Blumenkrantz Family: October 2006

A long one!!

11th letter
Fri. 10/6/06

**Bryan read through this afterwards and added his own commentary which is the smaller, blue font.**

I finally have some time to sit down and write down my story. WE HAVE A KID!!!! For those of you who don’t know, which is everyone besides immediate family and whoever they told, Brock is now 9 days old. Yes that’s right; he was born Wednesday, September 27th at 9:30am – over 2 weeks before his due date of October 12th. But of course, I was induced, so that makes it a little different. So I will start at the beginning – it will be extremely detailed because I’m writing this for me pretty much. On Friday, Sept. 22nd I had my 37-wk OB appt (info for later). That night as Bryan was getting out of the shower right before we were going to bed (midnight), I, on sort of a whim I suppose, called Labor and Delivery to ask about my swollen legs and feet (because they remained swollen – there was no change when I got up in the morning). I knew that something like that happens all the time to pregnant people, but for some reason I just wanted to check to see what they had to say about it (never called them before with any problems). They said normally they’re worried about swelling in the hands and face, and that the legs and feet are expected. But they asked if I had had headaches and I said yes, realizing that I had had a constant headache for about the last 4 days (not a bad one, just a nuisance). They asked if my blood pressure was high and I said yes, since I had just had my OB appt earlier that day I knew this. I forgot what the bottom number had been but the top (systolic?) was in the 130’s when it’s normally between 100 and 110. They told me to come in and they would check a few things. So Bryan wasn’t too happy (not true, I was just tired) that I had called and asked if I really wanted to go in and I told him I had given them my name and everything so they were expecting me now. I offered to go by myself but he came with me (cuz I’m awesome). I thought we would just be there for like 10 minutes. We ended up leaving the hospital at 3:30am. What they did was have me lay down on a bed and over a long course of time periodically measured my blood pressure, heart rate, and contractions. I think at that time I hit around 140/90. They had me do a urine test and they took my blood, so we had to wait for the results of that while we were there as well. While waiting and continuing to be monitored I had a few contractions that for the first time were really very uncomfortable; so the nurse decided to check me and said I was 1cm dilated and 80% effaced. Finally we found out that the urine and blood tests had come back normal, but still the nurse was convinced that I had the beginnings of “preeclampsia” (where I guess blood flow to the baby ends up getting cut off and the mother is prone to seizures – and they don’t know what causes it), and I was to now do a 24-hr urine test, and she told me I needed to take it easy and do nothing except to eat and take showers (!) – (I didn’t listen because I was convinced nothing was wrong with me since the tests had come back normal and that she was over-concerned). [The next day – Saturday the 23rd – was my baby shower that the girl I met on the plane ride here threw for me, and tons of people came and I got loads of stuff! It was great!]. So from Sunday morning to Monday morning I saved all the ‘ol urine (gross!) and turned it in Monday morning (Sept. 25th) to the lab. Tuesday morning (the 26th) a nurse called Bryan and told him they couldn’t get a hold of me and that he “needed to find his wife and have her call them.” This made Bryan pretty mad and he called me and this time around I answered the phone (I didn’t the first 2 times and I guess that was the nurse). He wanted me to wait 20 minutes before I called her back because he felt she was so rude to him. (She was! I thought they just wanted to confirm some appointment and it seemed like she wanted me to put everything on hold to do her job of letting my wife know). I knew right away something must not have been right with my urine test, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling. Well that didn’t even cross Bryan’s mind and he thought they were calling to remind me of an appt that I had or something. Funny boy. Like they’d be that urgent for that. Silly. I called her back, it was 10am now, and she told me that I had higher levels of protein in my urine than I should have, reiterated that I should be taking it easy, and asked when I could come in that day for a “non-stress test.” (Julie thought she said anal stress test so she was kind of worried). I just wanted to put it off and I told her 2pm even though Bryan had been coming home from his training class at like 10am (he worked barely any hours in September while in this class, it was awesome – seriously sometimes only an hour and a half a day!). I had pre-planned to have this day devoted to doing homework because I had a test to take that night in one of my online UVSC classes and I hadn’t started any of the reading or homework for this first section. But instead of doing homework until 2 I felt for