Adventures in Breastfeeding

The reason that I am writing this is that I feel like I was ill prepared to start breastfeeding.  For some reason, it is a taboo subject to many people and so there isn't an open dialogue about challenges that new moms face.  I have faced many challenges and have learned many tricks, and I feel that it is important that I be open and share these lessons.

I am a major proponent of breastfeeding.  Any of my classmates will tell you that.  In dietetics, it is hard to find motivated patients.  In fact, I shadowed dietitians who did nutrition counseling at a bariatric surgery center (you have to give weight loss the good ol' college try through diet and counseling with a dietitian before they will let you get the surgery) and the no show rate for patients was 50%.  Going in to have someone tell you that you are eating too much of the wrong things isn't a pleasant appointment, and most of the patients are not dedicated to making dietary change.  That is what attracted me to the field of lactation consulting.  People usually choose breastfeeding because they are highly motivated and they want to succeed.  They will seek help rather than avoiding it.  This was my ideal patient population.

The more I studied breastfeeding, the more passionate I became about it.  I wrote a paper about donor milk banking.  It can be used for adopted babies who otherwise wouldn't get breast milk, or for premature babies before their mothers own milk can come in.  I volunteered at WIC.  They had done a breastfeeding class and wanted to tabulate the results of a survey that they gave after the class.  I made a powerpoint presentation that could be played automatically in the waiting rooms of doctors' offices that told the benefits of breastfeeding for mom and baby.  I worked in the NICU during my internship and promoted the use of donor breast milk.

So it is understandable that when I had my baby that I would want to breastfeed.  And, as you will read, I have been quite determined to succeed.

Within just a few minutes of giving birth, I was breastfeeding for the first time.  It hurt some, but I figured that it was just the normal soreness that people had been telling me about.  I had shadowed a lactation consultant during my dietetics internship, so I knew several of the "tricks" to get your baby to eat better.  The first time that Gwen ate, she ate for 20 minutes...with a little prodding.  She would stop eating periodically, and I told Keith to "chicken wing her."  If you have met with a lactation consultant before, you likely know what chicken winging is.  If you have not, however, you likely think that this sounds crazy.  Keith, who had never met with or shadowed a lactation consultant, responded with, "You want me to eat her arms?"  Chicken winging is taking the baby's folded arm and moving it up and down, resembling a chicken wing.  It is gentle stimulation that can wake up a sleeping baby and encourage them to eat longer.

Thankfully I asked immediately for an appointment with the lactation consultant because by the end of the first day my nipples were bruised and slightly bleeding.  I had no idea why.  I was making sure that she had a deep latch (the baby should not only have the nipple in her mouth, but a large portion of the areola, or it will cause damage), so it didn't make sense that she was causing so much damage.  Furthermore, when you remove your nipple from the baby's mouth, it should look round, not flattened. If it looks flattened then it is likely that the baby is not latched on correctly.  Mine looked flattened every time.  Keith was extremely helpful to me, but he had no breastfeeding experience, so he could only do so much.  I enlisted the help of several nurses because I was in so much pain.  More than one nurse stuck their fingers into her mouth to check her suck and said, "Oh, you have a biter."  While she was latched on correctly, she would bite me each and every time she sucked.  The baby's tongue is supposed to act as a little cushion between your nipple and the baby's lower gums, but she would pull her tongue back with each suck.  She also had a tight jaw and her tongue got bunched up in the back of her mouth (when she would pull it back off of her gums), which was what was causing the flattened nipples.  The nurses suggested that we start something called "suck training."  For suck training, you dip your finger in glucose water and put it in the baby's mouth.  You then massage their tongue down with your finger so they learn to hold it correctly.  By doing suck training for a few minutes before each feeding it also relaxes their jaw so they are less likely to bite down.  I know that she was biting really hard because Keith said "Ouch" a couple of times when she bit his finger.  If it hurt my husband's finger, it made sense that it hurt my nipple.

The hospital that I gave birth at offers a breastfeeding class daily for new parents.  We missed the class the first day because it started just an hour after she was born.  We made sure to attend the second day, however, because we wanted to make sure that we were doing everything correctly as she was making things pretty difficult by being a biter.  The class was super helpful, and I learned about correct breastfeeding positions (cross cradle, football), indications that the baby is eating enough, ways to keep baby awake during feedings, etc.  We implemented several of the tips during the next feeding, but were still struggling.  Thankfully, the lactation consultant was scheduled to come in that afternoon.  She also said that it looked like our sweet teeny tiny baby was a biter.  She helped me with my hold on the baby, and gave Keith a list of ways that he could help me to feed her.  She told us that we should feed the baby from one side and then take all the baby's clothes off and change her before feeding her from the second breast in order to wake her up.  Everything felt so awkward.  I knew breastfeeding would be challenging, but it felt so unnatural.

We continued the suck training and woke our baby up every 3 hours, as instructed by the lactation consultants.  We also started pumping since Gwen was not eating well.  This created a very busy night. Since baby wasn't eating well, very little of the feeding time was spent with her actively eating.  In order to get her to eat for 15 minutes, she would be at the breast for over an hour.  Then I would have to pump for 15 minutes and wash all of the pumping equipment.  By the time that I would wind down after feeding her, I would have about an hour to sleep before it was time to wake her up again.  We did this routine for 2 nights, and we were completely exhausted.  Thankfully, we met with the pediatrician the next day (due to Gwen's jaundice), and she told us to just let the baby wake up when she got hungry.  This worked much better because when we woke her up every 3 hours she wasn't hungry and would just fall asleep.  When we let her wake herself up she began eating well at each of her feedings.  It also gave us a 6 hour stretch of sleep.

Unfortunately, the same day that we went to the pediatrician, Gwen started having 30 minute screaming sessions at the beginning of each feeding.  She would latch on, break off almost immediately, and then scream over and over again.  I would have my nipple in her open, screaming mouth and she would shake her head back and forth refusing to latch on.  I would plead with her to just close her mouth because what she wanted was already in her mouth, she just had no idea.  I called the breastfeeding hotline at our hospital and they said that the problem was likely that my milk had come in and that my nipples had a different firmness and Gwen was having to learn to latch on all over again.  They suggested that I pump for a couple of minutes before each feeding to help soften my breasts so she would have an easier time latching on.  I did this for a couple of days, and she started eating better, but still not well.  Each feeding would start with screaming for several minutes.  We still had glucose water from the hospital, so I would rub some on my nipples each time she would latch on and break off because it encouraged her to stay on longer.  After a while, however, I believe that she was figuring out that if she broke off she got more glucose water (yum!  sugar!), so we tried to switch things up the next day.  I finally figured out that it was not that my breasts were too full of milk, but rather that we had a hungry hungry hippo who was not one for delayed gratification.  If she didn't get milk immediately she would break off.  Pumping helped because it would cause let down to occur so she would get milk faster.  Glucose water helped because she was getting a little something until the milk came out.  But I wanted to stop pumping if possible, and I didn't want to use glucose water any longer.  Then we came up with the next plan.  The lactation consultants had told us about breast compression to help get the milk to come out and that babies who are fed by moms who used breast compression got more milk at each feeding.  So the second we got her to latch on, we would both squeeze with all of our might.  And this worked.  She got milk immediately, stayed on longer, and was a much happier eater.

Since we solved this problem, feeding her has become much easier.  She latches on and stays on much better.  I no longer have to stack pillows and blankets to get her into the proper position, and no longer have to apply a firm hand to her shoulder blades to keep her at my breast.  I can feed her by just holding her in my arms, she actively feeds longer, is much more efficient, and I am no longer in pain.  It is a joy to feed her now.

However, I got a plugged duct about 1.5 weeks ago.  A plugged duct is caused by the fat in the milk collecting and solidifying in the milk duct, causing milk to back up in the gland.  A plugged duct, with the proper treatment, should clear up in 48-72 hours.  The therapy is to use warm compresses for 15-20 minutes before each feeding, to massage the gland and duct at each feeding, to feed often from the side with the plugged duct, and to face the baby's chin towards the plugged duct.  Facing the baby's chin towards the duct is the most effective treatment and it is often easy since the duct tends to be on the side or bottom of the breast.  I have an abnormally positioned plugged duct, however, that is on the top, medial aspect of my breast.  In order to fact her chin towards the duct I would have to feed her upside down.  I called the breastfeeding hotline after I had the plugged duct for 2 days because I knew there was a risk for a plugged duct to turn into mastitis.  The lactation consultants told me that I was doing everything right, so to just keep on trying for a couple of days.  However, a couple of days passed and the duct had not unplugged.  Furthermore, it was Christmas weekend, so there was no way to contact the lactation consultants or my OB.  I either had to continue with what I was already doing and hope that it didn't turn into mastitis, or go into urgent care if my condition deteriorated.  After 1 week of having the plugged duct, I called the breastfeeding hotline again.

Standard therapy wasn't working, so it was time to see if I needed to go into the doctor.  The lactation consultants gave me a couple of more ideas: taking 1200 mg of lecithin 4 times each day, and massaging in the opposite direction (from the nipple towards the gland), and they told me that I should call my doctor if the problem didn't resolve itself in a couple of days.  I tried their ideas for a day, and then called my doctor because I was worried if I waited any later in the week that I wouldn't get an appointment before the holiday weekend.  I got the last free appointment for the day.  My OB said he was concerned that I was developing mastitis.  He put me on antibiotics and told me that I needed to face Gwen's chin towards the plug.  I asked him if I was supposed to hold her upside down while she ate.  He told me that his wife had the exact same problem with one of their children and that, while it sounds ridiculous, that I would have to lay her on her back with her feet towards my head and then I would have to position myself over her body on my elbows and knees to feed her.  This would face her chin towards the plugged duct.  This has been working pretty well, but I feel pretty silly each time I feed her.  The first time Keith saw me feeding her like that he laughed at me (I laughed at myself too...you have to keep a good sense of humor about it).  Unfortunately, I still have the plugged duct, feeding her in that position puts my nose right by her diaper (not pleasant if I haven't changed her yet, and I usually wait to change her until I have finished feeding from one breast in order to wake her up again), and it puts my head right by her legs (she has kicked me in the face several times).

