3 months

So sorry for the absence. It gets to hard to blog sometimes with a little one. We are all doing pretty well. Beezus is 3 months old now and growing like a weed. He is SO tall. We recently took out the 6-9 month clothing. As of last week he was 13 lbs 13 oz and 65 cm. He looks pretty skinny and long. People on the street think he’s 5-6 months old! So sad, my little baby is getting to be so big. I can’t believe he’s so big already. It feels like he was born just yesterday. He smiles and babbles quite a bit, and he’s been laughing for about a month now. It’s the sweetest sound in the entire world. He hasn’t started rolling over yet but his neck control is amazing since we baby wear so much. He’s starting to play with his toys a lot more too, which is adorable.

The amazing sleep we were previously getting seems to have faded in the past couple weeks. My suspicion is we’re going through an early 4 month sleep regression. He’s now waking 2-3 times a night, with his longest stretch being about 4 hours. It’s so hard. I was always the type of person who needed 10 hours a sleep a day so this chronic sleep deprivation is killing me! Usually in the early morning I bring him into our bed and he uses my boob as a pacifier. Which I’m not very keen on because it gets so raw but it seems nothing else will soothe him. When he wakes in the night he screams hysterically, but he’s not even awake. Nothing else will soothe him but my boob. He will nurse for 30 seconds and go right back to sleep, so it doesn’t seem like he’s hungry at all. Just wants some boob comfort. Poor baba.

We’re having a hard time getting him down for naps during the day. He does LOVE the carrier though, so it’s an easy sleep in there. During the day I feel like we are just in complete shambles though. I’ve read all these books on sleep and routines and it seems like nothing is working at all. Like yesterday he had five 30 minute naps. Like what’s up with that? And they were all in my arms/ on my boob. It seems he wakes up after 30 minutes and sometimes I can put him back to sleep with my boob but sometimes not. Right now he’s sleeping in our bed. I laid down next to him and nursed him to sleep and then was able to slip away after putting him back to sleep twice. So he’s been sleeping for 2.5 hours now which is fantastic. I guess eventually we will have a routine and maybe sleep will get easier… right??

Aside from Beezus, life has been a bit hard. I definitely have some postpartum depression, which has been rough. It’s hard to say though if that’s from sleep deprivation or what though. I have a counselling appointment for next month, so maybe that will help. We found out 2 weeks ago that my mom’s cancer has most likely returned, so that hasn’t helped. My mom only has me so I’m not sure how I will be able to juggle both my baby and my mom’s chemo and surgery after care. She had stage 3 Ovarian and stage 1b endometrial cancer 1.5 years ago. It was pretty rough but the surgery and 6 months of chemo were a success. But 2 weeks ago the surgical oncologist found a vaginal tumour. It could always be benign, but not likely, given her history and it’s quick appearance. My mom is usually really hard to deal with, and when she was going through cancer she was absolutely awful and abusive. I brushed it off at the time but now I have a child and I don’t want to show him that it’s okay for people to treat you badly. On top of that she’s saying she refuses to get anymore care is the cancer has returned. Ugh, it’s all just a mess.

I’m glad I have such a beautiful face to look at all day though. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 weeks. This baby is pretty awesome.

Well Beezus is amazing. He’s meeting all his weekly milestones. AND. He’s SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!! We are very very very blessed. It started about 3 weeks ago when he started sleeping 5 hour stretches… and then 6… and then 7… and now EIGHT. EIGHT HOURS OF STRAIGHT SLEEP!!!!! Oh how we are blessed!! I’ve always been a big sleeper, so this sleep deprivation especially during the first week was quite a blow to my system. So this has just been incredible. He usually falls asleep around 10:00 pm so that means he’s waking up at a decent hour! I think a big part is because we’ve started swaddling him. We tried it the first few days he was home and it seemed like he hated it, so we stopped, but we tried again last week and BAM. That’s some good sleep!!

He’s such a happy little boy, he’s been smiling for weeks and his coo-ing is getting out of control. He loves talking, and he gives us such big smiles when he sees us. I think he might start laughing soon!

He does have his fun fussy times of day though, especially at night. Those witching hours are just awful. But we bounce and bounce on the yoga ball and after like 2-3 hours he finally falls asleep. He loves being carried in the wrap. I LOVE wearing him now that I’m recovered enough. My wife and I have to alternate between wearing him because we both love it so much. I love baby wearing. It makes me feel like he’s back in my belly haha.

He still eats like a champ. Aside from the first week, breastfeeding has come very easy to us and I am eternally grateful for that. I love breastfeeding. I love the bond that we have, and I like just being able to whip out my boob any time he needs a snack. Occasionally I pump a bottle so my wife can feed him, and he does amazing with the bottle as well. We’ve been fortunate that he can easily switch back and forth from boob and bottle. I think that’s because he was started on the bottle in the NICU.

