The birth of Liliana

So Liliana decided to make her appearance a bit sooner than her scheduled date of May 13!

I was kind of hoping I would go into labour before my scheduled date because I’ve read that babies born by scheduled C-section are more likely to have problems breathing because the hormones that your body produces when you are giving birth help with the final maturation of the baby’s lungs and also help your body get ready for breastfeeding.

So I had asked my acupuncturist to do some treatments to help get things going. My acupuncturist told me it usually takes 1-3 sessions to set things in motion. I had the first one on Friday May 2nd. Then I had the second on on Wednesday May 7th.

I went to bed that evening after the acupuncture treatment and I was just falling asleep. I noticed I was having mild contractions. I had a lot of those in the past few weeks so I didn’t really think much of it. Then just past midnight I suddenly felt water gushing down my legs!

I jumped out of bed and just stood there in shock as a huge puddle of water gushed onto the floor. I yelled for Phil who had just gone to bed as well (he’s been sleeping in the other bedroom because I have too many pillows). Phil brought me some towels and I went and sat on the toilet while the water continued to pour out of me.

At this point I realized that I was going to have my baby very soon and I was just so excited I could barely think anymore! I started shaking like a leaf and didn’t stop until a few hours after the birth! First I called the hospital and told them what happened. I mentioned that my daughter had to be born by C-section. They told me to come in right away so they could evaluate the situation.

So then we had to get our bags ready to go to the hospital. They were mostly packed already but I had left a few things out that I meant to put in last minute. I was glued to the toilet so I was trying to tell Phil what to pack but I really couldn’t think straight because I was so excited!

Here is the very last picture of me pregnant, taken right before we left for the hospital. The look on my face is my “OH MY GOD I’m about to have a baby!” look.

We finally managed to get on the road sometime after 1am. Once we were driving I noticed that I was still having contractions but that they were hurting a lot more. I decided to start timing them using an app that I had on my phone. I saw that they were just over 5 minutes apart and lasting around 45 seconds each (you’re considered to be in labour for real once you’re having contractions every 5 minutes that last 1 minute long). As we drove they were getting more and more painful, to the point where I started swearing at Phil every time he went over a pothole!

We got to the hospital at about 2am. I told the nurses about my contractions and they hooked me up to a machine to monitor my contractions and the baby’s heartbeat, and did a vaginal exam. They told me I was 3cm dilated and in early labour. They also confirmed that Liliana was still feet first so I still needed to have a C-section. Sometimes when your water breaks you don’t go into labour right away so they said if that had been the case they would have waited until morning to call the doctor to do my C-section. However because things were already happening in my case the doctor had to come to the hospital in the middle of the night! When the doctor got there at about 2:30 she told us we’d be meeting our daughter within the next hour. I was quite surprised to find out that it would be so soon!

Meanwhile I kept having contractions and they were pretty painful and I tried to use my hypnosis techniques that I had been practicing but I was really just so excited I couldn’t focus and it wasn’t really working. The only thing that worked was a cue that I had been practicing with Phil where he would put his hand on my shoulder and say “Release”. Whenever he did that during a contraction the pain would immediately decrease by about 50%, it was pretty cool!

Finally they brought me to the operating room and the anesthesiologist hooked me up with the spinal anesthesia. It was a really nice feeling, my legs and belly gradually started feeling all warm and tingly, and of course the best part was not being able to feel the contractions anymore! Then they hung a curtain in front of my face so I couldn’t see what was going on on the other side. Phil came in and sat next to me, at first I didn’t even recognize him because he was all in scrubs with a mask on his face and a net over his hair!

Then the doctor told me they were starting to cut me open. Some people might be grossed out by that but I was just really excited and thought it was cool! Then a few minutes later someone said “we have a foot!” and then I felt some pulling in my belly (it didn’t hurt at all) and then a few seconds later there was the sound of a baby crying!!!! Her exact time of birth was 3:21 am on Thursday May 8.

