No Words Required

Oops

Lizzy is going to be very dissapointed in me but I forgot to mention a name that we call her very often. Little Girl. It started out as Baby Girl but soon evolved into Little Girl and it has stuck to her for weeks now. I can't believe she is nearly four weeks old already. I still want to count her age in days not weeks, soon though we will be transitioning to months. That will be hard to bear. I have to go take care of her now.

Terri

The Name Game

When we were thinking of baby names it was important to me to choose a name that could be shortened so our child would have a choice in what she was called. Elizabeth was a great choice by those criteria. Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Lisa, Lisbet, Liza, Beth, Betty, Bets, the list goes on. Well out of those choices we call her Elizabeth and more often Lizzy, but we also have a few more creative names for her.
Grumpy pants often fits the bill, she gets angry and glares at the world like you wouldn't believe. Lizzy Pants just somehow worked itself into the name rotation. My mom would call her the Duchess of Lakewood. Her ego is deflated when we have reason to call her Stinky Pants. Perhaps the most enduring name we have for her is Oinklet. She is such a noisy eater that that name has stuck like glue. I hope she doesn't hate us for it when she is older.

Terri

Catching Up

This week I have not been trying to avoid you, it just worked out that way. I have hardly spent any time on the computer. This is even going to be a short posting since I am about to go to bed. Lizzy is doing great and our niece Allyssa who is visiting from BC has been a great help with her.

Terri

Oh, Lizzy weighed in at 9lb 1oz today.

Chores

I am finally feeling up to doing some of the house work around here and will you look at who I found trying to escape in the laundry! My little convict.

Terri

Break Time

Yesterday Lizzy and I had a picnic in our back yard. I brought the camera out and took a bunch of pictures. I thought it would be a nice break from grossing you all out and convincing you to never have children.

Terri

Nitty Gritty #3 The Recouvery

After the placenta was delivered a very strong nurse named Isabell came in and started pushing on my belly. It felt like she was standing on me. It was quite painfull all in all. I stayed in the delivery room for quite a while after Elizabeth was born. Isabell kept comming in and standing on my belly. Everytime she did I would have a gush of blood come out. Eventually they decided that I was still bleeding so they gave me something thruogh the IV to stop the bleed. I can't remember what it was called but it started with an H. Apparently it often triggers diareah so they gave me immodium at the same time.
Finally they decided to move me to the recouvery room but first I had to have a shower. It is truly odd to have someone else shower me. I just sat like a lump on the stool and Isabell hosed me down like a Circus Elephant. Not a very dignifying experiance. After I was washed and dried I was loaded into a wheel chair and brought to the nursery to see Elizabeth. Mom was still right by her side and she was, (and still is), the most beautifull baby in the room. I wish I could have held her then but by that time I was in rough shape and probably would have dropped her. I did get to touch her again and let the reality of her existance sink in a little more.
By the time I was settled into the recouvery room I was very uncomfortable. My bum hurt and it constantly felt like I had to poo. I think that I frightened Gramo, Aunty Vicki and Karly at that point. I was in so much pain that I was reduced to moaning into my pillow and that is how they left me. I kept getting up to use the toilet feeling like I had to poo, but every time I tried to push it out I just had a gush of blood from my uterus. It was rather frightning. This pattern carried on for a few hours, past the time when Mom sent Patrick home to get some sleep.
At around 2:00am the pattern changed drastically. Mom was holding Lizzy and I got up to use the toilet. She asked if I was ok on my own and I replied that I was fine. And I was, for the first three steps. Then my vision blacked out my knees buckled and I staggered forward hanging on to the IV pole for support. Word of advice here, when you are fainting don't use something with wheels for support, it will let you down. Long story short, I ended up on my hands and knees half naked in the hallway. That got a swarm of hospital staff in a hurry. I crawled back into the room and was in the bathroom door when they caught up to me. I was so close to my goal but they wouldn't let me use the toilet. They put me to bed and fussed around for ages. I should mention that I had a catheter in from when they stiched me up so I was not in any danger of wetting the bed.
I don't remember much more from that night except that Dr. Yoo who delivered Lizzy was called back to the hospital to check me over. After her examination she said that I had a hematoma, (big bruise), in the birth canal and that I may have cracked my tail bone pushing Lizzy out. She also said that I had lost around a liter of blood. I guess that explains why the details are fuzzy.

