First Week: GREAT support system

Mia's first week of life was all about learning for our entire family. Mia was not much of an eater, although she did like to sleep A LOT. She slept so well, in fact, that it was difficult to get her to wake up and eat. The video below shows just how hard it was. We'd spend about an hour getting her to wake up to eat, only to have her fall back to sleep five minutes later even though she was naked and had a wet washcloth on her head.

Luckily, Dan and I had a great support system who helped us out A LOT and kept us sane. Dan was absolutely amazing, taking care of both me and Mia even though he was getting only slightly more sleep than I. I focused totally on Mia care (trying to get her to eat and do all of the things necessary to keep up my milk supply while she wasn't eating--this required getting almost no sleep at all). He did a lot of running around, cooking, and cleaning up while I sat in the apartment being pretty much of a mess.

Our friends Tim and Anh came by with dinner on our second night home from the hospital. The meal was excellent. Equally wonderful was seeing our friends and knowing that they were willing to help. Unfortunately, despite seeing them twice since Mia was born, I forgot to get some pictures of them with Mia. They are wonderful with her and are going to make excellent parents.

My mom arrived just after Anh and Tim left. I love my mom a lot, and can honestly say that I've never been so happy to see her. She was very helpful around the house, showered our entire family with love, and did a great job of encouraging us as we tried to figure out this whole parenting business. It was wonderful watching her enjoy Mia.

We were very fortunate for the support of our friends and my mom. However, the effort that my sister, Holly, and her husband, Darren, exerted to help us out is truly stratospheric. First of all, although they live just an hour and a half away, they took their camper to a fairly expensive campsite about a half-hour from our house and stayed there for three nights just to be close and be able to hang out with us. My five year old nephew, Jamie, got sick right before they arrived in San Diego so he did not come in our house their first day here and they were all gracious about hanging out at our pool and keeping Jamie away from the baby (a pretty hard thing to be gracious about, especially if you are five). In addition, grand plans like taking our entire family to the zoo quickly fell by the wayside as it turns out that women recovering from childbirth can't walk long distances. They went alone, and were nice about it.

This would have been more than enough wonderfully supportive behavior. However, they did a lot more. First off, we became convinced that Mia would eat if only we had a glider rocker like the one I fed her in in the hospital. Dan had tried to find one, but let's just say that sleep deprivation got the better of him. Holly and Darren offered to give us one (after they had already given us MANY baby gifts, some handknit). It took something like calls to five separate Targets and an hour and a half at an actual store to actually purchase the darn thing, but it arrived at our house two days after we arrived home. On top of that, they brought food for our entire family to eat during their visit AND left us with over a week's worth of frozen meals to have once everyone had gone. Mia is not the only one who rocks!

Other happenings in Mia's first week included her first bath and her first trip to a restaurant (for pizza). She was a real champ, waking only to eat and being perfectly content to stay in her carseat for the rest of the dinner. We pretty much spent the rest of the week feeding her, gazing at her, and telling her how wonderful she is.

Birth Story

Mia was born on July 16, 2007 at 1:44 am. As her father likes to say, she was a "very lazy baby" who needed a little help being motivated to join the world. So we headed to the hospital to be induced 5 days after her due date. We arrived at the hospital at 7am and got a suppository to ripen my cervix around 9am, after the requisite paperwork and poking and prodding was complete.

Once the tablet was in place, I needed to lie down for an hour. I had been up late the night before and ended up napping until 2pm, when the nurse checked me to determine if a second suppository was warranted. I had been feeling some minor back pain, was dialated to 4cm and the baby's head was located at -1 station (5 cm away from crowning), all signs of early labor. So, instead of getting a second suppository or being given pitocin, I decided to go for walks around the hospital to see if I could give birth without any more drugs.

Hospital policy allowed me to walk anywhere on the hospital campus as long as I returned for 20 minutes of monitoring after 40 minutes of walking. For some reason, I thought it was pretty funny to walk around outside in my hospital gown as it elicited funny looks from people who I imagined thought I was trying to escape mid-labor. So, Dan and I lapped the hospital grounds on three separate rounds of walking and monitoring.