My wife went back to work last week, after 6 weeks parental leave, and I was worried about being alone with him, but I think we’re starting to get the hang of it. I wouldn’t say he’s really on a schedule yet, but he’s pretty predictable with his nap times which helps. There’s obviously not a whole lot we can do since he’s still a newborn but I love taking him out for walks in the carrier. He absolutely hates his carseat, even though it’s one of the coziest (and expensive!) ones out there. Maybe the next kid will like it!

Oh, and this child is growing like a beast. at his 6w5d appointment he was 12 pounds 7 ounces and 60 cm long! The Dr said he’s the size of a 4 month old!! He’s quickly growing out of all his clothes. We just brought out his 3-6 month clothes last week and the sleepers no longer fit, since he’s too tall! So we’re now onto 6 month sleepers. I can’t believe how much money we spent on tiny little clothes that he barely (and some never!) even wore.

Overall we are doing very well. I think my hormones are starting to adjust. My postpartum  bleeding finally stopped last week, which was nice. My emotions are still kind of all over the place I guess. I think I’m finally coming to terms with my birth story. I think what finally got me over it was really looking into what was wrong with Emery when he was born. He was only in the NICU for 48 hours and I was still pretty out of it during that time, so I had forgotten the chaos that surrounded his stay there. It was all so overwhelming. I forgot that they started questioning us and testing him for bleeding disorders because his head was so bad, and that he almost needed a blood transfusion. I feel like a bad mom for forgetting all that. I thought it was a simple hematoma from being stuck, but it was actually a subgaleal hematoma or hemorrhage, which is extremely dangerous. 25% of babies die from it. The paediatrician never told us that, but obviously I understand why, but at the same time no one really told us the seriousness of the condition. Those two days were so confusing for us both. Sometimes I wonder if it would have changed if maybe I hadn’t been induced (right before the C-section the Dr said, “oh good thing we didn’t start the oxytocin!” and the nurse said, “Oh I started that 6 hours ago!”), or if maybe I had been induced the week before instead, when his head was a little smaller. I know, I should stop thinking about the what ifs, but it’s so hard, especially when I know that Beezus did NOT actually get here safely. He is safe now though. I know I should just feel grateful, and I do feel in my heart like we are so blessed, but since the very beginning of my pregnancy, we have always come just so close to losing him, and that realization is extremely frightening.  I couldn’t imagine our lives without him. I’ve never loved someone the way I love him. I can’t believe we have been given this incredible gift of being his mommies. ❤

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 weeks old

The last 4 weeks have gone by so fast!! I can’t believe how quickly Beezus has been growing. At his Dr’s appointment a week ago he was up to 9 lbs 8 oz and 57 cm!! He’s quickly outgrowing his 0-3 month clothes. I can’t believe how big he is. My milk took a week to really come in, and luckily since then we haven’t had any issues with feeding or supply. His latch is really great and he LOVES to eat. After the first two weeks my nipples haven’t been sore either. I have been very blessed. The first two weeks I was in tears because they hurt so badly, and I expected them to be sore for quite a while longer, with everything I had heard from other women, but luckily they have been fine. I’ve been pumping a bottle a day as well so my wife can feed him in the mornings while I sleep. We’ve been lucky that she was able to take 6 weeks of my maternity/ parental leave so she’ll be home with us for another 2 weeks.

We’ve slowly been getting into the hang of motherhood. It really is such a beautiful thing. Every day Emery grows and develops. He started really smiling the other day, when we play with him. He also pants while he plays on his play mat. He loves playing!

Sleep has been getting better too. Evenings are harder because he’s usually fussier and sometimes he just screams but we’ve been gaining new soothing techniques which is helping. He usually sleeps from about 10:00pm-2:00am, and then 3am-6:30am. We’ve been blessed with his nighttime sleeping habits! And he’s finally sleeping in his crib at night which is a Godsend! The days are a lot harder because he won’t sleep in his crib or anywhere other than our arms. He’ll sleep in a newborn carrier wrap or sling which helps a  bit, but it’s so hard to get anything done when he won’t sleep on his own! It’s not too bad while we’re both home but when my wife goes back to work I’m not sure how I’ll manage. I’m thinking if we get some blackout curtains that might help him sleep in his crib during the day…?

My healing has been going pretty fantastic as well. The first few days were the absolute worst, and it took another week for me to be able to walk more than 5 mins, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing! My stomach muscles hurt every now and then, but not too bad. I still have a bit of a pregnant belly too, but I’m quickly losing the weight I’ve gained. Two weeks ago I was down 22 pounds, which was great! 48 more pounds to go haha! It’s still difficult to wear clothes though, since my belly gets in the way of wearing regular clothes, but maternity clothes are too big… Luckily we stay home most of the time so I can lounge in sweats haha.