some reason other things were more important at this time and I packed the hospital bag you pack when you go in to have a baby. I cleaned up the baby room a bit and got things out of the way and the home was pretty much decent except for the mess in the living room from all the stuff I got at the baby shower that I hadn’t had a chance to put away yet. Because Monday I felt it was important to go shopping for food and for some baby things that we didn’t have and to get some other things done; Saturday night I was preparing the talk I gave in Sacrament meeting at church on Sunday, and Sunday night we spent eating dinner with the clan at Josh and Melissa’s house. So Bryan was home way before 2 of course and wanted to go early but I didn’t want to because I guess I just felt like I wouldn’t be leaving once I got there, and I wanted time to go pick up the rocker/recliner for the baby room from the furniture store. So we get there at 2 and I once again get hooked up to have my blood pressure monitored. This time it was consistently higher, and I think the highest I hit was 155/100. After about 45 minutes of it being high and not going back down (Friday night it ended up going a little down), they went to go show the doctor the results. They came back and said they had “good news/bad news: however I wanted to take it.” -That they were keeping me. I changed into a gown and they started an IV for magnesium which I guess is a muscle-relaxant to prevent me from having seizures. At this point I told Bryan that I was scared to death….. The doctor came in and checked me and I was still the same 1cm dilated and 80% effaced, so she manually (with her dang fingers) made me 2cm dilated, which was painful. She then put in the balloon thing (“bolus” I think it’s called-?), that would help me dilate to a 4 or 5. The nurses came back in and put in a catheter – which was interesting – but the most painful part was after it was already in – I constantly felt I had to go to the bathroom so bad that it hurt – very very uncomfortable. I told them from the get-go that I already knew I was going to want an epidural because I’m a wuss. They said to let them know when I wanted it and I mentioned that at my anesthesia appt they told me I had to wait until I was 4cm dilated. The nurse/doctor said it didn’t matter and if it hurt, it hurt, and I could get it whenever I wanted to. So I said ok, sure, I want it now. The contractions were already hurting but nowhere near unbearable, but the catheter was really really irritating and knowing that this balloon inside me was going to rapidly make me a 4…. but more so I wanted it because they were starting Pitocin (labor-inducer) into the IV and I’ve heard the horror stories of the contractions that come good, hard, and fast with that, and if I could, hey, why not avoid that. So they called in the anesthesiologist, who apparently had already worked all day and was already at home, and had to work the next day as well. So she finally came and it wasn’t all that bad at all, but I was definitely hurting a little more by then. The relief was freaking awesome and I could no longer feel the catheter – hallelujah. We go to church with one of the techs – Skylar - and he called the branch president – Shayne Stokes - to let him know I was in labor, because Stokes is one of the 2 pediatricians. (Skylar is the one who told us that a normal level of protein in one’s urine is between 50 and 250 and that mine had been 840. So after coming in and having high blood pressures once again, it was definitely confirmed that I had the infamous preeclampsia, and the only way to escape it is to deliver). Stokes came in and saw me and asked what he could do for us and he called the friends we were supposed to meet for dinner that night to let them know we definitely weren’t going to be able to make it. So that was really nice of him. So 3 of the girls came in and saw me and the word spread from there – I was in a happy-go-lucky mood due to the awesomeness of the epidural. Well as the night wore on the epidural was slowly wearing off so the anesthesiologist –Tori - came back in and adjusted the dosage (she was just resting in one of the other rooms…at my beckon call I guess!). The doctor had also come back in and the bolus came out with just a small tug so now I was further dilated. As the night wore on I did not further dilate. The nurse attending to me that shift (6pm-6am) said that my body was trying to catch up to what the bolus forced my uterus to do. So as it got later and later Bryan tried to find a comfortable sleeping position in one of the chair recliners and couldn’t really. (the chair sucked) And I slept maybe 20 minutes that night. The feelings of the contractions started coming back again but just on the right side, even though I was laying on that side (I couldn’t lay on my back because it made my blood pressure much worse than when I was on my sides) so the medicine should have technically worn off on the left first but it was always the right. After Tori tried to make dosage adjustments previously for this problem and it continuing, she knew she was going to have to redo the epidural so that when I was delivering I