I am test-driving my first pair of Lily Padz, and so far they rock!

For those not in the know about such matters, nursing moms tend to leak milk. Yes, it’s about as convenient as it sounds, especially when you forget to wear breast pads or you soak through then and end up with huge wet spots on your shirt. At least the leakage isn’t constant; for me, I usually drip from the breast that Jamie’s not nursing on at the time. And it’s worse overnight.

For the past month, I’ve been switching between disposable breast pads and washable cotton ones, but I’ve still been having leaks due to the pads getting out of position (happens frequently at night when I’m lying on my side) or actually soaking through. One of my co-workers had recommended I try Lily Padz, but I was reluctant since they cost more than $20 per pair, and a pair only lasts 6-8 weeks. The huge plus about them is that they stick to YOU and not to your bra, so they can’t ever get out of position. They smush your nipple flat (which stops you from leaking), and are washable and reusable.

This morning I got fed up after it seemed like I soaked most of my side of the bed while trying to get a sleepy Jamie to latch on properly, so I went out and bought a pair. They make me look kinda funny since they work on the principle of compression, but so far they seem to work great.

The weather today is very un-January-like. Right now it’s about 70 degrees. Jamie and I are out on the patio. He’s eating his dinner and we are both enjoying being outdoors.

A great site I’ve found that has a lot of resources for breastfeeding and for parenting in general: kellymom.com.

Yum. Frozen mom!

Odd and kinda squicky: As breastfed babies get older, as a treat or for sore baby throats or as a primer for solid food, try making Momsicles! Yes, they are exactly what you think they are. I’m not sure how you get the milk to stay mixed as it freezes, though… because when breastmilk settles, it separates into layers.

We think Jamie’s growth spurt might be coming to a close. He has eaten less frequently over the past 24 hours, which as been great as far as giving my poor boobs a little bit of extra recuperation time inbetween feedings.

I’m pumping milk more and more these past few days, in an effort to build up a supply. Our lactation consultant recommended we have 2 weeks’ worth of daytime milk frozen and ready to go by the time I return to work in mid-March. That seems like a daunting amount right now, but I guess we have some time to work on it.

Happily, Jamie’s intestinal discomfort and rumblings don’t seem to frighten him as much anymore. When he was brand new, any little thing going on on his tummy or intestines would wake him up and he’d start fussing. Now he deals with it a lot easier on his own, and even though he may rustle around and squeak in his sleep, it usually doesn’t wake him up. Sometimes his sleep noises mean he’s about to wake up and cry; sometimes they don’t. We’re getting better at telling the difference.

Jamie is now just a little over three weeks old.

It’s kind of strange to think how this little person’s life is measured in days, hours. Me, on the other hand… sometimes I can’t remember how many YEARS old I am. For him, every day is a year, every hour is a week. All his experiences are new, scary, exciting, and he’s learning and growing so quickly. His eyes scan you or the room or focus on an object, and you can almost hear the synapses connecting in his little brain.

I’m tired. So tired. Doc is, too. This is to be expected, I guess. I estimate that I’m sleeping maybe four to five hours a day, total, but in bursts that are usually two hours or less. Feed Jamie, soothe him to sleep, wait to make sure he’s asleep, fall asleep myself, wake up to feed him a short time later. I know it’s going to get better, but it’s a really tough road to travel. I don’t have a choice at this point, though, so I shall endeavor to suck it up, sleep when I can, and not complain. Doc is trying his hardest to make it easier for me to sleep by just bringing Jamie to me to eat for the first part of the night, so I’m not kept awake by his fussing inbetween feedings. I know this is not the best way to develop a sleeping routine for any of us, but right now we’re just hanging on any way we can.

I am also having a really hard time napping during the day. I know I need to, I REALLY need to, but the logistics and timing are often tough to manage.

Tired as I am, I’m adapting to this crazy sleep schedule better than I thought I would. I just look forward to the day when I can get 4 hours in a row, or 5, or 6. I was hoping desperately that we’d end up with a kid who was a really good sleeper, and that may yet prove to be true, but it’s not at the moment. He’ll fall asleep sprawled across your chest like a spider monkey, but the minute you try to move him into his bassinet, he wakes up and starts fussing and then full-on crying. We can’t hold him the entire time he’s sleeping… so this is kind of a dilemma for us. Holding him when WE are so tired could prove to be dangerous… he could easily slide off a sleeping parent onto the floor, or onto the bed and be face-down and unable to breathe.