Breastfeeding has been very difficult, but I am so happy that I am doing it.  I find it very rewarding, and it is getting to the point that it is an enjoyable experience.  I can, however, understand why so many people either don't even try to breastfeed or stop breastfeeding right away.  I feel that this is an important thing to do for my child, and I am proud of myself for sticking with it.

17 Days

My little baby girl is 17 days old today.  And the past 17 days have been nothing of what I would expect.

Things started out much harder in some ways and much easier in other ways than from what I had expected.  I really expected labor to be much different from what I experienced.  It started out harder than I thought, thanks in part to Gwen being positioned posterior, but then pushing was much easier and more rewarding than I had anticipated.

The next thing that was harder than I thought was recovery from labor.  I guess I should have expected that it would be difficult for your parts to recover from pushing out a 6 pound baby (thank goodness she wasn't any bigger), but for some reason when I was planning how things would go, I didn't think past the birth.  I had envisioned giving birth to my baby, and even the potential stitches that I would have to get immediately after birth.  But for some reason, it didn't occur to me that I would have to recover from giving birth.  While I was pretty sore when I left the hospital, I was kind of surprised that I was given discharge instructions including items like "Don't lift anything over 10 pounds" and "Don't drive for 1-2 weeks.  I guess pushing out my little watermelon was pretty traumatic to my body, but I never thought that there would be restrictions to my activity.  Which is why, within 1 hour of getting home from the hospital, I left Keith and Gwen at home by themselves while I went to the grocery store (this was a necessary trip as we had no diapers at home, and a desired trip as, while I love my daughter, I wanted 1 hour away from her as a little break).  I drove 55 hours after giving birth and lifted grocery bags that weighed more than 10 pounds (the bagger decided to put all of the cans and bottles in one bag).  It is no wonder than I was sore and bleeding more the next day.  The pain continued for several days, and I got mad at myself each time I forgot that I had stitches in a sensitive zone and flopped down onto the couch.  The bleeding and stitches, unfortunately, still continue.  Bleeding was supposed to last for about 2 weeks, but has persisted longer most likely because I ignored my discharge instructions.  The stitches should hopefully dissolve by the end of the week.

The next thing that was easier than I thought was my beautiful baby slept through the night the second night we had her home (she likely would have the first night, but we faithfully woke her up every 3 hours to feed her as instructed by the hospital lactation consultants).  The second day that Gwen was home, we had to take her to the pediatrician.  I was so happy that we went to the pediatrician on Gwen's 3rd day of life rather than her 7th day of life because the pediatrician told us to just let the baby wake up when she was hungry and to not worry about trying to wake her up every 2-3 hours.  We joyfully applied this advice and got in a 5 hour stretch of sleep (Gwen slept for over 6 hours, which technically applies as "sleeping through the night" as a trick to mothers who realize that actually sleeping through the night would require a full 8 hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep).  Since then, however, he sleep habits have deteriorated.  I have tried following the pediatricians advice for good sleep habits: keep her awake before bed.  Do her last feeding.  Wake her up slightly so she learns to go to sleep in her own bed rather than being held until she falls asleep.  This would be great advice if it worked.  But each time I put my baby down she screams.  She might make it for about 20 minutes before she realizes that no one is holding her, but once she wakes up and realizes that she is in that bassinet all by herself she has a colossal meltdown.  I learned last night that as long as I sleep in a chair with her on my chest, she will sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time.  I think she may have been a bit exhausted from the past several nights of very little sleep because she slept from 9 pm to 3 am.  She may have slept for 6 hours, but I woke up about once an hour since I was worried since I hadn't heard her cry yet.

Another area that has been more difficult than we had anticipated is with Gwen's health.  She has had a difficult couple of weeks.  Since she has been born she has had jaundice, diaper rash, a cold, and a plugged tear duct.  First was the jaundice.  The jaundice appeared shortly after birth due to an incompatibility between her and my blood types.  It lasted for about 10 days.  While I felt a little concerned, I knew it would subside on its own as her liver took care of clearing away the hemolyzed blood cells, and the jaundice came with the blessing of making Gwen a little bit sleepier than a typical newborn allowing us extra sleep at night.

At about 10 days, Gwen went from "pumpkin" to a more normal skin tone and developed ailment number 2: diaper rash.  It was understandable that she had diaper rash.  She pretty much constantly poops herself and gives us no indication that she has a dirty diaper.  We check periodically, but usually we only know if she has a dirty diaper if we hear it becoming dirty or smell it after the fact.  So we pulled out all stops trying to get rid of her diaper rash: we stopped using baby wipes, started using diaper rash cream, and did our best to keep her clean and dry.  We even tried to let her air dry a couple of times each day, but this ended up being much more dramatic than just leaving her in a diaper full time.  You see, she does not like being naked.  The first time we tried to let her air dry, we placed her on her belly on top of a towel.  Immediately, she started screaming.  The bad part wasn't the screaming - we can handle that.  The bad part was that each time she screamed (about once a second), poop shot out of her bottom, past the towel by about 1 food, and onto the carpet.  She became a poop sprinkler.  We didn't know if we should be horrified or laugh since it was funny and disgusting all at the same time.  Thanks to our quick work, we wrapped her up in the towel and obtained carpet cleaning spray from our cleaning supplies.  We haven't tried air drying her since then, as she not only made a mess, but never got dry since she spent the whole time crying and launching poop cannon balls.  Thankfully, I remembered that my mother-in-law had off-handedly mentioned that he kids couldn't wear certain brands of diapers because they would cause irritation.  Keith and I had noticed that the Pampers, while fitting Gwen better than Huggies (newborn diapers are too big on her and I couldn't find premie diapers at the store), had a mesh layer that stuck to her skin whenever her diaper was dirty.  I decided it wouldn't hurt to switch back to Huggies, and within 48 hours of being back in Huggies the diaper rash was gone.

To add to the difficulty of having diaper rash, and to make my first night alone with her memorable (Keith had to work night shift at the hospital), Gwen got a cold when she was 12 days old.  I had no idea what was going on at first.  I just knew that she wasn't sleeping at all and that there was no one else in the house to help me calm her down.  But as the night dragged on I noticed that she sounded more and more snuffly.  I also realized that when I held her on my lap with her head propped up higher than the rest of her body that the sniffles would subside somewhat.  When I would lay her flat in the bassinet, the sniffles would come back and she would wake up crying.  By the time I put together all of the pieces of the puzzle and figured out that it was a cold, Keith was on his way home from the hospital.  He set up the humidifier, we put her in her baby seat, and she was finally able to sleep.  She didn't sleep well for the next couple of days, but she slept much better in her seat than she had lying down.

The diaper rash is gone, and her sniffles are minor now.  But I woke up yesterday morning to notice that her right eye was completely crusted shut with yellow crusties.  I immediately called the pediatrician since I was worried that she had pink eye.  They reassured me that as long as the sclera of her eye was not red that it was likely a plugged tear duct.  I had no idea if her eye was red or not when I was on the phone with them because I couldn't get her eye to open because of all of the crusties.  After learning that it was likely a benign problem, I ran a washcloth under warm water and wiped away all of the crusties.  The good news: her eye was white.  The bad news: plugged tear ducts can take months to get rid of, and during those months you have to wash the eye several times a day and massage the tear duct, both of which seem to be the end of the world to baby Gwen.

Breastfeeding has been easier and harder in several ways, but I will save that for another post as that has been an adventure in itself.

Proud Papa

Gwen already has Keith wrapped around her little finger.  They are currently sitting in the living room chair next to me.  He is moving her hands around and talking about how she needs to practice her surgeon's knots.  He is also pulling up on her arms periodically, making her flex her teeny tiny biceps (today, at her 1 week pediatrician appointment, she measured in at the 8th percentile for weight) and saying that she is going to get ripped.  All the while he is throwing in some random Spanish words to try to make her bilingual...I'd better try to learn Spanish or they will start talking about me and I will have no idea.

He has several pet names for her already.  The one that I have heard most often is hobbit.  And yes, hobbit like the creatures of the Shire in Middle Earth.  In all fairness, I told Keith we could watch whatever movies he wanted while he is on paternity leave and he chose the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so hobbits have been on his mind.  He also calls her Gweny, Pumpkin (her jaundice made her look like a pumpkin until the last couple of days), and normal pet names like sweety, and honey.

He also has been doing major digital data accumulation in the form of photos and video.  After the first day of Gwen's life Keith's parents said, "I think you have already taken more pictures of her than we took of you during your entire childhood."  This is the beauty of having a digital camera.  The first pictures that we have of Gwen are beautiful, whereas Keith's first baby picture makes it look like he was hit by a bus.  While she doesn't really do anything yet, Keith loves shooting video of her "looking cute."  When she is wide awake, right before eating, she looks like she has a smile on her face and talks constantly.  We will likely end up with several hours of video of her cooing.  As for pictures, we already have a few hundred.  And not only is Keith taking pictures, but he is posting them to facebook.  I think that in the entire time that Keith and I have been together he has only put a couple of albums on facebook.  One album he added right after we began dating because I bothered him about not having the pictures.  The second album he put up was from the night he proposed.  Since he proposed I don't think he put up any albums until the night that Gwen was born.  She had been alive less than 12 hours and he posted a 58 photo album.

