The New Arrival

I'm finally getting around to posting, maybe...we'll see how many hours from start to finish that it takes me to get this post up....whoop, it is already ten minutes from the time I started, as Scarlett decided to have a little fit after the first sentence. Obviously, my new arrival is to blame! Well, her fault, and the fault of the many people that have flocked to see her.

So, the story of Scarlett! Rewind to four days ago, Tuesday. Just when I'd gotten myself resigned to the idea of the Thursday induction, leaving off bag-packing and other crucial errands until Wednesday, this little girl decided that it was time to make her appearance. I guess I should have figured that that would happen...but then again, I'm sure if I'd planned on it, it wouldn't have happened.

So, the night of Tuesday the 15th, my parents invited me to have Chinese food with them and my sister and her boyfriend. Mario was working late, so I headed to the restaurant by myself to meet up with them. I was just digging into my dinner when all of a sudden I felt something unpleasant...wetness. I stood up abruptly and rushed to the bathroom, wondering if I really had finally lost complete control of my bladder. No, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have had an accident of that magnitude in the middle of a Chinese food restaurant. The pregnant woman's worse fear had transpired: my water had broken in a public place. Luckily I was wearing black pants, and the lighting was dim...I really don't think anyone would have noticed if my uncharacteristically garulous father hadn't decided to announce it to the restaurant at large. (He still takes full credit for Scarlett's arrival, which he attributes to the ginger he forces me to eat from the sushi plate.

My mom drove me to the hospital while Mario left work to run home and pack my stuff. At first, even though I was PRETTY sure that this was it, I really wasn't ready to believe it, and until then I was preg-zilla about letting anyone know I was at the hospital, which is ALL that my immediate family wanted to do--start calling everyone they'd ever met. It pissed me off that we were getting phone calls before I even had my lab results. Maybe it was unreasonalbe, but I just wanted a someone to tell me it was all medically real...after so much hoping and waiting, I couldn't get my "this is it" mentality before someone certified confirmed it. And about an hour after I checked in, my lab results were back...I wasn't incontinent. My water was really broken, and I wouldn't be going home without a baby! Whoo hoo. We also had the same nurse we had when I was sick four weeks before, and we liked her a lot, so we were ready to go. (I was, of course, super nervous, but trying to act like I wasn't.)

I began having little contractions as soon as I got to the hospital, at first barely noticeable. They started me on pitocin (and I'm pleased to say, after my first wussy IV experience four weeks before, I handled it much better this time. Our nurse Leann, who'd watched my blood pressure plummet after the first one, was very relieved.) What surprised me was that immediately the hospital staff began pushing me to have an epidural! After my birthing class where the teacher told everyone to keep an open mind about needing pain meds, I wasn't expecting the nurses to be such pushers! Even before I started the whole thing really started, they were all "recommending" it. At first, I said I just wanted to wait and see how it went. By midnight, because I was reacting to the pitocin with high blood pressure, and progress was slow (3 to 4.5 cm in 6 hours), they began really pushing me, and the pain at that point was getting just bad enough that I caved. And, as awful as it was to have needles stuck in my back, I was glad I did it. It kicked in around 12:30, and the next two and a half hours were pretty much pain-free labor and fast dilation. Mario and I were even able to doze off, although the stupid blood pressure thing on my arm kept me awake by squeezing the crap out of me every ten minutes.

Around 3:00 am I started feeling things again...ouch. I eventually called my nurse and she hit me up with more epidural...but it didn't help. She tried again...it didn't help! I am sure it was helping some, but not only did the pain continue to intensify, I could feel my legs and feet just fine, so I know the drugs weren't quite doing the trick. Luckily, I didn't have too much of that to endure...around 4:30am I was pronounced fully dilated and ready to push!

The only scary thing, up until this point, was that the nurse was pretty sure the baby was in the wrong position..."sunny side up" as my dad calls it. She kept coming in to have me change sides, hoping that the baby would turn...if not doctor could try to turn her...if not, perhaps the dreaded C-s-word. I just tried not to think much about that. However, by the time I was ready to push neither Leann nor the doctor (not my own doctor, but one from her practice that I'd seen before) could tell which position she was in, and regardless, they felt that I could push her out. And I did! It only took about 20 or 30 minutes (about seven contractions, if I remember right) before she was out! Of course it sucked at the time, but from a grand standpoint it was all very bearable, probably even easy compared to what many women experience. Even though she was in the wrong position, she was very small, so that probably made it work.

Thus, Miss Scarlett Celeste made her appearance at 5:07 am, weighing only 5 pounds 12 ounces and 18 inches long. Don't ask me how monster me could possibly have produced such a small child. Mario, of course, was a champ throughout the entire thing. And he is already well on his way to being the best dad in the world!! He is absolutely, totally in love with her and it's the cutest thing in the world.

Anyway, back to the hospital...overall, the delivery was great, and I felt pretty great right away. I was ready to slough off all of my medical attachments and get out of bed the minute she was born, although the nurses were having none of it. We had a good first day with all tests going well, and we were home by the next day. So far, recovery, has also been fine...I had a minor tear with two stitches, but it's not bothering me much. I did come down with a cold the day we came home, which is a bummer considering, clearly, I won't be able to sleep it off. Breastfeeding almost broke me down the first night we had her...okay, I lied. It did break me down. I bawled my eyes out when we didn't have much success the first day, and we ended up having to use formula. I felt like a failure, despite the fact that I've heard the advice a million times not to panic when things don't go smoothly at first, but now I understand why people DO panic. However, thanks to a handy dandy little device called a nipple shield, both Scarlett and I have decided that we can do this breastfeeding thing.

My house has full of relatives (Mario's family is here), so it's hard to get enough time with my girl! I'm trying to be generous with holding time. But it's hard. Right now, I'm still counting how many hours she's been on the planet (just under 83), and every minute is still a miracle.

Okay, three hours later (lunch, feeding, several bouts of tears, and a couple of needling comments from my father-in-law about mommy things I am not doing right)...this post is done. More good stories, less information dump, to come.