So Here's My Number...I'm Tongue Tied Maybe

Delano had his 6-week doctor's appointment this morning.  There's not really any such thing as a 6-week appointment, but since I changed insurance companies and the old doctor doesn't accept my new insurance, I went ahead and made him an appointment with the new doc.  Plus, I wanted to get her take on my breastfeeding issue (aka THE PAIN).

10 pounds and 22 inches of a healthy 6 week old!

Yesterday on Facebook, I asked the mommies out there to tell me about their breastfeeding woes. I wanted to see if anybody's story sounded similar to mine.  I got stories of cracking and bleeding and clogged ducts and mastitis (I FEEL for all of those ladies!!), but nothing sounded quite like my dilemma. 

Until, that is, my friend Leza sent me a blog link yesterday about posterior tongue tie.

 I COULD HAVE WRITTEN THAT BLOG MYSELF.

This was me after reading the blog Leza sent me. Except I'm sure that guy isn't cheering for his nipples.
I guess he could be, though.  You just never know.

I was so excited to see this mommy confession that I read it about 8 times in a row and then started Googling.  I immediately made Delano an appointment with a pediatric dentist for an inspection of his mouth and a potential frenulum clipping (if a tongue tie is indeed what they find).  I called the Lactation Office at Women's East to set up an appointment for an opinion about the way Delano eats and posterior tongue tie.  And I couldn't wait until Delano's pediatrician appointment today to see what she had to say.  Here's how it all went down:

1)  The pediatrician had never even heard of posterior tongue tie and prescribed me a dose of Diflucan to treat a potential case of thrush (which is EXACTLY what the lady's doctor in the article did)

2)  One of the Lactation Consultants called me back, listened to my issues, and said that she knew exactly what posterior tongue tie was and how to treat it.  She is off tomorrow, but told me to call back in the morning to set up a time to come in and be observed (and have Delano checked out) by one of the other LCs.

3)  The dentist appointment isn't until Wednesday.

I'M SO EXCITED!!  Granted, I'm realistic enough to know that the LC and the dentist may not think that a posterior tongue tie is Delano's issue at all, but I'm still 100% hopeful that it is.  Because that means I'd have an answer and that it's fixable.

So thank you, Lindsay Karns (<---link) for posting your blog and for my friend Leza for finding it for me!!  My nipples may be thanking both of you here in the very near future.  You might just need a smoke and a sandwich afterwards.

5ks to Half Marathons (Part Deux)

Let's see........I ended the last blog talking (writing) about how I had stopped running in May, got lazy in the exercise efforts, expanded in my third trimester and then had a baby.  The end.  Now we're caught up to the present.

When Delano hit the One Month mark (which was Sunday the 16th), I knew it was time to get my butt back in gear.  So the very next morning, while Delano was still asleep, I hit the treadmill for my very first run since May.  This is what I expected:

• Legs feel like weighted bags of sand
• Can't breathe
• Overheat
• Quit after a couple of minutes....if I make it to a couple
• DIE

This is what I got:

• Legs cooperated
• Breathing was smooth and stable
• Sweaty but not dizzy or faint
• Ran an entire mile.....and could have kept going
• DIDN'T DIE

I'm not trying to brag, honest.  I was just literally so shocked and excited as to how well my first run back in "the game" went that I couldn't wait to tell people!  It made my day.  Granted, I was on my treadmill, which is a totally different experience than an outdoor run (much easier and WAY more boring), but I really did still think it would kill me and possibly make me want to cry.  But now I have high hopes for myself.

So I own a jogging stroller (thanks to my fabulous friend Shantih!), but I haven't taken it for a spin yet.  I need to soon, though.  I actually need to "practice" walking with Delano in it first, because he'll need to get used to being in a stroller without being in his car seat.  I know that might sound silly to some, but when your baby isn't quite old enough to entertain himself (when life solely consists of eating, crying, pooping and sleeping), it's likely that he'll associate being pulled out of his car seat and put into the jogger as being "put down" which will start the tears flowing (minus the tears part, since his haven't come in yet!).  Plus add in the fact that if he wakes up between the car seat and the jogger while feeling like he's being "put down", we might as well carry the baby with one hand and push the stroller with the other.  And then stop five minutes later to feed him.  Not a successful jogger trip.

