Regarding Henry

new pics for you all. he is a cutie, isn’t he? as you can see from the pics, lots of dark hair, and big blue-ish eyes.

A big thank-you to everyone who has called or emailed. . .believe me we appreciate it and apologies for our non-responsiveness. we’ll try to catch up with everyone soon, especially when Mom is feeling a little more together.

interesting things about Henry:

-he has very big feet and long toes
-he’s covered with this very fine, downy fur (which i know there’s some technical name for, and i realize this disappears shortly).

-he breastfeeds like a champ, which leads to his second skill: pooping. the diapers, i had no idea. neither the quality nor quantity.

-he was smaller than we expected, but seems to be wanting to make up for lost time by packing in as much food as possible now.

-he’s pretty clear about articulating his dislikes in a very loud and forceful way, but on the plus side, he’s also pretty easy to soothe.

ok, gotta run–time for feeding again! here’s just a few more pics, i have more which I’ll try to post soon.

Henry’s birth day

I’m going to try to get down a chronicle of Henry’s birth day, since many of you have asked.

On Tuesday July 25, I went to the doctor for my 39 week check up. As was the case the past few weeks, the baby’s head was way down, i was 3 cm dialated and about 60% effaced, but nothing looked totally imminent. In fact, the doctor and I discussed a general game plan for the next several weeks–she was next on call on August 2, and then again on August 13 if we needed to induce (which she actually advised against). Neither she nor I expected I would see her the very next day–she never even mentioned she was on call on July 26th.

I didn’t feel any different or anything, and in fact scheduled a meeting for 8:30am on July 26th. When my colleague Gwen left for the day she said, “Maybe I won’t see you tomorrow,” but i sort of rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, you will, see you at 8:30 for that meeting.”

At 5:15am I woke out of a sound sleep to some sort of twinge that was immediately followed by my water breaking. Props to my dear friend Cheryl for advising me to put towels under my sheets. I bolted for the bathroom, came out a few minutes later and told Dave what was up. He said, “Cool, does this mean I’m not going to work today?” and i think i said, “What this means is that we’re having a baby today or tomorrow.” We called the labor hot line, they told us to come right in.

I wasn’t feeling any contractions so we sort of took our time–I changed my voicemail at work, Dave sent an email to his work, we ate some food, got the car loaded up, etc.

By the time we arrived at Meriter (apx 6:30am) I was feeling what felt like occasional menstrual cramps, nothing too severe. We made our way to OB Triage, where they check to make sure you’re really in labor. The nurse hooked me up to a fetal heart rate monitor, and said they were going to run a test to make sure my water broke, but looking at me sitting in a growing puddle convinced her to just check me into our birthing suite.

Our labor and delivery nurse came to get me, and Lana stayed with us through Henry’s birth. I can’t say enough about the nursing care we received at Meriter (with one glaring exception , which I’ll get to later). Lana was just a fantastic nurse, and exactly what you’d want in that situation. So, she got me prepped, checked my vitals, and the crampy feelings started to increase in intensity and duration. When I told Lana what was going on, she said, “Hmm. . .maybe this will be quick. Let’s see who the doctor on call is today.” Turns out it was my own doctor, which was great and unexpected.

From here on out the chronology gets a little fuzzy. . .

I had told Lana I wanted an epidural and by about 8:30am was in a fair bit of pain with contractions. Meanwhile, we met Ryan, the resident who actually “caught” Henry. Another high mark in my book for the residents at Meriter/UW Health–Ryan was great, and very supportive and probably not even 30 yet. My own doc also did an exam and determined I was now 5 cm dialated and it was time for the epidural. Ryan called the anethesiologist (another resident) and had them prepare. I think the anethesiologist arrived between 8:30 and 9:00am, at which point things hurt a lot. Nothing unbearable, but I couldn’t talk through the contractions and was just starting to think, “Wow, this really, really, really sucks.”

The anesthesiologist did a great and very thorough job of explaining what he was going to do, none of which I can recall. He and Lana helped me get set up–lots of tubes, needles, pin pricks, etc. but my god was it worth it. The drugs set in pretty much immediately and suddenly I felt like I was going to make it through. I can’t state this clearly enough: GET THE EPIDURAL.

For the next hour or two, I could feel pressure but no pain. The pressure, however, continued to build in frequency and duration, and Lana, Ryan and my doc all kept shaking their heads in amazement saying, “Wow, this is going so fast! Do you have any idea how lucky you are??” Dave was great and very supportive, and we pretty much followed Lana’s lead on what to do.

At about 11:30a, Lana suggested we try some pushing, and sort of laughed after my first push and said, “You’re having this baby by 3pm. Maybe by 1:30.” The pushing was intense, but not unbearable. I remember being concerned whether I was doing a good enough job, as if they were grading me or something. Lana was a little concerned about the baby’s heart rate (apparently they get unhappy when they’re stuck in the birth canal during pushing) so she got Ryan and my doc back in the room to witness my pushing, with Lana describing me to them as “a power pusher.”

