Belated Pictures, and Some Details

I finally have time to post some pictures, mostly due to the fact that Soren is feeling sick today so he stayed home, and has been spending most of the day with Evelynn so that I could get stuff done today.  Anyway so here’s some belated pictures from the hospital, and all around cute pictures of Evelynn.

As of yesterday Evelynn is now two weeks old, I can’t believe the time has gone by so quickly.  Everyday she is discovering new things, and I’m discovering new things about her.  She absolutely hates being naked, she will scream and cry when you strip her down for her shower, but she absolutely loves being in the shower, and then she screams and cries when she gets out.  She is really really strong, she’s been able to lift and move her head around since the hospital, and everyday has been getting more and more control over her neck.  She keeps on trying to suck her thumb, it’s really funny to watch her try to find her mouth with her hand.

She is really really healthy, so healthy in fact that at the hospital the nurses thought there might be something wrong with her because nothing was wrong with her.  The pediatrician told me that she wished all newborn babies were as healthy as Evelynn is.

Her birth went relatively smooth compared to how it could have gone.  I was positive for the Group B Strep, and as a result my Dr. wanted me to be on the antibiotics for several hours before I went into labor.  So we made an appointment for 9:00 pm on March 7th, I came in they hooked  me up to the IV and I then I went to sleep.  When I checked in I was already dilated to 3 centimeters, and was 100% effaced.  Then at about 6:30 in the morning I was officially induced, they checked me again before I got the pitocin and I was now at 5 centimeters, with zero pain to get to that point.  After the petocin kicked in, it didn’t take me long to request my epidural.

As it turned out the pharmacy technician that mixed the epidurals that were given out that day mixed them way way to strong.  I was told that my epidural would take about 15 minutes to kick in, no it took about 30 seconds.  It was like I was heavily sedated, my hands went numb, was very sleepy, and it made me nauseous, I couldn’t even move my head without feeling sick.  So it goes without saying that the epidural was too strong, and granted I’ve never been on anything stronger than Ibuprofen, so when I’m put on any type of drug it really takes my system for a spin.  But on the bright side, I couldn’t feel a thing which was nice up until a point.

So it took me from about 6:30 am to 10:00 am to dilate to 10 centimeters, but because the epidural was so strong I was asleep and couldn’t feel anything so I couldn’t push.  So they turned the drugs down and let it wear off for a while, so around 3:30 ish even though I still couldn’t feel a thing, I started pushing.  The pushing went on for about 2 1/2 hours.  Eventually the epidural wore off enough so that all of my pushing was actually accomplishing something.  So when we got to the point where they called the Dr. in he was hurrying and pulling his gloves on, and Evelynn I think was ready to be out of there, so she kinda just slid out on her own, and the Dr caught her with his one gloved hand.

Soren got to cut the cord, they cleaned her off, weighed her, measured her, and all that jazz.  Then the Dr. delivered the placenta.  As it turns out I had a rare complication, that is rarely diagnosed, and is usually only seen in text books.  What makes it so rare is that usually you don’t carry full turn with this complication, you usually lose the pregnancy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  I can’t remember the technical term they gave it, but what it is is that in the umbilical cord there are two blood vessels and an artery and they all attach to the placenta in the same place.  Well with Evelynn’s two inches away from where the vessels attached to the placenta the cord split and the vessels attached in different places.  Which makes them very weak, and the vessels could have been broken any number of ways, by the cord twisting, or being pulled on.  The Dr. said that the umbilical cord was the most twisted cord he’s seen in his career, which  means that had I waited to go into labor on my own, we might not have been blessed with Evelynn.

All and all we consider ourselves to be very blessed, now I’m going to go see how Soren is feeling.