Keith has never been a fan of newborns because he thinks that they are boring.  We were baby sitting a couple of nights before Gwen was born and Keith said, "So what are we going to do with the baby?"  I said that we would probably hold her and feed her for about an hour and then put her to bed (she is only a few months old).  He then realized that at that point they don't really do anything.  But things are different with daddy's little girl.  He will just sit with her, look at her, and talk to her.  I think he may now be a fan of newborns...at least our newborn.

A Baby Story

Gwen was born on Monday.  I was right when I last posted that I thought that I was in labor.  It was quite an experience for which there is no way to truly be ready.

In the day leading up to going into labor, Keith and I were quite busy.  Keith is the head of the A/V team at church (audio visual team) and had scheduled us to work during the first church service on Sunday morning.  I had told him back in November that I would be willing to do A/V for that Sunday, but had warned him that he would probably have to find someone else as we would probably already have a baby given my early dilation.  I hadn't, however, gone into labor as of Sunday morning, so we didn't have to worry about finding a replacement.  After church we decided to head to the mall since we hadn't been to the mall during this holiday season.  We shopped for a few hours and picked up our last 3 Christmas gifts.  After leaving the mall we made our way back to church.  There was a wedding on Sunday and they required A/V people to work in the booth in order to run the lights, sound and video.  Keith had not found another person to do A/V for the wedding, so he had been asking me for the past week if I could possibly hold off until Sunday at 5:00 pm to be the earliest for me to go into labor because we were scheduled to work the wedding.  I showed up at church, Pastor Kevin made a joke asking if I was still pregnant (he had made the same joke before church that morning), and we worked in the A/V booth at the wedding.  On the way home I told Keith that I had kept my promise and not gone into labor, but now that the wedding was over I was ready to have the baby.  We went home and were asleep by 9:00 pm.

I woke up Monday morning at 1:00.  I woke up because I had to pee, and got back into bed a few minutes later.  I felt a little off, so I figured that I would hop onto my computer and cruise around the internet until I got sleepy again.  I had gotten an email about our Bible Study Christmas party and was looking at the menu for the restaurant that we were supposed to go to in a couple of days in order to make my menu selection.  I was having some cramping pain, so I decided to watch some tv on Hulu until I felt better (I watched One Born Every Minute, a reality birth TV show on Lifetime that takes place at the hospital at which Keith works and at which I was scheduled to deliver - it was kind of cool learning what to expect by watching that show).  But I didn't start feeling better.  I started feeling worse.  Much, much worse.  Between 1:15 when I felt my first contraction and 1:45, my contractions sped up from once every 15 minutes to once every 4 minutes (contraction 1: 1:15; contraction 2: 1:30; contraction 3: 1:40; contraction 4: 1:44), and they did not let up after that.  Not only did they speed up, but they got much more intense.  At 1:45 I decided it was time to take action.  I woke Keith up (he was due to wake up at 5:00 to get ready for work, so I had been trying to let him sleep in case it wasn't labor) and told him that I was having really intense cramps and back pain.  So of course, instead of suggesting that we go to the hospital, I said, "Could you go downstairs and clean the living room and the kitchen in case I'm in labor since we'll probably end up with people in the house?"  He spent 30 minutes cleaning, during which time my contractions sped up to being once every 3 minutes.

I was getting a little bit irritable, but was trying to be patient.  I had only been in labor for an hour, so I decided to update my blog and make a couple of phone calls.  I called my mom and dad to tell them that I was going to leave for the hospital soon, while Keith showered and took the dog for a walk.  By the time that we climbed into the car it was about 2:25.  I was much more uncomfortable than I had been and was stomping my foot each and every contraction because the only way that I could think of to relieve the pain was to move, which was difficult being strapped in with a seat belt.  My contractions sped up on the way to the hospital to coming once every 2-3 minutes.  We got to the hospital at about 2:45, but it took about 10 minutes to get from the car to the labor and delivery floor since every time I had a contraction I had to stop walking and lean against something.  I had 4 contractions between leaving the car and checking in.

Once arriving in labor and delivery triage, they hooked me up to a monitor (in order to determine if I was really in labor or not).  They told me that I had to lay down because the monitors weren't working when I was standing.  Each and every contraction my legs would shake uncontrollably, my back would arch, and I would hyperventilate.  The nurse worked with me to stop hyperventilating because it was making me incredibly nauseated.

The next part of my labor was a surprise to me.  During pregnancy I had read several books about natural childbirth and was convinced that I wanted to do it.  I had grand ideas of giving birth in a birthing center and using a birthing tub for my second birth, but was already locked into a hospital birth this delivery.  Plus, I became a high risk patient this pregnancy, so anything but a hospital birth was out of the question.  However, I was willing to keep my mind open.  I wanted to do whatever was best for the baby, and if that was receiving medication of some sort I was willing to do so.  But writhing in pain (writhing is the word that Keith used to describe me) in triage, I asked the nurse how soon I would be able to get an epidural.  She said that there was one person in line ahead of me, but that the anesthesiologist could come in after her.

They moved me from triage to my new room, hooked me up the monitor, and I immediately threw up half way through a contraction.  All decency went out the window as I would double over with an open backed hospital gown for the duration of each contraction.  The nurses questioned my ability to even get an epidural because they said that it would take a few minutes to place the epidural and that they doubted my ability to hold still.  The danger of not holding still is that if they accidentally puncture the dural sac, cerebrospinal fluid will leak and you will end up with the worst headache of your life, all while trying to keep up with a newborn.  I knew the danger of moving, so I told them that if there was a large needle in my back by my spinal cord that I would certainly hold still through anything.  Within 2 contractions of getting the epidural placed I already started to feel relief.  I couldn't figure out why I was such a wimp though.  1/3 of births are done without an epidural, and I couldn't even make it from 1:15 to 5:00 without getting one.  The nurses made me feel better, however, by letting me know that I was 7-8 cm dilated, was going through the transitional stage of labor (which occurs at the end of active labor, just before you push, and is the most painful stage of labor).  Then I felt even better when the doctor came in and checked and let me know that the baby was posterior.  The easiest way for a baby to come through the birth canal is if their face is turned towards your back.  If the baby is posterior then their back is pointed towards your back.  This creates the most painful kind of labor, back labor, because the baby is in a suboptimal position to be born and is pushing against your tailbone.  So, apparently, I wasn't being that big of a wimp.  I was having about the worst labor pain possible every 2 or so minutes, so that made me feel better.

Once I got the epidural my labor slowed down.  It took about 2 hours to progress the next 2 cm.  I decided to take the pain free opportunity to do my make-up (hey, these pictures are going to be around for a long long time and I wanted to look good).  I also straightened my hair.  Everyone told me that it was a lost cause because once I started pushing my make-up would run and my hair would get sweaty. I decided to do it anyway - I felt comfortable, was being very chipper, and needed a way to pass the time.  In fact, when my nurse saw that I was doing my make-up (when she had originally been worried about my ability to sit still for an epidural) she paged my triage nurse to come down to see how pleasant a person I was when not in pain.  They could not believe the shift in my demeanor.

Then it came time to push.  And it didn't hurt at all!  I had heard that even with the epidural that the baby coming out would feel like a burning ring of fire (in fact, for most of the time that I was pushing I had the Johnny Cash Ring Of Fire song stuck in my head), but I didn't even feel uncomfortable until the last two pushes.  I told my OB that I felt really uncomfortable at that point from all of the pressure and he told me that our baby was about as close to being born as you can be without being all the way out.  One more push, her head came out.  One more push, her body came out at 8:58 am, just less than 8 hours after going into labor.  I asked, "So is she a girl?"  She was.  He held her up so I could see her and I thought, "Wow!  She is so pretty!  I'm so glad that I had such a cute baby!"  They put her on my chest, and Keith counted her fingers and her toes (why do parents do this?  Having an extra finger is a pretty benign problem.  I guess since you can't check for heart defects that counting fingers and toes puts your mind at ease).  I breastfed her for the first time.  They weighed her and measured her length: 6 pounds 1 ounce and 17.5 inches.  Keith and I cuddled with her and took pictures while the OB sewed me up.  They kept me in my labor and delivery room for 2 hours after she was born so that the epidural would wear off and I could walk again.  Gram (Keith's mom), Pap (Keith's dad) and Grandma (my mom) came in to meet her and took pictures of our new happy family.  And I will say that I was right about doing my make-up and hair because I never broke a sweat and none of my make-up ran (the most important thing about childbirth...kidding of course; I may have been a bit vain with my labor beauty regimen, but the most important thing is that we have a healthy and happy little girl).

It was undeniably one of the best experiences of my life.  I had preconceived notions about how my labor would go, and I was wrong on every count.  But, like William and Martha Sears say in their book The Birth Book, it doesn't really matter what you decide regarding your labor and birth story as long as you have a healthy baby and are happy with your experience.  I may have had full medical intervention rather than a natural birthing center birth, but I am very proud of my accomplishment and of my teeny tiny Christmas gift.

Labor?

Is this what labor/contractions feel like?  If it's not, I don't even want to know what is to come, because this hurts!!!

