One more thing...

...since this started out as a lap band blog, I should note that I have lost 24 lbs since Lucy's birth. I gained 29 (7 in the last week) so I'm 5 lbs over prepregnancy weight. Another good thing about nursing a baby... :)

More Lucy pics

Babymoon

The first 8 days have been wonderful, exhausting, and filled with emotion. I have definitely had stress (parents stayed with us for 6 days! until I asked them to leave a day early...) but we have been blessed with a peaceful and mellow (so far) child, and I am trying to soak in every moment of having a newborn. She loves to snuggle, and we love to snuggle her. Tonight I'm trying to get her used to sleeping somewhere other than one of her parents' arms, but it's hard because I want to hold her all the time.

One of the biggest joys and challenges for me so far has been nursing. My lap band surgery definitely impacted the pregnancy, but my breast reduction has a greater impact now on my life than the lap band. I had breast reduction surgery in 2001. At the time, I was 28, divorced for less than 2 years, and had no prospect or intention of ever remarrying. I knew I wanted to have children, and also knew that if I did have a child I would like to be able to breastfeed, but I felt that it was a distant possibility, while my back pain and difficulty with exercising were a present reality. My surgeon told me that breastfeeding was unlikely given all the manipulation of the duct tissue. And I had a lot of tissue removed, so when it came time to actually plan a pregnancy, I didn't know what to expect. I did a lot of reading on the subject, discovered that there are lots of women with my history who successfully breastfeed their babies, and that it was definitely possible. (For more information, visit bfar.org.)

I'm still glad I had the surgery, because for the past 9 years it has greatly improved my quality of life. Luckily, I have been able to nurse and pump milk for my daughter, although I have had to supplement with formula because I don't quite make enough to keep up with her. What I didn't realize was just how invested I would be in being able to nurse my child. She lost too much weight in the first couple days, and when I brought her back to the pediatrician and saw how much weight she had lost, I burst into tears. I cried again the first two times my husband gave her a bottle of formula, heartbroken that she was hungry after I had fed her, and devastated that I had to give her formula. I knew in my head that this was a possibility, but for my heart it was another matter.

Now I am discovering how closely stress is related to the ability to lactate and nurse effectively. Lucy can tell when I am tense and she won't latch then. When I am relaxed, she does great. What I am able to pump is also affected by how stressed I am. This is why I asked my parents to leave early--I just wasn't able to relax enough to get our nursing relationship the way I wanted it. My parents weren't helping out, they were expecting to be treated more like guests on vacation, and they were stressing my husband and me out. I love them, but it was too much with a new baby. So now we have our privacy to bond with Lucy, and I am working on keeping things as mellow and calm as possible with the nursing. As much as I am able to do, I will be grateful to have.

Time to feed and cuddle Lucy. :)

Lucy: 9-28-2010

She's Here!

Finally! Lucille (Lucy) Evelyn arrived at 12:05am on Tuesday morning, September 28. It was a fast labor, especially for a first time mom, and she is beautiful and amazing. Everything was worth it, even the waiting. :)

I hope to get around to posting her birth story sometime soon. It will be long, as it was an exciting one, but also a perfectly healthy and normal one. She was very nearly born in the car on the way to the hospital! Right now I am enjoying the first quiet in the house since we got home Weds night; everyone is asleep, and I got up from a nap an hour ago.

I tried posting pictures, but it's not working right now, so I will try again the next chance I get.

The waiting is the hardest part

Today is not a good day. I woke up with every part of me hurting. I'm very irritated.

I am avoiding the phone, and staying off Facebook. I just can't take anyone else asking me where the baby is. Know where she is? In my pelvis, hurting me. I know people care, and just want to know. I know I'm overly sensitive because every moment of every day, I know exactly where she is and that she isn't where I want her to be, which is out of my body. And I'm hormonal, and maybe a little unreasonable.

I started this whole adventure out wanting to avoid any artificial induction--the thought being, labor induction leads to all the other interventions that I want to avoid. And I still think that's a good plan. But like Chris Rock says in his famous comedy bit-- I UNDERSTAND. I totally get being ready to just deliver and be done with this part, and move on with life. My OB is really great, and very supportive of my desires to avoid unnecessary interventions, and she even suggested I try some acupuncture (which I did, twice, and which doesn't seem to have helped), and I've tried every other at-home technique except castor oil (no thank you).

And of course, every day I spend on FMLA pregnant is one less day I get to spend with my baby. Either way, I go back to work Dec 1. This country's family leave policies SUCK. I was actually lucky to even get FMLA--I wouldn't have qualified, since I just started this job a couple months ago, except someone advised me to ask if my previous employment at the same hospital made me eligible, and it did. I don't have any more paid leave than before, but at least I don't have to pay COBRA for insurance, and my job is protected (not that they would let me go after spending so much money training me).

The whole idea of a "due date" is a huge mind f*ck. Half of all babies arrive after their due date. But we get this "date" in our heads--you really can't help it, the whole pregnancy focuses on this due date. And when the date comes and goes, you have to readjust, even though part of you knew this would probably happen. It is hard to really be prepared for the extra waiting, even if in the grand scheme it is a relatively short period of time. When you are so uncomfortable, and your brain can only fixate on this one thing, it seems impossible to wait another moment.