Then it was like having my own little cheering squad for the next hour or so. I didn’t scream or swear or say terrible things about my husband, but I did keep my eyes tightly shut throughout most of the pushing. Lana told Dave to take a few pics of the action to show me my progress since they couldn’t find a mirror, but we barely had time for one or two shots (which will never be shown publically, thank you very much) before I could hear Lana saying, “Ryan, gown up!” and then they were dragging the lights into place and turning the baby incubator on and we were In The Shit.

I felt a ton of pressure, and I did a few more intense pushes, and then I heard Ryan say, “Do we know what we’re having?” and my doc say, “No, and no one says but Dad. Tricia, open your eyes. Dad?” and then I opened my eyes and my god, they were holding our baby! and Dave said, “It’s a boy!” It was 12:32pm.
They handed off this awesome, squrimy, bloody baby to me and I immediately started to cry, and Henry started to shout, and I have no idea what else was going on. I think that’s when I delivered the afterbirth, and then Henry went to his dad while they stitched me up (yes, sorry to say, some minor tearing.)

It took them about another 15-20 minutes to fix me up while I watched Henry and his daddy together. Then I got to hold my baby some more–big open eyes, hi little person! So it was you all along in there. I was wondering when I’d get to meet you, who you’d be, and look, here you are. . .

Lana took Henry to clean him up and start the first of many pokes at him –let me just say hospitals are tough places for babies, they are constantly getting shots or blood draws or naked weigh-ins.

So that’s the story. Labor really, really, really wasn’t bad. I got pretty lucky , I think, so I’m grateful for that. Meriter over all was a very good experience (I have a few more stories I’ll save for another post), and the nursing and doc care was great.

Henry is absolutely beautiful and wow, I can’t imagine life without him now.

home

thanks to everyone for the calls, emails and posts. We’re home as of last night (thurs  oops,friday) and we’re doing good, although not sleeping a lot. I’m sure those of you that are parents can vividly recall this feeling of total joy and absolute exhaustion–interesting combo.

Henry’s great, and seems to be up for life on Elmwood Ave. We’ll try to post more pics soon so you can see all his crazy dark hair and big blue eyes.

more soon!

Henry Thomas Dickinson

7 lbs, 5 oz + 19 3/4 in. Born 12:32 p.m. today.
Everyone is doing well! More soon.

baby time!

well, i had a couple of posts in draft format ready to go about different stuff. . . general game plan for the next few weeks, name ideas, etc, but all that appears to be unecessary now.

my water just broke (apx 5:15am wed july 26) so we are headed to the hospital.  we’ll keep you all updated and let you know as soon as we have news!

This is what 39 weeks looks like

. . .not a lot different than 38 weeks, really.

Update from the Doc

Today was my 39 week check up. Before going any further, I’m going to say that this info may get a little personal, so if you don’t want to know all the details, skip this post.

The doctor did an internal exam, and says things are much the same as in past weeks: the baby’s head is way down, I’m almost 4 cm dialated, and my cervix is about 60% effaced. On the one hand, this is good! As my doc points out, a lot of women go through hours of hard labor before reaching this point, and I’m walking around like this baby’s about to fall out. On the other hand, I’ve been at this stage for almost three weeks, so it’s not like there’s continued major progress.

She also measured the fundus (basically, she takes a tape measure and measures the “longitude” of my belly), and said i’m down an inch. . .which indicates to her the baby’s head has descended even lower in my pelvis.

My weight is down one pound, which means nothing (other than I’m limiting myself to ice cream 1x per day instead of 2x).

And she listened to the heart rate. She wasn’t totally pleased with what she heard, so asked me to stay for a NST (non-stress test) where they hook you up to a fetal heart monitor for 20-30 minutes. What they look for is the baby’s heart rate to fluctuate with fetal movement at least three times in 20 minutes. The first 10 minutes on the machine, the baby’s heart rate stayed firmly in the 130s with no fetal movement. So the nurse came back in and had me turn on my side. This did the trick and seemed to wake the baby right up b/c we pretty quickly had the usual array of karate chops, big stretches, irish jigs, and whatever else s/he does in there to keep busy. For the next 20 minutes, his/her heart rate poinged around btwn 140-170—very good, very active. I actually asked for the print-out from the monitor–it’s sort of interesting to see just how active they are. The machine also picks up fetal movement (more accurately than I can detect it even), so you can see the correlation between heart rate and movement. If i can get this scanned, I’ll post it.