Anecdotal data and baby

Anecdotal data is that data that you collect from simply observing things in day to day life.  In the medical field, this can lead to some interesting and useless practices.  For example, how do you remove a clog from a feeding tube?  Many nurses will tell you that you pour soda down it, and this was standard practice for years.  Why?  It seemed to make sense.  If you have a clog, use something acidic (like soda) to break it up.  However, when research was later done to see if this practice worked, we discovered that pouring soda down feeding tubes actually led to more clogs, not less.  This is why the scientific method is important, and why without the scientific method we often end up with old wives' tales.

The reason why I have been thinking of anecdotal data is because I have been experiencing weird changes in my pregnancy symptoms.  The doctor told me on Monday that I no longer had to take my tocolytic (which was supposed to keep me from contracting/cramping), and by the next morning my cramping, which had been occurring about 8-10 hours each day, disappeared.  That is the opposite of what was supposed to happen.  I assumed that since I was cramping 8-10 hours a day on the medication that I would go into labor quickly once I stopped taking the medicine.  This made no sense!  So I started to investigate all of the possible causes of my labor symptoms, mostly to try to figure out how to encourage labor.

This brought me to notice something over the last several days, which would fall under anecdotal data.  The closest correlation that I can come up with to my cramping or not is if I have blogged about cramping or not.  That is to say, if I blog that I am cramping, I inevitably feel much better the next morning.  If I blog that I am not cramping, I seem to get the worst cramps of my pregnancy shortly thereafter.  As a joke, I shared this with Keith this morning.  As he put it, while these events seem to be correlated, he highly doubts that my blogging is causal.  Since I do not believe that my blogging has magical powers, I agreed with him.  It was humorous, however, to discuss (this is the type of conversations that two scientists sometimes have at home...at least when those scientists are Keith and me).

Because I was not convinced that my blog was somehow acting like a voodoo doll, I thought I would keep on mulling this around in my head to try to come up with a more reasonable explanation.  Thankfully, I did not fall for the first correlation that I discovered, as I came up with a more reasonable explanation this evening.  Bed rest makes my cramping symptoms increase.  I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday on my feet and felt great.  I spent most of today sitting down, trying to finish some craft projects for the baby and started cramping again.  Could it be that our main intervention to preventing pre-term labor was actually increasing my symptoms?  I believe this to be the case.  It would explain why, after nearly 5 weeks of spending most of my time in bed or on the couch I was experiencing the worst pain of my pregnancy.  And it would explain why my symptoms disappeared when I was released to do normal activity.  It would also explain why I didn't believe my symptoms to be too bad between 28 and 32 weeks, when I had mild cramping, but why my pre-term labor seemed to get worse upon entering the hospital.  I plan to test this hypothesis over the next several days (or until Gwen is born, which hopefully is not several days from now) by observing symptoms after activity and rest.  But I think that I am onto something...or at least more of something than when my major hypothesis was that my blog was the culprit.  

An open letter to my baby

Dear Baby,

You have taught me over the last several months that you are the boss.  I was under the impression that I would be in charge until you were born, at which point I would relinquish power to you.  But that simply has not been the case.

First, you created very high hormone levels in my body.  While I am happy that this was good for your growth and development, this did create some eating difficulties for me.  Despite experiencing nausea until 26 weeks, I was still under the misguided impression that I was in control.

Thankfully, at 26 weeks you let the hormone levels decrease enough that I was no longer nauseated.  However, at 27 weeks you decided to introduce a new symptom to my pregnancy: cramping.  I didn't really think anything of this.  Other than laying down for a while every time I felt cramping, this didn't drastically change my life.  That is until I was 32 weeks pregnant and the doctor put me on bed rest for 5 weeks since I was 3-4 cm dilated.

Bed rest was rough, but it made me begin to realize who was the really in charge, and if you wanted to come early we weren't going to stop you.  So I faithfully took my tocolytic and only left the couch or bed to pee to help encourage you to hang out for a little bit longer before being born.  But I knew that, despite the interventions, the timeline was up to you.

At the end of 5 weeks of bed rest, relaxation, and pharmacologic intervention I was cramping about 10 hours a day.  By causing this symptom and increasing its duration and severity the further along we got in this pregnancy you led me to believe that the simple acts of stopping my medication and beginning regular activity would lead to your imminent birth.

You weren't done pulling tricks out of your sleeve though.  As of Tuesday morning, 12 hours after my first missed dose of medication, all of my cramping disappeared.  In order to encourage labor, I decided to spend the entire day on my feet.  While this led to an aching back, it did nothing for labor.

So here we are: 37 weeks, 2 days pregnant.  Now I'm starting to think that you have been messing with me this whole time and that you have no intentions to make an appearance until January.  I get it now: you are in charge and have been since you were about the size of a sesame seed.  Now that I have admitted it, can we stop playing games and get this show on the road because I would really like to meet my new boss.

Love,

Mommy

Full term update...woo hoo!

I went to the doctor yesterday for my 37 week appointment (actually, my 36 week and 6 day appointment, but I don't like driving 45 minutes to get to the office that he works at on Tuesdays, so 4 pm the day before becoming full term had to do).  It was kind of a bittersweet appointment.  While I am super happy that I am now full term, I felt somewhat discouraged that I didn't make much progress.  I am ready to rock and roll today, so I could have handled hearing that I was 5 or 6 cm dilated.  But alas, I was still only a little bit more than 4 cm.  However, he told me that I had gone from being 50-60% effaced to being 70%, so I guess that is progress.  The main reason that I was discouraged it because I have been in escalating pain over the past week.  I cramp about 8-10 hours each and every day.  I figured that this meant that things were moving along, but apparently not.

Thankfully, I was told by the doctor that I could stop taking my tocolytic yesterday, so I am no longer taking medications that are supposed to keep me from going into labor.  I am hoping that I will make some progress over the next week now that I am no longer trying to prevent labor and I am going to try to encourage it (yay for yoga and my eliptical).  I tried to look up natural home "remedies" to go into labor and discovered something disheartening: there is no scientific support for any home remedy to go into labor.  Bummer.  Furthermore, most of the things recommended are either ridiculous (eat 7 whole, fresh, raw pineapples) or dangerous (various natural supplements).  While there is no scientific support, it's not going to hurt anything to try to go ahead and do the things that aren't ridiculous or dangerous, so I will press on.  I realize, however, that everything is on the baby's timetable, so no matter what I do it will likely have no baring.  A girl can dream though.

36 week OB appt

My appointment went really well today!!!  I am only a little bit more effaced and possibly a little more dilated (the doctor didn't want to push things to their limits when measuring because he wants me to make it another week), and I am officially off of bed rest!!!!  Well, kind of.  I'm supposed to "take it easy" for one more week, but my doctor said that I can get up and do a few more activities (nothing strenuous).  For example, he specifically said I am not allowed to work out.  But he did say that I am allowed to take the dog for a short walk.  I think that I have been abusing some of my newfound freedom, however.  Immediately after leaving the OB's office I went shopping.  First, I went to Half Price Books with Keith to sell some books (Yeah!  $2!).  Then I went to Target to pick up a couple of Christmas gifts.  I have had these gifts in my mind for a few weeks, but have not had permission to shop.

When I got home I took a long bath.  My discharge instructions from the hospital said that I was not allowed to take baths.  I was extremely disappointed because just a few hours before receiving my discharge instructions I had told Keith about how excited I was to go home and take a nice, relaxing bath. But today I made a point to ask the doctor if baths were allowed, and they are!

Next, I set to reorganizing the nursery.  I have been haphazardly sticking items into drawers as they have been arriving.  But there was no real system of organization.  Thankfully, I now have a stocked diaper bag, nursery items are organized by category, and I was able to get rid of some unnecessary items.

While in the nursery, I discovered some iron-on transfers that I bought several months ago.  I had also bought some plain, white onesies.  I figured that now was as good a time as any to do my next craft project!!!  Unfortunately, I have never been very good at iron-on transfers, and today was no exception.  The package instructions said that I needed to iron on top of a hard surface.  It said that if your ironing board had a soft pad on it that you should place something hard on top of it like a chopping board.  Apparently they meant a wooden chopping board, because my plastic cutting board melted to the first onesie.  I had it almost completely removed by peeling slowly, but it tore as I was trying to pull the last dime-sized section from the board.  The iron-on for onesie number 2 did not transfer completely, so there were holes in the middle of the pattern.  The iron-on for onesie number 3 had two layers: layer 1 was dark blue and layer 2 was metallic to make the letters shiny.  Unfortunately, the second layer transfered on half of the pattern, but not the other half.  The iron-on for onesie number 4 began traveling across the fabric and so I have a smeared pattern.  Baby might wear onesies 2-4 when running short on laundry because they aren't horrible, they are just bad.  Thankfully, my favorite design is the one that transferred the best (it says "Future Tree Hugger" and has a koala bear holding onto a tree), but my second favorite design is the one that smeared ("My Stroller is a Hybrid").

I figured that updating my blog would be a good rest, but now it's time to prepare dinner!  (Preparing dinner isn't as strenuous as it sounds - we still have quite a few leftovers from last week's festivities.)

Baby = Pain in the back

No, I don't mean she is a pain in the back figuratively.  I mean it in the literal sense.  I have been in nearly constant pain since I woke up Saturday.  I thought things were getting better yesterday, but then I overexerted myself (read: I folded some clothes while reclined on the couch with my feet up), the pain got worse and has not gotten better since then.  Every time I move now I either get cramps or low back pain.  I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, so I will find out the verdict then.  Thankfully, tomorrow I will be 36 weeks, and while that is still a little bit pre-term, one of the doctors at the hospital said that at that point I can start doing cartwheels if I so desire.  I might not do cartwheels, but I will probably try to organize the nursery better, clean out the refrigerator, and cook some food that we can freeze and then reheat over the next several weeks.

