayed longer, but I would probably have been going stir crazy, and the fold out bed Andy was in was not designed for fathers over 6 feet tall.

Since coming home, I'm still incredibly tired, but it's more because I only get 5 hours of sleep in little chunks, rather than the utter exhaustion of pushing out a baby in only 20 minutes. The first full day home, we had to take Brianna to the pediatrician, and I had never regretted having stairs so much as I did after dragging myself up and down and out and about, and repeat the next day because Brianna needed to be monitored for weight after loosing too much after birth before my milk came in. (What a way to feel like a parenting failure!) Gradually the stairs got easier, and by now I'm running back and forth without any issues. I've started up walking again too, though they're kind of pathetic, slow little strolls that leave me tired when it's warm out like it has been. Everyday I go further though, and I know eventually I'll get back up to a good pace and distance.

I had planned on using a walking routine to lose any baby weight that remained after Brianna was born, but thanks to a minimal weight gain throughout the pregnancy and the crazy metabolism brought on by breastfeeding, I've already lost it all. Plus an additional 17 pounds. I have no idea how I lost that much so quickly, but I won't complain. I'm not as swollen as I had been, so a lot of it was probably water. I'm not necessarily thinner than I was before getting pregnant, but I am back into my normal clothes, which feels fantastic but is a little frustrating at times because everything is shifted around from where it was before.

My belly has quite a bit of pooch with extra skin hanging around. It's gotten better than it was right after the birth, when it felt like a big soft sponge, but I'd like to at least have some chance of wearing a cute swimsuit this summer. The other big change is that my boobs are huge. Andy certainly has nothing but smiles when the subject comes up, but dear Lord, did I really need to gain three cup sizes? It seems to have been taken from my ass to fuel breastfeeding, which honestly, I'm kind of sad about. It was the one body part that stayed normal through the pregnancy, and I was generally pretty happy with the way it looked before. It helped balance out my figure and now I just look (quite literally) slightly deflated. I'm hoping things continue to reconfigure over the next few weeks, because this isn't exactly the body I imagined having as a new mom. Better in some ways, but disappointing in others.

You know what's not disappointing? Having my hair stop growing so much! Unfortunately it didn't happen overnight. In fact, those lovely postpartum hormones gave a sudden boost to my hair and nails. Nature isn't exactly selective about which hair gets the MiracleGro treatment, so any hairs that were already present starting growing like weeds, including my facial hair. After coming home from the hospital and having barely enough energy to shower, personal grooming was pretty low on my to-do list. Until I noticed that my hairs were longer than Andy's stubble. Yes, I had finally grown more hair than my husband and had gone past the title of Bearded Lady. I had starting looking like a college sophomore who tries to grow a goatee so his fake ID is more believable. The only reason I wasn't a completely lost cause is that I had waxed my upper lip recently enough that there weren't too many hairs trying to do a Chia Pet imitation. Otherwise Andy probably would have looked at me funny when I tried to kiss him. Needless to say, I promptly waxed and plucked my way back to delicate femininity, or as close as I could come to it in this hormone-addled state, and things have been much slower growing back in.

So even with all those hormones going crazy (and who knows what PCOS will do to keep things...unpredictable), I'm doing quite well physically for being halfway through the 6 weeks that it's supposed to take to feel back to "normal".

Emotional recovery is a whole other story though.

Baby blues have given way to something more. It's not something I'm ready to get into in much detail at the moment, but I am getting treatment. Some days are harder than others, but it's starting to get easier and I'm able to enjoy more of my time with Brianna, which wasn't happening much at first.

As promised, here's the (overly elaborate) story of how Brianna arrived. I have a lot to say, so grab a snack and dig in!

Really, it began that Sunday when I started having some mild contractions early in the afternoon. They didn't really slow down or go away, so I started keeping myself busy. I made a batch of palacsintas (a Hungarian version of a crepe), which unfortunately weren't refrigerated while we were in the hospital, so I didn't get the joy of a nutella-filled palacsinta when I got home - phooey. I went for a walk and the contractions got stronger. I sat outside while my mom planted flowers for me and they kept going. Through dinner and a shower, more and more contractions, incredibly regular. For most women, that would be a pretty sure sign that labor has begun, since contractions are supposed to go away when you move or change position if it's false labor. But apparently I'm that weirdo who doesn't like to follow medical rules. I tried laying down and getting a nap in, and once again they went away.

For some reason, it was even more devastating than the last round. They hadn't been difficult to get through, but they weren't exactly a walk in the park. I had gotten myself emotionally ready to go through with everything, and then it all went away. I was starting to wonder how many more times I would go through getting my hopes up, working to stay comfortable, and then being stuck again. We needed to reschedule our next check-in anyway since my mom needed to be at Dulles about the same time as the next day's appointment and there was no way it was going to work out with rush hour traffic on the Beltway, so we made our way to what would have been my Week 40 check-in.

