This past month has been the most amazing, emotional, overwhelming, and exhausting one of my life. We are thrilled to have our little Elliott in our family now! I find myself crying almost every day, sometimes more than once mostly because I'm so in love, or I'm terrified he's growing up too fast and I'm not soaking in every moment enough, but also often because I'm overwhelmed with exhaustion, frustration and pain.
HE IS SO CUTE! We were really terrified of having an ugly baby, but we feel pretty lucky because he is perfect and has hair, and also, I don't think even if he was ugly I would notice because I'm just so in awe. It is a very surreal feeling and even now, a month later when I look at him after he's had a nap or something and I've been doing something else and I come back to pick him up I have a renewed feeling of "oh yeah, this is MY incredibly adorable baby! This. Is. For. REAL!" He has grown up so much already and Nate thinks it is hilarious every time I look at pictures of him in the hospital and start crying and blubbering about him growing up too fast. His noises are hilarious, we love his assortment of squeals, squeaks, grunts and sighs. He is very alert and awake quite a bit for a newborn (not always something I'm a fan of), he picked up on nursing within an hour of life and it has become his favorite hobby (also not always something I'm a fan of), luckily he is becoming more efficient at it now so each feeding now lasts about 40 minutes instead of a couple of hours. Nights are still very hit and miss and we celebrate when we can get 3 hours of sleep at one time, or a stretch of being awake that lasts less than 2-3 hours. His faces are killer cute! Now I totally understand all those moms who flood my facebook feed with pics of their baby! I have an overwhelming desire to document every face, every body part, every noise, EVERYTHING that he does, I don't have any pics of his dirty diapers yet, but I wouldn't put it past me to get one just to document. (BTW, in an effort to avoid doing that to those of you who don't care for pics of an adorable baby 7 times a day from us, we have created separate FB and instagram accounts for him so you can choose to follow that only if you're interested.)
Besides falling super in love with our child, this time has also made me fall even more in love with Nate. I felt like the pregnancy brought us even closer together but having the baby here even more so. It is just an amazing this to see him so enamored with the little human we made and being a cute daddy!
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| At a few hours old |
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| Resting in the hospital with dad |
I'm also feeling so loved by all our family and friends and that they are so excited for us. We have received so much help especially from my mom and Nate's mom when they each flew here--help that looking back I don't think I could've survived without!
Now for a detailed story of his delivery, so you can stop reading now if you don't care how he got here, just that he got here (this was my general sentiment every time I've read or listened to most birth stories before I was pregnant, so I totally don't blame you.) But for some reason once you've been through it, or are planning on doing so soon, these stories become more interesting, plus I just like telling it so here it is...
Birth Story:
His arrival came on the day we had been hoping for, the day the new labor and delivery wing at the hospital opened, January 19, which was the day after my due date. Up until then I had been avoiding anything that might bring labor on to ensure we got the nice new rooms. That morning though, I broke out the evening primrose oil, raspberry tea, and spicy food, in an effort to get him out of me! Well, it worked! On that day I went in to work, and Nate worked from home in case he needed to rush to the hospital. I left work early because I was feeling a little nausea, but no contractions or anything that I thought might be early labor.
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| What I did while waiting for labor to start to try to be patient and distract myself |
When I got home I was taking a nap, and was awoken by my water breaking (4:15 pm), like the in the movies kind of water breaking, that soaked me and my bed through. I didn't freak out and run to the hospital, because I hadn't had any contractions at all yet, but called the hospital to try to contact the midwife on call, (who didn't answer until we had left three messages). Turns out they were worthless anyway, because they just told me not to rush in until my contractions were bad enough that I couldn't talk through them or painful enough I wanted some medication for the pain. I wish they would've said get your butt in here! So I started on my early labor to do list: cleaning the house, getting a massage from Nate with the lavender oil I ordered for this reason, listening to Nate's very long labor playlist and the several youtube videos for labor relaxation I had saved, painting my finger nails, baking brownies for the nursing staff, reading or listening to the several books I downloaded, etc. Turns out none of this was needed! Within 50 minutes of my water breaking I was having relatively painless contractions ~ every five minutes. But they escalated quickly, and soon my mom and Nate's mom were both telling us we needed to step on it and get to the hospital (which we did and Nate arrived to the hospital in busy traffic in only 9 minutes, usually it's a 20 minute drive). Good thing, because by the time we got in the car I was screaming for an epidural because the very frequent contractions had now become extremely painful.
