5 days old- Proud poppa's account of events

It was a cold, grey wintry evening, the clouds were heavy with ill omen as a mother gives birth to a son...

Ahem!

Actually, it was a bright and sunny afternoon, warm with nary a wisp of cloud in the sky.

A proud mum and dad were beaming, counting their blessings that their son, Simon Matthew arrived relatively healthy considering his early arrival.

Thursday, Day 1:  Simon's first checkup by the pediatricians!

Here's our little guy, just after his exam.  Kind of looks like his Daddy on Monday mornings before the caffeine has kicked in! *groan*

"And in the blue corner, wearing nothing at all, fighting out of Victoria, BC, and weighing in at five pounds and thirteen ounces, Simon 'The Early Bird' S!"

Friday, Day 2:  Mum and baby!

Altogether, say it with me now:  Awwwwwww.....

Simon! ... and some tired looking bald guy...

Saturday, Day 3:  Bath time!  He liked having his hair washed and his face scrubbed.  The rest of him? Not so much.

So tuckered out....

Sunday, Day 4:  All snugged into his carseat, Simon is ready to blow this popsicle stand.  Note the adorable candy-cane shaped rolls of blanket, the newest safety accessory, so versatile it'll go with anything in your wardrobe.

Simon's first fire alarm

It's our first full day home from the hospital and Grandma S had decided to cook PP and I a nice meal of shaken bake chicken and baked potatoes.  I had gone to take a nap, and baby S was sleeping peacefully in his crib.  Not 30 minutes after falling asleep, I hear the smoke alarm going off.  I come out of our bedroom to see Grandma S frantically fanning the heat detector to get it to stop beeping but to no avail.  I run to open up all of our windows thinking that any minute now the main building alarm is going to go off and sure enough, it did.  At this point, my heart is racing and all I can think about is get the baby and get the hell out of the appartment.  I open the oven and don't see anything out of the ordinary so I shut it off and put on my shoes, tell grandma S to get her coat and grab my keys and head outside.  On the way down, I run into the building manager so I tell him it was from our appt. and that it was a false alarm.  He says we still have to go outside.

We get outside and baby is wrapped pretty tightly in the blanket, still sleeping peacefully.  We get the all clear to go back in about 30 minutes later and we walk in the appt. and see a piece of the heat detector on the floor.  The firemen have to come up and inspect that no fire actually started and when they see that piece on the floor, they start accusing us of tampering with the heat detector.  It turns out that grandma S was fanning the wrong thing.  What she thought was the smoke detector was the HEAT detector and she fanned it so hard with a dishcloth that a piece of it fell off and triggered the main building alarm causing all of the building to evacuate.  Needless to say that grandma S hasn't wanted to cook another meal in our appt. and can you blame her?

And through it all, baby S slept peacefully and didn't even open his eyes or cry once.

First few hours at home

Our first few hours at home were spent opening a package from Auntie Cel and sleeping on daddy and grandma.

36w3d- Holy crap we had the baby early!!!

Wow!!! What a crazy few days it's been. As you can see from the title of this post, we had the baby early!! A month early to be exact. Obviously it was totally unexpected but he's happy and healthy and all is well. Simon Matthew arrived on Thursday July 10 at 4:19 pm and weighed 5 lbs 13.6 oz. and was 18.5 inches long. Here is our birth story:

At about 3:30 on Wednesday (July 9) I was just leaving the lab to head home when I felt a gush. I pretty much knew right away that it was my water that had broken but I was praying I had just peed my pants because I was only 36 weeks 3 days along and knew it was a bit too early for this little guy to arrive. I called Proud_Poppa to come get me given that I was NOT going to ride the bus home and then called the midwife who told us to meet her at the hospital. We got to labour and delivery and they put me in a room to check on the baby and to see if it really was my water that broke. By then my midwife had arrived and pretty much broke it to me that it was my water that broke and that I wasn't going home until this baby was out. They sent me to ante partum to wait for the next day to be induced and because I hadn't had my group B strep swab they started dosing me up with IV antibiotics. PP at this time, was sent home to get me dinner and pack up my hospital bag because I hadn't done it yet. When he came back, we had our dinner, and then by 9:30 he had to leave because dad's aren't allowed in that part of the hospital at night. I was told to rest up because tomorrow I was going to have a baby and to enjoy my last night of peace.