Terri

Nitty Gritty #2

Patrick has just informed me that he got to the hospital before they moved me into my own room. As I said earlier the details are fuzzy. I do remember wanting him to get there. I think it was around 1:00 or1:30 that I was moved to the delivery room. I don't think I was in there long before the pain of the contractions started getting to me. I wanted to avoid an epidural but had no qualms about taking the Nitrice Oxide. I am not sure how effective it was at dulling the pain but it was a great aid in controlling my breathing. I had to inhale slowly to get the gas and I just concentrated on my breathing through the contractions.
I would have to look at my hospital charts to tell you when I was 3cm dialated and when I made it to 5cm. I know that it only took an hour for me to go from 5cm to 9cm. Sometime in there I decided to get a shot of morphine for the pain. Once again I am not sure how effective it was but it did lead to some bizare dreams later on. After 9cm things got tough. My body started telling me to push, but the nurses kept telling me not to.
It was almost like having had to go to the bathroom for an hour and finally getting home to find someone already on the can having a good long read. Waiting in the hallway apoligising to your body for not being able to go like you promised it. Your body says "You told me I could go now, so here goes." And your mind says, "Wait, wait, wait, not on the floor, just relax those muscles, soon I tell you soon."
The little pushes that I couldn't hold back were almost as much work as the real thing. The real pushing hurt more though. Oddly enough though I have crystal clear memories of wanting to push and those feelings I don't remember the pain of pushing. I know it hurt though. It took about half an hour for me to push Elizabeth out. At the begining I wasn't terribly effective but the Doctors and Nurses coached me along and I got the hang of it. Patrick and my mom were right there with me for the whole thing.
Finally the Doctor asked me not to push while she did something with Baby then it was push, push, push and Elizabeth was born. It was 7:12pm when she emerged. We had been trying hard for a 7 11 baby, but I didn't push her out quite fast enough. She almost sild right through the Doctor's hands but she caught her. Right away they clamped her umbilical cord while suctioning out her mouth and airways. Patrick got to cut the umbilical cord then they whisked her onto the baby station and checked her Afgar scores and did other stuff. I was kind of out of it at that point.
Her Afgar scores were both 8, which I think is good, but they wanted her to have a good cry and she was having none of that. Part of it was the Morphine that I had and part of it was the dirty amniotic fluid.
I wanted to hold her right away, but she wasn't squaking and the Doctor was still trying to get the placenta out. After about twenty minutes of constant traction on the umbilical cord the placenta was still in place so they summoned the expert. I was told that he may have to reach up inside my uterus and pul the placenta free, not a pleasant procedure. It was about forty minutes after Lizzy was born that the expert showed up. By this time I had only been allowed to reach over and touch Lizzy in the baby station and then they wheeled her off to the nursery. My mom stuck by her like glue andPatrick stuck by my side.
Well the expert got all gowned up and took a hold of the cord and said, "Give it a bit of a push." I pushed and out ploped the placenta.

Terri

Nitty Gritty #1

Now that more then a week has passed I am feeling up to telling the tale of Elizabeth's birth...

On Friday July 28, 2006, I got out of bed at about 9:15am. I decided to have one of my all time fovorite breakfeasts, cold pizza. While sitting on the couch eating my pizza with a glass of orange juice I started to feel an odd sensation reminicient of my menstral flow, it was 9:30am by this time. I casually got up and saw that I was sitting on a little wet spot. Karly, who was watching cartoons next to me noticed it right away. I went into the bathroom and had a look, I was definatly wet. I put on a pad and hummed and hawed for a few minutes then decided to call the doctor's office. They advised me to go to the Labour and Delivery ward of the hospital and get things looked into.
At this point Gramo thought I was imagining things and Mom decided to get ready with glacial slowness. (Sorry Mom, but you really did seem to be draging your feet with that second cup of coffee and all.) I gave Patrick a call at work and told him that I thought my water may have beoken and that I was heading in to be checked out. We decided that he should stay at work until noon and then come home. I wasn't sure if my water had broken at this point or if I had just lost the mucus plug. At around 10:00am I had what I think was my first contraction. It was very mild but it was enough to make me want to get to the hospital sooner rather then later.
We drove to the hospital in Aunty Vicki's Mustang, this baby arrived in style I tell you. After checking in at admitting I was allowed to walk to the elevators and head up to the third floor where all the action takes place. The nurses up there were surprised that I had been allowed to walk, most expectant moms are loaded into a wheel chair. I was happy to walk.
Some of the details are starting to be a little fuzzy in my mind from this point but I will do my best.
We had to wait a few minutes for an examining bed to become avalible but I was occupied by peeing in a cup and gowning up. Once they had me in bed the nurses straped a fetal heart monitor and a contraction monitor to my belly and wraped an automatic blood pressure cuff around my arm. The monitors were ok but something was off with the blood pressure thing since it just kept getting tighter and tighter until my arm turned a lovely shade of purple. At that point Mom or Aunty Vicki got a nurse to fix it . Watching the read out on the contraction monitor was a really neet way to track my progress. Almost from the begining my contractions were about five minutes appart.

I have no idea how long I was in bed before the Doctor came and had a peek but it only took him about 1 second to announce that my water had broken and that there was Myocum, (baby poo), in the amniotic fluid. This is not a good thing but fairly common and they can deal with it no problem. I guess that by this point they had decided that I was in until Baby was out since they stuck an IV in me. I needed to have IV antibiotics because I had bladder infections during the pregnancy. It was not long after the Doctor's visit that I was transfered to a private delivery room. The privacy was nice but I had been enjoying listening to the other expectant mom's conversations. For a while there was a little boy in the bed next to mine who kept calling his Daddy a "Dirty Plumber." It made me laugh.

Distractions

Between learning how to care for Elizabeth and dealing with the recovery period I have not been able to make very regular posts. Hopefully in the next few days things will pick up and I will be more communcative. No promises though. I have a whole bunch of pictures to take off the camera and post but it is Elizabeth and my bedtimes. Hopefully she will let me sleep a little. I am suspecious about the condition of her diaper though, it is hard to tell what is gas and what is something more.
I am having a bit of a rough spot emotionally right now. I have a sore spot in my tummy and have to take an antibiotic that could get into my milk so I can't nurse Elizabeth for the next few days. I want to be able to go back to nursing her later so I am pumping, and feeling like a dairy cow. The worst is when after half an hour of pumping I have to dump the milk down the sink and give her formula. The experiance leaves me feeling terribly dissapointed and makes me doubt my ability to be the mother I want to be. I hope we can get back on track once I am done this stupid perscription.
Patrick and I are delighted to be parents and we are both enamoured with Elizabeth.

Terri

Pictures (Finally)

Here are just a couple of the pictures from in the hospital. The one of Patrick and I was taken just minutes after Elizabeth ws born. The picture showing four generations of women was taken the next day. We have a ton more pictures but it is fun to reveal them to you in a trickle rather then a flood. We are both much improved today and getting the hang of things.

Terri