More Baby Happenings

Where to start? Well, I guess I can share a little bit about the birth. We had a planned homebirth with our midwife, Nancy. I went into labor the morning of the 14th and spent all day on my feet, walking around the house, doing last minute stuff, and going for walks with Isaac (who came home from a fair), Kathy, and John. We went to the park in the morning, ate at a Taco place for lunch, and then Isaac and I took John for a walk to McDonalds to get some ice cream, yum! By that time things were getting more intense, so when we got home around 3:30pm I decided to sit in our room and read for a while. I got absolutely NO relief from the exercise ball (bummer, since I was assured by many that it helps, thanks JEN!!) so I continued to pace and take short walks in the apartment complex with Isaac. Things continued to pick up slowly but surely and at 6:30pm we decided that it was time for Kathy to take John home with her for the night, since the baby probably wouldn't be there until after his bedtime and we didn't want him around. At 7pm we called Nancy and she arrived around 8pm. I got checked to see where my pains had gotten me so far and I was about 6cm and 100% effaced.

After this I paced and sat on the ball, and my awesome hubby massaged my back for a while during contractions. At 9pm I went into the bathroom and my water broke so Isaac ran me a bath to labor and possibly deliver in. I stayed in there (once again with NO pain relief, doh!) for about 10 or 15 minutes and decided not to have her in there, but when I got out of the tub we realized she was not going to hold on until we made it to the bedroom, so we stayed put! Less than 5 minutes later I was holding her in my arms and she was so perfect and alert! Surprisingly she had a perfectly rounded head and was born pink all over. We sat in the bathroom for a few minutes with her and decided to cut the cord. Isaac did the honors and then we went to the bedroom to get cleaned up.

After the placenta came was when things got a little scary. I started hemhorraging pretty badly and Nancy hurriedly got all of her supplies out to stop the bleeding. While laying on the bed I easily lost about 2.5 cups of blood so I ended up with a shot in the leg of Pitocin, an IV bag of fluids and Pitocin, and some Cytotec to stop the bleeding quickly. I was weak and got an immediate headache and was pale as a sheet for about 30 minutes, but once the bleeding stopped things improved quickly and I could hold Jeanine again. I had to stay laying down for about 30 minutes, then I sat up and leaned against the wall for another couple hours until I could stand. This is me still plugged into the IV, which we hung from a nail in the wall.

So anyway that's our birth story. Jeanine nurses like a champ, she caught on right away! The first 3 nights were amazingly hard though because she was up most of the night with terrible gas pain. The poor thing was drawing up her knees and kicking out her legs in such pain, I felt so bad for her!Thank goodness for my mom thought because without her I'd be living off of 3 hours of sleep! Last night was much much better as Isaac was home and had the first "shift". I was able to get some much needed restorative sleep between feedings and ended up with about 8 hours total! It definitely helped me get some energy back, considering I'm still recovering from the blood loss and the birth, naturally.

Ok, here's more pictures, no particular order. Enjoy!

Johnny holding his sissy for the first time...he's in love!

Jim and Kathy with the kids

Sleepy baby

Sleepy hubby

Grandma Julie w/ Jeanine

Closeup of Isaac and Jeanine

Little escape artist...she always gets her left mitten off!

Sweet Jeanine! "Thanks Auntie Jen for my beautiful afghan, it's my favorite right now!"

Big brother having fun with his new light saber!