wouldn’t only be numb on one side and feel everything on the other. It was the middle of the night now, and I knew that she had woken up to come do this. I tried to wait to have someone get her until I no longer wanted the pain to get any worse, to avoid having to wake her all the time. (Just like Julie. Even in the worst pain ever, she doesn’t want to bother someone else or make them go out of their way to help her. I figured this was the time and place to make someone go out of their way to take care of her especially if that was her job). So it was re-done, a little higher than the first, and the pain subsided once again. Since I was not progressing past 5cm-dilated, they decided to monitor my contractions from inside the placenta by putting the little monitor way up inside me, so they would get an accurate measurement of the severity of the contractions (I guess the monitor on the outside measures them but is not accurate on how big they are). (I always thought that something comes out during the birth process not the other way around). Once it was inside me it showed a little bit smaller contractions than previously. It continued on and on like this. As it started to turn into the early morning hours they checked me again and surprise surprise I was 8cm and 90% effaced. I started to feel the pressure on my pelvic bone and that really was not comfortable and once again started to feel contractions so Tori was called in once again. She adjusted dosage and the pain went away but the pelvic pressure would not and she said there was nothing else she could do. (bologna) The nurse told me that they do not use as dense of a mixture here for their epidurals as where she had come from in the states (she’s only here for 8 months), and thus all pain was not gone during the final stages of delivery/labor. Tori (anesthesiologist) said that all of the nerves could not be numbed in the birth canal or something like that. So that was that. At this point the Pitocin level was extremely high so I was grateful I could not feel it. The morning wore on and the nurses had their shift change (which I was sad about because my nurse was AWESOME). The contractions had been starting to hurt again and just after 6am really started to get more intense. Then I swear I was dying. I felt every bit of it and there was no relief between contractions. My epidural was completely gone. They were coming hard and fast, one right after the other and I had to concentrate on my breathing and that was all I could do. Time wore on and it got worse and worse and unbearable. I was telling Bryan between gasps that I couldn’t handle it anymore. They checked me and said maybe I was now a 9 but the effacement was not progressing. I could feel his head and felt I needed to push so that made the constant contractions that much harder. I kept asking them to check me and when they finally did and I hadn’t changed I thought I was going to cry and cry because I could do nothing. The nurses were asking me questions I guess to “keep me calm” but it was only making me madder and more aggravated. (It was dumb. They wanted me to talk to her about anything besides what was going on. I could tell that she just wanted to concentrate on getting the pain to go away. So I figured the best thing to do was to just be there and help her do just that). I was breathing best I could and could only do that and didn’t want to answer their stupid questions. After about 2 hours of enduring this pain one of the nurses asked the question if I wanted any more kids, and between pants I said, yes, 5 more. She laughed at me. I was thinking yes I knew I wanted a big family, but thinking I couldn’t and never wanted to do this again because I wanted to shoot myself in the head – there was no light at the end of the tunnel – I just had to remain in this extreme pain and not progress to the point where I could push and get it over with – even though I was scared to death what THAT was going to feel like when I was already dying. At about 8:15am they checked me again and apparently my effacement was still a problem and they said there was just no way they could have me push in this state. So even with these horrible, hard, back-to-back contractions, my body wasn’t changing. The doctor had the Pitocin stopped and told me that they had another girl having a C-section right now and that once she was done I would be next. I was hurting so bad I was glad to hear that (especially since I’ve always thought a C-section would be easier) because I just wanted it to be OVER, but I was frustrated too because I just didn’t know how I could take it any longer and I didn’t want to wait! Ever so slowly there began to be like 15-30 seconds of relief between contractions (because the Pitocin was wearing off) so I had a chance to breathe normally for a little bit. (I thought that if they stopped the pitocin sooner and she had had a better epidural then she could have gone ahead and pushed like normal. It seemed that after the pitocin had worn off that her contractions went back to where they were supposed to be. I think then her body could have readjusted and she would have been ok but what do I know, I’m just a jet engine