What a month this has been!

While we didn’t go anywhere new and exciting, we definitely had the adventure of a lifetime!

First things first. Miss Taz celebrated her 6th birthday with us. She has really come out of her shell since moving to the new house. She didn’t care to be left alone while we moved house and cleaned the other place.

Since moving, Hina has been adjusting to living on the covered deck. The Mister doesn’t want her to mess up the new floor laminate/carpets in the house, so he screened in the deck for her to be safely contained. She loves being out there during the day, but I think she gets very lonely at night. For the 4th, I’ll be bringing her inside so the neighborhood fireworks don’t cause her stress. She’s done really well with the litter box since the transition. We’ll see if this has to be permanent.

Now for the best news of all…

Baby Waid arrived 8 June, almost 24 hours after starting the induction process on 7 June.

We were scheduled for induction on 7 June at 8am. I was a nervous wreck. Lots of scared/anxious tears. When we arrived we settled into our room and had a cervix check — that was brutal. Even the nurse would say afterwards it shouldn’t have been that painful, but it is what it is.

Thankfully I was already dilated to 4cm so we were able to start the pitocin. Unfortunately, that smooth start didn’t last.

Things didn’t progress as fast as we’d hoped and my blood pressure was at “stroke levels”, according to the nurse. We spent a good chunk of time trying to get that under control. It was incredibly frustrating that my body was working so hard against me.

I felt fine but the doc decided an epidural would help to calm that down and help Baby’s heart rate as well. It’s about 4pm at this point. I wasn’t having hard contractions at that point and I really didn’t want the epidural at all without trying to handle things naturally first, but it was necessary at that point. It was an emotional non-decision. I cried about it for quite some time.

As soon as I got it, my blood pressure leveled out and Baby’s heart didn’t have to work so hard to keep up. From there things still didn’t progress quickly.

When I was fully dilated, Baby still didn’t want to start moving down, so the doc decided breaking my water was necessary (are we seeing a pattern here?). That’s a heck of an experience, let me tell you! By about 4:30, the drugs had kicked in and they were breaking my water.

To make things even more difficult, when Baby started to move down, he was moving down at a slight angle. When the time came to push, he didn’t want to shift to make it easier. Poor kid ended up having some bruising on the top of one ear and his head from that, we’d learn later.

At about 8:30pm, I was finally dilated to 8cm. By then, we’d been in labor and delivery for over 12 hours. No rest for the wicked.

Around 2:30am, we finally started pushing. After about 3 hours with little to no progress, doc decided the best course of action was to perform a c section. Baby was just too big for me and my pushing just wasn’t cutting it. I lost it when he told me that. Everything I didn’t want to do, was happening.

To begin, I never wanted an induction. My poor blood pressure however made that a necessity. After that, everything felt forced on me, despite being told it was “my” decision. How could it be my decision when I’ve never experienced childbirth before?! I felt very hung out to dry. I wanted someone to tell me “this is what we should do because it’s for the best” not “here are the options, pick one.”

It was made even more emotional simply because COVID had turned everything on its head right when we needed some guidance the most. I felt very unprepared and even my choice of doctor wasn’t honored (all of my medical care up to that point had been with a female practitioner, both doctors during birth were male and I had never met them/been treated by them — luck of the draw there I suppose but still…).

Then the epidural before I’d even felt any real contractions…it was not how I’d wanted to start. It was absolutely for the best, given how dangerously high my blood pressure was (I wasn’t told just how bad it was until after I’d received the meds). In hindsight, that was definitely a blessing as it made the c section that much quicker. Still, emotionally I was unprepared.

Finally, the need for a c section was the icing on the cake. That’s a major surgery and recovery is a long process. I was so ill prepared for what it would be like as well. I didn’t expect how horrible the shaking would be in the aftermath. I could hardly hold my son my body was convulsing so hard. It was hard to breathe, I’m allergic to the medication they usually give to help with the nausea/shaking, and I lost a significant amount of blood (almost enough to need a transfusion — again, I wasn’t informed of this until after the fact), it was an incredibly scary recovery.

Then came all the nuances once Baby arrived. I was expected to feed him right away and felt awful when I could barely hold him to nurse thanks to the shaking. Plus my milk had not come in and we had no breastfeeding classes so I was flying blind and he ended up having a slight tongue tie, so his latch was not great. I was already experiencing so much emotionally and felt like an absolute failure.

Luckily, after a meeting with the lactation consultant, we got the feeding thing figured out, but those first two days were rough!

Recovery from the c section is still going on. I’m only a little tender now and still have some bleeding (TMI, but hey!). The incision itself seems to be healing nicely, but it was a long road to get to this point. Massaging my uterus back into place/to release built up fluids was no joke. I also started hemoraging the night before we were discharged from the hospital, which was another scary situation. Thankfully the nurses were on top of things and it was a false alarm.

Now if only my back would stop hurting so much, we’d be golden.

All in all, Baby Waid did not come into the world the way I would have liked, but he is healthy and perfect.

The rest of June was a blur.

I am SO thankful my mom was able to stay and help for a little while after Baby arrived. It was so hard to have her leave. Just having someone who understood how I was feeling helped so much. The Mister has done great, but Mom knew how much I worried about Baby all throughout pregnancy and how emotional all my decisions were during his birth. Plus, she is the baby whisperer. Any time he’d fuss, she’d only have to pick him up and he was fine again.

I’m also glad my dad was able to come back to meet his grandson and help the Mister with a few projects. I just wish they could have stayed longer!

We celebrated the Mister’s first Father’s Day (of the two-legged variety that is), though we didn’t actually do anything.

It’s just been a lot of diapers, feeding, and lack of sleep. I can’t imagine life without the little guy though.

July is bound to be another adventurous month. I don’t anticipate us doing a whole lot. We’re still social distancing and I’m not taking Baby out in public any time soon. We’ll just have to see what pans out.

Until then!

Cheers.

–A. xoxo