We're Doing Disney Again Someday...Plus One! ~ Come Read my Trip Report!!!

[matkensgirl2000]

That made me happy. Thanks for the pics and congratulations. Dug Baby has such sweet eyes.

 

[AprilRenee]

Oh my gosh!! Soo cute!! Wow these pics bring back memories! It wasn't that long ago but he's so big and grown up now comparatively!

How's the nursing going? I remember the first 2-3 weeks being really hard for me to get thru, even though we had a really easy time of it and no latch issues. Just know, it gets so much better by 3 weeks, you'll actually enjoy it by 6 weeks and we're at 5 months now and going strong and I love it so much!

Can't wait to hear your story and see more pictures!!

 

[Imagineer5]

WOW LOVE ALL THE PICTURES!! She already has a wonderful princess wardrobe - lucky girl!! She is sooo adorable and once again brought tears to my eyes thinking that was us just 7 months ago. Amazing. Enjoy those milk-drunk stupors and a baby curling up on you.

Hope nursing is going well - if you have any questions feel free to ask!

 

[cindianne320]

LOVE all her Disney clothes. Our dd came home from the hospital in a Minnie outfit!

 

[reelmom]

You brought tears to my eyes when i read that you listened to Wished on the way home. I love her wardrobe already. And the picture when you "told" her you were taking her to Disney was awesome. That made me laugh out loud.

 

[dtr_angel]

She is absolutely precious! Enjoy it, it goes so fast! If you have any questions feel free to ask, my little one is just 8 weeks ahead of your princess so everything is still fresh lol. I hope everything is going well!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[Dugette]

That made me happy. Thanks for the pics and congratulations. Dug Baby has such sweet eyes.

Yay for making you happy! Thank you. I love her sweet eyes.

Oh my gosh!! Soo cute!! Wow these pics bring back memories! It wasn't that long ago but he's so big and grown up now comparatively!

I have a feeling time is going to go very fast. I can't believe it's already been over a week! Crazy!

How's the nursing going? I remember the first 2-3 weeks being really hard for me to get thru, even though we had a really easy time of it and no latch issues. Just know, it gets so much better by 3 weeks, you'll actually enjoy it by 6 weeks and we're at 5 months now and going strong and I love it so much!

Thank you for this! There have been ups and downs so far. For the first few days, she was so sleepy that I could hardly get her to eat anything. She just kept falling asleep and was nearly impossible to wake up, even with all the little tricks for doing so. Consequently, she lost over 10% of her body weight (went from 8lb8oz to 7lb7oz), which the pediatrician was not happy with. However, by late Monday (after her pedi appt.), she finally decided to wake up and has been a very good eater. Almost too good...very frequent and often lengthy feedings. However, it's working and her weight was up to 7lb10oz by Wednesday's weight check, which the pedi was very happy with (they expect .5-1 oz/day and she gained 3 oz. in 2 days). I don't think we have any latch issues, though I've been trying to fine-tune as I can. However, the last couple days I was in terrible pain each time she nursed (and it was not painful previously). I'm thinking that just the frequency was causing the pain (she was nursing almost hourly for much of those two days). Thankfully, today she has been a lot easier on me. Maybe she went through a growth spurt already? She slept most of the night last night (woke at 5am and 7:30am only) and has been on a every 2-3 hour schedule today. Although there's still pain, it's WAY more manageable than it was the last couple days. I am sure hoping it keeps improving.

Can't wait to hear your story and see more pictures!!

She's napping now, so maybe I'll be able to get a start on the birth story. Probably will take a bit to get it finished, though. Plus, I'll need to consult Dug, as my memory of a lot of it is pretty foggy!

WOW LOVE ALL THE PICTURES!! She already has a wonderful princess wardrobe - lucky girl!! She is sooo adorable and once again brought tears to my eyes thinking that was us just 7 months ago. Amazing. Enjoy those milk-drunk stupors and a baby curling up on you.

Thanks! It's amazing to me to look at your PTR and see how much Aria has grown up already! It's like a window to the future for me, so that I know what's coming. Incredible how fast they grow and change. I'm excited to get to the point where we can take her out and do things like you guys do. So far, walks and the pediatrician visits have been it. But we really want to keep our "normal" lifestyle up as much as we are able to. Your PTR is good reinforcement of that for me.

Hope nursing is going well - if you have any questions feel free to ask!

