Way to Go Mark!

The results are in - Mark passed his Part IV Exams! Can we get a woo hoo? Doctor Rocco is one step closer to emerging! Our thanks to Nicholas for not coming during daddy's testing weekend. Your patience has been rewarded!

Happy Birthday to Nick!

I'm a day late here (which is funny since I had the realization on Monday that I was a day early), but things are just crazy with a baby in the house. Life is definitely more exciting (and in a good way for the most part since I so frequently cite that excitement is overrated) with little Nicholas around...and can you believe that yesterday marked his being on the outside for a whole month? Wow!

And, what a month it was with doctor appointments for him and I in the double digits. Thankfully, his weight is good and so we got to decrease our quota a little. Mine are still going since we're waiting for the last little drain hole to close up properly....that should be done by the end of the week. I honestly don't know what I'll do when I don't have a reason to visit my OB's office on a regular basis...they're pretty much family at this point.

Nicholas has been doing very well lately, but he's developed a nice little case of colic....poor little guy. It's all due to gas unfortunately. Where the gas is originating we're not sure - from formula type to things I eat (that are then transmitted through breast milk), we're trying to find the culprit. We seem to have had some success in at least calming him during the witching hours of 6 to midnight by instituting a little nighttime routine that gets him in bed by 7 p.m. which was suggested by my OB. We're still working on perfecting it...

Other than that, we're scheduled to go get some professional photos done of our little family and Nicholas by my friend and favorite photographer on Tuesday morning next week. I'm really excited to see what gorgeous shots she'll come up with. :)

We hope you're all doing well!

Happy Father's Day!

Today is Mark's first Daddy's Day! How exciting, eh?!

We started celebrating yesterday with a trip to Red Lobster for lunch and the purchase of a new trash can (really, we needed one and it's a really neato trash can - yeah, we know all you other dad's are jealous out there!). We made up for the lackluster shopping of yesterday with a gift befitting a new daddy - a VCR/DVR combo that Mark's been wanting for quite some time at Best Buy. We also made a little stop by the baby store and got a few more nipples for bottles and some more burp clothes (not that they did much good when I forgot to put one over my shoulder and Nick let loose - he was a little upset about a slight delay and lunch which led to more volatility in his digestive track).

Other than Father's Day festivities, we do have some updates on the whole weight gain and infection fiascos we've been dealing with. We seem to have brought Nicholas back to his birth weight and perhaps beyond. We'll find out for sure on Thursday at his next doctor visit.

Finally, with respect to my infection, we've beat it and now we're just trying to not get another one. This is fun (not!) to say the least. Mark's mom has the extreme pleasure of sticking long q-tips down each of the "holes" to ensure they stay open. We've been doing this for a bit over a week now and things seem to be healing up...despite the fact that they hurt something awful when I move around too much (and yet, that's part of what I need to do to heal properly).

I still take tons of pictures, but haven't really had the motivation (or time) to put any up on his site...I will try to soon. I got a couple of really cute ones of him and Mark today!

Hope you're all doing well...

Catching Up

I was contemplating the other day what, if anything else, worth mentioning happened during our first week as a "new" family that you might find intriguing or interesting to read. To be honest, I'm not sure much of what went on, besides that which I already mentioned (and can't remember right at this moment, incidentally, but that's beside the point!) would be in the "news you can use" or interesting category except to us, but here are a few highlights nevertheless:

• Dr. Newman, Nick's pediatrician, came to visit and check him out on Memorial Day for the first time. They seemed to get along swimmingly! :)
• We had a visit with Doug and Diane, friends of ours, on Memorial Day. They brought flowers, a beautiful pearl bracelet for me and, after shuttling Mark home for additional clothes and what not, ice cream for me since I was leary of what would be served by the cafeteria!
• We had a visit from Mark's teacher, Dr. Thompson, who checked little Nicholas out and told Mark he'd done an awesome job with his adjustment on Tuesday!
• We took our first ride in the car with Auntie Cassie at the helm to return home on Wednesday afternoon.
• On Thursday, Grandma Rocco came to take care of Mommy and spoil Nicholas!
  

