Part Two: My baby! In someone else's house!

As I previously mentioned, Calvin was six weeks early, which I didn't fully understand until he was taken to the special care nursery five minutes after being born. Special care is a step up from the NICU and handles babies who are 30+ weeks. When we moved to the third floor after delivery, we stopped in to check him out. He was receiving IV fluids and on constant monitors, but he was maintaining his body temperature and had not indicated that he needed a feeding tube. His breathing was great and he didn't need antibiotics. All good signs!

I was in the hospital until Thursday. When you have a baby you think you'll leave the hospital with your child in a car seat and go home and get started on the sleep deprivation and breastfeeding and all that immediately. I left the hospital, not pregnant anymore and without a baby. It was extremely weird.

The next two weeks were marked by visits back and forth to the hospital. Thank God that we live so close, or I couldn't have done it, and I think I'd have gone insane. I needed to see that child.

The third day or so that he was in special care, he had developed some jaundice. He was orange. I kind of expected that--my brother and I both had jaundice when we were born--and the light they put him under was like a little baby tanning bed. It was warm and I think he enjoyed it. The only drawbacks were (1) trying to change a diaper through the windows on the incubator and (2) we couldn't keep him out for more than an hour at a time. It's hard to describe how weird it is to go see your child, take him out of a box for an hour, then have to put him back. But again, I didn't mind it too much.

By the end of the first week I was exhausted, and things seemed to be looking up. He got his IV out, finished his phototherapy and was no longer a pumpkin. The only thing remaining was to get him to eat, which he had been doing with varying success. I was having trouble getting him to latch on with breastfeeding, but I was pumping enough that it was pretty much exclusively his diet. Unfortunately, when we came in one night to visit, he had a feeding tube. No one had called to tell me that this was happening; I was already under enough stress recovering from the birth and dealing with his being in the hospital. I may have cried. If I had been prepared for it--if someone had called and said "Calvin isn't eating as much as he needs to, and we need to put in a feeding tube," it would have been fine. But there was no warning. So for the next week I hated that feeding tube. I held it against the hospital as a symbol that they didn't think my baby was capable of eating enough on his own. Not only that, but "eating enough" was defined by the hospital as a certain number of milliliters. The only way of measuring that, in their estimation, was to give him a bottle containing the appropriate amount. Breastfeeding didn't count toward his minimums because "we have no way of knowing how much he gets."

I'm going to take a second to say, this is my first child and my first experience dealing with a premature infant. I have no idea how things "should" go in these situations or what I should have expected. But the way they handled feeding, especially with the emphasis on numbers and my inability to exclusively breastfeed, discouraged me from breastfeeding my child. I am not gung-ho about breastfeeding, and to be honest my main motivation for doing so was that it would be cheap as free. Unfortunately, the circumstances prevented me from being able to do it the way I planned. Throughout that week I began to realize that the only way that I would be able to get him out of the hospital was to ensure that he ate all of his bottles on his own, and if I took the time and energy to attempt to breastfeed him, he wouldn't do that. At this point, I'm doing a combination of breastfeeding and formula, but moving more toward formula because my supply is dwindling. Pumping all the time hurts and often he isn't interested in breastfeeding, so I'm sort of moving toward the easy alternative. I hope that doesn't make me a bad mother.

By the end of week two he was eating everything and he was switched to an on-demand feeding schedule, which was GREAT. He could eat what he wanted when he wanted; the damn feeding tube came out; and best of all, we brought in his car seat to make sure his oxygen levels stayed up while he sat in it. We did that on the 4th of July, and he passed. The next day, he was circumcised and that night we did "room-in" on the pediatrics floor. That means we stayed in a hospital room with the baby--the way we could have if he'd been full term and A-OK from the beginning. It was a rough night, but it got me prepared for what was coming.

On Tuesday, exactly two weeks after he was born, we brought Calvin home.

Part One: Even in labor, there are vuvuzelas

Tuesday morning (June 22) I woke up to an unpleasant sensation that, quite honestly, felt like I had peed myself. Except I haven't wet the bed in years and years, and believe that I have pretty decent bladder control. I called the doctor's office to ask what was going on, and they had me come in, at which point my doctor checked things out and said that my water had broken and I needed to check in to the hospital. Which I did.

