dancingsinging (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancingsinging) wrote2012-07-16 03:32 pm
dancingsinging) wrote2012-07-16 03:32 pm
The baby is here!
The little dude arrived on the 11th, healthy and very, very sweet. I'd have let you all know sooner, but our internet was down and, well, we've been busy.
Short disorganized thoughts that may end abruptly when he wakes up ready to nurse:
* Labor was brutal. My doula says I had a couple hours of three minute contractions with very little rest between. Like 20 seconds.Thank God the memory is already fading. I do remember three contractions in a row that felt like there was no time in between, during which I had to pant and not push even though I wanted to. Very awful.
* I am a fucking rockstar.
* I meant to labor in the birthing tub and deliver outside it, but it worked out opposite. It wasn't ready until pushy time and once I started pushing there was no way I was getting back out of that thing to deliver. But it worked out really nice. I thought the actual water birth thing was a little too weird and hippied out even for me, but it didn't seem weird at all when the time came.
* I will never forget drawing the baby's precious little self toward me through the water. It was like something some lame movie would try to pull off with imagery about the pathways between worlds or something, but it was /real/. I hope I can be more articulate about it later. But it was beautiful.
* I remember one of my first thoughts post-birth was "I'm so glad I never have to do that again." I hope I thought it after the wonderful "OMG my baby is so beautiful" moment but I can't remember. During the pregnancy I was trying to talk Spouse into having one more before I was too, /too/ old. Spouse was not down. Luckily, now we're not disagreeing anymore.
* The baby is completely fine and healthy. But we did bring him into the ER Saturday evening. His face was a little blue and my midwife said via txt that he was probably fine but then his color got worse and I was like, 'screw the midwife, I'm calling the nurse hotline." The nurse said that face color changes was an automatic 911 call, so we called them. He was pink again by the time they arrived but his blood oxygen saturation measured in the 80s so the paramedic suggested we take him in. It was all very opposite what we were trying for with the gentle, quiet home birth--sirens, way too many stompy adrenelated men. Six hours, three heel pokes and one vein-draw (read: session with a nurse jabbing and digging around in his arm with a big needle--Spouse actually teared up watching it) later, the ER doc tells us he has some condition that basically means "kinda blue sometimes" (acrocyanosis, I think?) and that there's nothing to worry about unless he stops breathing for like forty-five seconds or turns totally purple in the face. It was a horrible expreience (and incidentally freaked out my MIL who is now convinced that he's sick) but in retrospect I don't regret deciding to take him in. It's like, the whole thing kind of reaffirmed my feeling that there's something inherently wrong with the whole medical model and at the same time reaffirmed my wonderment and appreciation for what medicine can do these days. I'm very glad to be in a position to pick and choose which of it and how much of it I want.
Okay, baby just cried and then went back to sleep. I'm thinking I have about 2 minutes before I need to be boobs-out over the boppy. I probably won't be back on the computer for another several days.
Short disorganized thoughts that may end abruptly when he wakes up ready to nurse:
* Labor was brutal. My doula says I had a couple hours of three minute contractions with very little rest between. Like 20 seconds.Thank God the memory is already fading. I do remember three contractions in a row that felt like there was no time in between, during which I had to pant and not push even though I wanted to. Very awful.
* I am a fucking rockstar.
* I meant to labor in the birthing tub and deliver outside it, but it worked out opposite. It wasn't ready until pushy time and once I started pushing there was no way I was getting back out of that thing to deliver. But it worked out really nice. I thought the actual water birth thing was a little too weird and hippied out even for me, but it didn't seem weird at all when the time came.
* I will never forget drawing the baby's precious little self toward me through the water. It was like something some lame movie would try to pull off with imagery about the pathways between worlds or something, but it was /real/. I hope I can be more articulate about it later. But it was beautiful.
* I remember one of my first thoughts post-birth was "I'm so glad I never have to do that again." I hope I thought it after the wonderful "OMG my baby is so beautiful" moment but I can't remember. During the pregnancy I was trying to talk Spouse into having one more before I was too, /too/ old. Spouse was not down. Luckily, now we're not disagreeing anymore.
* The baby is completely fine and healthy. But we did bring him into the ER Saturday evening. His face was a little blue and my midwife said via txt that he was probably fine but then his color got worse and I was like, 'screw the midwife, I'm calling the nurse hotline." The nurse said that face color changes was an automatic 911 call, so we called them. He was pink again by the time they arrived but his blood oxygen saturation measured in the 80s so the paramedic suggested we take him in. It was all very opposite what we were trying for with the gentle, quiet home birth--sirens, way too many stompy adrenelated men. Six hours, three heel pokes and one vein-draw (read: session with a nurse jabbing and digging around in his arm with a big needle--Spouse actually teared up watching it) later, the ER doc tells us he has some condition that basically means "kinda blue sometimes" (acrocyanosis, I think?) and that there's nothing to worry about unless he stops breathing for like forty-five seconds or turns totally purple in the face. It was a horrible expreience (and incidentally freaked out my MIL who is now convinced that he's sick) but in retrospect I don't regret deciding to take him in. It's like, the whole thing kind of reaffirmed my feeling that there's something inherently wrong with the whole medical model and at the same time reaffirmed my wonderment and appreciation for what medicine can do these days. I'm very glad to be in a position to pick and choose which of it and how much of it I want.
Okay, baby just cried and then went back to sleep. I'm thinking I have about 2 minutes before I need to be boobs-out over the boppy. I probably won't be back on the computer for another several days.