mechanic). Also during the last bit of this 3 hour pain-period I had fever of 101.3. I was mad because I was worried about that and they were acting like it wasn’t a big deal. (She even asked them to retake her temp a bit later. The nurse said that she would in about 15 minutes. I didn’t really get that since a fever during pregnancy seems like a big deal). A little bit after that Tori came back in and adjusted my dosage. She said she wished someone would have told her that I was doing so badly, because she thought I could only feel the pelvic pressure that she couldn’t get rid of and I told her I felt every bit of every contraction from side to side and front to back. With this last epidural dosage and the Pitocin stopped, relief came. I was so grateful (later I was mad that this hadn’t been done earlier and that nurses hadn’t went and gotten her!!! -because the only reason she came back in was to get me ready for the c-section)! At 9am they wheeled me and all my IV lines into the O.R. and I took as much pain medication as they would give me because I’ve heard horror stories about that too (!) – where people could feel their c-section – ouch! They were supposed to get Bryan in scrubs so he could come in there but he wasn’t in there yet. Just after they made the incision he came in. After that I could feel the tugging and pulling and them leaning on me and sheesh. (It was crazy! I swear they played tug-o-war with her belly. They got out all the spoons, scoops, ladles, and salad tongs. They opened her up and then started to push on her belly like they were trying to shoot the kid across the room. The two doctors weren’t very big so they had to lift themselves all the way off of the floor to get enough leverage to push). The baby was so far down in the birth canal that they had to go in from the bottom and push him back up so they could pull him out through the cut. [This wasn’t an emergency c-section or anything – baby was doing fine, but I guess later Skylar (the tech we knew) told us I HAD to get a c-section because the baby wasn’t reacting to the contractions like he should have – it was like he was fine where he was and he wasn’t coming out]. It definitely felt like my body was a rag doll being thrown around. It was crazy. Bryan watched it all and said he didn’t get sick. (That’s right. I had watched enough Discovery Channel so I knew I could handle it). Finally they said his head was out but I heard no cry so I started to worry and then finally sort of some grunting sounds and I got a little bit of tears in my eyes and Bryan said at that point he did too (the boy who never cries – seen him cry twice in the 7 years I’ve known him) (I told her not to tell anyone). They told me my uterus was on my stomach. Then they announced that the baby had peed on the nurses. After that I don’t remember a thing. Apparently they showed him to me. During this out-of-it period I was dreaming about this weird alternate world full of rooms of blocks and crap like that. I knew that I had just had surgery and that the baby wasn’t with me and I wondered if something had gone wrong or if I was dead. Man it was weird. (But funny) Later on I could tell Bryan was by me but I felt like I was half in this dream state and half aware of him. I tried to tell him that I was trying to get back to normal, but he recorded me telling him things like this with our digital camera and I look like I don’t know what I’m saying but I really did. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t for a long time – I couldn’t focus. One of our friends brought Bryan some lunch and I ate his fries before I knew I was basically supposed to be on a liquid diet for 24 hours and I really regretted eating them soon after. I threw up twice. During labor I threw up 3 times but it wasn’t bad at all since all I had was water in me. They wouldn’t let me have water during the last crappy hours of pain when my throat was hurting so bad from all the breathing. Anyway, going backwards a bit – they took the baby to the nursery while they finished me up in O.R. I guess, and they said the father should go too so a nurse goes to take him there but just tells him they’re still working on him but that he’s doing fine and instead of taking Bryan back to the OR to be with me they took him to the room and he sat there by himself for like 30 minutes not knowing if either one of us was okay. Pretty dumb!!! It seemed a bit unorganized for sure. Bryan told me all this and told me that the longer he sat there the more worried he was and he didn’t know how long it was supposed to take with me and that finally he lost it and he said he cried! (I told her not to tell anyone). I wish I could have seen that – the last time I saw him cry we were 19. How sad huh?