So for the moment, I will be trying to get in as many treadmill runs as Baby D will allow (aka sleep through).  Maybe next week I'll try taking the jogger out on the town, but we'll just have to see.  As incentive, I have signed up with a team for the Color Run 5k in Nashville happening October 20th.  I'm super excited for this one, as it looks like TONS of fun!  Watch the video on the bottom of this page to see how much fun I'll be having:

http://thecolorrun.com/nashville/

I'm also planning on signing up for the Rock N' Roll New Orleans Half Marathon in February.  Lucas and I are going to make a vacation out of that one.

BRING IT ON!!

Because I can't have a blog without at least one picture..... :)

5ks to Half Marathons

I have been a runner since November 2010.

For those of you who don't know (or just want a brief refresher), my college BFF Leah and I decided to start the Couch to 5k training plan the Monday after Thanksgiving because we were sick and tired of being chunky and lazy and out of shape with the apparent inability to stick to anything else we had tried before.  The C25k plan was awesome because it was very specific with EXACTLY what to do for EXACTLY how long.  Of all the plans I had seen in magazines and such, C25k was by far the easiest to follow.  The plan is 9 weeks long and tells you to never try to finish it early, but encourages you to repeat weeks if you feel the need.  Due to the holidays and a rough week or two, Leah and I completed it in 12 weeks.  And as incentive, we signed up for the Cupid's Chase 5k 12 weeks away from when we started training.  It was so much fun to run a race and get the t-shirt that we immediately signed up for another.....and then another....and another! 

Me and Leah about to run Cupid's Chase!

Crossing our very first finish line.

In May 2011, our friend Traci asked us if we'd be interested in signing up for a half marathon that September.  We said yes.  We both completed that race, but due to a knee injury, Leah had to start several months of physical therapy and could no longer be my running partner.  But I kept on signing up for races and by January 8, 2012, I had completed 6 half marathons.

I took a break from half marathons at that point, because I was pregnant.  NOT that preggo ladies don't run half marathons and even full marathons all the time (just look at Amber Miller), but I decided that shorter runs (5ks and 10ks) were more my pregnant style. 

Right after I ran the Out Run the Police 10k at 21 weeks preggers.

I continued running until I was about 28 weeks pregnant.  At that point, my balance was off and my feet felt like sacks of sand and my sciatic nerve would twinge on me and I had to pee constantly.  So running became un-fun.  I was kind of bummed, because I had wanted to keep running until 32 weeks.  But it just wasn't in my cards.

From that point on, I did a little bit of walking and some water aerobics here and there, but I basically took the lazy road and stopped working out.  And then I started to look like this:

Chunky dunk. Ankles nonexistent.

Ok so maybe that also had to do with the fact that I was 2 weeks away from having a baby.

Time to feed the dogs and cats and try to get a little packing done for our weekend in Nashville, so I will talk about my current running plans in my next blog.....to be continued!

Cluster Feedings Have Taken Over My Mornings

Ahhh, cluster feeding.  I know I mentioned it in my breastfeeding blog, but let me elaborate on how my days currently tend to work themselves out.

Delano wakes up to eat usually somewhere between 4am and 6am, depending on a number of factors.  I feed him on demand, and though there is a definite pattern to his feeding frenzy, he is not on any set schedule just yet due to his clustering. 

If Delano wakes up closer to 4am, then he'll wake up again to eat usually around 7:00 or 7:30.  After he eats, I swaddle him and put him back to bed, where he'll usually sleep until about 9:30 or 10:00.  When he wakes up to eat closer to 6:00, he'll sleep straight through until about 8:30 or 9:00.  In the mornings, I usually get up and have anywhere from an hour to two hours to get anything done before starting my cluster morning.  This includes using the bathroom, getting in a treadmill run (newly added to the agenda), taking a shower if I need one, brushing my teeth, eating breakfast and anything else that I can possibly achieve before the baby wakes up, especially things that require two hands and no baby. 

"SLEEP WHEN THE BABY SLEEPS!!"  Seriously, if I hear that one more time, I just might shove my toothbrush or uneaten breakfast into someone's mouth.  Because even though I GET that mommies could REALLY use the sleep at times (and I DO try to doze off for a power nap when Baby D is asleep if I need it) and that the dirty house will STILL be sitting there waiting for me when I wake up, most of the time I don't need a nap and I'd much rather be productive, even if "productive" just means filtering through massive amounts of email forwards or reading other peoples' blogs.