The only other change has been on the scale.  I was down 18 pounds when I came home from the hospital.  I am now down less than 9 (in less than 2 weeks).  And no, I did not overindulge on Tofurkey Day - Gwen's position and size prohibit eating too much.  However, my wedding ring no longer fits (I can manage to shove it on my finger, but if I keep it on for longer than 2 minutes it is almost impossible to remove), my shoes are tight, and my lean body mass percent has risen 1% since I got home from the hospital.  That last point may seem puzzling if you don't know how body fat/lean body mass percent works on home scales.  The scale creates a circuit from one foot to another.  In order to create the circuit, however, it has to travel through all your fat, muscle, bones and blood.  Muscle contains lots of fluid, while fat contains little.  Therefore, fat has a higher resistance than muscle (electrical signals travel well through fluids because of all of your little ions that are floating around).  If you are dehydrated and you step on the scale, your body fat percent will read too high, and your lean body mass will read too low.  If, however, you are retaining water in your legs, the muscle percent will read too high.  This is how I have "gained" 1% muscle mass in the past 1.5 weeks despite being on bed rest.  And because I'm not out of my teaching mode quite yet I will offer one more snippet of information about body fat percent measurements.  If you use the scale, it only measures body fat in the lower part of your body (the circuit goes from one foot, through your leg, through your hips, down the other leg, into your other foot).  If you use a handheld body fat meter the circuit goes from one hand, through your arm, chest, other arm and into your second hand.  Therefore, if your fat is not evenly distributed in the top and bottom halves of your body, you are likely to get a high or low reading.  Also, I would question the accuracy of any percentage a home scale offers - I use mine not to monitor actual percentage, but to follow trends.  I can tell if my body fat percent is climbing or falling, but I don't believe it is providing my true body fat percentage (it is precise, not accurate).  If you want a better test of body fat percent that does the top AND bottom halves of your body, you do something called bioelectrical impedance in which you have one electrode on your left ankle and the other on your right arm.  But you still run into problems with dehydration.

Our movie picking ritual

Keith and I had a bit of a movie marathon yesterday.  With me being on bed rest (and making 2 Christmas gifts as well as working on a cross stitch for Gwen's room), him putting up all of our Christmas decorations (which took about 8 hours; we have a lot of decorations), and the poodle being glued to my lap since he was brought home from a 2 1/2 week trip to grandma and grandpa's, a movie marathon just made sense.  We watched Elf, Sweeney Todd, Far and Away, The Peacemaker, and Terminator Salvation.

Keith and I have somewhat different tastes in movies that I think mimics our differences in musical taste.  In music, he loves Journey, Kelly Clarkson, and Beyonce.  I like Iron & Wine, Regina Spektor, and Florence + The Machine.  Notice, he likes mainstream rock and pop and I like the more independent, or as Keith calls it, "weird" music.  The same goes for movies.  I do like a good popular movie, but I am also far more likely to sit down and watch a documentary or independent (read in Keith-speak as "weird") movie.  He, on the other hand, has a list of popular series of movies that he always gravitates back to whenever we are discussing what movie we should watch.  Here is how the movie choosing discussion typically goes in our household:

Keith: What do you want to watch?
Me: I don't care.  Let's watch whatever you want to watch.
Keith: Whatever I want to watch?
Me: (Knowing the danger of answering yes to this question) Well, within reason.
Keith: The Lethal Weapon movies?
Me: No
Keith: Back to the Future?
Me: No
Keith: Any of the Terminator movies?
Me: No
Keith: Something with John Wayne in it?
Me: No
Keith: Dirty Harry?
Me: No

So as you can clearly see, I didn't really mean it when I said that we could watch whatever Keith wanted to watch.  What I really meant was that I didn't feel like using my brain power to think of a movie to watch and I wanted Keith to suggest something up my alley.

The next step in the movie picking process involves Keith mentioning a movie and me agreeing to it.

Keith: Do you want to watch Bride Wars?
Me: Yeah!  That sounds good!
Keith: Really?
Me: Do you not want to watch it?
Keith: Not really.
Me: Well, then why did you suggest it?
Keith: I don't know.

After about 15-20 minutes of looking through our DVDs and Netflix instant watch list, we finally decide on a movie.  Usually, the movie is a bit more of a "Sara pick" than a "Keith pick" since Keith is nicer than me and more willing to give in.  So I told him last week that when he is on paternity leave we can watch all of the movies that he wants to see (I'll probably be so sleep deprived that I won't even care, and will likely fall asleep anyway).  But yesterday I started feeling generous a bit early (he had spent over 8 hours turning our living room into a winter wonderland) and told him that we could watch one of the movies that I usually veto.  That is how we came to watch Terminator Salvation.

I am fully willing to watch Terminator 1 or 2 from time to time - they are classics.  But time to time means no more than once ever 1-2 years.  Terminator 3 and 4 should not have been made.  Terminator 4 (the one we watched yesterday) reflects a Michael Bay film.  There is a lot of fancy cinematography, and you can't always figure out quite what is going on since the camera cuts quickly from one shot to the next.  Also, there is not much of a story line; it's all about the action sequences.  If you can't tell by my description of Michael Bay movies, I don't really care for them.  Thankfully, Keith doesn't like them either, so we spent much of the movie making fun of it or pointing out the unrealistic parts (which have to be pretty unrealistic for us to comment on them when we are watching a movie about machines taking over the world).

SPOILER ALERT: So when we got to the end of the movie we were both ready to pounce on anything.  At the end of the movie, John Connor's heart is failing and he is going to die.  The half-robot-half-human character volunteers to let Connor's wife take his heart to perform a heart transplant.  And the following reaction is one of the reasons that I love us together:

Keith (the doctor): Yeah, because I'm sure that they have all of the supplies that they need to perform a heart transplant just sitting around.
Me (the former transplant immunology PhD student): And I'm sure that the robot-man is a perfect immunological match for Connor.
Keith: And they probably have enough immunosuppressive drugs sitting around in their tent that he will be able to take them uninterrupted for the rest of his life.
Me: And I'm sure that her training as a veterinarian makes her completely qualified and competent to perform a transplant on a human.

That is a pretty typical conversation in our household, and I love it. :-)

I think I spoke too soon

So maybe my medicine was not as marvelous as I thought.  Within about 30 minutes of writing my last post my symptoms came back with a vengeance, and have now been present for almost 6 hours.  My in-laws are coming into town tonight and I was joking with my father-in-law on the phone earlier that the last time my mother-in-law came into town I was sent to the hospital as she was entering the city.  Hoping that doesn't happen again! 

Marvels of Medicine

I have felt much better since yesterday.  Things have calmed down quite a bit, and I no longer feel that Gwen's birth is imminent.  The doctor increased my dose of my tocolytic on Monday (he had previously decreased it because it caused heart palpitations) and since the increased medication kicked in I have had decreased symptoms, and thankfully no palpitations.  This year for Thanksgiving, I am thankful that I am still pregnant, and despite progressing some, Gwen still seems to be waiting a bit longer to be born.

Another thing that I am thankful for is that Simba is coming home today!!!  He has been at grandma and grandpa's being spoiled for the past 2 1/2 weeks, and I am so excited that I get to see him tonight.  We may have to break a couple of habits that he learned on his vacation.  He will not get daily peanut butter from me like he does from grandma Lou and I will not hand feed him his dog food like grandpa Big Guy.  But he will be spoiled in other ways.  I have missed him so much that I will probably make him sit on my lap during the whole holiday weekend to get forced belly rubs. :-)

35 weeks...almost

I had a doctors appointment today.  I was a little bit worried because since yesterday I have had preterm labor symptoms with increasing severity and frequency.  The doctor told me that I have progressed some - I'm now 4 cm dilated - but that at midnight tonight I will reach the final milestone that he wants me to meet before giving birth: reaching 35 weeks.  We'll see if these symptoms continue to get worse, or if yesterday and today were somewhat of a hiccup in my pregnancy.

Before my symptoms started getting worse yesterday I felt "off."  I don't know how to describe it, but I started to seriously think that baby might be born in the next few days.  I shrugged it off because I have feelings that things are going to happen all the time, and it is usually just me worrying.  But if you worry about things enough, one time you are going to be right.  While it wouldn't be the end of the world, I hope I'm not right this time.  This baby could use a couple of more weeks on the inside.

Pros and Cons of Home

I have now been at home for about 3 days, and I have noticed that there are some good things and some bad things about being at home:

Pro: The food is better

Con: I have to make my own food instead of it being delivered to me in bed

Pro: I have more freedom to move around and get out of bed

Con: I abuse that freedom and bend the rules of bed rest a little bit.  I have been pretty good, but it is really tempting to sometimes get up and unload the dishwasher or organize a few things.  I haven't been up for more than 15 minutes straight more than a couple of times a day, however, which I think is permissible because I have shower privileges and a shower takes about 15 or 20 minutes.

Pro: I have all of my stuff

Con: I have all of my stuff and it distracts me from what I should be doing

Pro: No more monitoring, shots, or interruptions.  I have been able to sleep much better in my own bed

Con: No more monitoring, so I don't know if certain things are normal or not.  I guess if what I have been feeling is not normal I will find out if I have progressed at my OB appointment on Monday afternoon.