So yeah, we have a lot of questions and worries. I have to admit that I feel sort of alone in this because we don’t have any friends here who have kids. There’s no one we can get together with to talk about stuff, to reassure us, to give advice, to share a babysitter with for a night out. Nate and Yvonne, the one couple that we do know with a baby, moved to Austin earlier this year. There’s always the telephone but somehow it’s not the same.

He’s going through a growth spurt right now, too. He’s fussier and is eating more frequently (every hour and a half or so instead of his previous 2-1/2 to 3 hours) and that gets really tiring for me, since I am breastfeeding exclusively. I’m also beginning to pump milk inbetween feedings, so I feel like I’m either feeding or pumping more than 50% of the time. That’s probably an exaggeration, but that’s what it feels like.

Doc described it as having a lamprey attached to my chest. I think it’s a good metaphor. He just sucks and sucks and doesn’t give much in return. (Yet.)

My little eel.

It’s not all griping and complaining, though. There’s a lot of good things about having a new little person in the house. He’s begun to be able to track objects with his eyes. Last week we were showing him one of his four (!) stuffed lion toys, and he followed it across his field of vision when we moved it. He’s showing some interest in this little play mat thing (a colorful mat with toys dangling from crossbars above). His wakey wakey periods are getting longer. His eyes are opening wider. He’s started making vocalization noises — not cries or burps, but bordering on gurgles and coos. He’s got a bad case of baby acne… all across his cheeks, forehead, chin, and even his poor little ears. It ought to go away in a few weeks, I suspect. He likes getting his hair washed. Sometimes in the morning, after he’s eaten, we let him lie on his side in bed with us and he’s sound asleep and unbearably cute in the morning light and we just stare at him and stare at him and stroke his little head and whisper to him in his sleep.

Have I mentioned that he’s damn cute?

And speaking of damn cute, I feel I must state, for the record, that just because I’ve birthed my own child, I don’t suddenly think that all babies and kids are adorable now. I’m not comfortable around young kids. I have no idea how to talk to them. I don’t know how to talk “baby talk,” nor do I particularly want to. I’m sure I’ll figure out how to communicate with my own son, but I don’t inherently have these relating-to-babies skills that a lot of people seem to possess. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’m not pinging the “femininity” end of the sexuality scale very hard. Who knows. All I know is that my feelings on total strangers’ kids haven’t changed much. They’re lovely, I’m sure, but I’m likely not interested in interacting with them.

If I know you and your child, that’s a different story (Hi, Zoe! You’re still adorable and awesome!). I guess this is not that much different from how I relate to adults. If I know you, great! If I don’t, I’m probably not going to initiate a conversation with you. Nothing personal, I’m just introverted.

Doc has posted more amazing photos. He captured the story of what happened in the 30 minutes or so after Jamie was born. (There are no squicky photos, I promise. Cameras were not in the room while I was actually giving birth). It was a little tough for me to look at because the emotion I was feeling is still so sharp in my mind. I was scared to death that there was something wrong with my baby. I’m glad Doc took the pictures, though, because I want to remember.

The hand finally turns pink and moves

And here are some awesome active-alert photos of Jamieson with his eyes wide open, just a day or two ago. His expressions amaze me!

Doc sings the “nom nom” song when it’s time for Jamie to eat. “Nom nom nom, lookin’ for Mom!” Super cute.

Where's my mom?

It is sometimes tiring being the only one who’s able to provide our son with nourishment, but we both feel it’s very important to breastfeed for as long as possible before introducing a bottle. Just to make sure it’s well established… and it’s definitely getting there. It won’t be long before I start pumping and storing breastmilk so that Doc can do a feeding now and again, and then during the days when I go back to work next spring.

The past several days have all kind of started to run together in my head. I can no longer remember how many times I got up in the night to feed Jamie, what times those were, how long it took him to get back to sleep, etc. What time did I wake up in the morning? Did I nap during the day? What did I do all day? No idea sometimes.

We’re beginning to develop patterns. Doc is often awake before me in the mornings, and makes me breakfast when I get up. Tea, bacon or sausage, fruit, and a bagel. I nurse Jamie (nom nom!), hope he goes to sleep, then eat. 

I’m still not quite sure what to do with him when he’s not nursing or sleeping. When he’s crying, it’s time to troubleshoot and figure out what he might need (hungry? diaper change? burp? cold?). When he’s awake and not crying, I guess this is the time when I’m supposed to play with him. But he doesn’t really play yet. He’s not at an age yet where he can be very interactive. So sometimes we just look at each other for a while. I’m sure I’ll start to feel more comfortable with him as he gets older. I already am, in fact.