So, appointment tomorrow, and we'll see where we go from here. Sorry about the complaining. It's about all I feel like I can do right now. I do hope to have something better to report soon.

Stir Crazy

39 weeks and 5 days. But who's counting?

I'm becoming more stir crazy, cranky, and lonely by the day. And bored. Yet, my mind isn't really able to focus on much other than baby, or getting baby out of me. It seems like a waste not to be working, except that I don't have much focus, and don't think I can tolerate either the 13 hour days or the pushing and walking involved. I have a stack of books and a couple knitting projects, and of course my baby shower thank you cards that still haven't gotten done. But these things aren't helping much.

I learned early on in the pregnancy that this can be a very lonely time for us women. Even though many, many women do experience pregnancy and birth at some point in their lives, when you are actually experiencing it, it is still an isolating time. I find my brain wanting to isolate and focus in, and I'm experiencing things that I feel dumb complaining about or talking about. Yeah, everybody knows that being late term means not sleeping, having lots of back pain, heartburn, etc. But it sucks! And I do feel somewhat trapped in my body. It's been long enough now that the mystery and fun and beauty of pregnancy has worn off, and I'm ready for the next stage. And hearing people warn me about the sleeplessness and endlessness of the next stage doesn't make waiting right now any easier or better.

I sit at home each day, and my husband mostly works from home. I think he's sick of me being around, most of the time. I don't have many friends in Portland now--being gone for 3 years will do that, and a lot of people did move away in the meanwhile. I only worked at my new job for 2 months, so I didn't establish close friendships there. So I hardly see anyone at all. I try to stay active--walking, going to the gym to swim, sitting on my yoga ball instead of on the couch, doing squats. Sometimes I worry that this loneliness and lack of interaction is going to really blossom when I am home with a newborn, but what do I do about that now?

I'm just ready to move on.

Due...almost

I was planning on working until my due date, which is in 10 days. But this past weekend things seemed to be moving undeniably toward labor (yes, on Labor Day weekend), and when I went back to work on Tuesday, I was miserable enough that I threw in the towel. My supervisor was extremely understanding and supportive, and I went on leave at 38 weeks exactly.

At first I felt terribly guilty about this. I've found that many women who worked during their pregnancies have told me similar things about it: you don't want to be waiting around at home, you don't want to spend any of your maternity leave pre-baby. There is a sort of pride about it, working until you deliver. But after a day of feeling like a weenie for dropping out of the race, I'm over it. My job involves 13 hour days, a lot of which are pushing stretchers with patients on them down long halls to and from operating rooms, bending over to do things on the OR floor like empty urine bags and pick up all the stuff I drop, and sitting in (or avoiding sitting in) incredibly uncomfortable chairs while monitoring my patients under anesthesia. There isn't much space up at the head of the bed for walking around and relieving back labor. Plus, having a patient on my last day who was "ruling out" for VRE (a particularly nasty multidrug resistant organism) reminded me that every patient in the hospital has the potential to pass along a bug I might not want my newborn daughter to get when I deliver her.

Plus, I don't mind having the time to get my head in a new space, and being able to do as much or as little activity as I see fit to do right now. Yesterday, I was walking around a lot and being more active, but today I just haven't been able to do much at all. I have great plans to do all this cooking for after the birth, go grocery shopping, write my shower thank-you cards...but I haven't been motivated today. This blog post is the most ambitous thing I've been able to do yet.

My profession has made me a little more educated about pregnancy and delivery than I used to be, and perhaps more so than the average person, but one thing I didn't really get before is how ambiguous labor signs can really be. Not just the fact that contractions can start and stop multiple times, but that you can be unsure if they are actually contractions. Or if what you are experiencing is 'progressing' or not. Or if your water has broken or not. If it's your first time, not only can you be unsure yourself, but there are a hundred other women to tell you their hundred different experiences, which doesn't add clarity. I want something more definitive, but I haven't gotten it. And being stuck in a moment in time, unable to see if an hour or three from now things will be more obvious (as I know they eventually become...usually), is terribly disorienting. I find myself losing perspective. For every woman who tells me knowingly, "Oh, you'll know," there is another whose experience was not knowing she was in labor for hours, or days.

Anyway, I'm ready to be done. I realize it may still be a few weeks, or it may be any day.

Getting There

I am 36 weeks and 3 days along...only about 3 1/2 weeks to go, if you don't count the rumor that most pregnancies, on the average, ACTUALLY go 41 weeks before delivery. I choose to ignore that rumor.

I have had an uneventful pregnancy. I had morning sickness in the first trimester, reflux in the second which has extended up until now (and isn't going away yet), back pain now. Bladder troubles, which while totally normal, are SUPER annoying and embarrassing. (DON'T tell me to do more Kegals! They are NO MATCH for a hugely pregnant uterus, grr.) But nothing on that list has been unusual. Baby Lucy is totally healthy by all appearances, and kicks the living snot out of me constantly. (Rarely does this bother me.) Honestly, I can't complain about this pregnancy at all.