See my little summary in the previous comment. Any thoughts? Is the pain normal? I'm just so glad that I'm not in nearly as much pain today as I was last night.

LOVE all her Disney clothes. Our dd came home from the hospital in a Minnie outfit!

Yay for Minnie outfits! She has a few of them. So fun getting all the Disney stuff. Other stuff is okay too, of course, but the Disney ones are extra fun!

You brought tears to my eyes when i read that you listened to Wished on the way home. I love her wardrobe already. And the picture when you "told" her you were taking her to Disney was awesome. That made me laugh out loud.

Yes, we were both pretty much bawling our eyes out on the drive home. It was emotional as it was, bringing our baby home for the first time, but then throw Wishes on there?...we were goners! Especially when Dug pointed out that our wish finally came true. Our Year of Disney in 2010 was partially to distract us from infertility, so the Wishes soundtrack really hit home in this moment.

I'm glad you liked her "I'm going to Disney World?!" picture! I saw that and immediately thought that's what her little face would look like if she could understand this!

 

[Dugette]

She is absolutely precious! Enjoy it, it goes so fast! If you have any questions feel free to ask, my little one is just 8 weeks ahead of your princess so everything is still fresh lol. I hope everything is going well!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

Looks like I was replying while you posted. Thanks! I totally believe time is going to fly by...I can't quite believe that she's been here over a week already! I hope your little one is doing well! Feel free to throw any advice my way! I'm not even sure what to ask right now, other than the nursing stuff in the previous post...everything is so new!

 

[reelmom]

I meant to mention earlier that it doesn't even look like you had a baby in your belly a week ago. You look so good.

 

[Imagineer5]

Hi - I am so glad you are enjoying my PTR as a window to your future lol!! We have also tried to keep our lives as normal as possible and of course it is different now but we def do that

As far as nursing goes, I had some pain in the beginning that was due to blisters on the nipples. I ended up pumping which had good and bad qualities but by a couple days old I didn't have anymore pain that I can remember. She also nurses about every 1.50-2 hours all day long until I got a baby scale and realized she wasn't actually hungry and was just comfort nursing lol.

I'm glad it sounds like you are getting some sleep!! That's wonderful! Your pedi isnt making you wake her at night to eat? We had to every 3-5 hours during the night for the first 2 weeks then after that we got to let her sleep straight through!

 

[AprilRenee]

I'm not 100% sure about the pain but if she's nursing every hour it's probably from that! The pain is better by 6 weeks too if you don't already have it, get lanolin and put that on before and after every nursing session. Helped me SOO much!

Oh and just so you know, Jcp has Disney baby stuff. $14 for 3 cute onesies (the kind with grow with me snaps) and $10 for cotton sleepers. It was all I could do not to buy every style for Caden and they had lots of girl styles too!

I really try to keep life normal as possible with Caden too. He is good at tagging along with me and just going to whatever I need to do. He's a happy baby so I just give him a toy and he's good to hang. I just have to pay attention to time now and make sure he gets naps, thankfully he's finally gotten better at napping on the run. He was great at the beginning then we had a rough period and now he can do it again! Yay!!

Life did change a little for me and Andrew, relationship-wise. Those first few weeks were really rough and we are best friends and get along really well usually but we just kept snapping at each other and driving each other nuts! However, once my mom started giving us weekly date nights and Caden started going to bed at 8 (around 2-3 months) our relationship really improved. Just know its normal to have to re-figure all that out! Hopefully, you guys just settled into it all no problem though

 

[MeMom]

What a precious DIS baby! It makes me smile so big to know how happy you are. Wishing you a lifetime of love, happiness, and fun with that beautiful girl!

 

[jc040404]

Awww! She's so adorable! I'm loving all these cute Disney outfits. That last pic was just great. Too funny! You did get me a little teary when I read about Wishes on your ride home. I can't even imagine going through that, but I'm so happy for the two of you. So glad your wish is finally here!

You look great, btw!