Despite the list being less than "thrilling" for most, it was quite a wonderful first week for us. I think the best part of it was when we were in the hospital, to be honest. It was so nice to have Mark and Nicholas all to myself...except when we had a few visitors here and there to spice things up. I have to admit that it was hard to say goodbye to all of that...especially since Mark would be going to school the very next day. I admit it actually made me cry when he had to leave that morning...I was just so sad that we were back to "normal" life with all its committments.

We did have a couple of other happenings which I've reserved to talk about currently since they are more in the newsworthy area. First, we're having some issues with breastfeeding so poor Nicholas lost a little more weight than they would have liked a little more quickly than they would have liked and he hasn't gained it back as quickly as they would have liked. So, we're in the process of supplementing with formula (much to my chagrin...) and pursuing a bunch of different avenues to up my milk production including taking reglan (a prescription drug that has helped other women be more "milky"), fenugreek (an herbal supplement with the same goal) and I am pumping regularly with a hospital grade pump. I am stubborn if nothing else and sooner or later my milk supply will come in at a level that meets little Nicholas' needs, I hope. If not, well, it isn't the end of the world, but it will be extraordinarily sad for me since this is one of the parts of being a mommy I was really looking forward to. We'll keep you posted on Nick's progress with weight gain...at last weigh-in on Friday, he was 6 pounds 6 ounces - 6 ounces short of his birth weight. He's in the 5th percentile right now (i.e., there are 5 kids out of every hundred out there who weigh less than he at his age). Length-wise, he's pretty average - 20.75 inches which puts him in the 50th percentile.

The other bit of excitement is about as fun as that one. My C-Section incision became infected. We're not sure how, but these things do happen. Thankfully, we caught it early enough that the doctor didn't have to re-open the incision, but the treatment still hasn't been what I would call pleasant. I'll spare you the details and just let you know that I am improving daily and should be out of the woods, hopefully, by the end of this week. We'd appreciate your prayers both for my becoming a better "cow" and healing...

One final thing before I rush off. We did have a "first" yesterday evening. We took Nicholas out for a little walk in his stroller around our community. He seemed to enjoy it....good thing since it is a nightly activity around here!

Have a great week!

Week One with Baby Nicholas – Part I

I have a little time to wait to take drugs (good friends right now) and then go feed the little guy so I figured I'd continue on with my "writing assignment."

Yesterday at 5:01 p.m. we celebrated Nicholas’ first week with us outside the womb. Or at least Grandma and I sort of did by singing him a fun little round of Happy Birthday.  So, now that we have the birth story out of the way, let’s talk about the past week and how it’s gone!

There’ve been good times and bad. Times with laughter and times with tears (speaking of which, I don’t’ think I mentioned that Mark said he cried when Nick came out…he just loves his little boy so much!). Times of elation and times of frustration. In a word, we had a pretty “normal” first week, I’d say! :)

Since we had a C-Section, the first four days with Nicholas were spent in the hospital. It was sooo nice having that team of professionals there to help us keep on top of things. We really do have to give a shout out to all the nurses and doctors who crossed our path and especially to Dr. Toig (who is responsible for Nicholas’ entry into the world!) because they were outstanding. Each one taught us something that has made our time caring for and enjoying Nicholas more precious and more productive.

So, the first night, I have to be honest, I don’t remember too much about. With all the morphine and other drugs I’d been given, I just wasn’t real “with it.” We actually had Nicholas in the nursery for most of this night with him coming in for “on demand” feedings so that I could get a good night’s sleep (or at least attempt it). That seemed to have gone pretty well. I spent a lot of time marveling that this little being was so precious, so tiny and created by Mark and I. It seemed too good to be true most times…especially since Mr. Nicholas is one sweetheart of a baby. Temperament-wise, he rarely cries unless he needs something and it’s usually pretty easy to figure out what it is he needs. This is saying a lot since most of the other babies on the maternity floor were crying A LOT during our stay. We actually had many nurses remark just how well-mannered our little guy was.

Despite his tendency, though, we did have a couple of “all-nighters.” Mark put an end to these frustrating crying fests one night after trying everything he could think of. I, believe it or not, actually slept through most of the episode because I was so exhausted. He had just remembered that in school they had learned that one way to calm a fussy baby was to put your finger pad on the top of his/her palate to allow them to suck, suck, suck to their heart’s content. Now being his mommy’s boy he was particular about Mark’s positioning during this exercise and wouldn’t let him set him down. He was okay, however, with laying in his bassinet with Mark standing there soothing him. After doing this for a while, Mark decided it would be amusing to have a look-see at our little guy’s spine (leave it to a chiropractor to be amused by such things, eh?).

