Monday, April 27, 2015

3 weeks in...

Well...it has taken me a few weeks to get back on here.  Such is the life with a newborn right??!!

Let's start with a Silas update :)

After getting settled in at home, he has been great really.  The first few days were a little difficult in that he couldn't latch on to nurse, which was due to tongue tie.  He was such a sleepy baby and so chill that he really didn't fuss that much.  I was pumping so that he could get milk that way. We had his tongue tie clipped when he was 4 days old and ever since then has been nursing great.  He has been slow to gain weight, partially due to that start, but is doing better now.  He had jaundice the first week, but not so bad that he needed any treatment for it other than getting a little sunshine. He is the sweetest baby.  And a snuggle bug for sure.  He does great at night too :)  Most nights he will sleep a good 4-5 hour stretch then wake to nurse.  He rarely cries.  When he gets hungry or tired he will just wiggle around and grunt :)  He is just a laid back, chill baby. We are loving every minute with this little dude.

His big sisters love having him around too.  They both want a chance to hold him every day.  Evie will call him "My Silas" and go running to the couch and say, "My hold Silas" and scream if we don't let her hold him right away.  She loves to make sure he has his "dummy" (aka paci) close by at all times.  Evie has had a little rough time adjusting in some ways to having a baby brother around.  I think part of it is due to teething and just settling in to a routine where her big sister is gone all day and she shares mommy's attention.  She is 2 as well, so there are daily fits we get to work through too.  She is still a cutie though and we wouldn't trade her spunky spirit for anything.  It just can test our patience as we guide her in how to use her words instead of screaming at us for things she wants.

Sarah Kate started school last week.  I might have cried right after dropping her off the first day.  She loves school though.  She has already made some good friends.  She is quite the cutie in her school uniform too :)

What else...hmmm...

Let's just leave it at that for now and throw in some pics...



From a walk we took last week in Cucheth.  I love this time of year as the flowers begin to bloom.



First day off to school.  The school is about .8 miles from our house, so SK rides her scooter.  That also means if I walk her in the morning and afternoon, I walk 3.2 miles, which is great exercise for me :)

Hopefully it won't be 3 weeks again and I can get back to keeping up with the ole blog more regularly.  No promises, but it does sound nice!



Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Silas Jeddie has arrived!

I am beyond thankful first of all that today I am home with a sweet baby boy and not being induced right now.  The consultant (doctor) had scheduled me to be induced this morning if Silas didn't come on his own.  Instead...SIlas decided he wanted to be an Easter morning gift and came on his own!

So here's the birth story.  I want to share how it all went down not just to tell everyone about it, but for myself too.  It is fun for me to be able to look back at the blog years later and see details I might soon forgot.

So let's start with Sat. morning.  I woke up around 6 and started feeling like my waters were leaking.  No big gush or anything, but something was going on I knew.  I wasn't feeling any contractions and it was a slow leak, so I wasn't rushing around like crazy to get to the hospital.  My plan that day was to go with SK and take her to get her school uniforms and such that she needed to start school in a couple weeks.  We were planning to go mid morning with Ginger and Ansley (her daughter) to ride the bus to Leigh and go to the store there to get everything.

I decided to call the Labor ward first and see what they said I needed to do.  They weren't too concerned about me coming in quickly and wanted me to call in to the Antenatal clinic and make an appointment with them to just come in and get a little check (meaning just check baby's heart beat and monitor me for a little).  I tried calling and couldn't get anyone to answer.  I decided I was feeling ok and wanting to be walking anyway to get things going on their own too, so I planned to go ahead to Leigh and do the shopping with SK and our friends.

Ginger was good with going with me and Michael was on standby if I called him while I was out to come and get me if things progressed where I need to head on to the hospital.  So we road the bus on in to Leigh and walked about getting uniform needs and all.  I had contractions off and on while we were out but nothing consistent or hard enough for me to have to stop going about.