My mood has been pretty great too. I think it helps having my wife here to help. There’s no way I could have done it all on my own during the day. I had the baby blues on and off for the first few weeks, but they seem to have settled down now. There’s nothing like hormones to make you feel insane. I was also pretty freaked out about my birth story, to be honest. I’m still pretty choked that I didn’t hear my baby’s first cries and I didn’t get to experience the first few moments. I thought I had been screaming from the pain which was why I hadn’t heard his first cries, but my wife said it was actually because I was drifting in and out of consciousness from the shock. I guess it seems a bit worse, but that somehow made me feel better, like it wasn’t actually my fault that I didn’t hear him cry. I kept thinking that it was my fault that he came into the world in such a brutal way, that it was my fault that I couldn’t protect him. I’ve asked my wife to tell me details about his birth over and over again, and I feel like that’s helped my healing process. But I know I’m still pretty freaked out about the whole thing. Honestly, I would like to be pregnant again one day, and I know I could do the labour all over again because that was a piece of cake! And I know people have VBACs all the time, but the Dr told me my pelvis was half the width of most women’s, and I should go straight for a C-section next time. I can’t bare the thought of going through that again…

But for now, we are perfectly happy being our little family of three. We are so blessed ❤

My Birth Story

Well Beezus is a week old now, and we are all so in love. He’s sleeping on my wife right now. He will ONLY sleep when he’s being held. It’s exhausting. We’re getting the hang of it all, hopefully the sleep issue will go away. Breastfeeding is going okay. My milk finally came in a couple days ago, so feeding has been a lot easier. I’m not sure if I ate something that made him extra gassy or if it was the formula we were supplementing with, but Beezus was extra fussy last night. Only the boob would soothe him! Good thing we have four of them!

Anyways, here’s my birth story:

On March 11, at 41w1d, I was booked in for an induction at the hospital. They were pretty busy so they didn’t get started until 2:30. I was still only a fingertip dilated. They inserted the cervidil, which is a tampon-like medication that sits next to your cervix to soften. They said because my cervix was not very favourable (less than 1 cm dilated and only 50% effaced, it could take a couple days to get going, and most likely I would go home and return in 24 hours to receive a new dose. They said the process could take 3-4 days. It was pretty alarming, finding out it would take so long, but I was looking forward to labouring at home so I accepted it. After they inserted it they told us to walk around for about 30 minutes and come back, where they would hook me up to the monitors for an hour and then we could go home. With 20 minutes of walking around I started experiencing some cramping, and my stomach became rock solid and wouldn’t ease up. It was getting really painful so they set me up on the monitors and realized I was hyper stimulating and contracting 7 times in 10 minutes. They left me like that for a couple hours in hopes it would level out but it didn’t. It was extremely painful. Even though I was having contractions, the pain was consistent and wasn’t easing up at all in between. So at around 5:00 they pulled the medication and said we weren’t going home until we had a baby.

The next step was to start me on an oxytocin drip, but they could’t start that until my contractions stopped, which they expected to. …Well the contractions didn’t stop. They slowly started feeling more like real contractions with breaks in between, and they went down to 5-6 every 10 minutes, but they weren’t lasting very long. At 7:30 Beezus’s heart rate climbed to up to 200 bpm and the nurses and Drs were getting alarmed. They weren’t sure what was going on, since now the medication was out of my system and my body had taken over. They started prepping me for bloodwork in the event of an emergency C section, which was the direction everything was going. At 9:30 the OB came to make the final assessment before sending me off for surgery. The moment she came in, Beezus’s heart rate slowed down to normal. She checked me and found I was 2 cm dilated, and she decided to break my water. That was a fun warm feeling!

After that my contractions slowed down to about 4-5 in ten minutes and were dying down in pain level. They started the oxytocin drip at around midnight I think. I laboured with pretty regular contractions on my own for a few hours. The pain was not as bad as I imagined. I think also, with having the awful reaction to the Cervidil, I didn’t think anything could be quite as painful, and I was happy to be getting breaks in between contractions! It was pretty bearable! I’m sure I could have gone longer without pain relief but I knew I’d be wanting an epidural at some point, so I got it when my contractions hurt like hell but I was still talking through them.

The anesthesiologist came in around 1:30am and gave me the epidural. It felt soooo much better. I couldn’t feel much pain at all and was able to sleep for most of the night. The nurses were really surprised and alarmed that I was able to walk to the washroom, but I figured that was just goof fortune.