They immediately took the baby over to a heating station in the corner of the room beside me but I couldn’t see anything because there were too many people standing around her. Phil got to go look at her right away and I was so incredibly jealous that he could see her and I couldn’t. For a few minutes they were checking her and doing stuff and I could hear her crying the whole time and I just couldn’t wait to see her so those few minutes felt like the longest time of my life!

Finally they brought her over to me and put her on my chest. It was the happiest moment of my life. Here are a few pictures taken right then:

 

After that Phil and Liliana went off to the nursery and the doctors finished sewing me up then I went to the recovery room. I think I was in the recovery room for about 30 minutes until I started being able to feel my legs again a bit. Phil says that while they were in the nursery they weighed her and measured her and gave her a Vitamin K injection. Here is a picture from that part:

Finally they brought me back to the hospital room where Phil and Liliana were waiting for me. I don’t really remember this part super well, probably because of some of the medications they had given me. I got to try breastfeeding her right away and it didn’t take too many tries before Liliana was sucking away!

Here are some pictures the next little bit:

So that is the story of Liliana’s birth and the first couple of hours of her life! She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and measured 17 and 3/4 inches long and she was doing just great right from the start.

It looks like I’ll be having a C-section :(

So I had my appointment yesterday to try turning the baby, but today she’s still breech.

At the hospital yesterday first they monitored the baby’s heart rate and movements for a while. Then the doctor did an ultrasound to check the baby’s size and position. Apparently she weighs around 6-8 lbs at this point. Her head is near my ribs, and she’s got her feet down which is called a footling breech position (see picture below).

 

First the doctor wedged her hand around the baby’s feet and bum and pushed her up as far as she could out of my pelvis. Then she basically pushed the baby’s bum with one hand and her head with the other and tried to turn her around. She had to push super hard on my stomach to do this and it was pretty painful, my stomach is covered in bruises not to mention the huge scratch marks because the doctor was digging her fingernails into my belly and then scraping her hands across my belly…

The image above shows what the doctor tried to do. We made it about as far as picture 3 above, and then for some reason the doctor could not get her to go any farther. As soon as the doctor released her hands, the baby slid right back to her usual position.

During the procedure I was trying to focus on staying calm and keeping my uterus as relaxed as possible to give the baby more room to turn. I used my hypnosis techniques that I’ve been practicing and they worked quite well, I was able to ignore the pain and stay very relaxed. The doctor was quite impressed and so was Phil!

Afterwards they spent another 20 minutes monitoring the baby’s heart rate to make sure that the procedure hadn’t upset her too much. Luckily she was just fine. 🙂

Seeing as this procedure didn’t work, there is not much chance of the baby turning anymore. And unfortunately if the baby remains in the “footling” breech position they don’t recommend giving birth vaginally either, babies have to be in “frank” or “complete” breech as seen in the image I posted above in order to be born vaginally. The risk with a baby that is coming feet first is that the umbilical cord will fall out beside the baby’s feet and then get wedged between the baby and me as the baby is coming out, therefore depriving the baby of oxygen for too long.

So after the turning procedure failed, the doctor wanted to give me an appointment for a Cesarean in a week from now! I asked her if we could wait a little longer, and I ended up getting my appointment on May 13. I wanted it to be as late as possible to give the baby more time to change position on her own (even though it doesn’t seem likely), and also because I have lots of stuff I want to get done before she gets here!

I’ll be going for one last ultrasound on May 9 to check if the baby has changed position and if she has we will cancel the C-section! There’s also a chance that I could go into labour before May 13, and if that happens I’ll just go straight to the hospital and they’ll check her position, and if she hasn’t moved then I’ll just have a C-section right away. But I’m pretty convinced that this baby has no plans to move so it’s very likely she will be born by Cesarean on May 13 or maybe before.

I’m pretty disappointed with the idea of having a Cesarean because I was really looking forward to giving birth naturally. However if I learned one thing during my 3 years trying to get pregnant it’s that you don’t always have control over what happens in your life and sometimes you just have to accept things as they come. So I’m working on seeing the positive aspects of all this!

Quick update

I just got my appointment for the procedure to try and turn the baby around, we’ll be doing it this Wednesday April 30 in the afternoon.

