A New Home For Henry

Yesterday Henry headed to a new home- his old crib! No more isolet he is a free man! We are so close to going home now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FK0vcGSARI
See the video of the big move.

Bad Meme!

So...my mom can not remember Henry's name and I have proof.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaVs8OlYZ5M

Here is a video link (below) of our little guy. I set up a YouTube account in which I have posted quite a few short videos of Henry. If you watch this one, you should be able to get to our page where there are more. Video number 11 is right after he is born, I look like a balloon-pretty awful. I had no idea how swollen I was until I saw the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lra46Ra8Y4Y


We are still at the hospital, Henry is doing wonderful. He is considered a "Grower and Feeder" now, basically he is just here to gain weight. He is still in an encubator and eating through a feeding tube that is in his nose for every other feeding but I am able to use pumped breast milk for all feedings now. I spend most of my time pumping and feeding.
We were very relieved to talk to the dr. today, she reassured us that all will be perfectly fine, which we really needed to hear. She is guessing we will be here at least 5 more days, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so maybe early next week. We are still staying in the same room and everyone is really nice. My swelling is still bad and now my back hurts pretty bad, which I think is due to my ever growing boobs.

Okay- not a lot of energy to post now but lots to write about the birth and Henry. Right now he is in the intesive care unit working on gaining some weight. He is doing very well, he is breast feeding well and seems to be one of the more fortunate babies in the NICU. We are thinking we will bring him home sometime this weekend (around Dec. 26 or 27) He is absolutely beautiful and we love love love him! thank you everyone for your phone calls, texts, and especially prayers. We can feel it and we know it is working. Thank you! Henry is on his way to being a very healthy boy!

Of course i will have lots more pics later and some videos to post but this all for now!

3 Ultra Sounds in a Week

Okay, I'm done sugar coating this whole bedrest thing. It is awful. I am on week four of not making food for myself, going days with out setting foot outside, letting the dogs eat trash because otherwise I would have to chase them. I constantly do not feel well and sleep about 3-4 hours a night. This is a true test of my patience which I have always lacked. Not to mention extrememly depressing. Chris is working is butt off to make sure the house is clean and I eat and trying to get ready for this baby. He still needs to install the car seat in his car and pack his hospital bag and lots of other things. At this point I can go at anytime so we are trying to be ready.

I still don't know what I am doing about having a doula, the hypnobabies teacher hasnt returned Chris' phone calls and we obviously can not go to the classes, I was only able to attend two of them but I am keeping up on the reading. But honestly with all these complications I don't have much passion to try the natural birth anymore, I feel so exhausted and discouraged that I kind of just want to let the dr. do what ever she wants at this point, I am almost afraid to argue about anything and my chance of having a c-section has increased again.

On Monday Chris and I went in to the dr. office for my regular NST (fetal monitoring) and the baby was not moving and increasing heart rate like they wanted to. After about an hour of monitoring and drinking juice they decided to send me to radiology to do further testing. Preeclampsia can affect baby's movement among other things. I actually went to the triage area of the maternity ward first, where they did more fetal monitoring before heading to radiology (where I am pretty sure I was surrounded by people with TB and other horrible contagious diseases) Here, Randy, our tech, did an ultrasound to check for 4 things- watch the diaphram move on baby, check cord blood flow, check heartrate (NST stuff that we failed earlier) and check body movement including fine motor skills-where they want to see baby move fingers or toes at least once. We passed all the tests except the heartrate and fine motor skills. He tried for close to an hour to get baby to move its fingers and it never did so we went back to triage.

In triage, we asked the nurse if we would see my dr. and she said no, there is no need. And then 10 minutes later she came in and said Dr. Stuhldrer will be down to see you guys in a few mintues and left. Now I freak out. I think the nurse heard me becasue she came back in and told us that the baby scored a 6 out of 8 points on the test (failed heartrate and NST) and so Dr. is probaby going to admit us over night. With a score of 8 we would go home and with a score of 2-4 we would probably be having a baby tonight but with a 6 it is up in the air and probably just want to keep monitoring me overnight. About 5 minutes later Dr. walked in and immediately started laughing and said that is what I wanted to see and we looked at the monitor and there was a little bump where the baby finally showed us a stronger heartbeat. After that ,it went up and down like it was supposed to. Dr. said that she is happy with that and we can go home, if that wouldnt have happened we would have been spending the night.

