Where was I? (Updated)

It's amazing how hard it is to find time for updates...

So,after I got to see my beautiful baby for the first time, J got to hold him near me for a bit, and my buddy the anesthesiologist took a wonderful "first family photo" of all three of us from above. He says he's gotten used to taking that shot, and it really came out great. So he gets some cred as a photographer as well.

Then it was time for the baby and J to leave me to get stitched back up. J went out to the hall to call all the parents, and baby went to get all checked out for a bit. I'm not sure how long all that took, but soon enough I was being wheeled to recovery and begging for some ice chips (I hadn't had anything to eat or drink for 12 hours, and even then my breakfast had been pretty meager, plus I hadn't eaten anything except for a breakfast bar for dinner, in the taxi on the way to the hospital.) But I wasn't hungry, just thirstier than I had ever been in my life.

Soon enough J arrived again, and they brought the baby in for some skin-to-skin contact. They put him right on my chest and sure enough, he did the amazing breast crawl, scooting himself up and over to my breast, where he didn't really latch on yet but plopped his head down for a little rest. It was so beautiful. I think he may have sucked a little, but I can't really remember. We did get to hang out for a while, and then they took him off for the last time, to have a proper bath. J went with him and took more pictures. They kept him in the nursery for a little while longer and J needed to get something to eat - he hadn't had any dinner and by this time it was midnight. So he went to the diner across the street for some pancakes - I thought that was pretty funny, but he also said he just needed a few minutes to breathe and process everything, and I was fine with letting him go.

When he came back it was time to head to our room, where they soon brought the baby as well. We were on the list for a private room, which we had to pay extra for, and fortunately one was available. Even better, we arrived after 1 am, so they ended up not charging us for the first night - score! This was the best money we ever spent (well, after all the money we paid to CC.RM I suppose...) - I felt so bad for the people in the shared rooms. It was so wonderful to have the room all to ourselves, and to be able to have J sleep there with us as well, especially since I wasn't able to move much. He took care of all the changing and bringing the baby to me for feedings. Plus the private room included the most amazing room service food with a real menu to choose from - not just hospital food. We were living in the lap of luxury for 3 days and it was great to be so pampered as we got used to the new baby. We brought him home on Friday the 22nd (the day we were supposed to do the c-section, and one week before his due date...), and J took off 2 weeks to take care of us both. He has been phenomenal - I don't know what I would do without him. He just went back to work this week, but still takes care of dinner and everything when he comes home.

The baby did great latching on for feedings almost from the start, and we had great help from the nurses too. He has been eating really well since then, and is gaining weight at a good rate. He is very sweet, and mostly just sleeps and eats of course. Today he has been a little fussy - wanting to eat almost every hour since 6:30 this morning - I just let him eat whenever he wants and am getting a bit sore. But he is usually on a pretty good schedule of eating every 3 hours, so hopefully he will get back to that soon.

What else can I tell you? I am still pretty sore, and sometimes have pain, from the incision, but overall I have to say that I don't mind missing out on the vaginal labor. I've been hearing and reading all kinds of horror stories of being ripped apart down there, so maybe I got a pretty good deal after all. As many of you said, once I had my little sweet baby in my arms, I just didn't care how he got there.

Finally, some of you asked his name, or for pictures - I'm not going to post either. Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, but there are enough identifying facts about me on this blog, and with the whole egg donor thing...well, I don't know. I've become a super-protective mama hen, and I don't think that's a bad thing!

Update for Soulshine:
Ok, he's absolutely adorable, of course! In fact, several people on the street have even said that they aren't "baby people", but that our guy is seriously cute. He has a full head of dark hair (only curly when scrubbed dry but combs straight) and J is obsessed with brushing it (as he says, he doesn't really have much of his own to comb). He makes the cutest little faces. We are hoping that he has his dad's cleft chin - there is a little indentation that seems like it could go that way. And he weighed 6 lbs 13 oz at birth and now is up to about 7 lbs 5 oz. He was 20 inches long - so pretty long and lean. And since he was squished in there sideways, he loves to keep his legs crossed Indian style with his feet all tucked up - in fact one of the doctors at the hospital was worried that one of his feet had a problem straightening out, but our pediatrician says that he is perfect. Of course we think so!