In the meantime I’m going to keep trying all the voodoo I’ve been doing, such as spending lots of time in positions like these:

And also burning herbs around my toes as recommended by my acupuncturist:

 

I’m slightly hopeful about these treatments because after my first acupuncture session I woke up in the middle night and felt the baby turn almost all the way around, but then she turned back again about 30 minutes later. But now I know that she can turn if she wants to so I will keep encouraging her to do so!

Also I have another of my 3-week belly pictures. This could potentially be the last one because 3 weeks from now I’ll be one week past my due date and may not be pregnant anymore!

 

 

Breech baby!

I just found out that our baby has moved into breech position, which is very bad news! She had her head down for the past couple of months, but when I went to see my midwife this week the midwife didn’t think she was head down anymore so she sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound and sure enough, the baby has her head up near my ribs!

I’m going to try everything I can to get her to turn around again including spending as much time as possible with my bum above my head, acupuncture, chiropractor and so on. My midwife is also scheduling an appointment for me at the hospital to have an external cephalic version (ECV), a procedure where they try to rotate the baby by pushing on her from the outside. This appointment will probably be in the next few days, maybe as soon as tomorrow. One of the risks of ECV is that your water could break or you could go into labour while they are doing it…. this is very rare but if it happens I could be having a baby as early as tomorrow!!!!! Yikes!!!

If the baby doesn’t turn around then my midwife will transfer my care to a doctor who specializes in delivering breech babies vaginally. Most doctors don’t do vaginal breech births so you have to have a C-section, but luckily my midwife knows 3 doctors at the hospital I was planning to give birth at who attend vaginal breech births so I won’t have to have a C-section. My midwife will still attend the birth anyways, but she just won’t be the one in charge anymore.

In other news, I got my photos back from my photoshoot last weekend and I’m very happy with them! Here are some of my favourites:

1 month left!

My due date is exactly 1 month from today! It’s hard to believe that we’ll be meeting our daughter so soon. Of course due dates are just an estimate, but most people give birth within 2 weeks before or after their due date.

Because I’m an actuary, I just couldn’t help looking up some statistics to figure out when this baby is most likely to be born. I found this awesome website with tons of data on when people give birth, created by someone who likes statistics just as much as I do (http://spacefem.com/pregnant/charts/duedate0.php) and I like to spend a lot of time looking at the numbers on this site.

I’ve created this summary table to show what are the chances I’ll give birth in each of the next 7 weeks. Anyone want to start placing bets on when this baby will decide to show up?

Basically what this means is that there is actually a 4% chance that I could give birth in the next week! WHAAAT?!?!?! That kind of freaks me out, I’m not ready yet! There are so many things I need to do before the baby comes (my taxes for example). And of course my pregnancy isn’t considered full term until I reach 37 weeks of pregnancy on April 20 so this baby better keep cooking for at least another week!

There’s a 7% chance I’ll give birth in the week of April 20. This is still pretty insane, however isn’t quite so upsetting because by then I’ll be done working, and I’ll also have made it to my photoshoot on April 19 – I booked a session with a photographer to take some picture of my fabulous belly that I have waited so long to have! It’s a package deal that also includes pictures of our newborn baby a few weeks later.

Speaking of photos….

 

The baby is now big enough that I can feel her bum wedged up against my ribs and her head pressing on my bladder. This picture shows how my organs have had to rearrange themselves to make room for the baby:

 

When I see how squished the pregnant woman’s bladder is compared to the non-pregnant woman, I understand why I have to go pee every time there is at least 1 teaspoon of liquid in my bladder!

It’s crazy how often this baby has the hiccups… at least 5 times a day! I wonder if she gets sick of hiccuping all the time?

In other exciting news… I only have 3 more days of work remaining! My last day of work is April 17 and then I’m FREE! No more office job for 1 year, I’ll have have a new boss instead!