She told us that she wanted us to get to the high risk OB again as soon as possible to monitor this more and check on baby's size. Our last ultrasound which was on Thursday showed that the baby was measuring small which was a little concerning becasue preeclampsia can affect growth as well. I asked her if she thought I would go to my due date and she said no, not after this, we will shoot for 38 weeks, that puts us at Dec. 27- but that is a Saturday so it will be before or after is my guess. All I know is that it better be before January becasue we will definitetly hit our out of pocket limit.

So we headed home and Chris took the rest of the day off of work since it was already almost 4 p.m. Nothing like spending an unexpected day in the hospital.

The next day my mom and kathy came over and cleaned the house and made returns to Babies R Us, (which by the way dont register there, they are total jerks). At 2:45 I got a call from the dr. and they said they scheduled me with the high risk OB (Tony Dungy's sister) at 3:15 so we rushed over to make the appt. They did lots of measurements and said I looked good, baby is measuring at 34.5 weeks now which is not bad. Baby is in the 20th percentile which is a little small but okay. She said if I were to go into labor today, baby would be fine. That was very reassuring. And since I have had contractions for about a month- this really is a possibility.

So here I am again, back on the couch and waiting waiting waiting. I actually slept last night which I think was due to exhaustion and a little help from Tylenol PM, but regardless I feel much better. Headaches continue, heartburn makes me vomit almost daily and very unexpectedly, my hips are moving and really hurt (dr. said baby's head is very low and that is causing my hips to shift and hurt) and I am just tired and tired of bed rest. I keep thinking that as soon as this baby is out I am joining a gym and letting the gym daycare raise my baby. ha, not really but I love the idea of being able to walk around the block instead of just straight to the pody and back to the couch.

This baby better be cool.

Week 34- 3rd week of Bed Rest

So I am late on posting on the blog, I have been very busy on bedrest! Not really. Since the last post we had Thanksgiving, my birthday and 3 dr. appts so I guess I have been a little busy.

For Thanksgiving we had our families visit and then once they left Chris made an entire Thanksgiving meal including a 9lb turkey for the two of us. Everything was really good and I even sat at the table. I know, exciting.

On my birthday (29 years old, gross) our families visited once again and brought me lots of gifts. On top of that, I have had lots of visitors, Katie and Catherine brought me lunch this week and Kathy and my mom hung out with me too. Kellie is coming over today and Adrienne is visiting tonight.

We have had lots of news since the last post. On Monday Chris and I went to the dr. They did the fetal monitoring, which they do everytime to make sure the blood pressure is not affecting baby, and then we saw Dr. Stuhldreyer. She said that bedrest is agreeing with me and she feels that she can let me go full term now (at this point I wanted to slap her, the thought of prolonged bedrest was upsetting) originally she said that we would be induced at 37 or 38 weeks, that would have been right around Christmas, but now it looks like we will go to the due date which is Jan. 10. That means I will be here on the couch for Christmas like Thanksgiving. She did say that she would not let me go past the due date but I don't really care when baby comes if we head into January- I will have to pay the 2009 deductible already and I would rather baby come when baby wants to come.

So, this is all kind of depressing but the good news is that baby can develop longer and ultimately be as healthy as possible which makes me happy. Other good news is that she is no longer planning on a c-section, she thinks I can do a regular delivery which makes me REALLY happy! However strict bedrest still applies and I still have to do the fetal monitoring 2 times a week and dr. visit once a week.

Yesterday (thursday) I had yet another dr. appt. Dr. wanted to see how big baby was so we had an ultrasound. My mom came with me to this one and once again tried to get me to find out the sex of the baby- I said nope. The baby looked huge in the ultrasound but only measured to be about 32 weeks along, so that means baby is a little small. She said it looks like baby is around 3.60 pounds but thinks that baby could get over 6 lbs. by full term delivery. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Really tiny babies make me nervous, I feel like I will break them!

In the ultrasound I was able to see the baby's face- baby actually looked like a ...baby! instead of a skelton in the ultrasound. I could see baby sleeping and he/she is pretty cute if I do say so myself. I have been having dreams that the baby looked like a little monster, but everything looked porportioned and normal! No gonzo nose or giant ears, however I did ask the ultrasound tech if she could measure the nose and ears just in case, she laughed at me and said it wouldnt work.

Okay- that is it for now! Maybe this weekend I will have Chrisopher take a picture of me on the couch with my fat swollen face!