Pro: I have very few responsibilities

Con: One of my normal responsibilities is Simba, and he is not a responsibility right now because he is visiting his grandma and grandpa.  I miss him. :-(  Thankfully, he is coming home the evening before Thanksgiving. :-)

Pro: I have much more privacy at home

Con: Part of that privacy is from Keith because he can't swing by and see me during the day.  I don't need privacy from Keith - I would prefer seeing more of Keith.

Pro: I don't have to sit on that light blue "soaker" that they put on hospital beds in case of accidental fluid losses (like if you pee your bed)

Con: If my water breaks I'm not sitting on one of those soakers (Keith said that he is tempted to smuggle one out of the hospital for home use...just in case; it can always be returned after the baby is born).  Question: How do you prevent ruining furniture if your water breaks when at home?  Do you just hope that you aren't sitting on the couch or laying in bed?  But what if you are?  This is really concerning me and I would like to know what other people have experienced if you are willing to share.

Normal Pregnancy or Preterm Labor?

One of the problems with the symptoms of preterm labor is that they are very similar to the symptoms of normal pregnancy.  Two of these symptoms that I have been struggling to decipher are nausea and back pain.

Back pain is something that pretty much all pregnant women experience.  Preterm labor back pain is slightly different in quality and location from most back pain.  It is a low, dull back pain.  However, what if you just happen to have a sore lower back?  I have gotten a sore lower back when not pregnant by slouching in a couch or chair, so might my slouching now be causing me low back pain?  As for the quality of the pain, it is really hard to determine what is causing it.  It can either be musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal or preterm labor if you have dull pain in your lower back.  This one has been a bit tricky, but I think I have been able to determine the difference between a more superficial pain (musculoskeletal) and a deeper pain (preterm labor or GI pain - however, if no GI symptoms show up in the hour after pain I assume it is preterm labor pain).

The other tricky symptom is nausea.  I had morning sickness until I was 26 weeks pregnant.  This caused me to lose about 18 or 20 pounds (depending on how well hydrated I was).  I didn't gain any weight until I was 29 weeks pregnant, at which point I gained 3 pounds before my 32 week appointment (the one where my OB sent me to the hospital).  I was still nauseated about 1-2 days each week, but the other 5-6 days I felt pretty good.  While in the hospital I lost weight (this is a pretty normal occurrence, but I am now back down 18 pounds), and I also developed a new symptom of steady nausea.  I have had nausea every day since last Friday.  If I don't eat it usually isn't that bad.  But once I eat the nausea gets worse.  I thought part of the problem is that at the hospital I was forced to eat on a specific timetable, mostly at times when I was not hungry.  But now that I am at home I am still becoming nauseated whenever I eat, however much less so now that I am able to choose when and what I eat.  So my question is this: is this just par for my pregnancy course, or is this a symptom of preterm labor?  If my morning sickness would have gone away at the end of my first trimester, as it does for many pregnant women, I would attribute this to preterm labor.  However, there has been nothing normal about my pregnancy nausea, so this might just be my normal.

I guess it doesn't really matter if these are normal pregnancy symptoms or if they are pre-term labor symptoms.  I am on bed rest.  I am taking a tocolytic (a medication that calms down your uterus).  And if I were to go into labor today despite these interventions they wouldn't do anything to stop it - they would just let things run their course.  I guess I will mention these symptoms to my doctor at my next appointment, but I'm not going to sweat over them because worrying won't change a thing.

coolest thing ever - I'm not exaggerating

While I understand how this works from a medical and scientific standpoint, I was still somewhat taken aback when the doctor told me.  I was being examined by the doctor for dilation and he said, "I can feel the baby's head."  What?  My baby is supposed to be closed up safely inside my body.  You aren't supposed to be able to poke it in the head!  It makes sense that when you are over 3 cm dilated that you can feel the baby, but as a soon to be mommy it was probably the coolest thing I have ever heard.

Going home

I am being sent home on modified bed rest this afternoon.  This essentially means that for the next week I will be doing pretty much the same thing at home as I am doing in the hospital.  The doctor said I can walk around a bit more than I do here because I am at 34 weeks and they also understand that I have to fend for myself at home much more than I do here.  In 1 week I can add a little bit more activity (I will still be on bed rest, but if I have to get up to do things I am allowed slightly more time out of bed).  At 36 weeks he said I can start doing cartwheels as far as he is concerned, which is fine by me.  I am tired of being in bed.  I am sad that I lost 4 pounds of muscle over the past two weeks.  I have never wanted to work out more in my life than I do right now...the eliptical is calling my name.  36 weeks - the first week of December does seem to be a pretty good time to have a baby. :-)

Privacy

I woke up a bit grumpy this morning.  Sure, part of this has to do with the fact that I woke up at 3:30 and couldn't convince my body that it needed more sleep.  So at 3:45, I rolled out of bed thinking that a warm shower might send my body the message that it was still bed time.  When I came out of my room, I saw that the screen saver was no longer up on the nurse's computer - this meant that she had been in my room charting on me while I was in the shower.  I knew that it wasn't time for her to chart on me yet because she is supposed to check on me and chart on me once an hour, and she had been to my room at 3:40 (I had pretended to be asleep because 1.) I wasn't in the mood to talk to her, and 2.) I figured that if I talked to her it might wake me up more and that there would be no way of going back to sleep).  I had specifically gotten up at 3:45 for my shower in order to avoid her.  Apparently she remembered something she had to do in my room, or she had heard the water running in my bathroom.  Either way, she was in my room and she was writing about me.

This charting has made me more and more irritable over the past few days (if you have seen my last two blog posts you would know some of the background).  This morning, as I was laying in bed after my shower, slightly bitter at my nurse for charting that I was in the shower in the middle of the night, I realized the reason for my grumpiness.  I have no privacy.

I understand that I am in the hospital, and not having privacy pretty much comes with the territory.  However, it wears on you after a while.  I am getting tired of being around people.  Not the people who come to visit me - I love to have visitors.  It is fun to see friends and family and it sure makes the time pass by much faster.  Not Keith - I think I would be going crazy here if it weren't for the fact that aside from 6 hours where he has gone home to take care of a few things, he has been in my room constantly, aside from going to work, since last Monday morning.  But I am getting tired of people checking on me each and every hour.  I am trying to not be annoyed, because I realize that it is their job and this is the reason that I am in the hospital.  However, I wish they would just come in to give me my medicine and to put me on and take me off of the monitor (this would only require them to enter my room 8 times each day).

Part of the reason that I get a little bit annoyed is because I am low maintenance.  I don't need people doing things for me once an hour.  If something is really all that urgent I will push my call button to get in touch with my nurse.  If I do not need medicine or monitoring I will let you know if I actually need you.  I think I am the exception and not the rule, as many of my nurses tell me that I am a really easy patient (granted, I'm just kind of along for the ride right now; many people in high risk maternity are much higher risk than me).

What bothers me more than the hourly checks from nurses (and it does happen every hour - I have a TV in my room that I have tried to watch all of 4 times because I have not yet made it through an entire TV episode without being interrupted...and I refuse to leave the TV on while someone is in my room providing me health care because that was a big pet peeve of mine during my internship.  Well, that and cell phones) is the interruptions from people bringing fresh linens and newspapers.  Please stop coming to my room and asking me if I want to buy a newspaper!  I really feel like it is in poor taste.  My medical care is probably costing about $20,000 to $25,000 for this two week stint.  You really can't throw in a free newspaper?  As for the people who bring fresh linens, they are usually male.  This wouldn't bother me if they would knock and wait for an answer before coming into my room, but most knock as they are opening the door.  One opened my door this morning without even knocking.  I thought it was Keith coming into my room because he doesn't knock, and then I saw a man arm that I didn't recognize.  It wasn't a big deal because they only open the door part way (the towel cabinet is just inside the door of my room), but I would be really angry if one of my healthcare providers were doing a womanly medical procedure on me (which has happened a few times since I have been here) or if I were changing clothes in my room (which I learned not to do pretty quickly - now all clothes changing takes place in the bathroom...but what do people on complete bed rest who don't have bathroom privileges do?).

This is a long term floor, and the nurses tell the patients to treat the rooms like their own apartments (bring in pictures, plants, blankets, decorations, but no dogs - they used to allow dogs but one bit a nurse and she was out of work for 8 weeks), but how am I supposed to do that when strange men are coming into my room multiple times a day?  I don't care if male doctors or nurses see me in less than flattering situations because they are my healthcare providers.  But I really don't need the guys delivering towels to barge into my room whenever they want.

So this is what has been bothering me.  I am tired of the lack of privacy.  I am kind of nervous about going home tomorrow (possibly, if everything goes well today), but at the same time, I am ready for a break from being cheery and presentable at all hours of the day and night.

More charting paranoia

I found out last night before bed that the nurses chart my activities.  One of my nurses was complaining because the options provided for them to choose from didn't cover my activities.  "They don't have crafting or working on the computer on here!"  Apparently she can choose between options including talking on the phone, visiting with family, sleeping or watching TV.  The computer charting system thinks that I can't be productive while in the hospital.

Charting paranoia

I don't think that I ever realized just how many things nurses keep track of in regards to their patients.  I have charted before for nutrition evaluations, but all I have to talk about is someone's diet.  If it doesn't have to do with their eating or bowel habits, it likely won't be in my note (unless there is some psychosocial issue affecting eating or nutrition).

