Isabella is doing well.. currently just over 10lbs, doing on-demand feeds, sleeping most of the way through the night with the exception of 1 or 2 feeds (not too bad). She’s starting to be aware and able to smile or giggle. She’s a bit fussy in the evenings and with some feedings, but mostly she’s able to eat, sleep and be entertained by people/objects/swings/etc. More news as it becomes available.
Jun
12
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Apr
19
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to put fingers to keyboard and let you all know that our little bundle of joy arrived safely a week ago today. Isabella was born the evening of Friday 11th April, 2007 at 23:22 she weighed in at 7lbs on the nose and was 19 inches long.
Never the one to do things by halves, I guess the powers that be thought that seeing Aaron and I were doing this only one time they’d throw all they had at us to make sure we had a “rounded” experience and a good broad idea of what “pregnancy & birth” is all about. We were scheduled for a pre-natal visit on the 10th April (38 weeks) and had been having the lovely duty since the previous Monday of doing a 24 hour urine collection as they’d found protein in my urine at the previous weeks test, however as my blood pressure was great they weren’t that concerned but wanted to just be double sure - the results for my 24 hour collection however showed that I was borderline for preeclampsia and as it’s very dangerous and comes on extremely quickly they didn’t want to take chances especially as Izzy was already “cooked” - there was no way they wanted me to go toxic plus I was incredibly “puffy” in the feet, legs, hands and face. So they told us to go home and get our stuff (we already had it all in the car), go out for a nice “last pregnant dinner” and check into the hospital at 6pm that night.
We did all that, and they gave me some medication to make my cervix “prepare” ie. thin and dilate - the next morning at 7am they started me on pitocin which induces the labour. I lasted 9 hours of labour without too much anguish, but when they told me that after all that time i’d only dilated 1cm even though the labour pains were less than a minute apart and “rather intense” I decided that an epidural would be a rather nice option. That was given and we went through about another 6 hours of labour and then found out i’d dilated to *gasp* 2.5cm!!! The doctors came in and basically said we could have a “very long” labour and get there naturally or we could go the C-Section route - I had absolutely no problem choosing C-Section so within 2 hours they’d wheeled me to the OR, drugged me up nicely, delivered my daughter and sent me back to my room, while Aaron went with her to the nursery to get her washed/vaccinated/weighed/measured/poked/proded etc. poor Izzy.
Unfortunately we’ve had a few more hiccups, my blood type is O+ and her’s is A+ and as such she’s coombes + which means my antibodies react to hers and she has jaundice, which makes for very sleepy babies that aren’t hungry at all, and for 24 hours she didn’t eat a thing regardless of how hard we tried, for 2 days she was in a bili chamber to try and fix that, we thought we had it under control and all lovely jubbly, and she was introduced to a nipple shield, even though we really want her to be 100% breastfed - I guess when it means the difference between your child getting food or not you tend to relax a little and agree that you can ween her back to the boob after she’s all better.
So after 4 days in the hospital due to the C-Section surgery we finally got to come home - the first night was sheer hell - we literally got 45 minutes sleep the whole night - she screamed blue bloody murder most of the night. It seemed that she was having a feeding cluster where she wanted food every hour for most of the night, however because of the nipple shield system we had, which included a very fine feeding tube on the end of a syringe with formula in (to tease her into suckling rather than actually feeding her), she was getting quite a lot of air in her system which was giving her pain no matter how hard we tried to burp her. Doctor visit the next day thank god and they said to get rid of the stupid tube and formula tease, that it wasn’t necessary anymore - but to continue with the sheild as she was used to it now and would have to be weened off it in about 2 weeks time. Things seemed to be great until the next day which seemed very reminiscent of the first day she was born when she wasn’t interested in food and would fall asleep on the nipple… plus she was going a lovely shade of yellow - seemed like the jaundice was back - which we confirmed with another doctor appointment today. We have another appointment tomorrow morning at 10am where we’ll find out how much it raised in a 24 hour period and then can determine what kind of treatment she’s going to need. Hopefully it will only be something like a biliblanket which we can use at home instead of having to admit her to hospital and put her back in a bilichamber which was horrible. Regardless whatever is best for her will be done, but I can tell you the stress levels and the emotions are taking their toll along with the lack of sleep.
So my apologies for not answering all your emails personally at this stage, i’d rather wait for her to be 100% better before I start bleating about how wonderful she is (she really is and every time i look at her and think it i blub like a baby), thankfully my mothers are coming in force tomorrow and Sunday for 2 weeks and I have the most wonderful mother in law without who’s help the first two days of Izzy’s life I probably wouldnt have been so relaxed (Izzy’s Grandpa isn’t all that bad either *grins*). As we get photo’s i’ll post to Izzy’s picture link on this page.
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Apr
11
Isabella entered this world on April 11th, 2008 at 11:22pm. As she grows and begins to experience more, we’ll post updates here.
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