We got situated in a labor and delivery room and just kind of sat around for awhile. There wasn't much on TV and I was STARVING. I hadn't eaten anything for breakfast since I thought this would be a quick visit to the doctor and I would just get something after, but THEN they told me I wasn't allowed to eat anything! NOOOOOO. So I got started on my Pitocin drip and turned on Food Network because if I couldn't eat food, I was at least going to look at it. Tyler Florence made some excellent looking Swedish meatballs.

Argentina and Greece were playing in the World Cup, but the only channel showing it that was available in the room was Univision. I had some fun translating the commentary, and Spanish announcers get REALLY excited about soccer. And may I just say one more time: the sound of vuvuzelas in the background of anything is like having a mosquito embedded in your eardrum.

So around 2 or 3 I started having some serious contractions and pain, and my doctor came by and started telling me how he doesn't believe in epidurals (WHAT NO I WANT MY DRUGS) which was a joke (thank God). The anesthesiologist came by a little while later and shot me up, which was the best thing that happened to me all day because within a matter of minutes I went from moaning into Brandon's shirt from the sheer pain of the contractions to sitting up and talking about how this wasn't so bad! I could totally do this!

My parents came after I got the epidural, which was a small mercy, given that I was an utter mess until I got it.

Sometime around 8:15PM or so they announced that I was ready to start pushing. The nurse got the bed set up and brought in the cart with all the medical supplies, and the doctor came in and just...kind of stood there. Because nothing was happening yet. Once things really did get underway, I pushed until the baby got where he needed to be, and then the doctor set up and started working on getting him out. This was a lot less difficult than I thought it would be. It was a matter of waiting for a contraction, pushing like crazy while Brandon counted to 10, then relaxing. That is, until he started actually coming out, at which point the counting was irrelevant and I just pushed as much as I wanted to.

Calvin was born at 9:03PM and weighed 4 pounds 15 ounces. He was 18 inches long and had a giant bruise on his head where he had been shoved against my pelvic bones for over a week. The first thing he did was open his eyes, and once they got him cleaned up I got to hold him for a few minutes before they whisked him off to special care.

After the hell that has been my pregnancy, labor itself was surprisingly not bad. The worst part was the pain before the epidural kicked in, which was pretty miserable, but even that wasn't too bad. I didn't sustain any major damage from the labor process, and what I did I won't detail here because no one wants to hear about that. I was really happy with the delivery process and how it was handled by the hospital; I don't think it could have been any better. Now the aftermath of the delivery, specifically the ramifications of having a baby six weeks early, was less pleasant.

Part two will detail the two weeks of visiting my own child at the hospital.

There is a baby, and it is real

So I guess that since I've actually had the baby now, I need to get started on the backlog of posts I should have started making three weeks ago. After the false alarms and bed rest, labor itself was such a non-event that I wasn't too worried about writing about it, and then the two weeks after were spent going back and forth to the special care nursery (where he resided until he was eating enough)...I've been kind of neglecting this. Therefore, I'll break it up into a few posts as I get to them. Right now, my brother is feeding Calvin, who is now eating A LOT. This means I have a few minutes to update, although this one isn't substantial, just a note that I haven't forgotten about this thing and will make my updates as I have the time.

He's the coolest baby ever.

Independence Day

Basically, I'm just going to repost my facebook status:

The doctor told me today that if we can keep the baby in for ten more days, we will be in good shape. So I'm holding out for June 28 or so as an arrival date and hoping that he cooperates, both in waiting and then in getting out!

(I mentioned to Brandon that I wanted the baby to come before July 4, and he thought I was making some comment about the significance of Independence Day, but really it's just because I want to go see fireworks and have a cookout.)

What To Do

First of all, if I sit with this laptop anywhere on my belly, the baby kicks it. I think he's drawn to warmth. Either that or he's trying to tell me that he's allergic to it, like a mogwai or something. I don't think I would want a mogwai for a child. They're cute and all, but you couldn't bathe them unless you wanted a quick and painless way of getting more children...which, given my current pregnancy status, might not be a bad thing. Sorry, I have no idea what I'm talking about. That was weird.

I watched "Julie and Julia" at the hospital and was kind of intrigued by Julie Powell's idea that "I can blog about something and it might turn into a career." But I don't see myself as a writer or this blog as anything that I will ever get paid for. In the simplest terms, I started this blog so I could write about stuff and communicate with people that I know. There is no expectation of it going anywhere. But then, she wrote a blog about cooking a lot of stuff, and I know that other people write about...well, nothing really, if you look at Hyperbole and a Half (which I do, all the time, because it's phenomenal) and it got me thinking: how does one get a gig like that? How do you get paid to blog?