Last night Doc brought Jamie to me at 1:30 for a feeding, and after he was done, Mom took him for most of the rest of the night. I was able to get a decent amount of sleep inbetween feedings. And this morning, he (and I) slept from about 5 a.m. to 8:30. Three and a half hours in a row! I don’t think he was asleep that entire time, but I was. Mom’s still up now. I’m sure she’s exhausted but we can’t get her to go back to bed.

Doc’s getting maybe 4 hours of sleep every night, which is apparently all he needs. This is really truly actually about the amount he requires; it’s just the way he’s built. But still, I can’t help feeling like the lazy ass in this family. I know, rationally, that we’re both working equally hard now, with breastfeeding (me) and diapering (mostly Doc) and soothing (both of us, I guess, but more Doc from my perspective), but I feel guilty being away from Jamie when he’s awake and I’m off sleeping. Like I should be sharing in the hard work of soothing his crying, instead of abandoning my responsibility to my husband and son.

I guess I still have some inner drive to be Supermom. I know that I can’t though, and it’s not fair to me or Jamie or Doc to try. So the guilt is there, but I go upstairs and take a nap anyway. I know I’ll eventually achieve some sort of balance; it will just take time and practice to get there.

When we took Jamie to the ear nose and throat doctor a week and a half ago (wow, has it really only been that long?), we had to fill out a bunch of paperwork. At the bottom of the page was a line for “signature of parent.” I thought, why does my mom have to sign this form?… Ohhhhhhh…. Wait, that means ME. I am a parent now. It was an interesting feeling.

Thursday we went to the mall for a little while to do some quick Christmas shopping. It was a nice day outside and Doc and Jamieson stayed in a little outdoor courtyard area while I did a bit of shopping. We experienced our first “blowout” dirty diaper. All over me, all over Doc, all over Jamie’s legs and then of course he got his hands in it before I could stop him… all over his outfit, and all over the baby carrier. And in a public place, too. What fun! I think we were a bit overambitious and stayed out too long. Jamie’s normally very calm in the car but he cried the whole way home. I think he just got too tired. So did Doc and I, for that matter.

We watched a video last night about “The 5 S’s”… swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging, and sucking. This method of soothing actually does seem to have some merit; Jamie does calm down most of the time when we use the 5 S’s. We’ll see if it pans out in the long run.

He was born with long fingernails.

His feet are huge, and he has really long toes.

His hair is unbelievably soft, and the same medium brown as his daddy’s hair. In sunlight it shines golden.

He makes this little “heh… heh… heh… heh” sound when he’s trying to tell us something.

He smiles. It’s not “just gas.” Or if it is, I am choosing to believe he’s really smiling.

He can already hold his own head up a lot of the time.

He smells like baby. New parents know what I’m talking about.

His little tongue is heart shaped.

Sometimes he just stares at me or Doc, and his eyes scan back and forth across our faces like he’s processing data.

Breastfeeding him is such a surprising source of satisfaction for me. It takes up so much of my time and energy but I just love it.

He usually gets calm when Doc sings to him.

He likes being swaddled up in blankets his grandma made for him, like a little baby burrito.

When he’s really mad, he turns bright red all over. He gets mad when you change his diaper or his clothes. Not all the time, though.

Also, when he’s super angry, he makes this little trilling cry. I know he’s mad but I can’t help thinking how cute it is.

Friday was about the worst day I have ever had in my life. I think I had a minor mental breakdown, and I mean that in a very serious way. I’m actually surprised I am writing about it here for the world to see, but I’m not ashamed to admit at this point that I am not Superwoman, and sometimes I need help.

I’ve been getting very little sleep, of course; that’s life with a new baby. I didn’t realize, though, that it wasn’t normal to not want to eat at all after having a baby. So I have eaten almost nothing since he was born. It really was beginning to catch up with me. The less I ate, the sicker I felt, and thus the less I wanted to eat.

Also, I spent most of Friday crying. I couldn’t control it; the tears just flowed no matter what I did. I had begun to regret getting pregnant in the first place. I wanted to go back to my regular life where it was just Doc and me and we got regular sleep and we didn’t have to worry about what we were doing wrong with the baby and why he wouldn’t stop crying. I didn’t want to have a baby anymore. 

I decided to call my doctor and let him know that I wasn’t able to eat. Later in the day the office called me back with a prescription for an anti-nausea medication and one for Zoloft, an antidepressant that they thought might help my appetite return.

