Weird a little bit...

Well, two weeks just went by and I didn't even notice them. We are home with our cute baby for 2 weeks now. During first week we had my mother-in-law visiting us to help with our baby - which we really grateful for! Thanks Karen! And second week I had my best friend Lexi visiting us. Thanks Lexi! It is so nice to have help even when you don't know if you need help or not.

It is my first day at home by myself with Dominic and I gotta tell ya - it is heart breaking to hear your baby cry when you driving home. Honestly, I wanted to stop every minute, well, actually no - he was crying when I was stoping at traffic light... I guess that car noise, motion and car seat swaddle makes babies feel like they are in mommy's belly so they don't cry.
We've been on our "3 days after hospital doctor appointment" a week ago and doctor said that Dominic already gained his birth weight back. Which is good :) He didn't get his big cheeks back though but it's ok, we still look very cute :)
I also went on my 2 weeks appointment after surgery and doc said that everything looks fine. I even fit in my pre-pregnancy jeans already, I think it's because I don't have appetite...

First Halloween for Dominic

After long night of "Trick or Treat"

Turkey Hormone

Have you ever had a turkey for Thanksgiving day? I'm sure you did and so did I. I'm sure you remember that feeling after eating turkey that you wanna sleep so bad? Well, so little that I knew that when you breastfeeding your baby, your body makes the same hormone as when you eating turkey and so you wanna sleep. When I'm feeding my baby it very hard for me to keep him awake and keep myself awake as well. I've tried all kinds of techniques but nothing seems work. So I'm in the trouble right now on having at least an hour block sleep because he is waking up more often being hungry. Any advice?

Night becomes day and Day becomes night

You've had that feeling when you are like zombie. Sometimes it's for a good reason and sometime it's not. Well, my reason is our son Dominic. Of course I'm ready to sacrifice all my time for him and everything else but it is kind of exhausting. I've heard it gets better when you are actually trying to deal with it at home. Now we are in the hospital in the NICU (He is in the NICU because he is showing signs of having an infection (elevated white blood cells) so they have him on antibiotics. They administer the antibiotics through an IV and anytime a baby has an IV they put him/her in the NICU at this hospital.)
And here how my day goes, for example:
1 am - feeding - takes between 40 minutes to 1 hour (this activity might include - changing diapers, feeding, burping, swaddling). Since he have to be in the special room being hooked up to monitors it takes longer than it would normally take (I think).
2 am - breast pumping milk - takes about 30 minutes (cleaning is included in this activity)
2:30 am - snack time (OMG, after feeding baby and pumping milk I'm starving like crazy). Sometime during this "free" time I have my nurse come in and take my blood pressure, oxygen level, pulse etc etc (it's like 6 times a day).
3 am - time to rest or at lest try because baby will wake up in about 1 hour and everything starts again. So I'm looking for that time when we are going to be at home and our son will have longer sleep time. Right now it looks like he needs to stay at the NICU at least till Friday afternoon and after that we'll see.

Midnight laugh

One of these nights I was up and ready to feed our baby (while we are here in the hospital in NICU) it was like 3am and I just got up from bed and walk into our baby room which is conveniently right off our room like 2 steps from my bed. So I'm standing there watching our baby and talking to the nurse while she is doing some of her tests done for us etc etc. And out of no where I hear a scream of a horrified father, exclaiming - "Help!!! Somebody help me!!! He is not breathing!!!"
My nurse ran into the hall and went to some room where the scream came from. Couple of minutes later she came back and said - "False alarm. Man was holding his baby and looked at the monitors, so when he saw that the Oxygen level was 0 he got scared. But since he was holding his baby he just bumped the monitor attachment..."

Big Day = Long Day

You know what day I'm talking about - yeah, that Friday Oct 23. As I posted earlier it was the day when I was scheduled to be induced. We called hospital at 6:30 in the morning to confirm that it is still ok for us to come. The evening before that I had doc appointment when they did (what they did to start the process) and it did started it "so well" so we thought that we'll get to the hospital even earlier than we were scheduled. Well, either my body or baby decided that it's not just time for it and I fall asleep for at least 5 hours (Scott slept only 3 out of those 5 since I was still making all those "funny" noises that pregos have during their last weeks of pregnancy when their body is getting swollen in all kinds of areas). Anyway, we got to the hospital between 7:30 - 8:00 am - "special thanks" to the morning traffic :) and as soon as we got here - we've been admitted within like 3 minutes and they put us in our labor-delivery room.
Here the precess started but not what I wanted it to be. I was dilated 4 cm in the morning which was good since the evening before it was only 2 cm - so that balloon of water did work but only for dilation not for softening the cervix. So next few hours doc and nurses were working on that with all kinds of technique - making me funny walking, bouncing on big birthing balloon, drinking a lot of water etc etc. Somewhere in there they broke my water and sometime after I started having fever. Nice! What else can go according to the plan??? (with thick sarcasm) Anyway the rest of the day and night they were fighting with that fever and having me progress to the needed level. By 8 am Saturday morning doc came and said that at this point we have two options (I thought they were something like: 1 - they sending me home or 2 - there is no way we delivering this baby...) but she said:
You are dilated 9.5 and cervix is completely softened, we can start pushing as soon as your fever will be below 100 F. So the pushing itself will probably take another 2-4 hours for first time mom but there is a big chance of infection that we are fighting from spreading to your baby. Or we can do C-section in next 30-45 minutes and you'll see your baby before you know it.
Of course we chose option with C-section. I was exhausted and in a lot of pain (yeah, epidural wasn't working the right way, I mean it would numb left leg completely and right leg only for couple of hours). So we got into OR and "the show" began.


Our cute baby boy - Dominic Chritopher Peterson was born at 10:00 am Oct 24th 2009. He is 9 pounds 5 oz, 23 inches long and his head circumference is 14,75 inches. He is over the 100th percentile in all three measurements according to the charts at this hospital. One nurse said he is the size of a month old baby and the other said - he looks like 3 month old baby. But anyway we love him and we glad he made it here :)

Induction

As today started I felt like it's going to be one of those days. I went to get some legal stuff done and than I had Dr. appointment scheduled for about 2pm. On which I find out that I haven't progressed at all and if we wanna move things along we gotta schedule an induction. The closest opening for it was Friday (tomorrow) morning.
What I've read about induction didn't included part where stick a balloon with water in you (you know where) to help you dilate. It should be done at least for 8 hours and than if you dilate they put you on medication. Or if you dilate far enough to start labor on your own that would be your answer.
When they say - "it's just going to feel like bad cramps... it's not going to hurt at all" - DO NOT believe them! I was in horrible pain for at least an hour (40 minutes out of them I was driving myself home from Dr. office with the only thought that I don't want to die right now because I wanna see my sweetheart, hug him and take pain killers if possible). My cell phone died right before I went to second Dr. appointment, so I couldn't call for help. I was crying all the way to home (I think I used all of my napkins stash in the car). It hurts like someone beat you up from waist down to your toes. Yeah, go figure. I used to tolerate pain not bad but since I got pregnant - it is just killing me.
Well, my induction is scheduled to be Friday morning Oct 23. So I hope to catch some sleep this night (if contractions will let me)... Dr. said that probably tomorrow afternoon we'll have the baby if everything will go according to plan. Does it ever goes according to plan with labor??? Ha-ha, never heard anything funny like that.