I’d also like to point out that this illustrates why using the heart rate to indicate gender is a total myth–the heart rate can and should fluctuate with movement, so at any given point the heart rate will be higher or lower. It’s fairly random when you happen to be in a for an appointment whether your baby’s moving or not, and whether that’s the moment they check the heart rate with the doppler. At every appointment I’ve ever had, our baby’s heart rate has clocked in at the 130s, but s/he must have been having zen moments during the 45 seconds we listened to the doppler. Because seeing what happens when we actually are hooked up to a monitor for a period of time shows you the baby is pretty much cycling through relatively alert and asleep periods all the time.

At any rate, we talked a bit about the game plan for delivery, which I’ll explain in another post.

Bottom line: 39 weeks and all is well.

What flavor?

So, the big question on everyone’s minds seems to be: boy or girl. Unlike a lot of people nowdays, David & I elected to not find out the gender of our baby. Mostly out of a sense of wanting to maintain a bit of surprise or mystery, and for me personally, I’d like some motivating factor to sort of help get me through labor.

But yes, it does seem pretty arbitrary that we didn’t find out. We got the ultrasound at 20 weeks, and saw the baby’s hands and feet and brain and heart and profile and on and on, and the tech told us to look away during the moments where we might have seen the Stuff. And after that point, I did think to myself that maybe we were being a little silly in not finding out—after all, then you can confirm a name, decorate the nursery, buy gender-appropriate clothes, etc. But, I’m still liking the element of surprise and think the anticipation is kind of a kick. Imagine, you’re about to meet this wonderful person who will change your life. . . and you don’t even know their name. Pretty cool.

Anyway, popular sentiment is running about 60%/40% in favor of boy. I tend to think boy. David *says* girl, but I think actually believe it’s a boy. Family trends indicate boy — this will be the sixth grandchild on the Nolan side, and there’s only one girl. And this will make number three on the Dickinson side, with two boys already.

Here’s how the other key players are voting. Feel free to add your voice in the comments! And, if I don’t have you listed below it’s only because you haven’t told me what you think, or you’ve said you can’t decide.

Grandma Nolan: wants a girl, is dreaming girl, but in the “don’t jinx it” school has bet Grandpa $100 that it’s a boy.

Grandpa Nolan: has $100 riding on a girl, but doesn’t seem strongly convinced in either direction.

Grandma Dickinson: boy. boy. boy.

Aunt Mindy: siding with her mom on this one—boy all the way.

Great-Aunt Tami: girl! and wore the pink to prove it.

Second-cousin Aimee: another check in the girl column.

Rita: was a very early and very firm “boy” predictor, but has recently changed her mind to girl.

Katie: in the boy camp, thanks to Rita.

Laura: also thinks boy, and gave me all of the Packers and Badgers outfits that her little girl didn’t get a lot of use out of. . .

Gwen: boy. made us an awesome blue quilt with a fishing motif (that of course would be great for a girl as well.)

Kari J: girl. Says she just has a feeling.

Chinese birth calendar: girl! I’m not giving specifics on this but you can check the chart yourself.

Baby’s heart rate: boy (it’s been running in the 130s the entire pregnancy)

Other indicators: i swear i heard the ultrasound tech say “his” at one point during our ultrasound, which is really my primary reason for thinking this baby is a boy. People have since told me that the techs are in fact trained to use one gender-specific pronoun rather than the impersonal “its” when discussing the baby during the ultrasound, regardless of whether the pronoun is correct. For example, my friend Laura’s ultrasound tech referred to the baby as “he” throughout Laura’s ultrasound, and Laura ended up with the lovely Elyse Grace.

On the other hand, at my 37 week exam, my doctor–who had up until that point only referred to the baby as “the baby”–was doing an exam and suddenly was using female pronouns, as in “Her head’s way down, and she’s got her feet over here, . . .” etc. Which made me so curious I asked the nurse at my next appointment if they could tell from my chart what gender I was having. She checked the chart and said nothing was written but that if the doctor had gone through my ultrasound pics (attached to the chart) the doc would know what gender.

By now you’re saying, jeeeezus if you’re that curious just find out. i know , i know, but we’ve waited this long, i can wait a few days longer.

Baby Blog

The Baby is due next week. . . Monday 7/31 to be exact, although the nurses have also mentioned 7/28 along the way. I myself am now predicting an August baby. S/he seems pretty content in there, and in no hurry to make an appearance.

Here’s our latest picture, taken a week ago at 38 wks (and some change). You can actually see me rolling my eyes in this picture, I think at something funny Dave was saying, or maybe more like that awkwardness you get when you pose for pictures. When I get a chance, I’ll go back and post the entire series, which starts at around 20 weeks or so.

But for comparison, here’s the first picture in the series, taken at 19 weeks. good god, i don’t even look pregnant!

Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s interesting to everyone or not to read what I’m sort of feeling (mentally, physically, emotionally) and I’m cognizant of the fact that this is a public forum. But, since this is as much a chronicle for me in the coming months as anyone else, you’ll have to bear with my editorializing.