 

[dtr_angel]

The pain is normal in the beginning, it does go away completely though! I hope she's getting easier to wake! Gavin was like that the day we left to go home - we tried EVERYTHING to wake him up and nothing worked. Eventually when he was hungry enough he ate LOL. The pain does get better, I was just sore for a little while. I was using lanolin after every feeding for the first week or so, then just a few times a day - now at 9 weeks old I don't remember the last time I used it, it's been a long time if that tells you anything. Is she sleeping through the night? Gavin generally was awake every 1-2 hours on his own to eat, but if he slept then we didn't let him go longer than 3 hours without waking him to feed. I still do actually, even though the pediatrician said we didn't have to wake him at night to nurse if he ate good during the day. I had tears in my eyes reading about you listening to Wishes on your ride home, how magical! Our Gavin is a fertility drug baby (he was 3.5+years in waiting with a lot of heartache in there!!) and I also tried to distract myself with 4 Disney trips. I'd rather have had him sooner than those vacations, but if I didn't plan them then we would've missed out on 4 great vacations together before he got here. Right now we are rocking out to 'Baby's First Hymns' in our Jeeps lol.

 

[Dugette]

I meant to mention earlier that it doesn't even look like you had a baby in your belly a week ago. You look so good.

Thanks! It surprises me when I look in the mirror...the big belly vanished quickly. I am still about 13 pounds over pre-pregnancy weight, though, so there's still a little belly left.

Hi - I am so glad you are enjoying my PTR as a window to your future lol!! We have also tried to keep our lives as normal as possible and of course it is different now but we def do that

I like seeing what things can be like 8 months from now!

As far as nursing goes, I had some pain in the beginning that was due to blisters on the nipples. I ended up pumping which had good and bad qualities but by a couple days old I didn't have anymore pain that I can remember. She also nurses about every 1.50-2 hours all day long until I got a baby scale and realized she wasn't actually hungry and was just comfort nursing lol.

Hmmm, I don't have any blisters (yet, at least), but still have pain. However, the pain has been much more tolerable the last couple days (I've been really working on making sure her latch is perfect and re-latching her if not). I did end up pumping for one feeding, since I was still in so much pain from the previous session that I couldn't handle doing another so soon. Pumping didn't hurt, at least. I don't think she's comfort nursing for the most part, as she generally is swallowing, but what do you do if she is? Just pull her off?

I'm glad it sounds like you are getting some sleep!! That's wonderful! Your pedi isnt making you wake her at night to eat? We had to every 3-5 hours during the night for the first 2 weeks then after that we got to let her sleep straight through!

Initially, our pedi wanted us to wake her at night, which we did. But, once we went to the follow-up appointment last Weds. and she saw that she was gaining weight, she said we shouldn't wake her anymore. I was surprised and asked a couple times, "Right now, we should stop? Not keep waking until she hits her birth weight?" She told us we should sleep. Dug Baby has been a good night sleeper too. She cluster feeds all evening and gets fussy before bed, but she's been sleeping long stretches at night...11pm to 5am last night. Nice!

I'm not 100% sure about the pain but if she's nursing every hour it's probably from that! The pain is better by 6 weeks too if you don't already have it, get lanolin and put that on before and after every nursing session. Helped me SOO much!

I do think the pain is getting better (I'm no longer screaming and crying), but it's still there. I have a lanolin equivalent (Earth Mama Angel Baby Nipple Butter) that I've been using, plus I got some gel soothies the other day, which provide some relief.

Oh and just so you know, Jcp has Disney baby stuff. $14 for 3 cute onesies (the kind with grow with me snaps) and $10 for cotton sleepers. It was all I could do not to buy every style for Caden and they had lots of girl styles too!

Awesome, I will have to check that out if the deals are still going on!

I really try to keep life normal as possible with Caden too. He is good at tagging along with me and just going to whatever I need to do. He's a happy baby so I just give him a toy and he's good to hang. I just have to pay attention to time now and make sure he gets naps, thankfully he's finally gotten better at napping on the run. He was great at the beginning then we had a rough period and now he can do it again! Yay!!

This is good to hear. I hope Dug Baby will be easy to bring with as well.

Life did change a little for me and Andrew, relationship-wise. Those first few weeks were really rough and we are best friends and get along really well usually but we just kept snapping at each other and driving each other nuts! However, once my mom started giving us weekly date nights and Caden started going to bed at 8 (around 2-3 months) our relationship really improved. Just know its normal to have to re-figure all that out! Hopefully, you guys just settled into it all no problem though

I think this has gone pretty well for us so far. We both went into things knowing how stressful it could get and I think we've done a pretty good job of being supportive of each other, for the most part. Baby going to bed at 8pm sounds awesome, though! Ours is still awake here at almost 1am tonight!

