A Baby Story

Do you remember that Show on TLC? I never really watched it because at the time it was on, I was no where near kids and I thought it looked horrifying.  Well, now that I've lived it twice, I can say...it is horrifying.

Ha!  I'm joking.  :)  With both E and Allie, I was induced.  With E it was because my blood pressure had risen to much and they were afraid of Preeclampsia.  With Allie, it was a scheduled induction. 

My husband and I went in at 8:30 last Tuesday morning and I was getting Pitocin by 9:00.  It took all day to go from the 3 cm I was when I got there to 6 cm when I finally started pushing.  For the majority of the day, we slept.  I felt contractions but they were manageable. 

At about 1:00 I finally started feeling very uncomfortable.  It wasn't painful more distracting.  If you've been through it you know.  I just found that I wasn't able to talk through them.  My stomach would tighten so much that it did effect my breathing.  So I finally broke down and asked for the epidural. 

Getting the epidural was not fun.  My husband wasn't even allowed to stand close to me while I was getting it because they've had too many husbands faint or vomit.  I won't go into detail but I will say that the short amount time that it took to get the epidural was the most pain I felt through all of this but worth it.

After a few more hours of labor I had still only gotten to 6 cm dilated after waiting a little while longer, the doctor did some checking and decided to go ahead and let me try pushing.  I knew my body was ready because I started to shake uncontrollably and got nauseas like I did with E.  They gave me some Zofran which helped a lot!  I pushed through 2 contractions and before I knew it Allie was here! 

There were pros and cons from pushing at 6 cm..problem was Allie didn't have ample time to "prepare" to come into the world. 

• As a result they had to put her on a respirator for about 10 minutes.  The entire time, I'm just sitting there begging to hold her. 
• The Pro, she didn't have to spend a lot of time in the birth canal so she didn't get all banged up or get conehead. 

Either way, she adjusted well and was stabilized and we became a family of four.

I came out of the experience pretty good, all things considered.  I have a couple stitches but am feeling pretty good a week later.  I have no idea how far I am from my pre-baby weight.  I don't own a scale so it will have to wait till I can get to the gym. 

 

 

 

In the meantime, I did try to get some pictures of both kids together and well.....this is how that worked out.  Not really successful but still priceless. 

 

 

Our current challenge is figuring out how to keep up with E while giving Allie the 1:1 time she needs and that we need.  Breastfeeding is already proving to be challenging because what it means for us is that I'm the only one that can feed her which limits how we divide and conquer.  So we might start pumping and going to a bottle but I'm holding off as long as possible.  The doctors asked me to try to hold off about 6 weeks or so but we'll see if that happens.  I breastfed E till he was 9 months and have a goal of 6 with Allie, although 9 would be great, I'm just not sure I see that happening. 

 

We're also going to try Moms On Call Schedule starting next week.  My SIL swears by it and I figured it can't hurt.  Have you ever used their schedules?

 

Anyway, I can't complain, life is good.  I'm very blessed to have such a healthy and happy little family (husband included).  We'll figure this out, but I'd love your tips and tricks for managing multiple kids.

 

So much going on!  Hope you're having a good week!