The pillow palace

Our bed has officially become too small for both me and Phil to fit into it. We have a queen size bed but in my efforts to sleep comfortably I’ve been bringing more and more pillows into the bed until one day there just wasn’t enough room left for 2 people! So I’ve moved into the guest room where I have room for unlimited pillows and built myself what I like to call my “pillow palace”:

 

Every night I crawl into my fortress of pillows, and every night I wake up to go pee in the middle of the night and have to wrestle with the whole pile to get out of bed! Even with all these pillows, I still have problems getting comfortable because there’s always some piece of me that hurts when I’m lying down!

We had a pretty decent snowstorm here yesterday and I don’t think I’ve ever been this desperate for spring to arrive!

 

Not only do I find it extremely difficult to put on and take off my winter boots, but all my boots are getting really tight as well. And I tried to keep squeezing into my winter coat as long as possible but a few weeks ago the buttons started popping off which is kind of a bad sign! While waiting for the weather to warm up I’ve been wearing one of Phil’s old coats which has got to be the ugliest winter coat ever made, I feel like a complete bum when I walk around in that thing!

WHERE ARE YOU WARM WEATHER????

Since I would like to give birth to this baby without any medication, I’ve been taking this home study course called Hypnobabies to learn how to relieve pain via hypnosis. My midwife says she’s seen a lot of people use hypnosis while giving birth and it really helps reduce the pain and the need for pain meds. I’ve even heard of people who felt no pain at all while giving birth because of the hypnosis. So I have these hypnosis tracks that I listen to for about 30 minutes a day to practice putting myself in a state of hypnosis/relaxation and eliminating pain. My main problem with listening to these hypnosis tracks is that I get so relaxed that I always fall asleep while listening to them, so I don’t get to practice the techniques very much! Anyways I have no idea whether this will actually help me when I’m giving birth, but I figure I’ve got nothing to lose by trying.

 

Here is my latest belly picture!

 

It looks like my little girl has had a bit of a growth spurt in the last few weeks doesn’t it?

For most of my pregnancy the baby had her head up and her feet down, but my midwife has confirmed that the baby has turned head down now (the best position for being born), and I’m sure she’s right because I’m getting kicked in the ribs a lot! She’s getting so big that now her movements feel pretty different from how they did a month ago. Before I used to feel lots of kicks and punches, now I will often feel an elbow or a knee or a foot poking out for a little while!

 

3rd trimester

Everyone warns you about the third trimester. The first trimester is the one where you’re sick (check), the second trimester is the “fun” trimester (check), and the third trimester is the one where you’re supposedly huge and uncomfortable and can’t sleep, and you can’t wait to get that baby out of there!

Well I’m only a few weeks into the third trimester and so far it has been living up to its reputation! I had a fun night last week when I got heartburn so bad it made me throw up and didn’t get any sleep until 4:30am. I’m developing new aches and pains every day. My feet have gotten fatter so now all my shoes are too tight. I throw up in my mouth a bit every time I have to reach down to pick up something from the floor, or anytime I’m putting on my too-tight winter boots. Also I get out of breath just from putting on my boots! The baby has decided that her favourite place to kick me is directly on my bladder, which always fools me into thinking I have to go pee when I don’t.

Not that I’m complaining of course… I wanted to be pregnant so much right? I find it pretty crazy that there’s a real baby inside me, the thought still freaks me out sometimes!

I guess I’m due to add another picture to my series already, so here it is (I look kind of dazed in this one):

Last week I had a surprise ultrasound! The midwife sent me to get an ultrasound to see whether the fibroid growing on the outside of my uterus had gotten any bigger (because if it had it could cause problems). So the fibroid ended up being about the same size as before, which is good news. The doctor also measured the baby and estimated that she weighed almost 3lbs (that was a week ago so it has probably changed by now) and is a perfectly average size for a baby her age so she is neither too big nor too small.

One of the fun things about being pregnant is that so many strangers want to comment on your pregnancy. I remember one day a couple of weeks ago when 3 people told me their opinion on how far along I was in my pregnancy (at the time I was right at 6 months pregnant). The first person guessed I was 7 months, the second person thought I was just about halfway (4-5 months), and the last one actually thought I was on the verge of giving birth (when I told him I had 3 months to go he said “oh wow are you having twins???”). I found it absolutely hilarious that 3 people who all saw me on the same day had such wildly different estimates of how far along I was, and that they felt the need to tell me their guesses (I certainly didn’t ask them to guess haha), and that they were all completely wrong!