What a precious DIS baby! It makes me smile so big to know how happy you are. Wishing you a lifetime of love, happiness, and fun with that beautiful girl!

Thank you so much!

Awww! She's so adorable! I'm loving all these cute Disney outfits. That last pic was just great. Too funny! You did get me a little teary when I read about Wishes on your ride home. I can't even imagine going through that, but I'm so happy for the two of you. So glad your wish is finally here!

Thank you! It was such an emotional drive! And, even though she's keeping us awake tonight, we're so glad she's here!

You look great, btw!

Thank you!

The pain is normal in the beginning, it does go away completely though! I hope she's getting easier to wake! Gavin was like that the day we left to go home - we tried EVERYTHING to wake him up and nothing worked. Eventually when he was hungry enough he ate LOL. The pain does get better, I was just sore for a little while. I was using lanolin after every feeding for the first week or so, then just a few times a day - now at 9 weeks old I don't remember the last time I used it, it's been a long time if that tells you anything.

I sure hope it goes away soon! She is definitely easier to wake now. It was really just those first few days that were a problem. Now she's just hungry ALL THE TIME. Pretty much every hour this afternoon and evening. I'm using the Earth Mama Angel Baby Nipple Butter every feeding now.

Is she sleeping through the night? Gavin generally was awake every 1-2 hours on his own to eat, but if he slept then we didn't let him go longer than 3 hours without waking him to feed. I still do actually, even though the pediatrician said we didn't have to wake him at night to nurse if he ate good during the day.

Well, she slept a 4-6 hour stretch the last few nights, but she does not want to go to sleep tonight. We'll see, I guess. Our pedi told us not to wake her anymore. I'm thinking all her evening cluster feeding is getting her through those long stretches at night.

I had tears in my eyes reading about you listening to Wishes on your ride home, how magical! Our Gavin is a fertility drug baby (he was 3.5+years in waiting with a lot of heartache in there!!) and I also tried to distract myself with 4 Disney trips. I'd rather have had him sooner than those vacations, but if I didn't plan them then we would've missed out on 4 great vacations together before he got here. Right now we are rocking out to 'Baby's First Hymns' in our Jeeps lol.

Wow, 3.5 years! I can't imagine! Our 2 was long enough! Disney trips are great distraction, though. And great memories to have during a time that otherwise would be remembered as pretty gloomy. Our Year of Disney was one of the best things we ever decided to do. It really got us through a tough time. And now we get to bring our little ones there!

 

[AprilRenee]

Glad to hear the nursing is getting better. I remember yelping and crying those first few weeks ugh! So glad that's over! Now I only yelp when he bites me with his stinkin sharp teeth. But that doesn't happen much. We had a few days of him figuring out that it wasn't ok and he doesn't bite anymore now.

Also glad you guys are doing ok with the adjustment.

And the deals should stay. Jcp has the "fair and square" pricing now so those prices are their normal everyday price.

 

[reelmom]

Thinking about you today. I hope everybody is doing well.

 

[Dugette]

Glad to hear the nursing is getting better. I remember yelping and crying those first few weeks ugh! So glad that's over! Now I only yelp when he bites me with his stinkin sharp teeth. But that doesn't happen much. We had a few days of him figuring out that it wasn't ok and he doesn't bite anymore now.

I know you said that things aren't so bad by three weeks and I agree. We are 3 weeks and 1 day today and, although it's not a walk in the park, I don't do nearly as much yelping now. Yikes on the biting, though!

Also glad you guys are doing ok with the adjustment.

Thanks. Although we were just talking earlier today about how nice it will be when she can go to bed earlier and we can hang out alone in the evenings, like you had mentioned...around 3 months, I think?

We did take her out with us for a belated anniversary dinner last Saturday night. It was great...she slept the whole time! So, we got a nice meal out!

And the deals should stay. Jcp has the "fair and square" pricing now so those prices are their normal everyday price.

Oh, yeah, that's right...thanks!

Thinking about you today. I hope everybody is doing well.

We're doing pretty well, thanks! I actually have a fair amount of time to READ things on the DIS, while nursing, but very limited time where I actually have two hands free to WRITE anything. So, I'm lurking around here. Right now, she's asleep on me in the Moby Wrap, so I actually can type! If it lasts long enough, I'll get the birth story posted. I finished writing it up, but I want to grab a few pictures to put in it too. Hopefully, that will be coming up soon, if Dug Baby stays asleep!