We get in and it turned out that I had dilated another centimeter, but it didn't feel like enough given what I had been through. A lot of people think a slow labor is easy, and while physically it wasn't too bad, I was emotionally drained. The midwife brought up the possibility of scheduling an induction, and I told her I would be fine with it even though I had been asking to have a natural birth. My mom joked before she left to discuss it with a doctor at the hospital that today would be great, and lo and behold, our wish was granted. Luckily, I had just enough presence of mind to suggest grabbing the hospital bags on our way out, so we were ready to go.

The doctor's office happens to be right next to the hospital, so within minutes we were in the labor and delivery admitting office and then getting checked out again by the midwife on call to decide if she was okay with admitting me. I had already known that I would need an IV for antibiotics, so really the question was whether I was okay with the effects of the Pitocin and needing to be continuously monitored. At the time, I thought I could handle it, so we decided to go for it.

At 5pm, IV #1 gets started and I don't know if it was the nurse or just how swollen I had gotten by the end of the pregnancy, but it hurt. A lot. And nothing is less reassuring than seeing your ass-kicking ICU nurse mother cringe at the job done on an IV. Motherly concern or professional surprise? Either way, I was pretty sure that at some point the pain of the needle jabbing my hand would distract me for better or for worse. More on that later.

The Pit gets started along with my antibiotics, and the nurse was kind enough to start me off at the lowest dose possible and kick it up periodically until my contractions seemed to be doing well on their own. For a couple hours, the contractions were easier than what I had been going through at home. And though we tried to hold it in, my mom and I got a good laugh hearing a woman across the hall yelling "Owie!" during some intense labor. There's just something comical about hearing something a toddler would use. She definitely was making it a lot harder on herself than it needed to be, with a lot of high pitched screams that cascaded throughout the unit. We joked about going in and offering some help, because she definitely sounded like she needed it.

Around 7pm, the shift changes and I meet Morgan, the nurse who will be helping us all night. She and my mom talked shop a bit, including how far she drives to get up to Alexandria since my mom was looking at moving closer, and she mentions that Books on CD make the drive easier. "I have one right now that's so good I drove the long way home and then kept circling the block trying to keep listening. It's really long though, and part of a series--" and I blurt out "Outlander?!" and we all collapse into a fit of raving and giggles because really, how can you not love the Scottish hotness that is Jamie Fraser? That was the first sign that I was going to love having her on my labor team. She also made a point of checking in with me before starting any nursing care to see exactly how I wanted things to go, which was really reassuring. She pretty much continued to be awesome the whole night.

Not too long after that, the Pit was strong enough to get some more serious contractions going, and though nothing was terribly painful yet, they had to keep backing down the dosage because apparently my body responds quite well to it with contractions back to back. Then my mom bumped the IV while helping me pee and you would have thought I had suddenly jumped to being ready to push with the chewing out I gave her. So when we get back out of the bathroom she asked Morgan to redo it (figuring she'd be a little more competent than her predecessor) before my next round of antibiotics was due. Unfortunately that happened to be the same time as the all holy run to Chipotle for all the nurses, and since I was her only patient and everyone else had 2, she was the one leaving (did I mention I couldn't eat solid food at this point, and my mom decides to add in an order for her own burrito? cruelty, I tell you!). In the meantime, someone else tries to get IV #2 started only to discover that my body was really not wanting to cooperate, so yet another nurse comes in to try it out. They get the needle placed, and all seems well with the world. Until Morgan gets back and tries to start the meds running again...and nothing happens. Because this needle didn't work either. Lovely. IV #3 finally gets going, but at this point I've been off Pit for an hour and the contractions have stopped almost completely. I'm feeling like a human voodoo doll, and poor Andy is nauseous because he hates needles but stays by my side so I can focus on him and stay calm through each stab with the needle. The midwife for the evening shift comes in at 10 to check me out and break my water, and I've only opened up another centimeter after 4 hours of Pit. Luckily, breaking the water seems to be the magic ticket, because things really start to take off.

For the next couple hours, things are intense. Really intense. I'm past the point where most of the labor aids we brought with us (a fountain, a birthing ball, and so on) are going to be helpful, but Andy keeps talking me through my breathing, staying right by my side. Eventually I figure out I'm getting through each surge by focusing on his face, eyes locked breathing right beside me so I can hold on to his strength. We kept going like that for a long time, his face inches away from mine, showing me all the love in the world, with the sound of waves in the background on a sound machine. There were a couple times that I was doubting myself, unsure if I could make it without something for the pain. But Andy told me "I know you're strong enough to do this, but if you want to get some medication, it's okay." And something about having the encouragement to go on and the permission to get relief if I wanted to gave me the strength to choose not to use the narcotics and keep going.

Then suddenly things pick up even more. I'm struggling to find a position that doesn't hurt, and now it's my mom talking me through each contraction, showing me the way through. But as I'm struggling and moving around, the monitor that I'm hooked up to keeps shifting, so the nurses can't keep tabs on my contractions or Brianna's heart rate. And this nurse (who should be renamed Wicked Bitch of the Hospital instead of Agatha) keeps coming in to adjust the straps and the sensors, and won't even let me get through some of the tougher contractions before diving in. With this kind of pain, I can only tolerate certain types of touch from people I know and love dearly, so a stranger coming in and getting in my space isn't exactly welcome. My mom had to actually swat her hands away a couple times when she simply wouldn't leave me alone. The only good thing to come out of what she did was that the Pitocin was turned down several times because of how closely the contractions were showing up on the monitor.