-stupid nurses. One of them finally came in and told him what was going on and that everything was okay and then he was okay. SO, back to Brock. He had a hard time breathing at first and he was either grunting or like hyperventilating, and they had him on oxygen. They started him on antibiotics because there was some sort of infection, and I also got 3 different antibiotics for infections as well and I was to still be on magnesium for 24 hrs afterwards. My legs and feet seemed to get even more swollen and they said the magnesium makes you retain fluid. I couldn’t get out of bed and so had a catheter that the O.R. put in – I of course was no longer on any pain medication besides Motrin – and I couldn’t feel it at all, so obviously the nurse who put my first catheter in when I was first admitted didn’t do a good job!! Bryan had to help the nurses with moving me just like when I was on the epidural (which was funny). When they came in to massage my stomach – I guess to feel for my uterus to make sure it wasn’t soft and to work out blood clots (really they wanted to check that all of the placenta was out and no pieces got left behind) – that hurt SO bad, it was very hard to breath. So since I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff and couldn’t move anyway, and since Brock was too, I didn’t see him for the first 24 hrs. Bryan left the room several times throughout the day to see him, and he took some pictures with our digital camera so I could at least see those. When I first saw them I was like, dang! - he’s got a big nose! Ha-ha. Bryan helped the nurse a little that night with his bath too, cuz they couldn’t wash him right away when they took him out of me due to his need for the oxygen. I got to see him Thursday morning when they wanted me to try to start breastfeeding. So Bryan helped me out of bed and helped me go to the bathroom and I ever so slowly hobbled down the hall to the nursery to see my boy. Later that day they were able to put him in our room in his little portable basinet-majigger (not to be confused with a baby carrying thing). They were in all the time to take him to do stuff and to check his vitals and stuff though. So they took his blood to test for this infection and it came back positive but the doctor thought it was a contaminant and with how well Brock was doing almost didn’t do another blood test. Saturday morning we found out that it really was positive and he did have Group B Strep (which they suspected due to his struggle to breath at first), which he got from inside my birth canal I guess. They tested me for it at my 36-wk appt and it had come back negative so they said either that was wrong or I had picked it up since then. They said they had already been giving him antibiotics for it since he was born so there should absolutely be no long-term effects. They said that they needed to check for meningitis though and that was scary, but a few hours later the results were back and were negative – phew. But they said even that wouldn’t have been a big problem cuz it was the same antibiotics they were already giving him, they would just need to administer them 14 days instead of only 10. So I tell you what, lots of visitors came and I was doing well and they said how they just cried when someone asked how they were doing after having a baby and I was fine. Yeah well it hit me that first night after seeing him. Just an overwhelming and worried feeling and dang I just felt so emotional. (She cried. Yea this girl that has cried like a hundred times since I’ve known her. She told me not to tell anyone). Friday morning they did his circumcision and they were taking forever so I got worried and cried, and I cried when Shayne Stokes’ wife Alison came to see me that day (she brought us treats!) and she was awesome. Saturday morning I really lost it when we found out that he really did have the infection and that we would be there until the next Friday for all his antibiotics and monitoring. Bryan had already been home a few times to grab things and stuff, and we decided I would go home that night to just have a little time outside of the hospital and to pack a bunch of stuff for our continued stay in the hospital. Because I had been officially discharged from the hospital Friday morning but we still got to stay in the same room with a bed for each of us so we could stay there and take care of Brock in between all the stuff they were doing. They still fed me and everything, and it was enough that me and Bryan could share it. But one guy we know brought Bryan breakfast and lunch on Thursday. And good thing there’s a café on base that’s open 24 hours otherwise we would have starved late at night. So Saturday night I felt good and thought I was a little more emotionally stable. Well, while trying to hurry to get stuff together and take a shower at home, my mom called, and I cried and cried telling her the update, I just couldn’t stop it. (Our families didn’t even know we had had the baby until more than 24 hrs after the fact when we finally called our parents on Thursday). I was so tired though, I could barely make the 10-minute drive each way from house to hospital that night. I had gotten very little sleep since I was admitted Tuesday. I cried as soon as I walked in my front door though – apparently Bryan had given some of my friends the key to the house and they had come and cleaned up the mess from the baby shower and organized it into the baby’s room and they vacuumed and cleaned some other stuff. (It’s a good thing too because if I did it, everything would have been messed up and she would have to redo it all over