 

[Dugette]

Dug Baby’s Birth Story

It was Tuesday, September 18th, 2012. We were 11 days over our September 7th due date. If she didn’t come in the next couple days, we were scheduled to begin the induction process on the evening of Thursday, September 20th. We really hoped to avoid induction, as we were planning for a drug-free waterbirth at the hospital.

We had an appointment with one of the midwives that morning to check on the baby again. We went in and they hooked me up to the monitors for the non-stress test. We enjoyed sitting in a comfortable, dim room listening to our baby’s heartbeat for awhile. Everything looked great on the test, so we were moved to a regular room for our appointment.

The midwife that day was Angela, who we had never seen for an appointment before (it is a large midwife group and we had only seen two for appointments). She checked and found that I was still about 60% effaced, posterior, and about 1.5 cm dilated (better than the nothing previously). She offered to sweep my membranes, which was something I was planning to ask about anyway. Basically, there was a small chance that it might help me go into labor on my own. But no guarantees.

She also mentioned to us that there was a gel insertion we could do to try to get things progressing. I thought I had done decent research on my options, but I had never heard of this until she mentioned it. It was a prostaglandin gel that they insert at the hospital, then monitor you for an hour, then send you home. My understanding is that the membrane sweep also released prostaglandins, which signal your body to get ready to labor (or something like that). We debated on what to do, and decided to go ahead with the gel insert. However the maternity ward didn’t have an opening until that evening, so we left with the plan that we would come back later that day, after work, and do the gel. If nothing else, it could help ripen the cervix to get us at a better starting point for the induction, but there was also the small chance it could get labor going on its own. In fact, Angela the midwife had mentioned that she had gone overdue herself, and I asked her if she was induced…nope, the gel actually worked for her! However, she made sure we knew that there was also the very real chance that it would start contractions that would fizzle out and just give false hope.

So, we went in late to work, worked, then left early so we could be at the hospital by 4pm. Another midwife who was new to us, Sarah, met us there. She checked, and I was now dilated to 2cm, so the membrane sweep must have helped somewhat. She then did the gel insertion, and we waited around afterwards, listening to baby on the monitor. All was well, and they sent us home after an hour or so.

The evening was uneventful, sitting on the couch.

We decided to take a nap, as we figured we may need to get sleep while we still could. We got up around 9 p.m. I started wondering if I might be having contractions at some point. I wasn’t in any pain, but it seemed like there might be something going on that may be more than just Braxton Hicks. We could feel my belly hardening up on a somewhat regular basis. Dug got his iPhone contraction timer app going, and we started recording things.

Around midnight, we decided to call the midwives, and they suggested we get some sleep. The contractions did start to get mildly painful after going to bed. Enough so that they woke me up, but I was able to go right back to sleep. So, we just kept entering them into the timer app overnight.

Contractions continued the next day, September 19th. This was around 5am:

We checked in with the midwives that morning and they said, since we wanted to do a fair amount of laboring at home, to call when they are consistently 3 minutes apart. However, my contractions were anything but consistent. At times, they’d go to 4 minutes apart for a good period, but then they’d spread back out again.

We spent the day at home, on the couch, timing contractions. I did some breathing through them and did some TV-watching through some of them. The midwife had also recommended taking a bath, so I did that at some point also.

Around noon (Dug's mom stopped by and took this pic):

When we had set up the gel-insertion appointment, we had also set up a second one at 4pm this day (assuming that it didn’t start contractions the first time). Since we already had that hospital visit set up, we thought it might make sense to go in anyway, even though they wouldn’t apply more gel (because I was having contractions), just to get monitored and see where things were at. When we called the midwives back later, they said that would be okay.

Since we didn’t know where things were at, but it seemed like baby was on the way, we loaded our packed bags and such into the car and headed to the hospital later that day. It seemed strange knowing that this may be our “driving to the hospital to have the baby” moment, and I wasn’t in extreme pain and was able to walk in and to the Maternity Care area and check in… not the dramatic stories you sometimes hear.

They brought us back to a triage room to monitor contractions and baby’s heart rate and to do a check to see if there had been any progress. The monitoring looked good. Progress had been slow, and I was only dilated to 3cm by that point.