Believe it or not, he found that C1, the first bone in our spine called the Atlas, was just a bit out of place on our dear little Nick. So, he gave it a little pressure for about 15 seconds with his pinky finger (there’s no racking and cracking when it comes to little ones) and, we kid you not, the moment he felt the bone go back into place, Nick was out like a light and we haven’t had a crying fest night since. You can bet your bottom dollar we’ve been using this little story to promote chiropractic right and left! Mark just wished he could go up and down the hall of the maternity floor and offer to check on and adjust all the other babies to give their parents a break from continuous crying, too!

As is always the case now, I need to run now so we’ll call this “Part I” and we’ll come back another time to relay more stories of our first week and all the neat things we learned and all the wonderful (and some of the not-so-wonderful) experiences we’ve had with baby over the past week!

And Now...

The rest of the story...

The next morning the day began with a pitocin drip and a wonderful process called breaking my water. All I can say is I will be wary of crochet hook looking things in the hands of others for a bit. And so, the real fun began...

Contractions. Fun? Not really. In this case, even less so because every time I had one, Nicholas' heart rate decelerated...not a good thing. I tolerated them by getting up and moving around with the help of Mark and a good friend of mine, Cassie (who was made an "honorary Auntie" due to her role in the birthing process). We made it to 13ml/hr. of pitocin (I may be off on my units here, but go with me) at which point the baby's heart rate was really decelerating and so they stopped the drip, ordered me back to bed and started monitoring again.

At this point, the doctor came in and discussed with us our options: 1) get an epidural and try the pitocin drip again to see if a normal delivery was possible or 2) get an epidural and go in for a C-Section. As I see it, going in for a C Section was pretty much a last resort sort of thing so I opted to try the pitocin again. Lemme just tell you how much I hate epidurals - it wasn't pleasant at all. The part I didn't care for the most was that I felt paralyzed from the waste down. I don't know if this is normal, but I did...though Mark and Cassie assured me that I could wiggle my toes when I tried despite not feeling them wiggling. Enough on that, though.

So, we began the drip again and this time I was forced to lay, yet again, on my right side so they could monitor the baby and I most effectively (is it any wonder that my right side was terribly sore the next day - my shoulder was totally the worst). This turned out to be a waste of time. They gradually increased the dose and we waited to see what would happen. In a word, nothing. At 10 ml/hour (3 away from where we'd ended the first round), I was having no contractions...none. Furthermore, I had not dialated any further...2 cm was still the call.

After some contemplation regarding the implications surrounding us, we decided to call the doctor in and discuss the C option. After learning that, given all factors present, we had a 5% chance of actually making it through a normal delivery, and after considering how long it was going to take to even get to the delivering part, we decided to go for the C-Section. Apparently, this was a good decision since, about two minutes later, little Nick's heart rate started decelerating rapidly with no contraction present.

What this meant for me, though, was that instead of being prepped and taken to surgery in a calm way, I was rushed with shouts and all manner of excitement (if I've said it once, I've said it a million times - excitement is WAY overrated). And, of course, as luck would have it, once they got me there, everything stabalized.

So, they got everything ready to go and Mark and Cassie came into the OR and away we went! Once baby Nicholas was taken out of my tummy (which I am so grateful Cassie actually took pictures of the event - a little bloody perhaps, but oh so magical!), Mark helped to cut the unbilical cord (which, by the way, we found out from the cord blood people, they like to get 100 million cells and Nick's had 190 million - go him!) and then he was bundled up and given to me to say hello. I held him, best as I could for a bit, and then let him go see daddy because I just didn't feel like he was very stable where he was and it made me nervous. Then Mark, Cassie and Nicholas went for bathing and screening and I "hung out" with my doctor and the rest of the staff to get stitches and such...

We all met up again in my recovery room where Nick and I made our first attempt at breast feeding. We did pretty well all things considered I think. Then we returned to our room for some much needed R&R and bonding time.

With that, I'll take another pause for a nap (I'm just absolutely exhausted at the moment) and try to get back here soon to give you some of the details of our time in the hospital as well as what's gone on since we left! Hope you're all doing well.