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| I recommend all of these things when trying to get labor going! Sure did work for me. |
We got to the (very pretty) new floor of the hospital, where everything was chaos because no one had any idea where anything was, something we had anticipated would probably be the case if we delivered in the new wing on the first day, and had accepted because I had toured the facility and been wooed by all the amenities. At 6:30 pm they admitted me, did some initial checks (I was already dilated to 8 out of 10 cm), and got me into a delivery room (that had never been used :) ) Despite me mentioning several dozen times since the moment I walked in my need for immediate pain relief, by the time I was in the delivery room and the doctor checked me again, I was about to start pushing (9.5 cm dilated), and the doctor said there was no way I'd be able to get an epidural in time.
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| A few hours old |
This time is now extremely hazy to me, but I do remember thinking the pain was worse than I had ever imagined it would be, and that my contractions were coming so quickly that I would only get a few seconds of relief before another one hit. Right up until about an hour before delivery, all of the pain was in my lower back, which has to do with the position of the baby, and it makes the pain more severe, but closer to delivery he must have moved because the pain moved to my front for the last hour. Nathan was a champ this whole time while I was staring at him and telling him I couldn't do this and gripping his hand and arm so tightly he was probably experiencing some pain himself, he was just telling me how awesome I was doing and helping me to keep going (not that I really had any choice). When he turned just for a moment to get me my water bottle, I freaked out because gripping on to him was about the only thing that provided any relief. Within a few more minutes a midwife arrived and I started pushing for 7 minutes before our little angel was born. His shoulders got stuck and they had to pull pretty hard to get him out (this didn't take long, but sure has extended my recovery time, because I'm still feeling the effects of this). The second he arrived (8:39 pm, only 4 1/2 hours after my water broke) I got to hold him and that moment was everything that everyone said it would be, relief and joy and amazement, and SO glad the pain was over. For the rest of the night until the next day I didn't even feel tired or like sleeping, I just wanted to hold him, watch Nate hold him, and admire our little giant. He was 9 lbs. 2 oz, and 22 inches long, that put him in the 94th percentile! Nate had little interest in cutting the cord, so I did :)
After the birth
I felt very ready for labor before it came, I learned all about it, exercised often to physically prepare for it and felt mentally ready for it also. Despite knowing it would be painful, I was so sick of being pregnant, that it didn't really scare me that much. I feel like most of my preparations were in vain, because my labor went so quickly I couldn't utilize most of what I'd learned. So, if I could do it again, I would've spent all the time I put into researching labor learning about and getting mentally prepared for the week FOLLOWING the labor. I read a little about this period, but looking back I realize I was extremely unprepared for exactly how hard, overwhelming and physically painful it would be. So in an effort to inform more than just complain here is my experience.
You have to learn to breastfeed- HOLY CRAP, THIS HURTS SO FREAKING BAD!!!- everyone kept telling me that breastfeeding shouldn't hurt if he is doing it correctly, but after having several of my nurses, a lactation consultant and pediatricians confirm that I was doing it right, it still hurt like #!@$* for weeks, I shed many tears and now completely understand and won't ever judge again a mom who chooses to do formula. In addition, you have to do it while getting no sleep and being in severe pain from the labor, which even now still lingers, especially after every time I go for a walk, even if it is just down the block. Also, despite an extremely helpful husband and mother to be there, the baby is calmed almost exclusively by nursing and a 9 pound baby eats A LOT. However I can't imagine having done any of it without Nathan and my mom that first week! She cleaned and spoiled me with homemade breakfast lunch and dinner to order every day, I ate better than I ever have, which was awesome because I was also starving all the time! She also taught me how the heck to do everything and assured me that even though it was extremely difficult, that was normal and it would get better. When she left I entered a panic stage because I had to be alone the next week when Nate went to work and had no idea what I was doing. Friends from church were very gracious and brought me dinner, but it was still scary to be all alone and responsible for Elliott by myself. I survived somehow and was rescued again this past week by Nate's mom's arrival.
I can't believe it has almost been a month! I'm excited now that I feel a bit more capable of utilizing the rest of my very short maternity leave to do cute things with him instead of just stay in and sleep/read/watch TV. Of course, the freezing cold weather we've been having is not super helpful for that.
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