The Awesome Adventures of Jason and Heather: February 2011

I know it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve had Braydon and I thought that I would have time to sit down and write out our whole experience but so far that hasn’t happened. He’s the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen but then again I could be biased. He’s sleeping right now but who knows how long that will last. We had an appointment set up for February 4th to go in and have me induced at 8:30pm. They told me to eat a big dinner and then call in an hour before our appointment to make sure that they have a bed for me. We went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and then we went home and prepared our overnight bag and Jason gave me a blessing before we made the phone call. And when we did call they told me to come in at 9pm instead. So we arrived at the hospital and checked in, they took me to my room and had me change before hooking me up to the IV, Blood Pressure cuff, Pitocin, and the heart monitors on my stomach. I don’t think that they got me fully set up until 11pm and then they told me to get some rest…not that easy. Every time Braydon moved out of the way of the heart monitor an alarm would go off and wouldn’t stop until the nurse came back in to readjust it. The blood pressure cuff went off every 15 minutes, and every couple of hours I had to get up to go to the bathroom but I had to have Jason come over to the bed and unhook me from everything and then I had to roll the IV into the bathroom with me. I sat awake the entire night listening to Jason snoring away in the corner and thinking about everything that was about to happen. I think I finally fell asleep around 5:30am and was startled out of sleep at 6am by a woman screaming her head off in another delivery room. At that point I was scared out of my mind and wanted to back out, but it was too late. When the nurse came in she explained that the woman that was screaming came in too late to have her epidural but I shouldn’t worry because I’ll get mine in time. I certainly hoped so.
Dr. Langer showed up at 7:45am to check to see where I was at and to break my water…that was a weird sensation. She said that I had dilated to a 4 over night and they decided that they would continue to increase the dosage of pitocin until I was fully dilated and effaced. All during my pregnancy I couldn’t really tell the difference between contractions and the baby moving but once they broke my water those contractions came on heavily. The nurse told me that the anesthesiologist was with someone but was heading to my room next. Jason came over and held my hand as I tried to breathe through the contractions and I could watch them on the monitor. Luckily I only had to go about half an hour without the epidural. I was worried that when they put in the epidural that it would be painful but it wasn’t I just felt pressure. My right side from the stomach down went tingly and they told me to roll over on to my left to make sure that the epidural would spread evenly. Jason and I watched despicable me while we were waiting for the epidural to take full effect and it actually made me sleepy so we turnd off the movie and I tried to take a nap. The nurse kept coming in every half hour to check on me and to see how I’ve progressed. At about noon I was 7 cm dilated and almost there. At 2pm she came back and checked again and she told me that I’m ready to push this baby out, I was completely dilated and effaced. Then the nerves really set in, this is the part I had dreaded all along. Jason hurried up and changed his clothes and put on his shoes while the nurse and doctor got everything ready. I pushed for about 15-20 minutes and then I felt nauseated. I thought I could handle it since I never throw up but I’m sorry to say that in this instance I couldn’t keep it down. They let me pause for a bit while I tried to compose myself and the nurse ran off to get a medicine that would help with the nausea. Then we were ready to push again, after another 10-15 minutes Braydon was finally here. The doctor was surprised at how big he was, she was thinking that he was only going to be about 6.5 to 7 pounds. He was and is beautiful weighing 8 lbs 9 oz, 20 inches long. They washed him off and gave him to Jason to hold and bring to me. Jason was beaming from ear to ear so proud of his new little boy. Jason and one of the nurses took him to nursery while I tried to get some sleep and wait for a recovery room to open up. We had him sleep in our room the first night and we didn't get much sleep with the nurse coming in every couple of hours to check on us and I think Jason had the most uncomfortable bed ever. The second night the nurse wanted to wheel Braydon into the nursery around 1am to do some lab tests and she asked if I wanted her to keep him in there for a whiles that we could get some sleep, I felt bad saying yes but I was so exhausted after the past couple of days.
It’s now been almost 3 weeks since he was born and it’s still an adjustment. He likes to sleep all day and be awake most of the night. Since Jason has school and work I’m up with Braydon trying to get him to fall asleep most of the night but he has gotten better. I’m able to get him to fall asleep by about 2am or 3am and then he sleeps until about 8 or so. One thing we haven’t been able to do is get him to sleep in his crib. Everytime we get him to fall asleep we lay him down and he wakes up 5 minutes later crying his eyes out. I’ll admit I’m a wimp and I don’t like him crying so after about 2-3 minutes I go and pick him up and hold him until he falls asleep again. Anyone have any good ideas on how to get him to sleep in his crib?
He had a doctors appointment yesterday and we were told that he weighed 8 lbs 5 oz, not exactly at his birth weight but the doctor said that’s fine since he was rather large to begin with, he‘s in the 50th percentile in weight. He is now 21.5 inches long which is in the 85th percentile. The nurse came in and did a PKU test while Jason held on to Braydon and Dr. Buchanan came in and spoke to me about different things. They did tell us that we need to get him some vitamin D drops which apparently breast milk is deficient in. And the worst part of the visit was that we had him circumcised. We decided to do it in the doctors office rather than the hospital because some insurances won’t cover the cost believing it to be more cosmetic than necessary. In the hospital that could end up being a $1500 procedure that we would have to pay out of pocket. In the doctors office it’s a 1/3 of the price at $325. I didn’t want to watch but I was in the room while they did it and Jason ended up helping out with the procedure, by dipping Braydon’s pacifier in a cherry syrup and by holding onto his hands to comfort him. The doctor told us everything he was doing and showed us all of the pieces that he uses. They actually numbed the area with a shot of lidocaine which Braydon didn’t enjoy. Jason was doing perfectly fine being that close and watching until the doctor asked him how he was doing and told him about another dad that was helping him in the hospital that passed out. After that Jason felt a little woozy and had to sit down. After the procedure was over Braydon was not happy at all. We stayed in the room for about 20 minutes trying to calm him down by feeding him but every few minutes he’s let out a huge cry which would make the milk fall out of his mouth and then he’d cry more. We finally decided to try and get him dressed and in the car seat thinking that the sooner we got him home to an environment he recognizes the better. He passed out as soon as we put him in the car seat and placed the blanket over the visor. He slept for almost the entire afternoon, waking only for 15 minutes to eat and then he’d be asleep again.

Our Family!