So once Delano wakes up, whatever else I wanted to do that morning gets put on the back burner until the afternoon, or even until another day.  Because Delano will pretty much be my boob ornament from that moment until about 12pm or 1pm.  Sure, he'll drift off to sleep every 15-30 minutes or so, but he won't stay asleep if I attempt to relocate him.  Then he's crying, and then we're back to eating.  It's a viscous cycle.

Delano's motto?

Once he FINALLY falls asleep and STAYS asleep (swaddling helps, though isn't always the answer), the cluster cycle has been broken and I can start my afternoon, which usually begins with lunch and a dip into the nipple cream vat.  Ok, so I don't have a vat of nipple cream, but how cool would that be?  If I could just open my vat, lean over and sink my boobs in for a little while, it might just classify as a little slice of heaven.

In the afternoons I do wake Delano to eat every 2-3 hours if he doesn't wake on his own.  Then we try to have our last feeding between 10pm and 11pm, though sometimes there's a slight cluster before bed as well.  This nighttime cluster has gotten much better over the last week or two, as Baby D used to eat constantly between about 10pm and 1am and that extreme has diminished.  Again, swaddling Delano helps him to stay asleep, though I have discovered that I cannot swaddle him until after he's already drifted off.  Yes, it wakes him and we have to start over, but it's usually only about 10 minutes before he's asleep again.  Then I tilt him up to get a burp out of him (which also sometimes wakes him), and then take him to bed where he'll sleep for between 2 and 6 hours for the first wave, then between 3 and 4 hours for the second and maybe third wave.

So those are what my days are like right now!  And if I go anywhere during the first part of my day, I spend part of that time pulling the car over somewhere to feed him, and I usually have to feed him through dinner as well (when he used to sleep right through it).  I'm now trying to space out his cluster feedings to at least an hour apart (from the start of one to the start of another), by letting him sleep in my lap, by keeping him distracted when he starts to cry and by wearing him in my wrap, so maybe this will help some.  Or maybe not at all...we'll find out!

Lucas is a HUGE help in the evenings, as he will hang out with Delano if I'm desperately in need of a shower or some downtime or need to get anything else done that didn't happen during the day.  Pretty soon I'll be able to stock up on some milk so that Daddy can feed Baby D, too (Delano has so far ingested every bit of milk I've pumped to date!).

Everything I've read said that this is a phase, and that this too shall pass.  So hopefully here in the next few weeks we'll fall into more of a predictable schedule!

On a fun note, Delano turned one month old this past Sunday.  :)

The Roots. The Roots. The Roots Are On Fire.

Not the band, though The Roots are quite amazing and I do heart them.  http://theroots.com/

I actually was referring to vegetable roots.  And my "roots" as a vegetable eater.  This blog just got boring, right?  Maybe for some.  But for others out there, this blog just got exciting!

Growing up, our family had a home-cooked meal pretty much every night of the week (Thanks, Mom) which almost always consisted of a meat (main course), two vegetables and bread.  Milk was the required beverage for us kids, and we were allowed "dessert" only after we had finished our meal, which often consisted of ice cream or a Little Debbie.  We were not a wealthy family, so it was all about feeding a family of five on a budget while at the same time keeping our junk food intake to an absolute minimum.  Frozen chicken nuggets and Koolaid did not exist in our house.  And of course us kids felt deprived that we were bring robbed of the "good" food.  But organic foods and the idea of buying local also did not exist in our house.

When I got to college, I enrolled in some environmental science classes to fulfill some of my general education requirements.  Long story short, I fell in love with environmental science and ultimately decided to major in (and graduate with) a B.S. in Environmental Science: Geography.  This is when I became a "hippie", as some started to call me.  I wasn't a TRUE hippie - I never had dreadlocks, I still adored my high heels, I always wore a bra and I continued to shave my armpits.  But I was enlightened on the state of the Earth and how awful we treat it and its creatures.  I was included in discussions regarding case studies and lawsuits involving the FDA and USDA and even the EPA....just a few of the government agencies that are supposed to keep us "safe".  I was introduced to the realities of some of the big wig companies such as Monsanto and Tyson.  I was ultimately presented with Corporate America.  And I hated it.

