MattJenGreer: May 2011

Better late than never right? For those of you who don't know the whole story of Collin's birthday, here goes...(FYI, I am using terms like dilation and cervix, so if that makes you squeamish, skip ahead to the part after the line).

We were scheduled to be induced at 5:30am on Thursday May 12. We got to the hospital at 5:15 and got checked in. After answering about a million questions (you'd think they would have kept all that information from 2 years ago), they checked my cervix to discover I was 2 cm and about 50% effaced just like I had been the week before at my dr appointment. I was afraid this meant we were in for a long day. They put in my IV and started fluids and the pitocin (this is the drug that causes strong contractions to get things moving). This was around 7am. They told me that my doctor would be in at 9am or so to break my water and to let them know when I wanted my epidural. I had planned on laboring for a little while without the epidural, but I knew I didn't want to feel her breaking my water so I told them just to make sure I got it before then. The anesthesiologist must have been bored because he was there about 5 minutes later to give me the epi. It was a little more painful this time than I remember with Max, but maybe that was because I wasn't having any contractions to distract from the pain of the needle. The nurses kept telling me that Joel (the anesthesiologist on duty) tends to be pretty heavy handed with the drugs, and they were right! Pretty much immediately I lost all feeling in my lower half. My right foot hung off the bed for about an hour and I tried everything I could to move it but had no luck. These were good drugs. I also was having contractions fairly consistently but couldn't feel anything. That was a little bizarre, to see them on the monitor but not be able to feel them at all. At 9am, my dr came in to break my water and at that point I was 3 cm dilated, so we had made progress. I was only at a level 6 on the pitocin drip then, which is pretty low (the nurses can take it up to a 20 without dr approval, or a 40 with it!), but the 6 was doing what it was supposed to do, and by 10am I was dilated to 4-5 cm. This is when things got a little crazy...

Three times between 10 and 11 Collin's heartrate bottomed out when I had a strong contraction. Each time it came back strong as soon as the contraction was over. It helped when my wonderful nurse (Teri) rubbed my belly after the contraction to soothe him and calm him down. They also had me on oxygen to help get more air to Collin. After the second time, Teri decided to insert an internal monitor (on Collin's head) to be able to better monitor his heartrate. She also called the dr to get her input on what our next steps should be. After the 3rd time this happened, at almost 11am, the dr and nurse decided to prepare an operating room in case I had to be moved back for an emergency c-section. There was a scheduled c-section at 11am and they actually pushed it back 15 minutes to make sure they wouldn't need the OR for me. The dr told me they believed Collin was perfectly healthy because his heartrate kept recovering so well after the dips, but too many dips could begin to cause problems so the next time he had a dip they would decide to go into the c-section. This was a little scary, but we trust our dr to make the right decision. They turned off the pitocin in case the artificial labor was what caused the dips in heartrate and Teri told me to keep rubbing my belly where Collin was laying since it seemed to keep him calm. They also pushed a lot of warm fluid through me to hopefully move some things around inside and give Collin a little more room to move around. After that we had to just wait, hoping we wouldn't have another dip in heartrate. For the next hour, there were no dips, but no progress on my labor either. A little after noon I was still around 5 cm dilated and he was still pretty high up. They decided to go ahead and re-start the pitocin and increased it slowly back to a level 5 over the next hour. Around 1:15 I started feeling pressure with each contraction and at 1:45 Teri came in to check my cervix again and discovered that I was fully dilated and ready to push! She called the doctor and had me do a couple of practice pushes...on the 3rd one she told me to stop and not push again because Collin was ready to be born and the dr wasn't there yet! The dr came in a few minutes before 2 and they spent 10 minutes or so getting everything ready. The dr told me to start pushing with my next contraction but I couldn't feel the contractions (that Joel sure knew what he was doing!). It took only about 9 pushes (3 pushes through 3 contractions) and Collin's head was out! After a little suction she told me to give one more push and out he came! He started crying right away and was checked out by the nursery staff then given back to me for a little bonding time before he had to go have a bath and spend some time under a heat lamp to warm up his body temp.
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We had a very easy couple of days in the hospital and got to come home around lunchtime on Saturday. My recovery started off going really well; I had a little cramping and soreness but overall was bouncing back pretty easily. Unfortunately Max came down with a virus while we were in the hospital so we came home to a sick toddler and we had to try to keep the two of them separated for a couple of days. I ended up getting the fever portion of Max's virus and Oma and Daddy ended up getting the congestion and sore throats. We were hoping Collin missed the illness, but last Thursday he started getting congested and still today he's fighting a lot of drainage in his head and throat which makes it hard for him to eat and sleep. Until the last few nights he had given us at least one 4-hour stretch of sleep per night, but since he's been so congested it's been hard for him to rest. We feel like he's been a little better today and he's definitely been able to rest better most of the day so hopefully the worst is behind us. Let me tell you, after the past few months we are ready to have a healthy household again!

Despite all the stress of being sick and having sick babies, we have been so happy to have Collin home with us. Oma has been with us since he was born and is staying through this weekend. I'm still trying to figure out a way for her to never leave, because I'm not sure how we'll be able to handle it without her!! One of our biggest concerns with bringing Collin home was how Max would react to not being the center of attention. He has been a wonderful big brother! He always wants to hold Collin (or Col-Col as he calls him), or bring him a blanket, or kiss him on the head, or give him his pacifier. He's really sweet with him. We've had a few moments where he seems to be testing his boundaries and acting out, but that could be just as much being 2 years old as having the new baby at home.

Speaking of Max, he continues to amaze us every day with his vocabulary and mental ability. One day last week he was sitting in his high chair eating dinner and started counting. I had only heard him count to 3 by himself, but he counted all the way to 10! I asked Oma if I had heard what I thought I did and she said she'd heard it too! He was so proud of himself! He knows almost all of the alphabet by sight...he mixes up a few of the similar letters like K and X but for the most part can identify all of them with little or no help. He's also gotten a lot better with his pronounciation of most words. I think he probably knows as many words as we do, he just can't always make them come out the way he wants them to. He gets better with it every day though. We really can't believe how much he's grown physically and mentally just in the past few months. I guess having a newborn makes him seem so much older and bigger as well.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of the past couple of weeks. I've posted a ton of pictures on the shutterfly site - click the link on the left side of the page to view.