We got back from Leigh around 1 and ate some lunch.  I had tried calling off and on throughout the morning to get in touch with the Antenatal clinic but no one was answering there.  So at 1 I called back to the Labor Ward only to discover I had been calling the wrong place all morning.  So the Labor ward connected me to the right place to get an appointment to come in, but at this point in the afternoon they didn't have any appointments left for the day, so they reconnected me with the labor ward.  They then said to come on in to the labor ward and they would check me out there and see how things were going.

Michael and I got things together at home and the girls situated with Emma Rose, who had to come home from working in the cafe so we could head on out.  We kissed the girls and headed off not knowing if we were going to be kept there or sent home to wait and see if labor kicked in.

Once we got to the labor ward they hooked me up to a monitor to check contractions and baby's heart rate.  **Side note--the midwife who was checking me in used an old school baby heart rate thing on my belly to hear baby boy's heart...like they do on "Call the Midwife".  I thought that was fun...haha.

She determined that it was my water leaking, but didn't do any sort of exam to see if I was dilating any.  She told us they tend to be more hands off and esp. if my water had broken that they wouldn't want to do any more checks than needed to keep from risk of infection and such.  *Def. different than what I have experience in the past, but I appreciated that.

While I was laying getting monitored I was getting some pretty good consistent contractions that were coming every 4-5 minutes.  It was coming in waves of lighter ones and some being stronger, but nothing that really caused me to be in pain too much.  Just enough where I was feeling them and knew they were getting more consistent and stronger.

They determined that I needed to stay at the hospital in the Induction Ward for the night and they would begin inducing in the morning if I didn't start progressing more on my own.  They took us then over to the Induction ward and showed us where my bed was and said we could go about the hospital as we wanted, but to just be back by 8:30 so the midwife could check in on me then.  So the Ward...hmm.  It was quite the experience.  It is a room with 6 beds in it, each with a curtain you could pull around it for privacy.  There was a chair (not the most comfortable for Michael we will say) and a birthing ball and that was it pretty much.  There were 3 other women in the room at this time.  One of the other women (and her partner) were watching an episode of "The Simpsons" and thought it was the funniest show ever.  I thought about offering our headphones to them as a subtle hint, but didn't.  Michael and I decided to head out and go walk the halls and see about getting some dinner in one of the places at the Main Entrance of the hospital.  **That also was different than what I have experienced in the past too...being told I could and should eat whatever while I was waiting and trying to get labor going.  So we went down and Costa Coffee was the only thing open (being a Sat. night and holiday weekend).  We were able to get some sandwiches and chocolate muffin and sit down there for a little bit before walking the halls again.  While I was walking I was feeling the contractions more steadily, so I knew the walking was helping.

We headed back to the ward and waited till about 9 or so for the midwife to come.  She checked the baby's heart rate and my blood pressure was all.   After sitting around there a little bit, I wasn't really feeling contractions, so we decided to go walking more.  At this point the hospital was a bit creepy to us.  Half the hall lights were off and no one was really in the halls at all, except for the wing where the labor ward was.  We still walked about though and I once again started feeling more consistent contractions, but not too painful at that point at all.

We got back to the ward around 10:30 or so and tried to watch a little bit of a show together and read a bit.  They turned the lights down around 11 I think and so we tried to lay down (or for poor Michael...he tried using the birthing ball to prop his legs on and get where he could sleep some.  Poor guy...

At about 11:30 I started feeling the contractions coming more frequent and increasing in pain.  At 12:30 I called the midwife to try and see at what point they would move me to a labor room (hoping it would be soon since my contractions were beginning to come so strong).  She asked if I wanted to get a bath to try and help ease the pain, so I went for that.  She also gave me some kind pill that I can't remember what it was called, but it was like a strong tylenol.  The hot water was great and gave some relief and helped me relax for a while, but the contractions were still coming about every 3-4 minutes.  And the med she gave me was completely pointless.