So I decided to do a few things about it:  I started to recycle, and I became a vegetarian.  I wasn't changing the world, but I was starting somewhere.

Recycling was easy.  I've been a recycle Nazi ever since.  I will even toss straw wrappers into my purse to recycle when I get home.  And I won't even use a straw if it's not needed because it's a total waste of a piece of non-recyclable plastic.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Like I said, A RECYCLE NAZI.

Becoming a vegetarian was a little tough at first, simply because I had never consciously eaten that way and craved some of the crappy foods I had been eating before (such as the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich at Chili's - YUM).  But it got easier, and eventually became second nature.  I still had something meaty and greasy now and then (especially after a hard night of drinking), but remained a vegetarian 99.9% of the time.  Well, I take that back.  I was a pescatarian.  As in I still ate seafood here and there as well as dairy and eggs.  I loved seafood way too much to give it up, even if it did go against the morals of why I was giving all the other meats up.

I don't remember how, why or when exactly, but I slowly slid off the pescatarian wagon and decided that I was fine with eating local, organic meat (Support local farmers!!).  So I would still eat pescatarian (or even fully vegetarian) while I was out, but would cook meat at home that I purchased from Greenlife or the local market.  And I did still eat a lot of meat replacement items: veggie burgers, veggie corn dogs, veggie chicken sandwiches, etc.

Fast-forward to December of last year (when I found out I was pregnant), and due to my constant state of starvation in the first trimester, my vegetarian/pescatarian lifestyle went right out the window.  That's not even remotely a good excuse, but that's exactly what happened.  My morals towards corporate farming practices were put on the back burner as I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it, with Reuben sandwiches as a standout fave.

And it's pretty much been that way ever since.

So it's time to get back to my "roots". Especially now that I have a little one.  I figure that I should practice what I preach.  I can't teach compassion if I'm not living by it!

My plan is not to cut out meat, at least not at home.  But I do intend to keep everything as local as possible by shopping at the area markets.  There are four markets around town that I know of.  One happens on Sundays, one on Wednesday afternoons and two on Saturdays (though I think the River Market is more for craft vendors).  If you aren't familiar with these markets, here are the links for info:

http://chattanoogamarket.com/

http://mainstfarmersmarket.com/

http://chattanoogarivermarket.com/

http://www.localharvest.org/brainerd-farmers-market-M39213

I also intend to go back to eating more vegetarian-like when I'm not at home.  Cut out all the crap I've been ingesting lately.  Plus I really do hate the corporate farming biz.
 

Besides shopping more locally than I have been in the past, I also intend to shop organically, though this is something I haven't really slacked on.  I've been buying all my dairy products at Greenlife (and now Earth Fare, too) for years, and I typically buy all of my produce there as well.  I hope to do more of my produce shopping at the markets, as well as buy my eggs locally, too.  And when Delano starts eating solid foods, I've got all the tools needed to make my own baby food, so it will be great for him to be getting local foods right off the bat!  And if you aren't aware of which produce items are "most important" for buying organic (due to pesticide contamination), here's a quick list:

**The order of the list is sometimes different depending on who the source is, but the list as a whole tends to remain the same.

So that's basically it.  I hope to eat more locally and more vegetarian in the near future.  Get back in the groove of it just being "how I do".  :)

Breastfeeding: Not for the Weary

I knew going into mommyhood that I would breastfeed.  I've known it my entire life.  There's never been another option in my mind.  Formula-feeding my baby is just not for me.  And neither is giving up.

That being said, breastfeeding hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be!  Growing up, it seemed like you just had a baby and POP (imagine the sound it makes when you pop your finger out of your cheek) - stick'em on the boob and everybody's happy.  Not so much the case, as my current and former breastfeeding friends and family would agree.  During all of my insanely obsessive Google researching while pregnant (along with a Breastfeeding 101 class), I quickly discovered that breastfeeding takes hard work, extreme dedication and maybe even a few tears for about 99% of the female population.  The few 1% who claim that it was "SO easy!" and that it "Didn't hurt at all!" are the ones we'd all like to punch in the face.  Or they're just big fat liars.

