Saturday, July 31, 2010

Overdue update


Nothing of great importance to report, but just wanted to let you know that I am still alive! Have spent the last month resting as much as I can (I have gotten a lot of help, for which I am very grateful.) Recovery is a lot slower this time around - I am guessing it will be at least another month before I truly feel "normal". The Dr. put me on a no dairy diet, and that with the "nursing diet" (nothing spicy or gassy) makes for very little variety or taste in my food! Hopefully there will be some benefits (weight loss... pretty please) but we'll see.

Christopher James, nickname "mister" is doing well. He is a serious baby - reminds me a lot of Tory. Continues on a horrendous schedule, including playing/crying until 3 or 4 am most nights. He is very vocal - he grunts and growls and bleats like a goat when he wants something but doesn't cry very often, for which I am truly grateful! The girls are being a big help and I have just had them start studying again after a one month break.

Stephen has been working double time, poor guy - not sleeping much at night and still doing everything that he has to in the day (or into the night.) We have had 3 major charitable projects this last month (pictures forthcoming), the organization of which has taken a lot of his time, but they were all very successful!

More news coming when I feel like it. Have a great day.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Something funny..

Stephen insists that I post this, so here goes. It was taken on my birthday last year (which is October 2, in case you forgot) :-) (Watch Bub the whole time...)

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Christopher James it is...

So it is official. He is Christopher James. He such a good baby and so sweet! Bub just loves him to bits and wants to hold "his baby" at every available opportunity.

Here is his rendition of where "his baby" came from (a transcript is available below for those who need it:



Transcript:
Bub:I got this baby from my Mommy's tummy and the from the hospital. And then Mommy was staying in the hospital and then I just started to get this baby.
Dad: Do you like it? What's this baby's name?
Bub: Hmmm, the baby's name is baby.

I am recovering slowly, first day without strong pain meds, and Stephen is working so hard to keep me well fed and cared for (with some help from our girls as well.) We also have had quite a bit of help from others we live with, which we're very thankful for!

One more video of Bub and "His Baby":

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Here's Baby

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to put up pictures - I have been waiting for us to choose a name, and although it's very close, the final decision has not been made, so bear with us.

Names in the running are:

Christopher James
Edward James
Michael James or James Michael...

Christopher James is the favorite so far, but we always take forever to name our babies. I'll announce it formally as soon as we know for sure. (Oh, and the nickname in Spanish for James is Diego.. cute, huh?)

Without further ado, for those of you who wish to know, here is a short retelling of the birth of the baby of our family. (Warning - Placenta's, uteruses and other body parts will be discussed, so discontinue reading and skip to the pictures if you're faint of heart.)

We originally scheduled baby's birth for July 9th. After much back and forth we decided on a c-section, for a number of reasons. There was a possibility of trying to deliver the baby naturally but when we prayed we both felt very strongly that we were supposed to have a c-section and that was also what the doctor was recommending (because of the size of the baby, my health history and the fact that the rascal kept changing his position in my tummy, so there was no guarantee he would be in the right position come his due date.)

We have a good friend who supports our work and runs a diagnostics clinic here, who had helped with all my lab work and he offered to do a more elaborate sonogram for me, so we took him up on it and went in last week on Friday to have it done. He said everything was fine with the baby, but urged us to go see our doctor on Monday, as the scar from my previous section was very thin and there was danger of uterine rupture.

We saw our ob-gyn on Monday and he immediately moved the surgery to Wednesday, June 30th. We checked in Wednesday morning (have you every gone 24 hours without eating or drinking!!! Thank God for IV drips is all I have to say!) and the surgery started around 12:30 noon. Everything was pretty casual, they numbed me from the chest down (I hate that part - so claustrophobic)and Stephen sat next to me and held my hand. The baby was out at 1:19 and was fine. He weighed 3.3 kilos and was 49 cm long. I cried tears of joy to hear his lusty cry, as I had had a premonition that something was wrong, and I was so thrilled to see that he was fine!

However, as we were there admiring the baby, Stephen said he looked up to see the doctor turning white. He said we needed to make a decision fast and showed Stephen how the placenta was completely adhered to the uterus, making it impossible to separate the two without me bleeding to death. Already I was starting to hemorrhage, although I didn't realize it at the time.

We had about 10 seconds to decide, so we told him to take it out, as that was the only option we had (he wanted our consent, however). I told Stephen to go with the baby as we had no idea how long the surgery would be and they proceeded to do a hysterectomy on me which took about 2 hours. I was awake the whole time, although I was on a lot of "happy juice" and drifted in and out of sleep. Poor Stephen had it much harder than I, sitting with the baby and waiting to find out if I made it or not. He had a bad scare when one of the nurses rushed in, asked for my full legal name, (hands shaking) and then rushed out and wouldn't tell him anything. Poor guy! All the while I was blissfully in a drugged out state. Thankfully I was able to nurse the baby as soon as I got to the room and we left the hospital 3 days later.

Our dear doctor came in to check on me and when I thanked him he said, "No, thank God, it was a miracle. It was so close! Thank God you're here!" He is not a very dramatic, nor a very religious man, so that tells you something. Afterward I had a number of my friends tell me that they had a bad feeling about my surgery and were praying for me, some for days beforehand! I really believe that had something to do with how well things turned out.

Baby is fine - sleeps pretty well, although he thinks that 1-5:00 am is a good time to play. I am making it to the bathroom and back now without help (hurray for small favors) and each day the pain is a little less, but it's going to be a much longer recovery as it was a much bigger surgery.

I am still reeling a little from it all, emotionally I am a little bit in shock about such a big thing happening out of the blue. However, I have done a bit of research on the condition (Placenta Increta) and have found I have a lot to be thankful for:

* This condition is very rare, and it usually means very premature birth of the baby. Thankfully I carried him full term (38 weeks) and he is fine.
* Many women who have had this lost a lot of blood and had to have transfusions. My blood type here is very rare, and it would have been a big problem. Because we were both in the operating room, we decided immediately and the surgeons got on it immediately, I didn't need a transfusion.
* We decided to have a planned cesarean. (The doctor said that there was no way I would have lived should I have tried to have the baby naturally.)
* The doctor was a good surgeon. He had just done another hysterectomy that morning. We had tried to find a more natural doctor for this baby's birth but again, after praying, felt we were supposed to go with him, even though surgery is his strong-point. He really isn't very interested in much "natural" and that kind of goes against what I wanted in my ob-gyn, but boy was I comforted that he knew what he was doing when I was undergoing the hysterectomy.
* So far no surgery complications and I am healing, albeit slowly.
* The baby is fine and we have a beautiful, well balanced family.

I am sure there are lots more things to be thankful for, but those are some of the biggies. Now, without further ado, here are some pictures of our newest addition. (More photos coming soon - I don't have any good close-ups of him yet):