Here we are!

Wow, time really does fly when you have a new baby. I'm sorry for keeping you all hanging and I do appreciate all the lovely comments. Everything is great here and the little one is right here next to me on the couch, my usual perch for computing. I don't know how much time I'll have to write this entry, so let me just start with the arrival story.

At last update, we were expecting to do a c-section on Friday the 22nd, due to his transverse position, as well as slightly low fluid and cord around the neck. Well, on Monday the 18th I went for my OB visit and my blood pressure was elevated. She was concerned enough to send me to the hospital for observation, though was pretty sure I would be sent home after a few hours. I went to the hospital and spent about 5 hours in triage, being monitored. An ultrasound showed that fluid was a bit lower, but baby was fine. However, my blood pressure kept spiking, so they admitted me overnight. After a very sleepless night (blood pressure being monitored every 30 minutes at first, and then at 1:00 am being moved to a shared room with a woman on bedrest who kept coughing and using her call button to ask for various things...), I was told by the doctors that they wanted to go ahead and do the c-section that day. There just wasn't any point in waiting and my blood pressure was worrisome enough that they didn't want me to get any worse. So I called J at work and gave him the news (he had come by the evening before to bring me some stuff and visit with me, but had gone home to sleep and get in a good day at work). He frantically finished up as much work as he could and joined me by mid-afternoon. C-section was scheduled for 4 pm, but of course we ended up waiting much longer. I was surprisingly calm, even as we heard that the c-section before us was taking longer than usual due to some complications. At 8:00pm we were finally taken back to be prepped. It turned out that the doctor from my practice who was on call was not my actual doctor, but one who I like very much, so I was pleased. She had been checking on me all day and was nice and calm, so I guess that helped.

Going into the operating room was surreal. It was so bright. I climbed up on the table all by myself and they got me all hooked up. (I had had an IV since my arrival the night before...) The worse part was getting the spinal injection. Actually, it was the numbing shot before the spinal that was the worst, and then I didn't feel anything. J was not in the room with me yet, and I was squeezing the doctor between my legs to brace for the pain. It only lasted a second. Then I got all laid out and the sheet was raised. After a few more minutes, they let J come in. When he saw me, I think he freaked out a bit. At first I didn't recognize him because of the mask and hat (his smurf suit, as the nurse called it), but then I did, and he was so pale and almost crying when he got to me. Later he said it was just so freaky to see me all exposed like that, and it seemed all too real. Anyway, I was so happy to have him there right beside me, and I squeezed his hand the whole time.

The most important person to me at that moment however was the anesthesiologist. At first I was kind of nervous when I met him before going into the OR, because he looked like he was about 12. He was very nice though. I told him that I often get faint with medical procedures and that I was also afraid of puking. He told me to let him know at the faintest sign of nausea, which I did almost immediately at the beginning of the procedure. He put something in my IV and within seconds I felt better. Later on, I started to feel faint and told him again, and he kept me from passing out.

As I have heard before, I could not feel any pain or even discomfort, just moving around. It was totally weird. I was looking into J's eyes and squeezing his hand, waiting for some news. Then they said "the baby is out!". We just looked at each other because it was so quiet and we didn't really believe it. It seemed like an eternity as they took him over to the warming station to get him rubbed down. J did not look over the sheet to see him coming out - he did not want to see my open belly and I totally understand. So he waited with me. Then we heard the most beautiful sound in the world - our little baby crying. Of course we both started to cry at that moment. A minute or two later, they invited J over to see the baby. He went and took pictures - I told him to bring me the camera so I could see. So that was my first glimpse at my baby boy - through our digital camera. It was still surreal. Finally, the nurse brought him over to me, all bundled up, and I got to see his beautiful face. Of course I cried again - I could not believe this was finally my baby, in the flesh. It was pure joy.

I'm going to have to leave you there for now - we need to go out now. But I will finish the update later...