I don't write every day because I know people don't expect me to, but if someone were paying me I'd write at least once a day, if not more. Every time Jezebel has posts about internships opening up I wish that I wrote daily or that I lived in New York, since most of their writers are city-dwellers. I've been getting positive feedback about my writing style from people who matter to me, and whose opinion I trust, although I just feel like I write what I think and this is how it comes out. Maybe some of it is my attention to grammar or these ingrained rules that I cling to as an English major. But I'm getting off topic again.

The reason I've been thinking about this is because I'm wondering about my future. I'm not going back to teaching next year, and with a new tiny human to take care of I don't know how much of a break I'll be taking or where I'll be in my life when I get back to the workforce. There's a song in Avenue Q called "What do you do with a BA in English?" I've always liked it because, well, that's my degree. I knew from the time I was in high school that I wanted to be a teacher, and this is the first time I've actually stopped and looked back at it and said "Well, is this what I want to keep doing for the rest of my life?" It's as if I've realized that I have options! I could go to pastry school! I could write! I could go to grad school and become a professor or a lawyer or something that actually pays a decent wage!

I think for now I'm just going to allow myself to focus on being a parent. Or, well, hopefully not being a parent for a few more weeks. The longer we keep the baby in, the better his chances of being a football star when he grows up!

I Am Not Dead Yet

This update contains medical information that is probably boring and/or not that important to most of you, but I'm documenting this pregnancy and therefore it gets included. It is not overly graphic, but it is detailed, so you know.

MY BABY TRIED TO ESCAPE!

Sunday I was having some serious stomach issues, hard contractions that I tried to pass off as an ulcer or some unpleasant indigestion, but those were gone the next day so I was in fact able to ignore them. Wednesday night just before Brandon and I left to get some dinner, I noticed that there was blood on my toilet paper. This would not have been cause for concern if I had not had a period for seven months and should not have been starting now, thank you. So I actually called my doctor. There are very few things that will make me call my doctor, especially after hours; unexplained bleeding is one of them.

"I can't really diagnose you over the phone," she says, "You need to come to labor and delivery."
"Is that the same thing as the birth center?" (You can tell I am very prepared to come have this baby.)
"Yeah, right over there."

We got dinner first, because we were hungry, and it was close by. And thank God we did, because here is the exciting saga of What Happened Next:

WEDNESDAY NIGHT:

I was taken up to triage and hooked up to some belly monitors. They checked my heart rate and the baby's heart rate and how my contractions were faring. Apparently I was having contractions--I knew this, but you're supposed to have those Braxton-Hicks things beforehand, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. I think I started to get a little concerned when the nurse kept asking if I had a car seat. NO, I DO NOT HAVE A CAR SEAT, I HAVE TWO MORE MONTHS BEFORE I SHOULD NEED IT. (Also I think my coworkers are still going in on my travel system stroller, which comes with a car seat, so I was kind of waiting until after we had the work baby shower.)

After several hours of waiting for the doctor because everybody was having babies on June 2--no joke!--she checked me out, said that there was in fact some bleeding, that I was dilated to 1cm and 50% effaced. In other words: this baby seems to think that it would be a nice time to start trying to bust out of the joint, and we DO NOT want that this early. Hence: two rounds of steroids, observation, magnesium sulfate drip to hold off contractions and control my still-elevated blood pressure, 24-hour urine sampling, and oh yeah, you can't go to work tomorrow.

They also put me on a clear liquid diet to start because the magnesium can make you pretty sick, but they let me eat real food again starting Thursday night.

THURSDAY:

Got my steroids, got my IV line, confined to a bed (but I still have bathroom privileges! THANK GOD FOR SMALL MERCIES) and hooked up to monitors all day. Kate's mom came to visit me. I had been having about four contractions an hour, but those slowed up as the day went on. They had me on clear liquids only during the day, which was miserable, but let me eat around dinnertime. They also told me that I would probably not be allowed back to work period--given that the school year is over next week--and then told me not to worry about it.

(But I still have to put in grades and clean out my classroom and I have yearbooks to sell and prom pictures that people haven't picked up and that one kid's mom, I still have her $20 in my desk, and I have to get to a network computer to enter my grades in, and also there is supposed to be a baby shower for me, and I have a wedding to attend Thursday and graduation Friday, but yeah I WON'T WORRY ABOUT ANY OF THAT...except that in the end I think I have it all worked out. It just took me some time to come to terms with all of that, and the "you can't do everything.")