Another perk to being pregnant is that everyone is so nice to me and I get special treatment! Sometimes this can backfire though… for example when someone brings a dessert to work they always insist that I have a second piece because I need to “eat one for the baby” (it’s important to get babies hooked on sugar early on eh?). Or like what happened when I was on the airplane recently… my legs were really swelling up during the plane ride so I needed to get up and walk around. My strategy was to always go stand in the lineup for the bathroom whenever the line was really long so that I would have an excuse to stay standing for a while (most of the time I didn’t even have to pee). Unfortunately everyone was so nice that Every. Single. Time. I went to stand in line, all the people ahead of me in the lineup would insist on letting me go ahead of them because I was pregnant, and I always had to argue with them to let me stay at the back of the line!

I’m very excited to say that I’m almost at the end of my last 5-day work week for a looooooooooooooooong time. Starting next week I’ll be taking one vacation day per week until I go on maternity leave. That’s going to be a huge relief because the problem with working full time is that I can’t take afternoon naps, and I NEED naps!

 

So if my whole life plan works out like I want it to, the next time I have to go to work 5 days in a row will be sometime around 2020 (I’m hoping my job will let me work part time for a while after I have kids, and I’m hoping to take more maternity leaves in the next few years as well).

6 months pregnant

I can’t believe I’m 6 months pregnant! Up until now I’ve kind of felt like I was just pretending to be pregnant, but now my belly is big enough that it’s obvious to everyone and salespeople at the mall call me “cute” just because I’m pregnant (that actually happened to me this weekend).

My total weight gain so far is 18lbs and here is the latest picture in my series:

I had an appointment with my midwife yesterday where I got to take the infamous glucose tolerance test. First you have to skip breakfast. Then you have to chug a glass of this sickly sweet orange syrup. Then you wait 2 hours while you’re starving and have your blood tested afterwards. Going this long without food is no big deal when you’re not pregnant, but when you’re always STARVING it’s not so much fun. As soon as we finished the test Phil drove me to the nearest restaurant as fast as he could, before I could injure anyone.

My midwife called me a few hours later to tell me I passed the test so I don’t have to worry about gestational diabetes!

My midwife also did a check of my cervix  yesterday to determine whether there was any risk of premature labour. She found that there was nothing to worry about so she gave me her official seal of approval to fly to Banff this weekend, yay! In preparation for the 4 hour flight I went to the grocery store and purchased every single variety of snack food that exists.

I had a bit of a panic attack today because I went to the bathroom and saw that I was bleeding a bit… I haven’t had any bleeding since October and I liked it that way. I called my midwife freaking out. She asked me if I had felt the baby move today, but I’ve gotten so used to feeling the baby move that I don’t really notice it anymore so I couldn’t remember if she had moved recently. That made me freak out even more! Anyways the midwife said the bleeding was probably caused by the cervical exam she did yesterday and not to worry unless it got worse. After that I completely stopped bleeding and the baby kicked me like crazy for the rest of the day, so I was completely relieved.

I’m proud to say that I finally managed to stop taking the anti-nausea medication! I’ve been off it for just over a week, and not only am I still alive, but I actually haven’t barfed in almost 3 weeks. I’m almost daring to think that I may be done with the barfing (obviously now that I have written this down, I will most likely throw up tomorrow morning). For the first time in almost 3 years, I’m not taking any medication at all!

Milestones

Today I’m 24 weeks pregnant, which means that I’ve reached another milestone in my pregnancy: if something really bad happened and our baby were to be born TODAY, she would have a chance of surviving in the outside world. 24 weeks is pretty much the earliest they admit premature babies to the NICU and try to save their lives.

Obviously I do NOT want my baby to be born anytime soon… the survival rate for babies born at 24 weeks is only a bit higher than 50%, and babies born this early have a very high chance of having some kind of disability for the rest of their lives. But at least I can stop worrying now about losing my baby due to a miscarriage!