Unfortunately, the monitoring sessions lasted for far longer than 20 minutes and required that I stay pretty still. This seemed to slow down my contractions (which increased during the walks) and, at 6 pm I was still only dialated 4 cm. The nurse suggested that the doctor break my bag of waters. Since my OB was slated to arrive for his shift at the hospital at 6:30, I asked if I could rest a bit and have him handle things (all the walking and pain from contractions was tiring me out).


At 7pm, my OB checked in on me and I had not progressed at all in the last hour, so he broke my bag of waters. The nursing staff had also changed shifts and the new nurse, who had 30 years of experience and some very definite ideas about labor, let me know that I was going to hurt a lot more now and asked me to not leave the floor during my walks. She was right, the pain was definitely more intense. And, although I managed 40 minutes of walking, I was much slower and in a lot more pain. I was checked again at 9 pm and still had not progressed.

At that point, the doctor recommended that I start pitocin. The nurse made it very clear that pitocin would make things a lot more painful than rupturing the amniotic sac. She recommended that I get an epidural before the pitocin was started. I was pretty tired at this point and really wanted to sleep so that I could have enough energy for pushing. Knowing that the epidural would make this possible, I agreed.

The epidural was in by 9:30 and it was relatively quick and painless (not nearly as painful as the three separate attempts at an IV). Within a couple of minutes, all of the labor pains were gone and I slept until 11:30, when I was checked again. At this point, I got pretty discouraged because I had only dialated to 5 cm and was told that I probably would not give birth until breakfast the next day (nearly 24 hours after being admitted to the hospital). Although I was not in pain, I was pretty tired of the whole thing and was ready to have it over with.

I went back to sleep and woke up at 12:15 with some pain. The nurse was in the room and I told her that I felt a pretty intense contraction. It felt just like the birthing videos I'd seen, the uterus opening things up and simultaneously moving the baby towards the birth canal--I could feel the whole movement, pretty freaky. The nurse reminded me that I could give myself some more drugs through the epidural and I did so. This did not remove much sensation, however. I continued to feel the baby moving down, but, because I had been told I had not progressed much at all when checked an hour before, was convinced I was a hypochondriac and did not call the nurse or wake Dan, who was also sleeping. When the nurse entered the room again at 12:30, I told her again that things were getting intense and she told me that was a good sign that labor was finally in full force, but did nothing. Finally, at 12:45 I felt certain enough that Mia was on her way and that the sensations were not going to go away that I called the nurse and asked her to check me.

She did and announced, "She has hair!" I was fairly certain this was a sign that I should have spoken up sooner. Things went into high gear at that point, moving things around in the room to prepare for labor. I was told not to push while the room was being set up. At 1am, we began practice pushes with Dan and the nurse each holding one of my legs (Dan gets kudos here. He had been explicit that he wanted to stay by my head and hold my hand, but he jumped right in when asked). I had a bit of a fever and Mia's heart rate was a little irregular, so the nurse had me stop pushing so she could leave the room and consult with the doctor. She had me wear and oxygen mask and had a special team come to the room to look after Mia if she needed it. A little while later (maybe three more pushes), she decided to leave again to ask the doctor to come down to deliver the baby. So I had to stop pushing again (not pushing is way harder than pushing, so I was a little annoyed by the third interruption).

Once the doctor arrived, Mia made her way into the world very quickly. (They had a mirror for me during practice pushes. I could see the top of the head for quite a while before the doctor arrived so it wasn't much of a surprise.) A few pushes and some perineal massage--which is misnamed as it hurts and is not at all relaxing--and Mia was with us. She came out pretty much all at once and was pretty slippery.

I was a little nervous at first because it took a while for her to cry. They warn you that your baby might not cry at first in childbirth class and that it's perfectly normal. All the same, I was glad when I heard her. The doctor held her up so I could see her--she was pretty long and lean. They sent the team out of the room quickly, as it was clear that Mia was fine. Dan cut the umbilical cord and the nurse and Dan went to check her out and clean her up. The doctor tugged on the umbilical cord to pull out the placenta, stitched me up, and they finally let me hold my daughter.


All in all, it was a pretty amazing experience. Dan had such a glow in his eyes, it was clear that he was instantly in love with her too. She was so beautiful--not squished up in the typical newborn ways and very alert. We were so thrilled to have her finally join us and to start getting to know our daughter.