Doc picked the medications up for me and I took one of each in the early evening. And then the downward spiral began.

I had a really bad reaction to the Zoloft. My depression symptoms rapidly went out of control. I was having scary thoughts that I don’t want to write down now. I felt like I was losing my grip on reality. I just went through the motions with the baby. Feed him, then hand him off to someone and not care what happens at that point. I didn’t care about the baby or myself or anyone except Doc, and the thought that I was making Doc sad is really what was holding me together by then. Mom said that my “affect” was flat… meaning that I had no emotion of any kind on my face.

Luckily Doc and my mom were around, and Doc’s mom, sister, and her husband had come in for the weekend. They decided that I needed to sleep as much as possible, so I went to bed. Doc and the two grandmas worked in shifts all night and brought Jamie to me when he needed to eat and sat with me until he was done. 

When I was awake I kept telling myself to get on top of it, to get back in control, to figure out a way to deal with it. Easier said than done. Logically I knew this was what I needed to do, but I didn’t have the tools and energy to actually do it. So I spent all my energy breastfeeding and trying to keep my mind in one piece.

When I woke up Saturday morning (and really, “waking up” and “Saturday” and “morning” are all relative terms when you have a week-old baby) I felt a little better, but could still feel the Zoloft fucking with me. I had enough clarity, however, to force myself to eat. I had some grapes and tried to eat part of one of Mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls. Then we left for the pediatrician’s office (we had an appointment to find out why Jamie hadn’t pooped in over 48 hours).

Later Saturday, Doc went to the grocery and bought me a selection of Luna energy bars and some Ensure and Boost, the high-calorie nutrient drinks. I’ve been drinking the drinks fairly regularly between feedings now, but I am still having a really tough time eating much of anything. I’m not sure that the anti-nausea medication is actually doing anything.

I need to call my doctor and ask them what Plan B is for my lack of appetite. My body will take what it needs to make breastmilk for Jamie, but it’s not leaving me with enough resources to keep myself going very well.

I need some help.

In the labor room, the nurse handed me a hospital gown and told me to change in the bathroom. I hopped up onto the bed and the doctor came in to apply the gel that would help get labor started. This was about 1:30. I stayed in bed for about 20 minutes to give it a chance to begin working, and then got up and began walking the halls with Doc. Labor and Delivery at Baylor is not a terribly big place, and so we walked the same circular path dozens of times. At some point Doc went out to the car to get our bags, and Mom walked with me for a while. 

My pain level wasn’t too bad initially; it felt a lot like a constant mild cramping sensation. As we walked, the contractions got a bit stronger and I had to breathe deeply through them; they happened about once every time around the path, maybe every 3-4 minutes.

The doctor checked me around 3:00 and I had progressed to 3-1/2 centimeters dilated. He said that we could either wait for up to six more hours and hope I progressed more, at which point we could start me on Pitocin for additional induction goodness, or go ahead now and break my water.

Doc and I decided that it was preferable at this point to just get it over with, so the doctor broke my water, which is about as fun as it sounds. Almost immediately, the contractions increased sharply in intensity. I tried to continue walking around but it quickly became impossible. Once a contraction started, I had to stay in whatever position I was in because moving hurt way too much. 

I remember at one point I was on the birthing ball, leaning on the bed, and throwing up into a little basin that Doc was holding for me. That is true love! Plenty of nurses around, and he wanted to do it instead. (And now I can no longer drink orange Vitamin Water.)

Kathryn came in just in time to see this. I didn’t know it was her until later; I just saw a pair of legs in scrubs and assumed it was another nurse since I was preoccupied at the time. 

The contractions felt like I had a band across my lower back and around my abdomen, and it was being tightened until it was excruciatingly painful, especially in the back and pelvis. The pain in my uterus was hardly noticeable in comparison. 

I worked through contractions for what felt like forever. Doc and I tried the count-up breathing technique, where I took breaths as deep as I could and counted up out loud with each breath to the peak of the contraction, then begin counting down as the intensity lessened. I tried leaning on the birthing ball, on my hands and knees on the floor (I’m sure my butt was hanging out for all the world to see), leaning on the foot of the bed, sitting on the bed with my legs hanging off, and at one point I got into the bathtub. I took off all my clothes in front of everyone before getting in the tub; all sense of modesty had disappeared.

Kathryn worked on my lower back as much as I could tolerate through the contractions, and she also pressed some points in my shoulders that did seem to help with the pain a bit. Doc held my hand the whole time or had his arms around me, helped me count, and tried to keep me focused on my breathing, exactly the way we had practiced in class. He did an amazing job with this, talking me off the “I can’t do this anymore!!” ledge countless times.