Angela, the midwife from the previous morning, was on duty again. She did give us the option to go home and labor more there, but recommended that we stay at the hospital, take some sleeping meds, and try to rest, hoping for progress by morning. We were hesitant on this, as I wasn’t crazy about taking sleeping medication and morphine, as she was suggesting. However, she made a good point in that I would need some rest to make it through the rest of labor without medication. We decided to go ahead with her suggestion and stay at the hospital.

They were able to get us out of the little triage room and into our own labor/delivery/recovery room. Very nice room, by the way: lots of space, big soaking tub, couch that converts to husband-bed, etc. Here's a pic from the next day:

Dug brought our luggage in, since we were there to stay. They had me take some sleeping medication and gave me a shot of morphine and pretty much tucked me into bed for the night.

I think the goal was for me to be able to sleep through the night. That really wasn’t the case. I slept very much like I had the previous night, minus the contraction timing (they told us not to). Woke up at every single contraction, then went back to sleep until the next one. Due to the meds, though, I was VERY sleepy and out of it, so it didn’t take any effort to fall back asleep. I was still very drowsy in the morning too.

Dug was able to get some sleep, but was pretty uncomfortable on the sofa bed, so it wasn’t the best night’s sleep.

In the morning, September 20th now, Angela was still on duty and checked me and was happy to report that I was 5-6 cm. Yay, progress!

Because things were moving along, we decided it was time to ask for one of the volunteer doulas that the hospital provides for free. One of the best decisions we made, by the way! A little later that morning, Danielle, our volunteer doula, showed up to help us through the rest of the day. She was amazing and so full of great suggestions and support.

A little while later, the midwives changed shifts, and a different midwife, Melissa, came on duty. She checked me and thought dilation seemed more like 5 cm. Disappointing! She gave us several options, because she was concerned that progress was going slowly, and because she felt the baby wasn’t at the right angle: her face was looking up rather than down. That was why we weren’t making more progress, since her head wasn’t pushing down correctly to dilate the cervix.

One option would be to use pitocin, which could cause stronger, more regular contractions to get our baby into position, but we wanted to avoid pitocin if possible. Another option was to do nothing and see if anything changed in an hour or two. Finally, we could try using some different positions with the help of the doula.

When Melissa stepped out of the room, we asked our doula Danielle if people who get pitocin are able to deal with it without getting an epidural (I wanted to go pain-med-free). She said that every single person she’d been with got the epidural once they were given pitocin. Good to know.

So we chose trying different positions.

I spent the day breathing through contractions, snacking on grapes and some other hospital food, drinking a lot of water, and trying different positions to help baby move along.

Because the hospital we were at is very into natural care type things, a “healing touch” person came around, offering to do her thing for free. Sure, why not? Essentially, the idea was something about energy of holding her hands over me. I was so tired by that point that I actually slept through most of what she did (I was falling asleep after many contractions). I felt bad, but I’d open my eyes enough to go, “Okay, she’s waving her hands in such-and-such a way,” then go back to sleep.

Can’t remember when, but at some point, the midwife said that she felt I was getting dehydrated (despite drinking a ton of water), so she recommended IV fluids. We took a time out to do that in the bed, then went back to moving around again. I didn’t notice any difference (she seemed to think the fluids would give me more energy), but I guess it didn’t hurt (except for leaving me with that annoying IV thing taped to me).

Later in the day, the midwives switched again and Angela came back on. There had been some progress, and dilation was closer to 7 cm. As she finished the check, she asked, “Did you feel that?” I asked, “Water?” Yep, my water broke right before she was going to suggest we do that. The water was clear, which was great, since there’s often meconium in the amniotic fluid when babies are this late.

There was still more progress needed, but things moved swiftly from that point. We did a lot of different things that afternoon. Some suggested by Danielle and some suggested by a very helpful nurse we had. Used the birthing ball, tried a position draped over the raised back of the bed, did lunges, walked the halls and squatted at the railing during contractions, took a bath (with aromatherapy), used the shower sprayer, used a breastpump, etc. I mostly just focused on my breathing during contractions. In fact, when asked for details about the contractions, I really didn’t know, since I was so focused on the breathing that I was just tuning out the contractions.

