Shawna’s Whimsical Weblog

I love not being pregnant. I have traded in the third trimester maladies: exhaustion, heartburn, having to pee every few minutes, backaches and swelling into postnatal maladies: exhaustion, difficulty walking (stitches + general trauma), lochia bleeding, and lack of any core muscle strength. However, there is nothing but an upside to not being pregnant. All of these current ailments will pass within a month or two and I never have to be pregnant again.

Last go round, I was able to turn all my pregnancy weight into baby. I’m curious to see if this will happen again. Liana is not a great eater. She falls asleep on the boob a lot and sometimes she’ll be wide awake and still only feed from one side. Let’s start from the beginning. I think I weighed 178 lbs before delivery. I was able to weight myself again on one of the patient beds in the hospital 2 days after Liana was born. I weighed 164 lbs. I think it’s good we don’t own a scale. I think the lack of progress on weight loss would just be discouraging. I have my postpartum check-up on March 18th. I’m hoping that should be a sufficient amount of time to actually see a drop in weight. I did go to my first postnatal yoga class yesterday and should be able to attend on a regular basis.

Liana started at 6 lbs 10 oz. She dropped down to 6 lbs 5 oz 3-4 days after birth, but hopefully has been gaining in weight since then. While she may not be a great eater in my mind, she does pee and poop aplenty. That makes me think that she is eating what her body needs. My milk came in 2 days after birth, instead of 5 days. I’m trying not to be as neurotic about breastfeeding this time around. I won’t be going to weigh her in-between doctor visits at a breastfeeding support group. Her next check-up is this Friday. I’ll update this log then.

2/17/10: @*$#&! I woke up with heel pain in my left foot. If I have plantar fasciitis again, I’m going to be pissed. I have started on stretching, icing and wearing arch support all the time in hopes that I might nip this in the bud. I’ll have to wait a few days before I can really conclude anything.

2/18/10: Happy 35th Birthday Tim!

2/19/10: Liana checked out great at her appointment. She is up to 7 lbs, 8 oz (+1 lb 3 oz in 2 weeks). They typically want the baby gaining 1/2 lb per week. She won’t need to be seen again until her 2 month check-up.

The story on how Liana was born…

I woke up on Groundhog Day 2010 with above average back pain. I thought to myself, “Wow, I must have put on more weight and my back is really starting to feel it.” Tim had already left for work and Marshall was hungry for breakfast at his usual 6:45 AM. It was around 7:30 AM I think I felt my first contraction. Of course the contractions are so mild at first that you could mistake them for something else. I got online to give Tim the head’s up that I might be in labor and busied myself with reading up on the difference between “false labor” and “real labor”.

Within the hour it became clear I was indeed having regular contractions. They were still 16 minutes apart, so I felt like I still had time before having Tim come home. I soon rang my mom, but was sent to voice mail. Uh-oh. Another hour passed and I still haven’t heard back from my mom. At this point in time, Tim decided to leave work and stop by my mom’s house. Contractions continued to be erratic coming in at 4 to 14 minutes. I have them written here on a piece of paper: 9:44, 9:52, 10:09, 10:19, 10:26, 10:30, 10:41, 10:51. At that point in time, Tim arrived home and began to record contractions for me on his Blackberry. My mom had gone for a walk with the dog and had been sidetracked by pulling out some invasive weeds in her local canyon. She would arrive shortly after Tim to watch Marshall when Tim and I headed to the hospital.

I kept thinking, “My water should break any time now.” I called Labor and Delivery around 11 AM and they told us to come on down. I had been walking through the contractions up to this point. The 40 minute car ride to the hospital was not as pleasant. We checked into L&D around 1:30 PM and was finally examined around 2:45 PM by a Dr. Lee. I was only 2 cm dilated and she suggested we go get some lunch and walk around for 2 hours. This seemed like a good idea at the time, even though I had Tim pushing on my back any time a contraction hit as a counter-measure. Spoiler Alert: Back Labor is really, really painful.

I got dressed and we headed downstairs to the cafeteria. I really just wanted a place to do some yoga back stretches (cat and cow poses for the yoginis out there). However, there really wasn’t any place to do them. Tim decided to grab something from the cafeteria and I tried to find a hallway to stretch out on the ground. However, when you are in a hospital, you will get everyone asking you is you are OK if they see you on all fours. “Just in labor!”, I’d say. “I’m OK!”, I’d say. Finally I decided that these contractions were getting stronger and closer and we best head back to check-in, although it had only been 45 minutes.

Back in L&D, I was really becoming rather agitated about my increased discomfort. Dr. Lee examined me again to find I had moved from 2 cm to 3 cm. When you hit 3 cm, you are considered to have been moved from “passive” labor to “active” labor. And boy howdy did that labor seem “active” in the next 2 hours while I waited on an epidural. I can basically remember screaming for a minute every 3-5 minutes. By the time the anesthesiologists showed up, I think I was getting a little hoarse. Part of the delay was due to the fact that my blood had in fact turned to syrup and the nurse DonnaMarie couldn’t get the proper suction to draw it. I also had the chills and was shaking a lot. But after what seemed an eternity, Emily would insert that lovely needle that would put the lower half of my body into a state of pins and needles and all was good with the world. Tim fed me ice chips which still somehow managed to give me heartburn. I thought about all the food I’d be able to eat once the baby was born.

Dr. Gross and Dr. Wilson would be my delivering doctors. They didn’t check on my dilation until 8:30 PM at which point they said, “Hey you’re 10 cm and at +2, want to have a baby?” Huh. My water still hadn’t broken, so they did that for me. Then after 3 sets of 3 pushes, Liana was born at 8:53 PM. It’s funny how quickly everything goes at the end. I tore along my previous scar tissue from Marshall’s delivery (not uncommon), but not nearly as bad as a surgical cut. It took me twice as long to sew me back-up as to push Liana out.

Liana was 6 lbs and 10 oz. She measured in at 20.6 inches in length with a 34 cm head circumference. She was pretty blue on delivery which was dismaying to me, but apparently not out of the range of normal since she got an 8 out of 9 on her two Apgar tests. Having not been up all night, I was not completely delirious on meeting my daughter. I was moved to tears on how beautiful she was and how happy I was to finally meet her.

We spent two nights in the hospital. Basically these were fairly tedious days filled with doctor and nurse visits. We would have been happy to go home sooner, but I am fully happy to be able to live in a place where they want to make sure there are no problems in the 24 hours after delivery for the mom and the baby.