Abigail: 2 weeks later
Posted on December 29th, 2008 by Ben
Abigail just had her two week check-up. Here is a quick overview of her stats.
Weight: 7 lbs 6 oz. That’s up 8 oz from her birth weight, and probably about a pound from when we left the hospital (like most babies, she lost some weight in the hospital after birth — we never got a final figure, but when they first measured her again she was down to 6 lbs 10 oz).
Length: 20 inches. There’s an inch for you since birth.
She is doing very well. The only real down-side to the appointment is that it seems Abby has colic. She tends to get fussy at night for a few hours, crying and whining a lot and not much we do seems to console her. Laura was originally thinking that Abby didn’t like Laura eating chocolate and that she was going to have to stop until Abby is done breastfeeding. But once the doctor said colic, it seemed to explain everything. So, Laura is back to eating chocolate again (though sparingly). Which is nice, because now I can eat chocolate myself without her moping about it.
And what good would an update be without a new picture! Here’s one from the day before her check-up.
Abigail is Here!
Posted on December 27th, 2008 by Laura
Abigail Diane (pronounced Deon) Loveridge was born on December 15, 2008. She’s beautiful and we are just loving having her in our family.
Here’s the story of her birth.
At around 7 in the morning, I rolled over and had a pretty strong contraction. I thought I had just rolled over too quickly and got hurt like I had so many times before. But soon after, I had another contraction. I decided to look at the clock and it was 7:21. So, I tried to sleep and managed to until 7:28 when I had another pretty powerful contraction. I decided to time one more before I woke Ben up and I had another one 7 minutes later. I tapped Ben on his chest and said, “I don’t think I’d go into work if I were you. I’m having pretty good labor contractions every 7 minutes.” He asked if I was sure and I said I was.
So, we showered and started getting the rest of our hospital bag together. I was going to try to french braid my hair to get it out of the way, but as I was going to do it, my contractions were getting fairly painful and rather close together. Ben had called my mom and told her that I was pretty sure there was a baby coming that day. So, she was going to get ready to come down in a few hours or so.
In the meantime, Ben and I had gotten Thomas up, changed his diaper, and finished packing the bag. It was around 8:30 am. I was getting contractions pretty close together at this point, like every 3 minutes or so. I had to stop periodically because they were getting more and more intense. Ben called his mom to come over and watch Thomas so we could go to the hospital. While we were waiting, I mostly finished getting ready and Ben got the car packed. At one point, I got on my computer to tell some people that I was heading to the hospital and had to get back off before I could because I was having a contraction and I felt like I needed to push.
I was starting to get a little nervous at that point. So, at 9:15 or so, Ben’s mom finally comes in the door. I had just had a contraction that was pretty bad and had scared Thomas. He doesn’t like it at all when I’m in pain or sad and he kept saying, “Mommy!” and crying. It was so sad. I had Ben get my socks and shoes and we left quickly. Once we were in the car, my contractions were one minute apart and painful! I screamed and Ben drove, almost knocking into people in his rush to get me to the hospital. Luckily, we only live about 2 miles from our hospital because we got there within 5 minutes of leaving home.
Ben pulled up to the main entrance and we saw that the driver isn’t supposed to leave the car. We knew there was no way that was going to happen, so we left the car there and expected our car to get towed. People were looking at me as we went into the lobby because I was screaming and moaning. People kept offering me wheelchairs, but I refused them because sitting made things worse.
While we were riding the elevator, I got a small respite from the pain, but it came back as soon as we got off. We called the nurses and they opened the doors. No one was there at the desk. Not a soul. I had another great contraction and I started screaming. 3 nurses came running down the hall. I screamed, “I need an epidural! I feel like I need to push!” One of the nurses said, “I don’t know if we’ll be able to get the epidural in time because it sounds like you need to push!” They offered me another wheelchair, which I refused and we hobbled to a room. I struggled onto a bed and at this point, there were about 5 or 6 nurses in my room.
They ripped my pants off, but didn’t have time to do my shirt. It was about 9:22 when the checked and found that I was at an 8. At that point, I said, “My water hasn’t broken yet.” As soon as I did, I got a good contraction and I just had to push, which broke my water. I went from an 8 to a 10 instantly. All this time, I’m screaming my guts out because it hurt so dang bad and also because I wanted an epidural. The nurses put a badly done IV in my hand to start getting it ready. It’s my fault it was badly done. I couldn’t hold still long enough for them to do a good job. So, a doctor who I don’t even know came in and introduced himself. I didn’t really care who he was at that point.
The nurses were trying to get me to calm down. I asked again for the epidural and one of the nurses said, “Honey, we’re trying, but one way or another, in 20 minutes you’re going to feel much better.” All of this happened very quickly, you must understand. At one point I screamed that I was going to die and another I yelled to “Get this thing out of me!” Ben almost laughed out loud at some points because it was just so abnormal for me to be screaming so loudly and to be in so much pain that he found it rather humorous.
So, after a few minutes, they told me to push. I just have to say, that was the most painful thing in the world, but there was nothing else I could have done. I pushed 3 times, and my little girl was out. I can’t say that I was thrilled because I was still in way too much pain for anything. My head was pounding and I was terribly sore and still contracting a bit. In any case, total time from getting to the hospital to delivery: 8 minutes. Total labor: 2 to 2 1/2 hours. And Abigail’s stats: weight-6 lbs 14 oz, length 19 inches, hair color-strawberry blonde, eye color-blue.
I was a bit upset that I had to go natural because I honestly couldn’t enjoy her birth as much as I wanted to. I didn’t even get to hold her until I was in my room because I couldn’t deal with the amount of pain I was under. My doctor came in 4 minutes after Abby was born and thanked me for getting to the hospital.
When I got back to my room, my mom and Lisa showed up because Ben had called them to say that we had a baby girl. Everyone was shocked at how fast it happened. So was I, as a matter of fact! Ben came back with Abby (still nameless at that point) and I finally got to nurse her. It was about 2 hours after she had been born, but she latched on fine and everything has been great since.
So, that’s my story. I never wanted to have a natural birth, but I got one. I’m glad I can say that I did it and I’m actually very proud of myself. I will never do it again if I can avoid it, though. True, the recovery has been much better than it was with the epidural, but everything else was so terrible, it’s just not worth it.
We were going to stay the full 2 days at the hospital, but I was sleeping terribly and Abby was doing so well, we decided there was really no reason to stay.
Oh, and another thing, I had to have my IV in until around 5:30 at night because I was bleeding pretty heavily. Remember how I said it was a badly done IV? Well, I have a nice, big, nasty bruise from it now. It was a long day full of a lot of pain. The IV had pitocin in it so that I would cramp more, which made everything very uncomfortable.
So, we’re all doing well, considering the whirlwind delivery. I was famous at the hospital for being the mom that almost gave birth in the car. Speaking of which, it was still there when Ben went down to get our bag.