Big update, small post

Thanks so much for the well wishes for tomorrow. It turns out that tomorrow will be the day....that we bring Mr. Bean home! He actually arrived on Tuesday night and we are doing great. I will give more of an update when I can - right now I'm super tired and need to go to sleep. I cannot believe that I have my beautiful baby boy right here beside me as I type. It has been a totally surreal week. More to come...

One more week???????

Ok, so the little guy is not actually breech, but more transverse, with his head up under my ribs (as I suspected) but the rest of him sideways. He is also face up, which meant that they didn't have a good place to grip him to do the version. More importantly, he has the cord around his neck, which is probably why he is staying up there - he knows better than to move down. And my fluid is a little on the low side. For all of these reasons, the doctor did not think it was safe to do the version. So, we are scheduled for a c-section next Friday morning, one week early, so that I hopefully won't go into labor before then. This is somewhat disappointing to me, but ultimately of course I just want the guy to come out safe and sound. And at lunch, J. reminded me of how grateful we should be to even be in this position, and of course he is right.

And now I know that I only have one week to get all the last minute details, both baby-related and work-related, taken care of! I can't believe we are going to meet our baby in just one week!

Upside down....

...or should I say, right side up. The little guy is breech. The doctor is giving me until Friday to see if he'll turn on his own, but then I'm scheduled for an external version. And then, if that doesn't work, they want to do a c-section the following Friday (at 39 weeks), assuming he doesn't turn on his own during that week. I'm pretty peeved, and nervous. I know this happens all the time, but still. I'm going to go to yoga tomorrow morning and hope that some good poses will help, and will also ask the teacher for a recommendation for an acupuncturist who specializes in turning breech babies. I've been doing cat/cow pose at home, as well as "butt in the air" pose, whatever that is called. And pelvic tilts. And playing music down low with headphones. Will go do a cold pack up by his head and a warm compress down below in just a minute, when I get into bed. Any other thoughts?

I'm certainly not complaining too much, because this pregnancy has been pretty blessedly easy-peasy up to this point. But I really don't want to have a c-section, although several people have told me that it is just not that bad. And I know there is still time for him to turn. If he doesn't turn with the version, I think I might ask the doctor whether I can wait a little longer before doing the c-section, just in case he decides to turn on his own. I think they are just worried that if he hasn't turned by this week, he will be too big to do so.

Any thoughts?

Another sleepless night update

Here I am awake in the middle of the night again, same old, same old. But I do seem to have such a hard time writing entries that this seems like as good a time as any.

Things are still really busy, but I'm less stressed than I was last time I wrote. First of all, we ended up finding another place to rent in the summer at Ca.pe C.od. Actually, it is the cottage right next door to the one we wanted originally, and it turns out that we really lucked out. I did not realize that the one we wanted at first actually has another house right in front of it, blocking a direct view of the ocean, whereas ours is the last house in the row of cottages and does not have a blocked view. So it seems that this situation turned out for the best. It is still a long way off, but I'm so excited about our first little vacation as a family!

On the hiring of two people to teach for me in the fall, we are making progress. A dismal job market in academia in general, and even more so in my field, is bringing out lots of people who are desperate to work. I feel really bad about that for them, and it really sucks that we can't pay them more money. But I do think we'll end up finding a couple of people who are willing to take the jobs. I hope we can take care of everything before I'm done for the semester, but if not my colleagues will finish up the process without me.

In terms of finishing the semester, I am now done with the actual teaching - have covered all the material that I needed to cover and am moving on to final presentations from the students. This is particularly good because it means that I can sit with my feet up for the next three class days, which will be my last. Yes, I just have to get through 3 more days over the next two weeks! I will most likely go out to campus at least one more day though, to wrap up loose ends and possibly meet with job applicants, but I am almost done.