The pain during each contraction was so bad that I didn’t even have any reserves left to cry. I don’t think I cried at all, actually. But I know I kept saying “Fuck!” over and over. It was pretty much the only word I could muster. I’m not sure what that says about me.

The problem was, I was only getting about 30 seconds inbetween contractions, and the pain never lessened in the interim to a point that I felt any sense of energy regeneration. Doc and I had previously agreed that I would need to ask for an epidural three separate times before I really meant it; the first two times he would offer me encouragement and try to help me work through the pain. I can’t remember at which points my three requests came, but finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and made my third request. I felt like I was chickening out and caving in to the pain way too soon, but at this point I had been laboring for well over two hours with these unbelievably intense contractions, and I didn’t care anymore about my previous wishes to deliver medication-free. My fancy idealized birth plan had gone out the window when we decided to induce, anyway.

Doc went to find a nurse, and I worked through a few more contractions before the anaesthesiologist arrived. I had to sit upright on the bed for him to put the epidural catheter in, and that just about killed me. The nurse put an IV for fluids into my wrist and the anaesthesiologist worked the needle into my spine. Doc was careful enough, though, to warn him when another contraction was coming so he could stop what he was doing in case I moved. You don’t want to be jerking around when someone is putting needles into your spinal column. Finally the catheter was in and he started the juices flowing. He asked me which leg became warm first (the right one), and I felt a flood of warmth flowing down my right leg and back up again. Then the left one followed soon after. The pain of the contraction that I was in decreased as normal, but then kept on decreasing and decreasing until it was completely gone.

I have never felt relief like that in my life. Epidurals are freaking awesome!

Now I was confined to the bed since my lower half no longer had sensation. I could wiggle my toes a little and bend my legs at the knee just a bit, but could feel nothing. The doctor checked my cervix; I’d only progressed half a centimeter to 4 the entire time I’d been laboring so intensely. He checked the baby, and he was “sunny side up;” in otherwords, facing the wrong way. I had been having back labor, not regular labor, which is why it was so intensely painful and located across my lower back and pelvis. He also said that the reason that I’d only progressed 1/2 centimeter was likely because the intensity of the back labor was causing my uterus to seize up. I was too tense to dilate. The epidural was definitely the right choice, not only because I was able to relax but also because my labor was not progressing properly otherwise.

They had me flip onto my side to try and encourage the baby to start turning into the proper position. I laid like that for a while, talking to Doc and Kathryn and my mom. Kathryn worked on some pressure points on my ankles that are supposed to help regulate labor. She told me later that every time she pressed the pressure points, she could see my contractions on the monitor go flatline. I have to wonder if I hadn’t yet had the epidural and she was doing that, would it have made them stop? Or hurt less? Hard to say, but I find it fascinating that it was having an effect.

When the doctor checked back in a little while later, Mr. Baby had turned about half way around! He decided to reach in and manually turn the baby the rest of the way (Doc said from the chair across the room “Remember: lefty loosey, righty tighty!”), which he did in a matter of minutes.

After that, my job was to lie there on my back until I’d achieved full dilation. By about 8:30 in the evening, I was at 10 centimeters, and it was time to start pushing. Doc and I had talked about the pushing part being with just us in the room (and the medical staff, of course), a fact that I had failed to communicate to my mom and Kathryn before I went into labor. I feel bad about the mix-up, but I felt that this part of the process was really intimate and I wanted it to be something special that Doc and I shared.

A flurry of nurses came in and began to set the room up for delivery. I don’t remember exactly what this involved, but I know there were some tables full of instruments that might become necessary. At almost 9:00, with Doc and a nurse each holding one of my legs up (a lovely position to be in), I began to push. It was an interesting sensation because I couldn’t really feel anything, but the nurse coached me and I was able to get the hang of it pretty quickly. When you push, you take a deep breath and then let it out slowly while bearing down, while the nurse counts to ten. You do this three times per contraction. The baby slowly begins to emerge, but it’s like two steps forward, one step back, so it takes a while. They had set up a mirror so I could watch what was going on, which at first sounds kinda gross but it is completely fascinating. I felt a sense of great pressure, and I watched my baby begin to emerge! It was utterly amazing!!

After 45 minutes of pushing, the baby began to crown. The doctor came in (and blocked the mirror, unfortunately), but at 9:46 p.m., Jamieson Harlan Scott was born. I immediately began to cry with joy.