anyway). I would have never asked them to do that – I was so grateful. So that was awesome. And can I just say that breastfeeding is so stressful! I won’t go into a lot of detail with that, (thank goodness) but it was even more so a stressor because he wasn’t pooping and they were really worried because he was really yellow and his levels of Billyrubin (sp?) were higher than normal which can really only be adjusted by pooping out his excess levels of red blood cells I guess. So they were constantly bugging me about it and we were spending tons of time trying to get it to work and Brock was doing really well but just not getting anything from me. So we continued to just do what you were supposed to do except we had a little itty-bitty feeding tube with formula we’d insert on the side, so he thought it was coming from me, so that we could get something in his stomach so he could poop dangit. After about 24 hrs of doing this formula thing he finally did so that was a big relief, and we only did it once or twice after that. My milk came in late Saturday night finally so that was good but definitely one of the more painful things I’ve experienced. We pumped and got like 4 ounces but there wasn’t much relief at all. Bryan used that to give him a bottle that night because we wanted to see how much he was eating and we hoped that I would be able to get some sleep that way. He drank 2 ounces one time and 1 ounce the other. Well on Sunday I was just dying. I pumped 10 ounces!!!!! I tell you that to try to give you some idea of just how much pain I was in. So anyway, it’s better now and continues to get better every day. Sunday and Monday was spent trying to get another IV site started on Brock, but they kept blowing his veins. All veins had been tried and Stokes came to us and said there were a few spots they could shave on his head and try but couldn’t guarantee those wouldn’t blow too. We opted to go for the shots instead. That night a nurse discussed us going home because Brock was so stable and was doing really well (which is awesome considering they were at first considering sending him to Okinawa to get the help that he needed), and without an IV site we could just come back twice a day for his antibiotic shots. So we were discharged Tuesday afternoon and I was happy but scared too. I got all emotional that night again – man and I thought I had gotten it all out of my system – they weren’t kidding when they say your hormones crash! It was not too fun in the hospital and let’s face it, our bed compared to theirs…..but at the same time it was sort of fun because we were so dang tired that we laughed at everything the other did. Oh I guess I should tell you that Brock weighed 7 lbs. 14 ounces and was 19 ½ in. long. (wow, talk about beating around the bush for a birth announcement). Glad I had him early!! So tonight we went for Brock’s last injection – and wow, it’s over I guess. Now we’re just learning how to handle being parents and I think we learn a lot every day – like how to change his diaper effectively without him peeing all over the place….
So it seemed to be one thing after the other and I’ve been emotional for sure, but not depressed – it’s fun and Brock is awesome and it gets easier every day. Bryan has been awesome – he helps with everything and has been so supportive. I don’t know how I could have done – or how I could do it without him. He was able to get out of the last days of his training class without it affecting him, got this whole week off as a type of “maternity” leave, and 3 days at the beginning of next week because of something he earned for his score for physical training in tech school, so none of this time off actually affects his leave. Then my mom will be here next Friday. My c-section hasn’t been bad at all – the first day was hard but it’s getting easier and easier and now barely inhibits me at all. The shelf down there is weird, and the jiggly skin (although not so jiggly anymore) literally looked like a bowl full of jelly when I laughed and me and Bryan would just watch it and laugh and laugh. My legs and feet remained swollen for some time and even my arms and hands so when they were trying to draw blood they couldn’t find my veins and kept poking me to no avail when normally you can very easily see my huge veins. Just when I thought I was going to be cursed with fat ankles forever, I woke up one day this week and had my legs back. To me they now look “storkish” and I swear they’re smaller than before – Bryan can touch his fingers together when he grips my ankle. I weighed myself when we got home from the hospital and already have lost over 20 pounds – holy cow. We’ve had dinners brought to us so far it’s great.
So this is my journal entry so I’ll remember this experience of mine for the rest of my life. Takes a lot of time to write this much. We love our little babes! Brock Taylor Blumenkrantz is here!
Julie and Bryan

Quite a few pics I've posted below, but the rest can be seen here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.c67go73s&x=0&y=-atx8hs&localeid=en_US
Just click on the link and then click on the picture to start the slideshow. There are some scary pics in there so beware...