I HAVE been lucky on a few aspects of breastfeeding.  First of all, Delano never had any problems latching on, as this is the most common (initial) problem of all.  The second they handed him to me in the hospital to eat, he latched on and started eating right away.  Second, I took a gamble by introducing Delano to a pacifier really early on (after consulting with a nurse for an opinion) when nothing else seemed to soothe him.  I knew it could possibly lead to what is known as "nipple confusion", where he might begin to reject my nipple after liking a pacifier nipple better.  But he didn't experience any nipple confusion at all, and a pacifier can still soothe him and help him fall asleep when all of the other bases have been covered.  And third, I came into breastfeeding well educated on the subject, at least from a literature and conversation standpoint.  I knew what a correct latch should look like, I knew that it would most likely be painful for a while, I knew about engorgement, etc.

What I wasn't prepared for (sorry guys, if any males are reading this), or maybe I just ignored this part of the literature, was scabby nipples.  I knew they'd likely end up cracked and sore, but scabs were new info to me.  I was also not prepared for "cluster feeding".  I knew that a baby eats (on average) every 2-3 hours during the day and every 3-4 hours at night.  However, cluster feeding is when a baby eats what seems like almost constantly (possibly every 30 min to an hour) for a block of time, often during a growth spurt.  I was also not prepared for the searing "shards of glass" pain my nipples are going through right now, nor was I ready for the after-feeding pain (possibly associated with a situation known as thrush, which I actually had read about) also happening right now.

The nipple scabs are long gone, as are all the cracks with exception of one really stubborn one on my left side.  I discovered nipple shields way too late for the scabs, but those are something I would recommend to any new mother to try if she ends up in the superb cracks & scabs situation ($10 at Babies R Us).  As for the cluster feeding.....that may be what is currently extending my nipple pain, since Delano clusters usually twice a day for about a 3-4 hour stretch at a time and my nips don't have hardly ANY relief between feedings.  Once he finally falls asleep for good, my nips look fine but feel like they've just been run over by a truck.  My easiest feedings are when I've had several hours between them.  As for the after-feeding soreness, it may or may not be a thrush symptom (which is kind of like a yeast infection of the boob).  Delano doesn't show any signs of thrush, and besides the soreness, neither do I.  So I'm just treating it like I have it just in case, which simply means putting a special prescription cream on my boobs between feedings.  I've also been pumping during his long naps to try to give my boobs a break when it's time for him to eat again.

This morning I attended the local La Leche League monthly meeting to see if they had any advice for my current predicaments.  The ladies in the group were incredibly nice and willing to help out in any way they could.  One of the leaders watched Delano latch and eat, and determined that his latch was perfectly fine and not a part of the problem.  She checked the roof of his mouth for ridges (which could potentially cause his latch to be more painful on my end) and he doesn't have any odd or extra ridges in his mouth for that possibility.  She also checked his mouth for evidence of thrush and saw nothing.  So basically, if my soreness doesn't diminish here in the near future (I'll give it two weeks), I can call one of the LLL ladies up personally and we can investigate my boobs some more.

**Sidenote.....I TOTALLY missed this confession during the meeting today (Amanda says I was talking to Delano when it happened), but one of the other new girls in the room was talking about how with her last baby, her medication caused her milk to dry up.  I heard that part.  What I missed was the girl following it up with, "Ok I'll just be honest....I have herpes."

So....to sum it all up, breastfeeding is tough!  But all the woes are temporary.  The cracks go away.  The scabs go away.  A baby WILL latch, even if it's a battle in the beginning.  And according to the experienced mothers out there, the soreness will also go away.  It WILL one day be as easy as we all imagined it growing up.  You just have to stick with it and not give up.  And if you ever have questions or want someone just to watch what you're doing to see if you're doing it right, there are four trained and accredited LLL ladies in town (both young and old) just a phone call away.

http://www.llleus.org/web/ChattanoogaTn.html

For those in other cities, just Google La Leche League to find a group in your area.

Since I don't have any pictures of me breastfeeding (thank goodness, right?), I'll just toss in a few cute pics of Delano in his super early days.  :)

 Found his thumb for the first time (at least that we know of) right after leaving the hospital!

 Rough night I guess.....

 Daddy soothing Delano during one of the early LONG nights.

Sucking his thumb while holding Daddy's thumb.

Cuteness!!!

First Blog. Ever.

I've done it - I've started a blog!  I figure it's about time to start logging my life happenings for my friends and family to read about, since I'm pretty much a stay-at-home mom now with a family and stuff.  :)  Plus, I enjoy reading my other friends' blogs, so why would anybody pass up on mine?  Just kidding......but I really am going to get this blog rolling.

