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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

1 year old!

Claire's birthday is today!  She is:

-Crawling
-Climbing onto anything she can, quite the climber
-Waves and says "hi"
-Says mama, dada
-Is sick on her birthday
-Takes 2 naps per day 2-3 hours per nap
-Wakes up at least once per night (being sick hasn't helped)
- Loves her siblings and all the attention she gets from them
-Her favorite thing is being outdoors
-She loves water = bath, pool, sink
-Loves to cuddle and be held


Claire's birth story:

I was scheduled to be induced with Claire on 8/27/2013.  We went into the hospital, checked in at 7am.  I was checked at the Dr. office a week before that and was di











lated 3 cm, so thought I'd go into labor before then, but I didn't.  Just lots of braxton hicks, or pre-labor contractions.  We went into the hospital nervous (b/c labor was impending) but excited.  Had my pillow to make things comfy and had the other 3 children watched by Grammy and Grampy.

From 7am-11am I was checked in, got a blood sample, IV started, got in a gown and then they hooked me up to an antibiotic.  I needed 2 rounds of the antibiotic which takes 3 or 4 hours per round.  So from 7-11am Rob and I just watched tv and hung out.

At about 11:30 am the nurse started me on pitocin.  She still didn't "check" my progress at all, which was fantastic for me.  They set it at the lowest setting and came to turn it up ever 30 minutes.  About noon they talked about getting me an epidural before the Dr. came to break my water.  I had requested this b/c last birth I progressed really fast after the water was broken and wanted an epidural, and was guessing I'd miss out if there was no epidural before the Dr. came.

Aboutr 12:30pm I got the epidural and was just starting to feel "uncomfortable" from the contractions.  One side wasn't as numb as the other, but not as bad as with Luke where one side could feel everything.  Epidural was relatively quick, but I was much more nervous during it b/c I wasn't in massive amounts of pain, so I was concerned about it, rather than just so relieved to get it.

At 1ish, the Dr. came in and broke my water.  She checked me before and I was already dilated 6cm, so I'm glad they hadn't checked me before she broke my water.  After she broke the water she said I was an 8.  She left the room and said she'd see me soon.

Within 10 minutes I felt like the epidural was broken and was in a lot of pain.  Nurse checked me and said I was a 10.  They set up for delivery and said I could start pushing.  We had called my mom at 1pm and told her that my water was broken and I was a 6 and she better head down quickly.  She walked into the room as I was pushing, 30 minutes from the phone call.

Claire was born a few minutes after my mom's arrival.  She was born at 1:45 pm , 8 lbs. even.

It was a very painful delivery despite the epidural, but I guess that's what happens when you go from no labor to baby delivered in 2 hours.  I honestly only felt like I was in labor from 12:30-1:45, so an hour fifteen minutes....fastest delivery of all 4.

Claire had fluid in her lungs and was purple with lower oxygen at birth.  Thankfully her nurse was so calm about it that I didn't know there was an issue.  I was able to hold her and do skin to skin and then they took her to clean her off and put her under an oxygen mask and rubbed her chest for quite awhile.  She was on oxygen for a good 30-45 minutes while I was being cleaned up and she was being cleaned up too.

Because of this I didn't hold her for about an hour, which seemed like quite awhile.  After a bit she would take the oxygen off and Claire's stats would drop but then with oxygen she went back to normal.  After that hour she was perfect.  For the next 2 days at the hospital it was rough with her coughing, spitting and choking on the extra fluid in her body (trying to get it all out). But, day by day she acted more and more like a normal newborn.  The first 2 days she acted the same as Luke had and I was so upset that I had another colicky/reflux baby to raise.  Thankfully she ended up with a milder case of reflux and no colic.

The hospital stay was nice besides the fluids in Claire.  Rob and I had a blast ordering food and also found out that we could get tiny Ben and Jerry's ice cream with my meal, so we'd order those too.  It was a great time to bond with JUST Claire, not the whole family.

I definitely also felt like relieved that this was the last baby and last hospital stay and last postpartum recovery I'd have to endure.

Now here we are a year later and I can't believe it flew by this quickly.

We were blessed with a sweetheart, Claire Olivia Douglas.

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