Early mornings

I have not blogged in FOREVER. I guess that goes with the territory when you have 4 kids. Blogging becomes a luxury. Tonight I fell asleep with Liam on the couch at 10 pm. Worn out most of the day I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. And now here I am awake since 3 am (it is now 4:30 am). And here I sit in a chair nursing my little man. It's funny how being awake and having quiet makes you think. So I figured since I don't have a 2 yr old tugging on my arm asking for a "cuppy" or a "viiiimin" (vitamin) and a 4 yr old bouncing all over the place I can sit here while I nurse and reflect and record my thoughts. Who knew! Moms of 4 kids have their own thoughts that do not include the tv schedule for Disney Junior. Haha. Well....

What was I saying?

Oh yes. The quiet. The soft woosh woosh of the dishwasher and gentle snores of little Liam as he dozes here in my arms are so peaceful. His little eyelashes flutter against his soft squishy baby cheeks. His yummy baby smell co-mingles with the heady smell of the rain from last night. Heaven. This must be what heaven is like. Peace. Soft babies. What else do we need really?

(I just got interrupted by Mack who came down stairs to see why I am up)

I know someday when I can sleep all night uninterrupted I will miss this. These early morning wake up nursing sessions. So I am working on not focusing on my tired body and more on how lucky I am to have a sweet healthy baby who loves to be close to me all night. (And all day). I know someday he won't want to be snuggled up against my chest. So drink it in. And enjoy the early morning hours rather than mourn your sleep. This time will pass so quickly. My very last baby is now almost 7 months old. Blink and its gone.

Liam Cliff - welcome to our family

It's mid February - actually Valentines day. So today seems like a good day to tell Liam's birth story :) 

The morning of Jan 21st we went in for an OB checkup at 39 weeks and 4 days. Still 2 cm but he was able to stretch it to 3 so he stripped my membranes and sent us out out to walk the mall for 4 hours. Immediately after that I was cramping and spotting a bit. My contractions were ranging from every 3-5 minutes apart and hurting pretty bad in my lower back and into my legs. In fact at times I had to stop walking because I felt like my legs were going to buckle. 4 agonizing hours of walking and trying not to look like I was in pain at the mall, we went back and he checked me. Still at 3 cm. He stripped it again and holy moly the cramping was bad! Sent us out to get dinner and come back to L&D at 7 pm to see if any progress or if he could break my water and get things going. We decided to drive up to see my 2 good friends and sit around their condo. I was pretty much over the walking at this point. So I stood and sort of rocked back and forth while trying to make conversation with them. At this point these contractions were hurting a lot and I was feeling a lot of pressure. It was getting more and more difficult to talk through them. We went back to L&D at 7 pm and got set up on the monitor. Still contracting about every 3 minutes. Cervix was 4 cm at this point! After getting the IV set up and my epidural - my blood pressure dropped to 68/40 so I earned a shot of ephedrine in my arm. fun! Once that all stabilized my OB came in and broke my water at about 10:15 pm. Baby dropped at that point to 0 station. I could really tell he had dropped because I was having insane pressure even with my epi - wrapping all the way to my back. The OB decided to step out and watch the monitors for a bit and see if I made any progress. My nurse went on break and Mike stepped out to go use the restroom. 

At about 12 midnight just minutes after Mike disappeared a whole bunch of nurses came rushing in because the babies HR was in a prolonged decel into the 80-90's. They turned me side to side, tried oxygen, fluids, put on an internal heart monitor on the baby. It would briefly come up to the 120's then drop again. Something was up. I was rechecked and my cervix was only 5 cm. So my doctor started talking about a run to the operating room. :( At that point I was so discouraged. This was EXACTLY what happened with Ethan. As soon as I hit 5 cm the baby was in distress. They shaved and prepped me for a c/s. No sooner had they done that the heart rate recovered back to the 130's and stayed up. As long as I was on my side it seemed to stay stable. So about 30 minutes after the decel started they cleared out and left just me and my nurse and Mike. Mike had walked back in during the middle of the chaos where both me and my OB yelled "where the hell where you?!" and my OB threw him some scrubs to change. Shew! After that I started getting the shakes really bad. Nausea and shakes. I KNEW I was in transition.

The great thing about my epidural was that I could still move my legs and also I felt TONS of pressure. With every contraction I could feel the head move lower and I could feel tons of pressure down there. At about 1:15 I started feeling like I needed to bear down so I told my nurse. She had my OB come back and check and I was complete! they brought in the delivery table and my OB sat down on the foot of the bed to do a "practice" push. I gave one big push and felt the head pop out. Then my OB was saying "wait, stop!" and fumbling for his gloves lol. He hadn't even uncovered the delivery table yet. Right away the OB was saying "Look at this cord!" I forgot to even check to see if we had a boy or a girl! I looked down and saw a big knot in the umbilical cord. Crazy! Then they handed him to me and I saw for myself - baby BOY!!!! So worth the wait!! I held him for a few minutes and they took him to the table to suction his lungs because he had meconium in the amniotic fluid when they broke my bag.

Liam Cliff was born Jan 22, 2013 at 1:33 am weighing 7 lbs 9 oz and 20 1/4 inches long. His head was 14 inches around. Apgars were 8 and 9. Perfect little man. :) Yay VBAC!