Nurses, on the other hand, are responsible for keeping track of the person as a whole.  After I had been in the hospital for about 5 days, one of my nurses said, "Let me know when you are ready to take your shower so I can change your sheets."  I figured that this was just because my sheets hadn't been changed in about 3 days (I hadn't requested to have them changed because I don't change them every 3 days at home so I figured that I wouldn't request others to change them that often), and it would be a convenient time for her to change the sheets while I was out of bed.  But when I got out of the shower, not only were my sheets changed, but my nurse came back into the room and charted that I had taken my shower.  I had been taking daily showers since my second full day in the hospital, but I hadn't even thought about telling them when I was taking my showers.  Often my hair would be dry before my nurses would see me again, so I have a feeling that it looks, according to my medical record, like I didn't take a shower for 5 days.  Since then, I have still been taking daily showers and my nurses have seen me with wet hair 2 times and asked if I had showered.  My nurse asked me again today to inform her when I take my shower so she could change my sheets.  So in the last 11 days it looks like I have only taken 4 showers, according to my chart.

I didn't realize that they were monitoring my food intake until today.  I know that for some patients we (the dietitians and me) would ask that the nurses estimate how much of the meal that the patient ate to make sure that they were eating enough.  However, it never occurred that they might be keeping track of my intakes.  It makes sense that they would track it because I am a pregnant woman and they want to make sure that I am eating enough.  But if they have been tracking my intakes since I entered the hospital, I can tell you that their records are completely wrong.  For one thing, I often don't feel hungry when they bring me my tray.  As a third trimester pregnant women, it is recommended that I eat 6 small meals a day instead of 3 large meals.  This hospital's meal service is not amenable to that.  They send 3 meals: Breakfast at 8:00, Lunch at noon, and Dinner at 5:00.  I am usually not hungry at these times.  They wake me up at 6:00 am every day to do fetal monitoring, so I am usually hungry by 7:00 am.  I have a snack drawer right next to my bed, so I either give in and eat a snack at 7:00 making me not very hungry by 8:00, or I hold off until 8:00 and eat my entire tray of food.  An entire tray of food is really too much food, so when noon rolls around I am usually not very hungry.  However, I tend to like the food served at lunch more than the food served at dinner, so I try to eat the food because I know that I might be getting a bad meal later.  I usually save a couple of items off of my lunch tray to give to Keith when he comes to visit me at 1:00.  But then dinner is a 5:00 - way too early.  I am accustomed to eating dinner at about 7 or 8 at night, and I am not hungry at 5:00 because I ate at noon when I wasn't hungry in case dinner was bad.  So I usually give my entire dinner tray to Keith.

Even when Keith and I don't eat my entire tray, I take certain items off of my tray to store in my mini fridge.  I figure that Keith or I might be hungry later, and there is no sense in throwing away food we might eat.  The kitchen here is probably wondering why some dish or piece of silverware goes missing from my tray every meal.  And at other meals they end up with 2 extra plates on my tray because Keith or I eat something from my refrigerator.  Long story short, usually 100% of my tray is cleared of food.  Some of it ends up in my belly, some if it in Keith's, some of it in my night stand, and some of it in my refrigerator.  Furthermore, I have acquired food from the outside through guests, my baby shower, and Keith (he brings me small items from the cafeteria periodically - the food in the cafeteria is much better than the food on the trays - and he also brings me free food left over from resident lunches).  I often eat this food instead of the food from the trays.  There is no way that the intake estimates are accurate in any way.

I didn't realize until today that they are tracking my eating habits.  And frankly, the more and more that I find out that they chart about me, the more and more paranoid that I get.  At home I might miss taking a shower one day.  But here, there is no way because I know that big brother is watching.  At home, I have a rule that I will eat what I want when I want it (within reason - I won't go and eat a dozen chocolate chip cookies) because I have struggled with losing and failing to regain weight this entire pregnancy.  I figure that I will change this strategy if I start to gain weight too quickly, but given that I still have entire days of nausea, I doubt this is the case (today was one of those days, causing me to not eat anything from my lunch or dinner trays and to send Keith down to the cafeteria for ice cream at around 3:00).  Here I feel like they are judging my every meal: "Is she eating enough?  Is she eating too much?"

Finally, I found out that each and every hour, they are charting on my position in bed: am I sitting up, laying on my left side, my right side or my back?  How high is the head of my bed?  This is important because the best blood flow occurs when on your left side and the worst is on your back.  I refuse to lay flat on my back, but I will lay on my back if I have the head of my bed elevated.  However, I don't want my medical record to read that I am cutting off the oxygen to my baby by laying on my back.

I sure hope that they don't let me know anything else that they are keeping track of.  I am already modifying my showering, eating and sleeping habits because I want my chart to show that I am a good soon-to-be mommy.  I realize that no one is combing through my chart to check my showering or sleeping trends, but knowing that they are writing it down makes me paranoid that they are tracking and making judgments regarding if I am a fit future mom.

Pregnancy nostalgia

I started feeling pretty nostalgic this morning.  It might just be the pregnancy hormones, but I saw a commercial for a pregnancy test and started to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thinking back to 7 months ago.

I found out that I was pregnant super early.  Keith and I had been trying for a few months, and I had been reading quite a bit about the early signs and symptoms of pregnancy.  I had my first sign about 10 or so days after my period (this is super early, but at the risk of providing too much information, which I have already done several times in this blog, I have a really short cycle, which adjusts the time tables for everything associated with early pregnancy).  There is something called implantation bleeding where the fertilized egg implanting in the uterine wall causes a teensy bit of bleeding.  I noticed this and got really excited.  In fact, one of my friends facebooked me around that time (after bleeding, before pregnancy test) and I told her that I thought I might be pregnant, but it was too early to take a pregnancy test so I wouldn't know for about another week.  It turns out I was right!

I became a little bit OCD with pregnancy tests.  I calculated the amount of time it would take for pregnancy hormones to reach detectable levels (hormone levels double daily), added that to the day that I started bleeding, and decided that would be a good first day to take a pregnancy test.  However, I was too impatient for that, so the day before the day that I had come up with from my calculations I took a pregnancy test.  It was negative.  But that didn't discourage me.  I went out and bought another box of tests and decided I would retest the next day (the day that I had calculated).  The next day (two Tuesdays before Mother's Day) I took another pregnancy test.  It was around noon, and after 2 minutes the test was negative.  But after 10 minutes the test was maybe positive.  The problem with this is that you are supposed to read the test in a certain window because if you wait too long to read it you can get a false positive.  So I decided that I would test again the next day.  I didn't quite make it to the next day.  I made it until about 6 pm before I became impatient enough to test again.  That time, the test looked maybe positive after about 5 minutes (the line was faint).  Once again, I was out of pregnancy tests, and didn't have a definitive answer.  I decided that I was having too much trouble reading the tests with the little lines, so I would get some digital tests.  But then I was worried that the digital tests wouldn't work right, so I also bought some more of the tests with the little lines.  I retested the next day on one of the digital tests and it said "Pregnant!"  Then I wanted to confirm the test, so I took another test with the little lines.  Both lines showed up! (Yes, you counted correctly.  At this point I had taken 5 tests.)

I decided it was time to go shopping!!!  Mother's Day was only 2.5 weeks away and I had some soon-to-be grandmas to shop for!!!  I made my way to Halmark to see if they had any good grandma items.  I found countdown calendars that said "XX Weeks Till I'm A Grandma."  I figured that would be a good way to announce my pregnancy!

Then I went home because I had to prepare to tell Keith.  I had already bought a couple of baby items that I was going to wrap up.  I was going to have Keith open the present and gather from the items in the box that he was going to be a daddy.  I had purchased some baby fire boots (Keith is a volunteer firefighter whenever we go home to visit his parents, and has been for years) and put them on the feet of a little baby Eeyore stuffed animal.  I made a trifold diaper for Eeyore and put him in the box.

Keith came home that night, opened the gift, and didn't understand right away.  He looked a little confused regarding why I bought him a stuffed animal and fire boots.  I think he may have been in disbelief, and just hadn't let it sink it what a stuffed animal and miniature shoes might mean.  I told him that he was going to be a dad. :-)

A couple of days later, Keith's parents came into town.  We decided to tell them on Saturday night by giving Keith's mom her mother's day gift.  But before we told them I decided that I wanted to take another pregnancy test, just to be sure.  Early in pregnancy, you never know what might happen, and I didn't want to tell Keith's mom that she was going to be a grandma and then her not become one.  But test number 6 was still positive!  We gave her the gift, she opened it, and said to Big Guy (Keith's dad), "I told you so!"  Apparently by taking a 3 hour nap Friday afternoon, and then shopping with Lou (Keith's mom) and mentioning that I had been craving pickles (a normal craving for me when not pregnant...sometimes you need a little low calorie salty snack) she had decided that I was pregnant.  I told my mom in a similar way on mother's day, and I told my dad and his wife by sending them a book about going to grandma and grandpa's.

I wasn't done with the pregnancy tests, however.  I scheduled a doctors appointment for when I was 4.5 weeks pregnant in order to get a blood test done to confirm that I was pregnant.  But before going to the doctor I wanted to make sure that I was still pregnant.  So then came pregnancy tests 7 and 8.  Yes, during the month that I found out that I was pregnant, I took 8 pregnancy tests.  But I figured that I might as well use them up since pregnancy tests have an expiration date, and I was pretty confident that we wouldn't try to have another baby before they expired.

So that's the story of how Keith, his parents, my parents, our siblings and I found out about Baby Gwen. 