We went down for a consult with the high-risk OB office, got another ultrasound. The baby is 4 pounds even, looking good for where he is on the gestational chart, and flexing his arm muscles to prove to his daddy that he can make T-rex arms look good.

Side note: Someone told me the other day that if T-rex had actually had arms the way he was drawn, he could not have been a carnivore, because there was no way he could have controlled or eaten his prey, or something. But they just find dinosaur pieces and make a puzzle out of them, so who knows if what we think they look like is accurate? I thought that was interesting.

That doctor told us that we want to keep him in for a few more weeks and that we were doing exactly what we needed to do to make that happen.

FRIDAY:

Finished my steroid shots around midnight. If baseball steroids feel like the shots I got, I would be a wimpy batter and make do with it, because those suckers HURT. Today my blood pressure has been much better, my attitude has been much improved, I have accomplished a lot related to work, and things are generally looking up. The magnesium drip ends at midnight, which I am very much looking forward to, and provided I don't resume contractions after they take that off I should be set to take a shower tomorrow (I MISS SHOWERING SO MUCH, Y'ALL) and head home hopefully some time this weekend. Which, thank God, because it is boring here. But my nurses have been fantastic, my doctors have been cool, and friends and family have been checking in periodically. I miss everyone and really appreciate the sentiments.

I told Brandon a few minutes ago that most people come to the hospital to get their babies out, but I came to keep my baby in. That's backwards.

PRIGGITY PRIZZOM 2K10

Yesterday I spent about 17 hours at the Wendell Community Center working on prom stuff. That included decoration construction, setup, food arranging, and the prom itself. You should have seen my feet afterward! I could barely walk! But it ended up really being worth it, because I think Rebekah and I put on a great event for our students and everyone appreciated it. I had a lot of students come up and thank me and tell me how much they liked it, and even little things (like seeing our prom king wear his crown and lei ALL NIGHT, and watching kids take photos in front of the arch that nearly killed us to construct) made me feel very rewarded.

No one really ate the food, so I don't think they're planning to provide any next year. And I know that there's no way Rebekah will do this again--especially after the whole paperwork fiasco that we went through for what ended up being no REAL reason, except that we had a nearly-comprehensive guest list that I only had to add about 3 people to (one of whom I had just left off). But for our first prom as coordinators, it was awesome. The lighting and decor were lovely, and I managed to get rid of some of the old decorations from my wedding that I had no idea how to use in the future! We used the centerpieces from the wedding, which are small mirror plates with candleholders and seashells on and around them. It brought back some crazy memories putting those things together. I donated them to the school so that I don't have to deal with them, because they can definitely be reused for Winterfest or anything where we need some nice-ish decor. The colors are adaptable.

One girl did try to get in with a counterfeit ticket which was the wrong color. That was weird. The best part was, her date took her home and came back himself for the rest of the evening! (I mean, hey, he wasn't going to miss his senior prom.) Julie, one of the science teachers, went around with the plastic leis we had bought and started just putting them on people. I think more than half of the people left with them, and surprisingly, I didn't find but one or two on the floor or tables, and didn't see any in the trash can. I know it isn't much, but prom favors are fun to have, and I think it added a little more festivity to the evening.

We also had raffle tickets that we used for the coat check room, but we ran out of space for jackets, so a lot of it was shoes and purses. Rebekah and Ben manned that room all evening, and I think they enjoyed being insulated from the noise and dancing and craziness that was the main room. I went back and forth between the ticket table, the coat check, the photo room, and the refreshment table, and I took a few candid photos. Our candid photographer was the same person doing the keychains, and everyone gets those, so I don't think she got out a whole lot; but she did get photos of the king and queen, and a few others, and I got photos of the breakdancing guys that took over the floor around 11:30, so we're probably covered.

It stormed pretty much all night, which would have been a downer but kept kids under the canopy rather than wandering the park, and helped us keep tabs on everyone. And we got a fountain for the night, which is quite nice and could be a permanent fixture on campus if we want to pretty up some area of the school--it should probably go outside though; maybe Green Club can install it in some kind of landscaping project, I don't know. But I feel like this was a big success, and with this out of the way and yearbooks still selling fast, at least some aspects of my job are ending on a high note. Maybe I'm not the greatest classroom teacher ever, but I rock at extracurriculars. And I think the school will miss that.