I had ACTUALLY planned on starting a blog in the hospital right after Delano was born.  But given that the hospital had a crappy WiFi connection (or maybe none at all?), that was a no-go.  So THEN my plan was to get it rolling as soon as I got home.  Needless to say, Delano turned three weeks old two days ago and I am JUST NOW getting the ball rolling.  Ah well.

So I figured for my first few posts I'd play a little bit of catch-up as to what life has been like since I became a mom three weeks ago.  I do keep a journal of my own (via a Word document called "My Life") that I have been updating randomly over the last few years, so I decided to cut and paste my entry from last month about the birth of Double D.  That will definitely start this blog off from the beginning moment as a mom!  So here it is....you can skip it or enjoy it....I know it's a long one!

AUGUST 2012

IT’S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Delano Durante Simington was born at 7:56pm on Thursday, August 16, 2012.  He weighed 7 lbs 5 oz and measured 20 ¾ inches long.

At my doctor’s appointment on Wednesday the 15^th, it was decided that I could check into the hospital to be induced at midnight.  It made me incredibly excited, but also incredibly nervous.  It was really happening!!!  So Lucas and I went home, got the car packed with everything being taken to the hospital, went to dinner at PF Chang’s, and then watched TV until it was time to leave the house. Once we got checked into the hospital, I was hooked up to an IV and a few heart monitors and given a pill right around 1:30am (inserted orally up against my cervix) to attempt to get me to start dilating.  The nurse said it may or may not work, but that she wouldn’t know for 4 hours.  After she left, I did my best to sleep in the hospital bed while Lucas tried his hardest to get some sleep on the not-so-comfy pullout chair.

At 5:30am, the nurse came back in to check the status of my cervix.  Lucky for me, I had dilated to 2 cm!  She asked me if I had been feeling any contractions (to which my answer was no), because the monitor showed that I had been having some for a while.  She then doubled the pill dose and told me she’d be back in another 4 hours.

At 9:30am, the nurse came to check my cervix again.  By this time, I was having some pretty strong and painful contractions.  Since I had reached about 3 cm, I was allowed to have the epidural, which I gladly accepted.  So at approximately 10:00 am, I was given an epidural.  The epidural itself wasn’t that bad…..yes, it was a little painful and yes, it was a weird stinging sensation throughout my body when he started it up, but the worst part was having to sit up, lean over (on top of my contracting belly) and relax my shoulders (HAHA!).  Luckily Lucas stood in front of me as an anchor and helped keep my shoulders down.  Once the epidural was flowing, it was literally a matter of minutes before I felt relief.  Then it was a cake walk after that!  It was a very strange sensation for sure….I could move my legs, and I could feel when people touched them, but I didn’t like it when people touched them (especially rubbed them) because they had that constant tingly “asleep” feeling to them.  After my epidural was good and set, they nurse installed the catheter for my pee.  Didn’t feel a thing.  It was great.  The only real stinky part to the epidural was that I couldn’t lay flat on my back or sit up beyond a certain angle.  The nurse would come in and flip me from side to side every 30 minutes to an hour.  And lying on my left side in the hospital while drugged up was just as crappy as the past several months at home.

The next 8 hours or so were literally spent just waiting things out.  My cervix continued to dilate on its own up until about 7 or 8 cm, when it slowed down its progress to pretty much a halt.  This is about the time I got my first dose of pitocin.  Not too much later, I realized my epidural was wearing off (and man did it wear off FAST).  The anesthesiologist was in the room in no time to strap on another dose, though, and then we were back in business up until about 9 cm, when progress slowed down to a halt again, prompting another dose of pitocin.  A little after 6:00 pm the nurse declared that I was at 10 cm and ready to push!

Dr. Emberson arrived, checked me out for size (haha), and told the 2 nurses in the room to get me started.  Apparently the doctor doesn’t hang around for the whole pushing process….the nurses apparently call him back when the head is coming out and not receding back in during push breaks.  So we started the pushing process, and OMG it was HARD.  Since I couldn’t feel anything but slight pressure while I pushed, it was hard to figure out if I was doing what they wanted me to be doing (“Push down into your bottom”, “Tilt your hips up more”, “Push into your gut not into your legs”, etc).  I only knew if I did what they wanted when they hollered out “Yes!” or “Good job!”.  It was EXHAUSTING.  Absolutely exhausting. 