It was not without complications, though. The doctor had Doc cut the cord, but very very quickly. And then they took Jamie away to the warming bassinet instead of putting him on top of me right away. I knew that something was wrong. They told me that he just needed a little suction to get some stuff out of his lungs, but the way they were furiously working on him told me that it was a lot more serious than that. They had oxygen on him and Doc said that they kept lifting up his little arms, and they would just drop back onto the table like dead weight.

I had some complications myself. My placenta didn’t want to come out on its own. It had gotten itself stuck to the wall of my uterus. The doctor had to manually remove it, and it came out in chunks. Luckily I coudn’t feel any pain from this, but the pressure was intense. They brought Jamie to me about 20 minutes after he was born, and the doctor was still working on me at this point. Jamie’s breathing was still rattly, so they took him again and did some more suction. 

I didn’t tear externally, but they had to put in a few internal stitches. Again: thank you, epidural. 

When they brought Jamie to me again, I tried to get him to breastfeed, and he latched on like he knew exactly what he was doing. We fed successfully for about 20 minutes, and then they wheeled us up to my postpartum recovery room. 

After we got settled in, Doc went down to the waiting room to get Mom and Kathryn. I felt kind of bad because at this point they’d been waiting down there probably almost five hours. I don’t know where the time went, but it was close to 2 in the morning by now. We spent a little time visiting in the room, and they left for home a short while later. 

The rest of the time in the hospital is kind of a blur and I’m forgetting so many details already. My mom was there off and on helping us, we slept in short bursts, I fed Jamie when he was hungry, nurses came in and out around the clock to take my or Jamie’s vital signs, we signed a lot of paperwork, learned a lot of things about baby care, Doc gave Jamie his first sponge bath, I tried to eat the crappy hospital food (two words: clear gravy), we practiced swaddling a lot, Doc took a lot of photos, and Jamie had lots of tests and screenings, all of which he passed with flying colors. 

We came home on Wednesday afternoon.

I’ll write more about Jamie’s first week of life when I have a little more time.

Well. This has been QUITE a week.

Have I mentioned that the weather turned nice and cold? We even had a dusting of snow one evening. Mom is still here, helping us immensely. The governor of Illinois tried to sell President-elect Obama’s Senate seat. I believe that the earth has continued to spin on its axis.

Oh, also, I had a baby.

Wait, what? You want to hear more about THAT? :)

OK then. I’ve been typing this here and there over a couple of days because, well, I’m finding it is usually more tempting to sleep than to get on my computer most of the time. Right now, for instance, I’m typing with a baby asleep on my chest. If he wakes up I’ll need to put this off once again, but I’m trying to write as fast as I can because I am rapidly forgetting details. 

So, on Sunday night (December 7) I didn’t eat any dinner. I just wasn’t feeling all that well. I went to bed early and woke up again about 1:30 in the morning with a contraction painful enough to pull me out of sleep. That was the first one that had ever done that. I wasn’t able to get back to sleep for several hours because the contractions kept coming every 20-30 minutes and I was wondering, is this it? Eventually I made an effort to sleep through the pain because I knew if this WAS the beginning of labor, I would need my strength later on.

We got up in the morning and went in for my 41-week OB appointment with the same doctor that I saw last week. He seemed much less rushed than last week and took more time with me, so I felt a lot better about him this time around. I told him I’d been having contractions since early morning. He checked my cervix — 2-1/2 centimeters dilated this time. I asked if I could possibly be in early labor; he said not likely. I still had a ways to go before getting there.

Because I was at 41 weeks he sent me for an ultrasound to check a few things, and unfortunately there was not enough amniotic fluid left in my uterus. It also showed some particulate matter in the fluid, and he was concerned that it might be meconium, in which case the baby would likely be in some measure of distress.

So he gave us a choice. Either go home, drink fluids all day ‘like a son of a gun,” and come back in the morning for another ultrasound to see if my amniotic fluid had replenished, or head to the hospital today for induction. He said that option A was probably not going to work, and waiting even a day if it didn’t work could be risky for the baby.

This was really a no-brainer decision for me and Doc. We had our birth plan laid out in advance, which directed for no induction unless medically necessary. But if there was ever a medically necessary reason, this was it. That birth plan was for us and our particular ideals, but the minute anything I was hoping to accomplish might negatively affect our baby, then the decision was easy. Baby’s health wins out every time.

We drove across the street to the hospital, got checked in and into a labor room, and called my mom and Kathryn to let them know what was going on.

More to come…