Why I'm Really Okay with Staying In the Hospital

I was told by the doctor this morning that he likes to play things conservatively and would feel most comfortable if I stay in the hospital for one more week, until I'm 34 weeks pregnant.  He seemed apprehensive to share this information with me, most likely because most people in this situation would be  chomping at the bit to get home.  However, I had already resigned myself to the fact that I am in the hospital, it is the best place for me to be, and I will likely be here for a while.  Here are my reasons why I am really okay with staying in the hospital for one or more weeks:

1. I have people cooking for me.  True, the food may not be great, but I am learning with each and every meal which items I should order and which I should avoid.  If I get a truly horrible meal, Keith can always run down to the cafeteria and use some of his meal stipend to get me a replacement item.

2. I have people cleaning for me.  I can get clean bed linens as often as I desire.  I also have people who come in daily to take out the trash, mop the floor, and clean my bathroom.  At home, the house would slowly deteriorate into a state of mess since I would be unable to clean up after myself (however, I do realize it would get less messy than usual since it is pretty hard to make a mess when you are restricted to bed).

3. I don't have to remember when to take medicine.  I have nice nurses who keep track of that for me and tell me it is time to take a pill.

4. I am less likely to get blood clots.  I currently am being given heparin, wearing TED hose (anti-clotting socks), and have "space booties" that inflate every few seconds to simulate walking.  At home I would likely only have a blood thinner and my own initiative to keep blood clot free.

5. I enjoy both eating and going to the bathroom every day.  At home I can either lay down in bed on the top floor of our house, where the bathroom is located, or I can lay on the couch on the main floor of our house, where the kitchen is located.  There is no kitchen on the top floor and no bathroom on the main floor.  This means that I would have to take stairs several times a day in order to accomplish both eating and bathroom while I am home alone.

6. I have seen Keith more in the past week than I had in the previous several months.  It is nice that he is a doctor in the same hospital in which I am a patient.  He swings by between cases and before he has to go to conferences.  He is also working just 2 floors away in the same wing of the hospital, so if I need him for anything he can be here in about 3 minutes flat.  At home, I could go all day without hearing from him.  In the hospital, I am becoming spoiled by seeing him every few hours.  Also, he is doing his Anesthesia rotation so he wears scrubs every day.  That means that his wardrobe is provided on carts distributed throughout the hospital.  He also has a meal stipend, so he can get food from the cafeteria around the clock.  If he stays at the hospital with me, he gets an extra hour each day to visit with me or sleep, since he doesn't have to drive back and forth from home.

7. At the hospital I am seconds away from health care.  At home, I would either have to drive myself to the hospital (I doubt they will give me driving privileges though, since right now I only have bathroom privileges), call an ambulance, call a friend who lives a good distance away from us and may or may not be at home, or rely on the nice woman who lives next door to me but has dementia to drive me to the hospital (they took her car keys away from her a couple of years ago, so I don't think that she would be the best choice of a driver).  Being close to health care is very much a benefit at this point.

8. Peace of mind.  While it would be nice to sleep in my own bed, I would likely instead lay awake and worry in my own bed.  If I have any concerns that something isn't "right," I can push my nurse call button and ask them to examine me.  At home I would just have to wonder, or find a way to my OB's office or hospital.  Furthermore, if baby were born today, it would be much better to be down the hall from the NICU than to accidentally give birth at home and be 20-25 minutes away.

So, while it's a bummer, I prefer staying in the hospital to going home right now.

Wimpy Little White Boy Syndrome...why I'm glad we're having a girl

We have all heard that girls mature faster than boys.  However, this happens much earlier in life than most people realize.

In the world of the NICU, nurses and doctors from all over the nation know about the wimpy little white boy.  For some reason, caucasian male premature infants do not do as well as little girls.  Furthermore, babies of other races tend to do better than white babies (although, girls still tend to outperform boys).  From what I've been told, here is the hierarchy of babies from the largest two racial groups in the US (I don't know how other races fit into this scheme):

Black girls
White girls
Black boys
White boys

So there you have it!  Little girls tend to be more advanced and heartier than little boys (perhaps the sugar and spice helps in some way).  Advanced, in a teeny tiny baby may seem like a foreign concept.  I mean, they aren't doing calculus or running marathons.  What does it mean to be more advanced, or to mature faster, as a preemie?  At this point in gestation (33 weeks tomorrow), it means that our little diva will likely figure out how to coordinate her suck, swallow, breathe reflex faster than if she had a Y chromosome.  This could either get her from feeding tube to eating from a bottle, or from the breast, faster, or could prevent the feeding tube entirely.  Avoiding the feeding tube is a big reason why we are holding out for 34-35 weeks (as long as Gwen will allow it since she is the boss at this point).

So this is why we are glad that we are having a girl.  Plus, the shoes are much cuter. :-)

Hospital/Baby Update

I can't believe I am going to say this, but the reason you didn't hear from me via blog yesterday is because I was so busy I had absolutely no time!!!  This is a major blessing in the hospital.  I thought I was going to go crazy on Thursday morning because at that point few people knew I was in the hospital and I felt pretty lonely and uncertain about what was going on.  Since then, the outpouring of love and support has been almost overwhelming.  It is so nice to know that there are so many people out there thinking about and praying for us and who are willing to take time out of their busy schedules to check in and help out.  So, first of all, thank you all.

Now onto the update!  Unfortunately, the main gist of things is that I am going to be confined to this hospital room/bed for quite some time.  The only standing privileges that I have are to go to the bathroom and to shower (however, it has been specified to me that the showers are to be short).  Thankfully, I have retained these privileges and have not had the misfortune of being seen by another doctor who notoriously kept one pregnant woman here for 179 days with 100% bed rest (sponge baths and bed pans).

The reason for my bed rest and extended hospital stay are that I have dilated more since I entered the hospital.  I am currently 3-4 cm dilated and 80% effaced.  The doctors wanted to do a test on me yesterday called fetal fibronectin.  Fetal fibronectin is the protein glue that holds your amniotic sac to your uterine wall.  When this protein glue starts to break down, the amniotic sac is less supported and you are more likely to have your water break and go into labor.  If the test is negative (no FFN is detected breaking down and leaking out) there is a less than 2% chance of going into labor in the next two weeks.  If the test is positive it doesn't really mean anything - the glue is breaking down, but you could go into labor tomorrow if it is breaking down quickly, or you could go into labor in 5 weeks if it is breaking down slowly.  I was really hoping, of course, for a negative test result yesterday.  When I woke up yesterday morning they did the swab and then checked my cervix.  Unfortunately since I had dilated beyond 3 cm they didn't send the sample to the lab because after you are greater than 3 cm dilated it is almost certain that the test results will come back positive.

I spoke with the high risk maternity attending yesterday after finding out that I had progressed and that we were unable to do the FFN test.  He said that his plan is to keep me here until early next week and to see if things calm down a bit and if the progression has stopped.  I asked him about taking other tocolytics (meds that stop/slow down contractions/labor), but he said that they probably wouldn't change my meds.  The problem with tocolytics is that we really don't know enough about pre-term labor.  We know that there are several causes, but we don't know what all of the causes are.  We have a lot of tocolytics, but we don't know which tocolytic will work on which pregnant woman since each one targets a different cause of pre-term labor.  Furthermore, we don't have any real good ways of testing what is causing the pre-term labor, so the general approach is to throw a bunch of tocolytics against the wall and see what sticks.  As my attending described it, "There are several hammers and several nails, and we would have to find the right hammer to hit the right nail on the head or it won't slow things down."

If I were much earlier in my pregnancy, let's say 25 weeks, they would try a plethora of tocolytics on me to stop things since the outcomes on 25 week old fetuses are much worse than for 32 week fetuses.  However, tocolytics are not risk free.  At this point, my baby would be born healthy enough that the risks of many of the tocolytics outweigh the benefits.  If baby were born today there would be three reasons to be in the NICU: 1.) they don't develop the suck, swallow, breathe reflex until around 34 weeks, so they have to be tube fed; 2.) they sometimes get tired breathing because, even with the steroid injections, their lungs haven't quite developed all of the way; and 3.) they are teensy and sometimes have temperature control issues.  None of these are devastating long-term problems, they are just discouraging inconveniences that  would last for 2-3 weeks until baby is able to grow enough to not need the extra help.  The doctors have me on one tocolytic, procardia (a calcium channel blocker that calms down the uterus), that has very minor side effects.  Essentially, it can make my blood pressure go a bit too low.  However, I am in the hospital and am stressed out somewhat - I don't think there is a risk of my blood pressure dropping too low.  Additionally, they check my blood pressure before each and every dose of procardia to make sure that it is safe to give it to me.

I spoke with my primary OB after speaking with the high risk team.  He agreed with their assessment, however is a bit more conservative in his approach.  He has adopted the "wait-and-see" attitude for me and said "I would like you to stay in here at least until Tuesday since you will be 33 weeks at that time. On Tuesday we can reevaluate things and develop a new plan."  From interacting with my doctor over the past 32 weeks, I know that this really means, "We are going to keep you here until Tuesday.  On Tuesday you will be 33 weeks.  After you are 33 weeks we will reevaluate things and keep you here one more week until you are 34 weeks.  At 34 weeks we will reevaluate things and keep you here one more week until you are 35 weeks."  I know that the best outcomes occur after passing the 34-35 week mark, so we are keeping our fingers crossed and keeping our prayers going that baby will be willing to stay in for at least 2 more weeks.  I have a feeling that I will not make it to term and that they will keep me here until baby is born.  But it is better to be in the hospital with baby in my belly than to be in the hospital with baby in an incubator being fed through a tube.

It looks like this anticipated Christmas baby may now turn into a Thanksgiving baby.