At some point in time they asked me if I wanted a mirror to see the progress, saying it might help if I could SEE what I was doing since I couldn’t really FEEL what I was doing.  I said sure, so they wheeled over this giant dressing mirror for the festive occasion.  As soon as I saw what THEY were seeing, I cracked up laughing and apologized to everyone in the room for the horrible view J.  However, the mirror DID help me to focus on where to push when I could see progress being made.

I pushed for approximately an hour and 20 minutes, and Delano (“It’s a boy!!”) popped out at 7:56 pm.  They laid him on my chest for a few minutes before Daddy cut the cord and then the nurses took him to his little bed right beside mine.  They finished cleaning him up and doing all the things nurses do while the doctor delivered my placenta and took care of things on “my end”.  It was probably around 8:30 pm when Lucas was finally able to walk out into the waiting room and announce our little arrival, along with his name (which made my mother cry, since Delano was her daddy’s middle name).  My family, Lucas’s family, Amanda and Leah were all part of the waiting room crew.  Jason and Shelley came by right around 9:00, bearing the gift of French fries (per request).  J

The first night with Delano I spent by myself, since I let Lucas go home to get some rest (I wasn’t going to make him sleep on the pull-out chair again, though I thought about it).  Delano and I stayed in our delivery room that night, since all of the recovery rooms were full.  I was concerned about breastfeeding - that Delano wouldn’t take to it right away - but that part went significantly well.  Delano latched on immediately.  Getting up and down was slow and tricky – I wasn’t connected to any machines anymore but the epidural was still wearing off and my body felt like it had just gone to war.  We didn’t get much sleep that first night as we were trying to figure each other out (and Delano wouldn’t stay asleep every time I put him in his bassinet), but we eventually got a couple of hours of sleep in the early morning hours with me reclined in the bed and Delano asleep on my chest.

The next day was spent with visitors from when visiting hours started (9:00 am) up until visiting hours were over (9:00 pm).  Before lunchtime I was moved over into a smaller recovery room, though the bed was larger than the last.  Loads of friends came by and our families were there all day as well.  By 9:00 when the last visitor left, I was ready for a shower and NO visitors!  Lucas stayed in the room with us that night, though he did run home first to take care of all the animal needs. 

The second night was definitely more of a challenge than the first.  It was hard to get any real sleep when nurses were popping in to check on me and the baby (or take the baby to the nursery for certain routine things) every hour, plus Delano was fussy and NOT sleeping and neither Lucas nor I could figure out the ultimate reason.  We fed him, changed him, walked him, rocked him, held him…..he would drift off, but then wake up during “transport” between us and his bassinet.  So then we’d do it all over again.  We eventually asked a nurse about giving him a pacifier, since that’s generally a no-no during at least the first month while breastfeeding, but since he had already established his latch I wondered if it was still such a horrible idea.  The nurse said that it was up to us, that some babies don’t have issues with nipple confusion and that sucking a pacifier may be ultimately what soothes him.  So we decided to give it a shot, and we were glad we did.  He wasn’t a super fan of the pacifier, but after a minute realized it wasn’t so bad and he got quiet.  Lucas eventually ended up asleep in the rocking chair with Delano on his chest.  It was a long, rough, zombie-like night.  Some people said that I shouldn’t have decided to keep Delano in my room, that I should have taken advantage of the hospital nursery while I had the chance.  But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.  It’s not like two extra nights of sleep would have changed my life, plus I was thankful that those first two nights happened in the hospital when I had nurses around to help and answer questions.  I think it made my third night at home a little bit easier.

On Saturday, we got to go home at lunchtime!  We packed up and headed to the house, and then decided to head out to Portofino’s for some lunch with Lucas’s family and my mom.  After lunch Lucas’s family hit the road back to Nashville, and we were officially on our own!  We were officially our own little family!

 Dinner at P.F. Chang's before heading to the hospital!

 Our moms hanging out in the room with us the next morning.

 There he is!  About an hour after being born.

 I love this picture of my dad.  :)

 Aunt Nicki captured this great picture!

 Daddy with his new munchkin.

 Mama and Delano cuddles.