Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has had a Merry Christmas and is enjoying the holiday season. Derek and I celebrated Christmas as parents for the first time ever and found we have some room for improvement. Originally we had planned to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at our house before heading down to Grandma's but changed our plans last-minute to avoid driving during a blizzard. As it was David's first overnight excursion we frantically were packing everything we thought we might need and managed to forget David's presents from us and Santa. Luckily we did manage to remember his Christmas stocking with some small gifts in it and he still got plenty from grandparents and other family. David was very understanding about the whole thing and he gave Mommy her favorite present of all- he slept for 7 hours straight that night!

Yesterday the fun continued when my friends Christy and Elizabeth came over for dinner. Both live out of state so it was really nice that we all managed to be at the same place at once. Elizabeth brought her yummy chicken enchiladas and Christy made our friend Amy's famous chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm, I almost felt like we were back in college again. It was especially enjoyable for me because I've been feeling pretty stir-crazy and isolated lately. David's still too young to take out in public, especially this time of year and I'm starting to feel a little like I'm under house arrest.

He really is a little sweetheart though and we love him more all the time. He passed his 2 week checkup with flying colors and has regained all of his birthweight. I put away all of his newborn sized clothes as it has gotten to hard to squeeze him into them anymore. I tried out the new camera lens Derek got me for Christmas and thought I'd post a couple of the results. Happy Holidays everyone!

I'm Cured!

Whew! For the first couple of days after David was born I was doing pretty well considering that I'd just undergone major surgery. The nurses were all remarking how quickly I was recovering and I told everyone that having a C-section wasn't nearly as bad as I'd anticipated. I spoke too soon. The night before I was discharged I developed a TERRIBLE headache. The doctor and nurses all thought it was likely a reaction to the pain pills I was taking so I stopped taking them and went home Friday as planned.

The weekend was pretty awful. Just having the headache would have been bad enough, but the headache plus having to take care of a newborn was torture. Just to give you an idea, the whole time I was in labor, having the C-section, and recovering I never rated my pain as higher than 5/10. This headache was 10/10. I know I could have and probably should have called my doctor much earlier to let her know the headache hadn't improved off of the pain pills, but it was the weekend and I hate to bother people on their time off. Plus I kept coming up with alternate explanations (stress, sleep deprivation, hormones). Finally by Monday afternoon nothing had worked and even though the presentation wasn't exactly classic for a spinal headache after an epidural my doctor had me go to the ER just in case. Talk about a miracle cure! They did a procedure called a blood patch to reverse the effects of leaking spinal fluid and I immediately felt like myself again. It's amazing what a difference it makes to be pain-free. I can actually enjoy spending time with my baby!

And for those of you who are wondering how little David is doing, he is just fine. He's gained 6 oz over the weekend (in the hospital he didn't want to nurse and the pediatrician was keeping a pretty close eye on his weights) and he seems to be very healthy! I've posted some pictures of his first bath at home.

The Baby Who Cried Wolf

It seems to be a common fear that I am going to give birth and forget to tell anyone about it based on the number of phone calls I now receive each day asking for baby updates. Still I suppose it's better that they call me because whenever I call anyone now they race to answer the phone with baited breath and then are invariably disappointed to discover that I'm just calling to chat. This is especially true ever since the false alarm we had the other day.

On Wednesday I started to have some pretty painful contractions I didn't know what to make of. My pregnancy books clearly outline how to differentiate between false labor, pre-labor, and true labor but my symptoms were nothing like anything they outlined. The pain never let up between the contractions so I couldn't really time how close together they were or how long they lasted. Then after several painful minutes they would let up entirely for a few minutes to an hour or more. For 4 hrs I tried warm baths, drinking fluids, laying down, moving around and everything else I could think of and they only got more frequent and intense so I finally broke down and went to the hospital.

The nurse who hooked me up to the monitor declared that I was definitely in labor but that she couldn't really tell far into it I was because every time I had a contraction it set off a whole series of contractions. It was already 11:00 so I figured I better call my boss before it got any later and left her a message that I was in labor and not to expect me at work in the morning. We also put my family on the alert. They gave me some morphine to settle things down and it unfortunately worked a little too well. I started having fairly regular contractions about 3-4 minutes apart, but they weren't strong enough to have any effect. After 4 hrs the nurse still maintained I was in labor, but the kind that can last several hours to days before progressing to the next phase. The next morning we had the fun task of calling everyone back to tell them the baby changed his mind.