At 2:30 they were getting more intense so we called the midwife again.  At this point I had not been checked at all and just knew in my head I was feeling pressure and had to be at close to 10 cm. if not already there.  Well...she came and saw how strong my contractions were coming and asked if she could check me.  Yes.  Yes, please.  So she examined me and said I was 2.  2 flipping cm was it.  I wanted to cry.  I thought at that moment I wasn't going to make it.  She said for me to try and get some sleep and rest, to which I wanted to respond "yeah right!".  She left and said to call if anything changed or we needed anything.

At about 3:30, my contractions were crazy intense and then my waters fully broke.  Like full on gush, big ole mess broke. (Sorry if this is TMI, it is a birth story though...).  We called the midwife again and she came in first checking to make sure the fluid was clear.  She still wasn't too concerned about things being much different I guess cause she just offered a new pad and said to ask if we needed anything.  TO which I replied, "Yes!  I need new sheets."  She didn't realize with the room being kinda dark how much of a gush there was.  So then she changed my sheets and saw how much pain I was in.  She got new sheets on then decided she should check me again.  This time, I was 10.  So if you calculate that, I went from 2-10 in a matter of an hour folks.  I was quite relieved, but also like "holy cow"!  She said that we were going to rush right over to the labor ward and for Michael to get our stuff.  He grabbed as quickly as he could and she got me in the bed where she could wheel me across the hall.  All the while I am contracting every 2 minutes and moaning/groaning/screaming in pain and feeling such pressure.

We got into the Labor room (finally a private room where I don't have a lady on the other side of the curtain sawing logs (aka snoring) while I am moaning and trying to breathe through contractions.  She immediately told me to do whatever my body told me to do and just go with what it was telling me.  I start pushing around 4 or a few minutes before.  The first few pushes weren't too bad and I was feeling kinda confident, then he crowned and I know I screamed a couple times that I wasn't going to be able to do it and didn't want to.  Let's just leave that part at "it hurt...it hurt a lot" but I was able to hush up and focus on using the contraction to get him out and he was born at 4:12 a.m.

I believe he must have been sunny side up (from my memory of him coming out).  The midwife put him right on my chest and it was the most precious moment.  He took a few seconds to start crying, but then gave a good little cry and then settled right onto my chest.  He was very alert to begin with and his eyes were wide open for a bit in those first couple of hours.  Michael got to cut the cord and then I just got to have skin to skin time with him for a couple hours.  I ended up needing a couple stitches, but didn't tear bad according to the midwife.

After about 2 hours another midwife came in to give Silas a Vitamin K shot and Michael put some clothes on him and wiped him off a little bit.  I was able to get up and take a shower while Michael got some cuddle time with him :)

We then were told we could stay in our private room and be discharged from there or if we wanted to go to the ward and take more time we could.  Ummm...easy, I will take the private room and early discharge.  They came in at about 10 to start our discharge and we were home a little after 11.

So Silas's birth story is nothing like his sisters.  I am so thankful for it though.  It might have had it's interesting and hard moments, but overall it was an amazing experience and I felt well cared for by my midwife.  It was amazing to be able to not be hooked up to monitors and to not have the epidural where I was able to move about so quickly afterward.  Plus I really think labor went more easily and quickly without it.

So there ya go.  I will do another blog sometime soon hopefully of how it has been since being home.  How the girls are taking to him and all.

I will ask that you pray for him to figure out nursing soon.  He is having a bit of a time with it so far, but we aren't worried too much yet.  The midwife came by our house yesterday and another will come some time today to check and see how he is doing.  I will update more on that too on the next blog, but pray with me that we can sort that out soon for him.

I will have to work on getting pics on here, but if you are on Facebook or instagram I have posted pics on there and will try to get more up later.  We used our phones mostly so far, since it has been easier :)

And I wanted to say too how great a dad and hubby Michael has been too.  He was great and so supportive while I was laboring and has been so helpful since Silas arrived.  He loves our children so well and cares for me like a champ.  I don't think I could have done a natural labor and delivery in a whole new country without him, or I know I couldn't have.  I am so thankful for him and love seeing him hold his son and look at him with such love.

It has been a fun crazy ride the last few days that is for sure!  More blogging to come tomorrow maybe...which will be determined by my little man and how much attention he needs :)