Throughout the night the nurse slowly increased the oxytocin. Based on the monitors they didn’t think I was progressing very well. They didn’t want to check how far dilated I was because my water had been broken and they didn’t want to introduce bacteria. At 6:30 I said I had been feeling a rectal pressure for quite some time now, so the nurse had a look and found I was 10 cm! It was time to start pushing! I started pushing at 6:50 am. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed. They kept saying I was pushing really well. So I just kept pushing with some guidance. After 2 hours not much was happening and Beezus was getting distressed again. They called the Dr in who had a look and realized that there was no way Beezus was making his way through my pelvis. He said we could try forceps, but that most likely wouldn’t end well, or we could go straight for the C section, which he recommended. That was a no brainer, and after 2 hours of pushing I welcomed it.

It’s hard for me to explain what happened next. I was really scared and started vomiting. They rushed me in to the OR, strapped me down and started prepping me. I kept telling the anesthesiologist that I could still feel my legs and other parts of my body. He gave me the maximum strength of epidural. They brought my wife in, who was sobbing. The doctor had just told her that they would most likely need to resuscitate Beezus when they got him out. It didn’t feel too bad once they started cutting, but I could feel the pressure and it scared me. Within a few minutes it appeared something was wrong. Baby was stuck. It was a blur after that because the epidural started wearing off. I was in so much pain and started screaming. My wife said my body was being tugged all over the place and the table was moving quite a bit. They had to go in through the vaginal canal in attempt to push him back up because he was so stuck. It took a while to get him dislodged, and they had to remove my uterus to actually get him out. I didn’t hear my baby’s first cries over my own. I think that was the hardest. I didn’t get to see him right away because they whisked him away to the paediatrician. He was pretty banged up but he scored 9/10 on both his APGAR tests. They finally brought him and my wife over to me and I was able to see his beautiful face. It was all bruised up though, and my wife was so scared for me. I was screaming every   few seconds from the pain. They took my wife and baby away to the recovery room, my wife said she could just hear me screaming. They tried to give me everything they could, including Ketamine. Eventually they knocked me out and finished closing me up. It was the hardest and bravest thing I’ve ever done. I’m so happy my baby boy is here safe and we are both healthy.

Although Beezus was healthy, he had a hematoma on his head from being stuck, so he had a lot of swelling and bleeding under his scalp. They kept him in the NICU for 48 hours where they did an ultrasound to make sure he had no bleeding in his brain, which he didn’t, thank God. His face was all bruised as well. He was pretty banged up from the whole birth.

His head started to recover pretty quick and by now the hematoma has been mostly reabsorbed. The swelling and bruising is completely gone now.

So that’s my birth story. It was pretty hard to write, to be honest. Harder than I thought. The nurses and doctors kept telling us we needed to talk about it, get some closure. I was so hopped up on adrenaline the first few days in the hospital that I didn’t even think there was anything wrong, but as I’ve been writing this I can’t help but realize how hard of a story it is for me to share.

I guess I’m just glad that we’re both here safely. We have a healthy beautiful son, and I couldn’t be more proud.

 

 

 

He’s here!

Beezus was born on March 12, 2016 via emergency C-section, weighing 8 lbs 7oz, and 53 cm long. It wasn’t the labour and delivery I had wanted, but he is here now and we are both safe and healthy. We couldn’t be more blessed. He had a two day stay in NICU and we were finally discharged this afternoon and are resting at home. It feels so amazing to be home and a family of three. He’s perfect in every way. I’ll upload some pictures and write my birth story when I get a chance.

xoxo

41w1d Induction today!!

It’s amazing what a night of solid rest can do for your sanity. Yesterday we were able to get ALL our last minute errands done and I had a really great sleep. We half expected a call this morning between 7:30-8:00 letting us know that there was space for induction today. By 8:30 there hadn’t been a call so we assumed today wouldn’t be the day. I was a bit disappointed. But at 8:45 they called!! And I was relieved and excited. So I’m glad the call came late so I could actually get excited about it. We’re going to have a baby today!!  I couldn’t be more happy.

Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. This process hasn’t been an easy one, and I have really appreciated having such strong, encouraging women be a part of our journey.

Bless you all.

xoxo Robyn

41w0d Induction Stalled.

Well after a couple panic attacks and the worst sleep of my life we got to the hospital at 8:00 am for an NST and ultrasound. The locum Dr said they would call and give me a time for the induction. But when we got there the nurse said they were too backed up to do any inductions, and since Beezus is doing well I would have to wait. Kind of a relief to be honest. So we’ll just be waiting for a call, either tomorrow morning or this weekend, telling us when to come down.

It’s nice having the day to finish errands that we didn’t get around too, and also being able to sleep. Hopefully tonight yields a solid sleep.

Which means back to my breast pump and ball bouncing! I still have a little hope Beezus will come on his own. I felt some stronger back pains and a bit more cramping throughout the night and this morning, so I hope that means something. I’m just praying and praying over here! Please pray/ think happy thoughts with us!

xoxo Robyn