But, I'm officially ready for it to be over. As much as I wanted to get back to work...and I did, and I do enjoy my job...this week my back pain is just telling me that this is all foolish, what the hell am I doing still working?

I am entering the "one-day-at-a-time" phase. I can make it one. more. day.

Before, my thinking was that pregnancy discomfort would be the same whether I was at work or at home. But now, I just want to lie down and rest my back. Now, walking and pushing stretchers for 13 hours is too much.

I definitely need the salary, which ends once I go on leave, and I need the health benefits, which also end until I return from leave, so I at LEAST need to get into September. And I want as much of my maternity leave to be spent with the baby as possible. So I still go to work, at least next week. We'll see about the week after that...

But, now for the complaint-free part. The baby's room is finally done, and we are happy with it. The room has white siding on one wall and is painted taupe for the other walls...we are renting, and I hate to paint, so I just decided to leave it the way it was. Our crib, changing table, glider and armoire are all set up and filled with baby things. I made linens and curtains out of cute Amy Butler fabrics in pinks and oranges. And I'm having a small shower next weekend. I've ordered the car seat (baby can't come for a week, until we get it...). The bassinette is in our bedroom. The "stuff" part of being ready is pretty much completed. Of course, that's the LEAST of "being ready."

And since this is ostensibly a band blog, I can report that I have gained about 22 pounds for the whole pregnancy. I measure exactly on target for size. I'm sure I'll gain a little more, but I have room to do so, if I can eat enough. The truth is that my stomach doesn't hold much now, and that's true for most pregnant women at this point. As long as baby still looks healthy, my OB has no concerns. I am pretty sure that I would have gained much more without the band. Hopefully, between the band and nursing, it won't take too long to lose the baby weight after Lucy is here. I've stayed healthy otherwise too--BP is normal, no GD, nothing but the usual pregnancy complaints.

I hope to post some baby bump pics, and some pics of the nursery, but it's taken me this long to even blog, so I am not making any promises.

Alien

First things first...does anyone know how to stop the Chinese spam from invading my comments? I moderate them, but it is getting really annoying.

Next up, I have started my new job, and even received my first paycheck (which was WAY smaller than I expected, btw, but still nice to get). Things are going well...I am off orientation tomorrow (gulp!) and swimming on my own. I am still not sure how 13 hour shifts will go for me as my pregnancy gets closer to completion. As it is, I use the restroom every hour, which has been feasible while I have been orienting (and thus had another provider to cover for me when I left for the restroom) but when I am on my own I will be at the mercy of someone else being available to watch my patient while I go. It's all part of the deal, of course, and will only last for another 8 weeks or so...

I do like the job a lot, and everyone I have worked with. People seem to enjoy working for the group, and enjoy each other. The OR atmosphere is much more respectful of everyone in it than where I trained. No one is allowed to have tantrums and unprofessional outbursts, which was more common than it should have been in Spokane. It makes things more collegial, more respectful, and frankly, safer. It will take a long time for me to meet everyone and for everyone to get to trust me. A really long time, since I will barely have established who I am when I go on leave. But that is also expected.

I can't really complain about the pregnancy. Everything I am experiencing is normal, the usual back pain and heartburn, the usual feeling huge and unwieldy, but it is a healthy, normal pregnancy, thank goodness. I have only gained 20 pounds to date, which is probably just fine but surprises me nonetheless. I'm sure I'd be looking at a lot more weight gain without the band!

One thing that has surprised me is how little I can eat now. I get hungry very quickly, but I get full way faster than I ever did prepregnancy, no matter how tight the band has ever been. I'll ask my OB at my next appointment if I ought to have more of an unfill, but I don't think what I am experiencing is unusual for any pregnant woman, band or not. I don't think an unfill would necessarily change it, but I'll ask. Nothing ever gets stuck or anything, I have nothing distinctly "band related" to point at. I just get full very quickly. I don't necessarily STAY full, but again I think that's pretty normal.

The baby moves all the time! I think it's funny that they advise women to do "kick counts" a couple times a day to make sure there isn't a decline in fetal movement. Lucy moves all the time. No need to count, and I can't keep track. I hear a lot of women talk about how their baby's head is here, or feet over there, or the baby is hiccuping, or doing different things. How do they know? I don't have a clue what's going on in there. I just know it feels like an alien moving around all the time. It's strange and interesting, but I can't tell what part is what or exactly what she's doing in there.

And finally, here's one thing that losing 70 pounds before getting pregnant did for me: I have been able to grow into my belly (my extra belly flab, that is) without any stretch marks. I know I can get them, because I got all kinds of stretch marks when I gained weight. But nothing new on my belly, and I still have a little skin left to go before it gets tight. Sweet! I may get out of this without any new stretch marks, which would be really cool.

If anyone is still reading out there, thanks...I know the updates have been infrequent, and perhaps not that interesting. But this is just how it is right now. There is a lot going on, and I don't have that much energy. I guess that probably won't get any better up until and after I deliver, so I'll just do my best to post something interesting when I can.