So much for my last night of peace.... Only a half hour after PP left, I started having contractions that were 10 minutes apart. I told the nurse and she didn't believe me. So I just figured what I was feeling was nothing. Over the course of the next few hours they started getting more intense to the point where they were 5 minutes apart and I had to breathe through them. I buzzed the nurse and she still didn't believe me because she said to take a couple of sleeping pills and sleep through them. I took those pills and spent the next 4 hours NOT sleeping, and breathing through contractions on my own with no labor support. By 4 am, I buzzed the nurse again and told her I was having contractions, and that I needed PP with me. She was pretty insistent that PP could not be with me on that ward and I insisted right back that she get him on the phone because there was no way I was continuing labor without him. She finally listened and sent me to the delivery room where I spent the next half hour on my own in the shower waiting patiently for PP and my midwife to arrive. Once PP was there, I felt so much better. He helped me through intense contractions but because I had been laboring all night, the contractions weren't really getting any more frequent because I was falling asleep for the 2 or 3 minutes between them. My midwife checked me at 11 am (12 hrs of labor at this point) and she said I was only 4 cm dilated and that it would likely be another 6 hrs before I was at 10. I knew that there was not a chance in hell that I was going to be able to labor through them. I felt like I had to push so much and there was no headspace I could be in that would stop that feeling. Believe me when I say, puh-puh-puh DOES work at least to a certain extent, no matter how goofy you sound saying it. At that point, I caved and asked for an epi. I knew I couldn't labor through another 6 hours of those kinds of contractions. The anesthetist couldn't come right away because he was in an emergency c-section so I labored at least another 45 minutes. Once the epi was in though, my god, the pain relief was amazing. I slept for another 5 hours while PP went home and showered up. When he got back, I had just been seen by the obstetrician and I was 9 cm. He told us that because he was so early, he and a pediatrician would have to be present at the birth to make sure everything was ok. An hour later, I was ready to push and 45 minutes after that, Simon Matthew was born. I have to say, the relief of having him out of me and happy and healthy was intense. He cried right away and the pediatrician said he was looking good. He weighed 5lbs 13.6 oz and was 18.5 inches long but because he was so small and so early, they had to send him to NICU instead of back to the mother babe ward with me.

My midwife was amazing and after checking me out (no stitches and no tears), she and PP wheeled me to the NICU so I could meet my little man. He was in an incubator and they told me that he might be back in the room with me within the next 2 hours. Well, it turned out his glucose levels were not regulating themselves so they had to keep him until he had 3 consecutive feeds with good numbers. I spent my first night in mother babe alone in a semi-private room with a, shall we say interesting, roommate who managed to turn the hospital gowns into a strapless dress and luckily had no issues with sending her screaming baby to the nursery so she and by default I could get some rest. The whole next day was spent pumping and dropping off my milk to NICU to get him to try and regulate his glucose levels. They warned me he may need a second night there and I was so upset. The nurses in mother babe totally understood and were so nice to sit with me and calm me down a bit. They also got me a private room so I could rest in preparation of baby Simon's release from NICU. At around 5 on Simon's second day in this world, they wheeled him into my room because he had finally passed his glucose tests. Since I was in a private room, PP could stay with me through the night and we muddled through feeding and caring for our new baby. We ended up staying another night because I felt I needed all the breast feeding help I could get. We put him on a 3 hour feed schedule and he ate like a champ both through bottles of pumped milk mixed with formula and through short spurts of breast feeding. We were released from the hospital on Sunday (July 13) and have been managing very well since then. I'm feeling great, but I think that's because he was so small and I didn't tear so I didn't have to deal with that kind of pain.

I wanted to say that the nurses at mother/babe are absolutely amazing and were all so willing to help us learn how to care for our baby. If you get a chance, look for Cynthia who is a lactation consultant and RN and helped us out so much during her day and night shift; she was so patient and had excellent advice for us.