This was around 6pm, using the birthing ball with our doula's counter-pressure on my back:

It seemed that these activities must have helped to get baby’s head into a better position. The contractions did start to get more frequent and regular as the day went on. At some point, Dug asked if they were going to check me again. Angela said that it really wasn’t necessary at that point, because I was feeling pressure and some urge to push by that point. So, we never had that declaration of “you’re complete/at a 10!”

Because I wanted to have a waterbirth (I know several people who have and highly recommended it), Dug asked if they could get the tub filled and get things ready to go. They started preparing that. There was a separate room with the waterbirth tub, so we’d have to move over there for the actual birth, then move back into our room afterwards. Here's the tub, before I came in:

At some point around 7:15pm or so, they told me the tub was ready, and we headed over there. I climbed into the tub and continued breathing through contractions. They did some sort of aromatherapy thing where they attached some scent to my top. You can see it here (around 7:30pm):

They told me to go ahead and push when/if I had the urge. So, I started pushing with some contractions. They seemed impressed and said that I probably wouldn’t have to push as long as a lot of first-time moms. This was encouraging to me, as I know a lot of people push for 2-3 hours. I was so exhausted by this point that I couldn’t wait to be done and I was finally coming close to the finish line.

I believe I ended up pushing for around an hour. Finally, her head came out. However, her shoulders were a little stuck. The midwife later said that it wasn’t shoulder dystocia, but she just had a little bit of a tough time. They had me lean back, then lean forward and push with all I had. They were just about to have me move to the bed when she came out. Born September 20th at 8:29pm. The midwife guided her to me and we pulled her out of the water and held her against me. She didn’t start crying right away and the midwife said that Dug Baby was sort of in shock and had fluid in her and was not starting to breathe on her own. Rather than letting the cord pulse as long as they usually do, they had Dug cut it after a minute or two so they could take her over to the warmer and get her breathing. Once they got the fluid out, she started breathing and crying on her own. Dug stayed with her and was able to hold her skin-to-skin once they got her going.

A few minutes after getting out of the tub:

They had me move from the tub to the bed in the room to deliver the placenta and get stitched up from 2nd-degree tearing. I had the option to hold her, but I was so exhausted and didn’t feel capable in that moment, so I had Dug continue to bond with her. He sang her “You Are My Sunshine” and cuddled with her. Little did I know he also played her Star Wars music, “Han Solo and the Princess,” that he had been playing to her while she was inside. He also played her “Soarin’,” another track we’d been playing her (in fact, that was how we finally got her to sleep last night…Soarin’ on repeat!). After they’d done some of the stitching, I decided I would be okay to hold her, so he brought her to me. So crazy to finally be holding her on the outside!

Once they were done with everything, they had me get in a wheelchair and brought us back to our room. There was a giant “It’s a Girl” stork balloon that a nurse had re-homed to our room:

We got settled in for our first night together. We worked on nursing a bit, but we were all pretty sleepy. Here we are, back in our room:

I was able to get a few hours of sleep later that night and felt SO much better after that. We had a good remainder of our hospital stay, some visits from relatives, and headed home after two nights.

On our drive home, we listened to the Wishes soundtrack. We were both in happy tears, amazed that our little wish came true and was riding home with us!

 

[Mom&RN]

What a great birth story, it sounds like you had a really great support system at your hospital. I think it is great that Dug had that time to bond with Dug baby, so often the dad gets to stand in the corner, cut the cord and then stand in the corner some more! Poor guys. I had my son by scheduled c-section because of some health problems that made a ******l birth dangerous for my son. Because of that once they took me off to recover from the c-section my husband got to go with my son and spend some great bonding time with him. The nurses were wonderful with my husband and had him bathe our son, put ointment in his eyes, put medicine on his umbilical stump, let him listen to his heart and lungs - my hubby and son got the royal treatment from the nurses. Then he held our son and sang to him the whole time I was gone. When I was finally released out of recovery my husband and son were fully bonded and I had to talk my husband into letting me hold my own baby! He kept saying "I'm afraid you're going to drop him!" I was lying down Though I wish I hadn't had to have a c-section I don't regret that time my guys had with each other. It made things special for my husband. Hope you, Dug and Dug baby are all doing well. Thank you for sharing your story, it was very special.

When I first posted this I noticed that one of my words was turned into asterisks... I thought oh my goodness I didn't cuss! You can probably figure out pretty easily what word it is.... being a nurse I would never have thought of it as a bad word! LOL