There are only so many times you can turn down a dosage before you hit the minimum the pump is capable of producing. I had reached that point, as low as the IV would allow but with contractions going full strength and right on top of one another, so there was a chance the IV would be capped off and I would be sailing on my own. I was desperate to get in the shower and try using the water and heat to soothe me, but when you're on Pit, the baby must be monitored because the heart rate can suddenly change for the worse, which is when C-sections tend to be needed. But just in case it might be doable, my mom asks if I can get into the shower since the Pitocin is getting turned off. Thankfully, the midwife was okay with it just one time until I needed to get round three of antibiotics, and then I would have to stay in bed. For 30 minutes, I would be free of the IV and those incredibly confining straps. I was so sick of the pressure they were putting on my belly that I was nearly in tears, begging to have them taken off but too afraid to rip them off myself.

After a fun round of "hide the IV in a glove smaller than my wrist" so everything stays sterile while I'm wet, I crawl into the shower. It was soothing to a certain extent, but the contractions were so intense at that point that it was all I could do to remain upright. They hadn't really slowed down much by that point, so I was still just shifting from one position to another by the time the next one started. The time seemed to pass quickly, and by the time I was sicking of being uncomfortable, it was time to get out.

The thing we had forgotten about from my false labor escapades is just much a shower can move things along for me. I keep struggling through each contraction, struggling to keep from absolutely losing it and dissolving into a puddle on the floor. My mom is talking me through each one, pushing me to keep ahead of the pain that's coming and regroup with the fleeting lulls between each contraction. Each time it feels like I'm near drowning, about to lose control, unable to swim to safety and nothing to grab to pull myself away from the overpowering strong current. At this stage everything is kind of hazy, but I remember counting random sequences of numbers between 4 and 9, distracting myself by making new patterns every time. Because that's how a math geek handles contractions, obviously.

I'm going along like that for what felt like ages but was probably less than a half hour when suddenly I have to go to the bathroom so badly it distracts me from the awful contractions. But nothing happens. And suddenly we realize that I don't need to go -- I'm wanting to push. I'm fighting the urge because surely I'm not there yet, panting to give myself something else to do, but it's all so instinctual that there's no way in hell that panting will last me more than a couple minutes. So I decide to test the waters and give a little push. Holy instincts, Batman! It hurts but it feels right, and seriously, it hurts a lot but if I don't push soon I might just go crazy.

My mom is yelling over her shoulder, "Uh, she's trying to push, Morgan! Call the midwife!" and suddenly everyone is moving a lot faster. The midwife comes in to check everything out and I'm not quite there, just a tiny lip of the cervix still sitting around Brianna's head. So she and Morgan get everything set up on the sterile table and I'm back up on the bed, bearing down every so slightly with each contraction because that's the only way I can handle the intensity of the urges.

Finally, just before 3am, everything is ready. Andy and my mom are at each leg, ready to support me when I'm not pushing, and I'm being told to start. I get into it with every ounce of strength in my body, getting as many as I can with each contraction and feeling things starting to stretch and burn. My mom is counting through each push for me, telling me that Brianna is crowning already, and then Andy is counting for me, back in his role of being my rock to hold on to. All of a sudden the stretching burn gives way to the greatest pain I have ever experienced in my life. It was like having every sunburn of my life condensed into one moment and wrapped around my hoo-ha. I'm trying to push despite the pain, but each one is more and more painful, and I let out an ear-splitting primal scream, because there is nothing else my body can do to convey the agony I was feeling. But before I can get carried away with another scream, the midwife gets my attention and tells me I need to push, and suddenly I am back on track.

Just a few more pushes and even more intense pain, and suddenly I am holding the most beautiful baby girl in my arms, tears streaming down my face as Andy and I see our daughter for the first time. She is absolutely perfect, like her daddy in so many ways, and we are instantly in love. From that moment on, everything but Brianna is a little bit hazy for me, but I do remember my mom cutting her cord, the wide eyed look she gave us as she nursed for the first time in my arms, and the tears in Andy's eyes when he held her. My mom gave us some alone time to get to know Brianna while she called everyone to share the news, and I can't imagine a happier way to spend the first couple hours of her life.

Everything was quiet in the room after the midwife and Morgan got me fixed up (a first-degree tear - no surprise with that short of a delivery) and settled, though when she went to get me back on Pitocin to help my uterus contract, the IV had blown AGAIN. So six needle pokes and three failed IVs left me with a shot in the ass instead, which was infinitely better than more IV. All in all, I don't know that I could handle another birth with continuous monitoring, but with the incredible support of my mom and Andy, I got through it and managed to do it without cursing, telling Andy I hated him, or threatening to kill someone.