How sweet to hold a newborn baby...

How sweet to hold a newborn baby
And feel the pride and joy he gives

That's the song I've been humming to soothe baby Andrew. I meant to write a couple more blogs before giving birth but plans change when you're making plans. I was 37 weeks 5 days gestation when baby Andrew came to this world via unplanned c-section with a weight of 7 lbs and 14 ounces, and length of 20 inches.  My due date was not until March 30th but I've been alerted early on that I may be induced early and won't be allowed to go past 40 weeks. But I didn't expect at all it would be around 37 weeks.  Due to elevated high blood pressure and gestational diabetes, I had to be induced much earlier. I wasn't mentally prepared and the house was not completely ready for the baby as we still had a lot of organizing to do in the baby room.

It's been an exhausting week but we know exactly what we signed up for and this is indeed the greatest blessing from God!  Just looking at him all the pain seems to disappear.  He is the cutest baby...am I allowed to brag :)

Here's how last week's events transpired. I'm going to make this post quick so excuse the typos.

Tuesday
2 pm - arrived at Mt Sinai Hospital and was monitored until 5 pm
5:30 pm - inserted the balloon catheter to open my cervix (that was a painful procedure) and was put in wrong.  We found this out later the hard way.
6:45 pm - we were told to wait downstairs while they were waiting for the room for us so we went to Swiss Chalet for dinner
8:15 pm - finished eating and I went to the washroom. While I was farting, the balloon popped out. LOL. So we went back to triage and we were put back again on a monitor while waiting for our pre-delivery room
9:15 pm - they took me off the monitor and kept us waiting until 11:45 pm when we were moved to delivery room D9
11:45 pm - they hooked the IV with the pitocin (a man-made oxytocin) to start my contractions. That was a rough night as my sleep was being interrupted every hour by nurses doing their jobs of checking my blood pressure, and sugar levels.

Wednesday
Around 12:30 AM - the doctor assessed me and realized my cervix was not even dilated yet and that's when they figured the balloon catheter had not been put in properly
They had to re-insert again the balloon catheter. Again another painful procedure.
6:30 am - the balloon catheter came out when I peed and the nurse said that's good as it means I'm dilating
10:25 am - doctor manually broke my water. Up until that point, I wasn't experiencing any pain from contractions. I was having contractions the whole night according to the nurse so she kept asking me if I need anything for pain relief.  And I said, I don't feel any pain.  So she asked me if I have high pain tolerance because I was showing consistent contractions on the monitor.  But no, I didn't feel any pain up until the doctor broke the water and all of a sudden it was sudden intense contraction pains I ended up asking for an epidural after a couple of hours.  The nurse figured I didn't feel pain before because the water had not been broken and it might have created a shield of some sort, but she was still baffled by it.  The epidural made me bed bound and everything from my waist down went numb and I was also a bit nauseous.
1:30 pm - OB doctor came and said it was dilated between 5 and 5.5 cm.  Then came back at 4:40 pm and said it was only 6 cm.  My dilation was too slow and there was no
point waiting as the baby was not descending at all so doctor recommended C-section. 
5:45 pm - signed the consent forms for C-section
6:00 pm - moved to operating room. I was very nervous about it because I've never read anything about C-section to prepare myself. While being prepped in the operating room, I almost couldn't breathe due to fear. And I was so thirsty with my throat so dry it made it so difficult to breathe.  I just tried to focus on the prize and the fact that it would soon be over.

6:47 pm - baby Andrew was pulled to freedom. The entire procedure was painless and quick.  I felt tugging and that's about it.  My husband saw the whole procedure though and thought it was real messy.  But the medical staff are amazing and they know what their doing.

Shortly after the C-section, we stayed for a couple of hours in the recovery room then got transferred to our main room at about midnight

midnight - baby had 1 dirty diaper (black tar) which was expected.

Thursday
8:10 am - my catheter was removed.  Still nauseous and in pain from the C-section. 
Nurse took temperature of both of us and taught me how to breastfeed Andrew.
Had 3 black tar dirty diapers and 1 green dirty diaper on Thursday and 1 wet diaper

Friday - just 2 dirty diaper and the pee has some reddish color to it so we got a bit concerned he's not getting enough milk. I wasn't producing milk yet at the time so he had to be fed with formula. I was frustrated that my milk was not coming yet.


And when we got home on Friday evening, I just felt so thankful for this wonderful blessing. I'm not complaining at all.  This is the greatest gift ever.  I'm now producing milk (still in small amounts) but I keep pumping every couple of hours and that helps.

Fast forward to today, I just love the cuddling and snuggles.  It's amazing no matter how sore my body is, I somehow find the strength to breastfeed and take care of Andrew.  He has a good appetite.  It's me that has to adjust to breastfeeding.