The [Mis]-Adventures of Tabitha: April 2006

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Sound and Fury

SunShineyBaby

This pic was taken when she was exactly 1 week old. We are living in a bit of a coma. I like to call it The Days of Milk and Poo. Our entire existance is based on milk and poo.....and sometimes sleep but not a lot of that. She really is a good baby. Doesn't fuss a lot and is happy to be swaddled and in your arms looking around at the world.
Her gramma Bev arrived yesterday and Tabitha has weaved her spell of magic and loud endearing farts around her grandma. If she wasnt so small and new I would swear that she was a truck driver/bar fly re-created. Wait a minute, who am I kidding?
I have met her parents and she IS those things re-created. She would make her Aunt Chris proud with the decible level that she can achieve with her burps and farts. WHO is the bozo who told us that baby poo doesn't smell? Cause, let me tell you, ITS A LIE
POO SMELLS! BABY OR NO

She loves her boobie! We have had a lot of issues around breastfeeding and it hasnt been easy. We have a basic anatomy incompatability issue. Her mouth is too small and my breast is just too big for her little mouth. Plus, the milk sinuses are WAY up there so she has to suck like mad to get any satisfaction. While I in the meantime are begging her to stop sucking so hard. I have had to pump for a few days and feed expressed breast milk just to give my poor sad nipples a break from her furious feeding.

Family portrait @ 1 week. We still look happy, tired but happy. The dog has decided that it is HER baby and sits and guards her all times. She, infortunately for Tabitha, thinks that sitting on her is the best way to protect her. We have to convince her otherwise.
GOD, I look like crap!! I hope to change that and soon.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Calming the storm

Tabitha is now 6 days old. One day shy of her first week with us outside. She is an amazing and wonderful little girl. I sometimes just look right at her and start weeping. I cannot believe I actually got her, that I actually, finally after so much trying and effort got my baby. She cries and I am happy to hear it, it makes me laugh and feel so warm inside to hear her pitiful wails. She has such spunk already this little lady of mine. She gets so angry when her clothes are removed, or put on for that matter. She pulled the stethoscope out of the nurses’ ears at the hospital and gets even crankier when you mess with her cute little feet. She grabs onto my breasts and looks me in the eye as if to say, Get To it Woman, I Want the Boob. She is endlessly fascinating to me and I can’t help myself but to stare at her for extended periods of time. All the little faces and expressions that are developing and I get the privilege of watching it all happen before my eyes.

Her arrival to this world was scary and complicated. My face was bruised and bloodshot from enduring endless contractions with no relief. She did not do well when pitocin was added to my IV to progress labor. Every time I had a contraction, her heart rate would plummet and on a few occasions even stopped. The doctors and nurses went into a panic and ran into my room and made me flip over on the bed onto my hands and knees to relieve pressure to her cord so her heart would accelerate. Not easy to do with an epidural and you can’t feel anything below your bellybutton. That worked temporarily but then another medication was added to the IV to stop all contractions called Terbutaline. Nasty stuff this. It makes you feel very anxious, paranoid, shaky and your heart starts beating a mile a minute. It does have the desired effect of stopping the contractions though. My body of course, did not take the hint. The contractions stopped temporarily but then my body said, no….we are doing this thing anyway. We needed to get this baby out and get her out now. So I was prepped for a C-Section.

I was brought to the operating room and the docs and nurses in attendance were running about getting everything ready as fast as they could. I was strapped to a table that looked like a cross. Legs tied down, arms tied down, blue curtain over my face so that I couldn’t see what was happening. The anesthesiologist added a different med to my epidural and the cold feeling of that medication crept down my body and paralyized me from the ribcage down. I felt nothing at all, the doc said that they were going to some numbness tests and asked me if I could feel anything. When I replied no, he said good, because we started 2 minutes ago. David was sitting near my head to the left holding my hand and cooing into my ear. There were feeling of pushing and pulling and I did have some pain in one spot but I breathed through them (they were easier to take than contractions) They pulled her out and I didn’t see her or hear her. I know that they took her over to the warming table and started working on her. I heard nurses calling out stats on her. Her weight (8.86 pounds), length (20 inches) but I still didn’t hear that cry. I started crying waiting for it. Then, there it was. A small, pathetic little mewl. She was alive and she was my baby. She wasn’t breathing well on her own yet and they needed to help her . They worked on her and cleaned her up she started breathing better on her own. It felt like eons until I finally got to see her for the first time. Hidden from her by the big blue curtain it felt like they were cutting off my heart rather than just my view. Daddy brought her around the curtain for me to see and she was wonderful!! So beautiful and just so perfect with those big fat cheeks. 6 days later, she has already changed so much. Those big cheeks are not so big anymore but now she looks at me and knows me on the outside like she did on the inside. It is me who can calm her when the storms hit her eyes better than anyone.

Cindy

Friday, April 21, 2006

corrections and a picture

Yes, Tabitha was 8 lbs 8.6 ozs, not t ozs as previously reported. Mommy, baby, Daddy are doing fine now that tubes have been removed and food has been provided.

Yes, we caught a trifecta, natural labor, induced labor, and a c-section. No fun at all. I'll save the gory details for Cindy to retell, let me suffice to say that there was a lot of pain, a lot waiting, and more than a little fetal distress. Tabitha's heart rate would plummet during pitocin induced contractions. All contractions, actaully, when they stopped the pit they had to add terbutylene to the mix to stop the contractions.

The c-section, I am told, was completely uninteresting and typical
from a medical perspective. Tabitha popped out, the nurses did
their cleaning, etc., and I got to hold her while they finished up
on Cindy.

Taby Kat and I wandered around in the hall outside the delivery
room looking at things and talking. She stopped crying when
she heard my voice and she was very interested in trying out
her eyes. She looked everywhere and at everything. I think
she was particularly interested in lights, specula, and strong
color contrasts, like warning signs posted on the walls.

Last night someone came into our room every 45 minutes to
and hour. Sometimes more often. Blood, meds, weighing, and
I don't know what else. Tabitha was not an obsticle to our
sleep, the medical staff was.

Tomorow I get to bring home my favorite girl and my favorite
girl (under 30).