Monday, December 13, 2010

Much needed post!!

Wow!! So sorry to keep everyone hanging like that :).

As most people I'm sure know...Alysha Renae Honeycutt was FINALLY born on October 20, 2010 at 2:58 p.m. As follows next is her birth story, if you don't care to hear details like blood and vomit please skip ahead :).

I went into the dr's office the night before to get the labor process started. They inserted a catheter between my cervix and her head and inflated it to put pressure and make me dilate faster. I had been at 2 cm for about 3 weeks by this point. And then they sent me home. I could hardly walk and all I did was cry for about 3 hours. I finally got into a comfortable enough position on our pull out bed to lay without tears for a little bit. When I would get up blood would start pouring and it freaked me out a bit, but once we called the on-call doctor and he said it was normal with the balloons I calmed down a bit. I got to sleep at about 1:30AM and my alarm went off at 4:30. We ate a bit of breakfast and called the hospital at 5 to let them know we were on our way to make our 5:30 appointment. They told us to wait an hour cuz there had been a few unexpected births overnight and they didn't have my room ready yet. So sadly I sat uncomfortably on the couch again for another hour. Finally at 6 we headed for the hospital getting there around 6:20 a.m. We got all checked into the hospital and they started an IV and set up the monitors on my stomach. Little Alysha didn't like being monitored so she kept kicking the monitor off of her. The nurse was getting frustrated cuz it looked like I wasn't having contractions on paper, but she could tell I was having them every three minutes by the look on my face. So finally at about 9 my doctor came to check how far I was progressing and she took the balloon out. I was at 5 1/2 cm so she decided to break my water and get the guy to give me an epidural. Thank heavens! Cuz when she broke my water I thought I might die! The contractions were escalated by about 100%. They were coming about every minute. The nurse had Loren pushing against my knees to push my hips into the bed and take the pressure off my back. The guy came into the room and had me roll on my side and inserted the needle for my epidural. It stung pretty bad, but once the medicine was in effect I was doing great! Loren would look at the internal monitor they'd inserted and tell me when I was having a contraction and I'd just smile and say...ok. I couldn't feel a thing. It was the best! But the epidural messed with my stomach and I started getting super nauseous! All of a sudden I was leaning my head over the side of the bed and throwing up all over the floor. And myself. Without being able to move my legs I couldn't turn myself over so I ended up getting puke all over the bed, my nightgown, my hair, and the floor. The nurse was very sweet about it. Loren helped me into a clean gown and they changed my sheets and got a cleaning lady to mop the floor. I feel humiliated, but they just gave me some anti-nausea medicine through my IV and I promptly fell asleep. I mean, I was OUT. I would wake up every once in a while cuz I was shaking so badly. So I thought I was cold and pretty soon I had 5 heated blankets piled up on me. The nurse then realized that I wasn't shivering, my body's natural response to pain is to shake all over. So they stopped giving me blankets. So while I slept for 3 hours, Loren spent his time walking between me and his parents who were out in the waiting area with his sister. Finally the woke me up at one to check me and decided that I was fully dilated and ready to push. However my doctor was just about to go into surgery with another patient! So they had me do a "test push" to see how fast this was going to go. The nurse had me push while she looked, then yelled stop stop! Turns out it was going to go faster than they'd thought, so I was going to need to wait for the doctor to get out of surgery. Within the next five minutes though they decided that I was going to go fast enough for the doctor to be there before she went into surgery. So after effectively pushing for an hour...Alysha Renae Honeycutt was brought into the world! Very quietly. I was super worried at first cuz she wasn't screaming!! But after they laid her on my chest and Loren cuz the cord she got flicked a couple times and started crying. She was weighed in at 8 lbs 7 oz. And she was 21 1/2 inch long. Much bigger than the doctor had thought. She had dark dark black hair. And she spent the next 5 hours crying. My parents and brother and Loren's parents and one sister were allowed in right after I got cleaned up and stitched a little. They oohed and aahed for about an hour and then Loren and I were left alone to be with our little bundle :). She didn't really catch on to eating and the nurses were a little frustrated cuz by 9 p.m. she still hadn't pooped. But she figured it out soon enough and the next day we were ready to be headed home at about lunchtime. The next few days were really hard cuz she decided to stop eating altogether. We tried everything, but it took her about 4 days to decide that she wanted food! She slept a ton!! Which was great for me. After those first 5 hrs of her screaming nonstop, I have to admit I was super worried about how she was going to be at home. But I have to say that she does not cry hardly at all! She's rather good about putting herself to sleep and she lets us know when she's hungry, but it's usually through grunting and rustling around, not crying. She loves her binky and bathtime. Although she hates to be naked! If she's not in the bath she needs clothes on and a blanket tightly wrapped. She had her first trip over Thanksgiving and did perfectly in the car! She loves a bottle and she loves her Granny and Grandpa Howell! She got a little tired of being passed around over the holidays, but seemed pretty happy with my Aunt MaryAnn, and Loren's sister Marlene. She had a bit of constipation issues, but resolved those after a warm bath at the hotel in Mt. Pleasant. (Sorry laundry staff!!) Overall she's a very happy, healthy, well-adjusted to earth baby :). We love her so so much and can't wait to not only spend our first Christmas together in a couple weeks, but get to share it with her as well! :)