Our due date is in three weeks! I am 37 weeks as of yesterday and therefore officially full term. I truly can't believe that we have made it this far - it seems so surreal. And it's even stranger to think that we really are going to have a baby in this apartment soon. This weekend we are working on final preparations - our glider arrived the other day and needs to be put together. And we got a narrow, tall bookshelf to put in a corner to provide some additional storage, so that also needs to get assembled. And then we will work on getting everything put away and the room all tidied up. I still haven't gotten any curtains or a rug - who knows when that will happen! We are going to make a list of all the final things we need to buy and will take care of that over the next week or so. But even if the little guy arrived tomorrow, we would be fine - just need to run out to the 24 hour drug store around the corner for some diapers!

That's it for this late night update. I hope I can fall back asleep soon, but at least I can sleep as late as I want to in the morning...

Can't sleep...

I've been meaning to write another post for a while now, but it has been crazy. Right now I'm up in the middle of the night (morning really), with the worst.reflux.ever. I stopped taking Zan.tac because I was worried it was making me dizzy and fuzzy-headed, but this is a nightmare. Although I had been popping Tum.s all night, that just didn't help. So I got up to take some Zan.tac and am remaining sitting up until it kicks in.

So, we have been trying to find a beach place out on Cap.e Co.d for two weeks at the end of the summer. We are getting a late start on it, so of course the choice is limited for anything on the water. This is the first time we have ever done this, but are hoping to start a little family tradition and of course we'll want a little vacation by then. After much, much searching and stressing (I literally spent 12 hours combing listings and contacting people last Monday), I finally had a place that we wanted and was in contact with the owner, telling her we wanted the place. I was getting stressed because she didn't get back to me by email over the weekend, but J was telling me to relax, that we couldn't expect everyone to reply to email over the weekend (again, this was a private owner...) and that it would surely be fine. So of course now I got up at 3:30 and checked my email, only to find out that sure enough, the place had been rented. She also lists it with an agency, and they had booked the first week we wanted. That sucks. So now I'm back to the beginning, sort of. I'm revisiting the other contenders we had, and hopefully some of them are still in the running. But that was the last place up in the area we thought we really wanted to be, whereas we aren't as sure of the location of these other places. I just want to be on the beach though, so hopefully we'll at least get that. Talk about stress.

More stress: As you may recall, I am a college professor. I am taking the entire fall semester off and had lined up our current adjunct to teach my classes for me, plus needed to hire someone else to teach a few more courses in my discipline (I am the only full-time person who teaches it). It was going to be hard enough to find someone for those 2 extra classes, considering we pay adjuncts complete cr@p, but now I find out that the person who was going to take my classes is not coming back in the fall after all. (She has been adjuncting for us for a year, and found something that is more convenient and pays better - I can't say I blame her...) So now I have the added stress of finding not one but two people to cover my area in the fall. Ugh. Fortunately my colleagues are helping me out, but it is not going to be a fun process, especially if I want to be involved in the final selection process. Because I'm only going to be on campus for 2 1/2 more weeks! Yikes.

In other news, we went to our 2-day intensive childbirth class this weekend. We weren't able to go to the weekly ones in the evenings, so opted for this weekend-intensive instead, and it was indeed....intense. But good. We learned a lot and got to know a lot about how our hospital works. Plus we got a tour and filled out our pre-admission forms. Of everyone in the class, our due date is the earliest, and that really got me thinking about how we don't have much time left. I really could go anytime now!

Speaking of that, I am just over 36 weeks now. I owe you some pictures and J finally sent me a couple, though he still needs to give me some of the later ones with my sweet kitty before we lost him. But here's one from yesterday.


I'm definitely getting big, but people keep telling me how small I look for 36 weeks. I am measuring exactly on target, and as of last week's OB visit had gained exactly 20 pounds since the beginning of the pregnancy. Of course, I was already carrying an extra 10 pounds before starting IVFs three years ago, and the treatments put on another 10 pounds, so I had plenty of extra padding to start with. I'm looking forward to lots of walks with Mr. Bean in the park this summer. And hopefully some along the beach as well!

Ok, I'm hoping that the fire within me has subsided enough for me to go back to bed now. I've been up for 2 hours and that is not going to be fun tomorrow. Or should I say, today.