Something very exciting happened this week: Phil felt our little girl move from the outside for the first time! He put his hand on my tummy and was able to feel my belly moving due to her kicks! Previously all of Phil’s attempts to feel her move had ended up like this cartoon (click on the image to see a larger version):

I had another very exciting milestone this week: I went 9 full days without throwing up!!!! My prior record was 7 days. Oh did I mention I still throw up on a weekly basis? Yeah I thought barfing was supposed to be a first trimester thing, but I’m just a few weeks away from my 3rd trimester and I’m still throwing up. Good times!

I’ve been putting X’s on a calendar every time I throw up, that way I can tell if the barfs are getting farther apart. Seeing as I love statistics, I’m now going to give you guys some stats on my barfing habits since the beginning of my pregnancy.

Date of my first barf: September 19

Total number of barfs by month:

Most barfs in one day: 3 (October 9th)

Month I wish to forget forever: October

Most unpleasant barf: October 29. Phil and I had an appointment with the midwife that morning, and we were running late so I had to eat my breakfast REALLY FAST. I shoveled my porridge into my mouth at lightning speed, and as soon as I had put the last bite in my mouth I got up to do something else while I was still chewing my food. BIG MISTAKE. 30 seconds after having stood up, my entire bowl of porridge was sitting in our bathroom sink clogging the drain (I couldn’t make it to the toilet fast enough) and Phil had to clean it up. I couldn’t help with the cleanup because I was too busy crying about the fact that now I’d be hungry for the rest of the morning given that I’d lost the breakfast that I’d worked so hard to hurry up and eat!

I’ve been taking anti-nausea medication since October 9th and I haven’t managed to get off it yet. I’ve tried to stop it a few times but I feel so sick when I do that I always start it again. The first time I tried to stop the meds in November I actually started losing weight again because I felt so sick I couldn’t eat! However in December I managed to get down from 3 pills a day to 1 pill a day. I might try to quit again in the next couple of weeks when my current supply runs out. It would feel so liberating to be medication free after all these years of pill-popping for my fertility treatments!

My biggest annoyance nowadays is how much my back hurts. I started having back pain in October and it’s been getting worse ever since. Now my back hurts 90% of the time, and often the pain is unbearable and it’s almost impossible for me to find a comfortable position. The only comfortable position is lying flat on my back (which I can’t really do when I’m at work).

I’ve tried so many different things to try to help with the pain. In the beginning walking made me feel a lot better, but now it just makes things worse! I’ve also tried massages, visits to an osteopath, warm baths, applying heat to the area, lumbar support pillows, yoga and stretching. Most of these things will help relieve the pain for a few hours (the osteopath can make me feel better for an entire day!), but the pain always comes back afterwards.

In spite of that, I’m still so happy to be pregnant!

More than halfway there!

So I’m 5 months pregnant now, more than halfway through the pregnancy! I still have trouble believing how lucky I am to be experiencing this pregnancy sometimes.

The belly is coming along nicely if I do say so myself. Here’s the latest picture in the series.

I’m still gaining weight at a rate of a bit more than 1lb per week. Here is what Phil had to say about my weight gain:

The most common phrases you can hear me say these days are: “I’m sooooo hungry!” and “My back hurts so bad I wish I could cut it off!” and “I think our little girl is having a dance party in my uterus right now!”

I recently had the pleasure of finding out that yes, this is a real thing:

We had an appointment with the midwife last week and everything is looking great. She’s probably going to have us do another ultrasound in March/April. The one we had in December is often the last ultrasound you get in pregnancy, but apparently I have some sort of fibroid growing on the outside of my uterus and they need to check if it’s gotten bigger to make sure it won’t interfere with giving birth. Apparently this kind of thing is pretty common and in most cases doesn’t cause any problems so I’m not worried!

January 2nd was my due date for my previous pregnancy, so recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the baby I lost… if that baby hadn’t left us, we would probably have met him/her by now!

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that baby or how sad it was to lose it, but this milestone is a lot less depressing given that I have another baby to be excited about now and I’ll be meeting her in just 4 months!