Little Miss Alice

I’m pretty sure Drew’s birth story never did make it to print because I was drowning in the transition to two kids. I can already tell this transition is going to be much easier! And even easier than transitioning from zero to one. I’ve learned at least a couple things in my five years of parenting, and I feel a big difference this time around in my level of ease and confidence knowing certain things and being able to just do them instead of constantly learning and googling. And not getting stressed out when the baby is crying (or the baby and the toddler and the 5 year old all at once). And let’s face it, my parenting standards are lower and I’ve taken dozens of chill pills.

Anyway, on to birthing! The few weeks leading up to Alice’s birth were pretty stressful. I had a lot that I just really wanted to have “in order” before she got here, and didn’t feel ready or like I’d prepared at all, so the weeks and days leading up I was just go, go, going. Finally about a few days before she got here, I still didn’t have all my boxes checked, but I felt good enough, like if she came now I wouldn’t freak out that nothing was ready. Tanner and I spent a lot of time in those days nailing down a couple of solid boys names. We had picked out Alice Dakota pretty much before she was even conceived, but since we didn’t know the gender yet, we wanted to have a boys name ready. She was born on a Monday two days before my due date. That morning I’d seen my midwife Katie (there’s a group of three of them I see) and she’d checked me at a three. It was a rainy day, very warm for February, and after my appointment I took Drew and Camryn to English Landing park to let them puddle jump. I started having very mild contractions about 1 p.m. when we got home and right around when I put Drew down for his nap. I wasn’t sure what to think of them because I’d never had contractions this mild before. With the other two, my contractions kind of started with a bang and didn’t mess around, so I wasn’t sure if these ones were the real deal or not. I totally see the appeal in having a scheduled induction and having the baby’s birthday already scheduled and written on your calendar, but there is just something really exciting about not knowing when it’s going to happen and then realizing, it’s today! I decided to pack my hospital bag (ya… hadn’t checked that box yet…)  and I just kind of anxiously fretted around the house for a couple hours while my very mild contractions kept coming and I wondered if this was it. By four, I’d decided it was  (Yay! The baby’s coming!!) and called Tanner and my friend Becca to come watch our kids for the night– my mom & mother in law were both planning to come help, but I’d opted to schedule their visits for later since drew had come 8 days late and I wanted to make sure I had a baby by the time they got here. Tanner ironically happened to be doing his OB/GYN rotation at the hospital I delivered at, so he was already where I needed to be! He came home and drove me to the hospital during rush hour while I scarfed down some triscuits & cheese, energy balls, and mango tango juice (the pre-labor snack food of champions).

By this point, my contractions were about 10 minutes apart and getting pretty intense. Everything was feeling really similar to Drew’s labor and I was confident I was progressing and was only a few hours away from meeting my baby. After checking in at about 5:00 p.m. (oops, also hadn’t gotten around to pre-registering. You’d think being a more experienced mom would make one more prepared, but for me it’s fostered an attitude of “eh, it’ll be fine”) they took me back to triage, took my vitals, checked me- dialated to a 5- and then made me sit in bed and hooked me up to the continuous fetal monitoring machine. All the eye rolls in the world for the continuous fetal monitoring machine. That thing is the most worthless peice of expensive pointless medical nonsense ever. I cannot express enough disdain for the practice of hooking laboring women up to this thing. Giving birth with the midwives, they are very open to letting you walk around, move freely however you want, take a bath, labor on the birthing ball, eat & drink, etc. But there’s no way around the hospital protocol that says they need 30 minutes of continuous fetal monitoring. Boo. I was pretty annoyed, and increasingly annoyed as 30 minutes turned into 2 hours because “we’re not getting a good reading” or “registering your contractions.” Oh, that’s because I’m not having any anymore because I’m laying on my back strapped to a hospital bed. The same thing happened with Drew. The minute I was laying down, I didn’t have another contraction for 25 minutes and they stayed infrequent. I knew if they checked me again and I wasn’t progressing sufficiently according to their definitions, I would get sent home, so I finally begged off the machine and started walking laps around the labor and delivery floor with Tanner. He knew a lot of the staff from working there all month so everyone was saying hi to him. It was February 20th, (the day before my birthday) so we kept wondering, “is this baby going to show up before or after midnight?” I was rooting for before. Ya, it would be kind of special and cool to share a birthday with the baby, but I wanted my own! As soon as I was walking, the contractions picked up quickly and were getting to be long and difficult.  I remember stopping to hold on to the rails on the side of the hallways or sit on a bench to breathe through them. Pretty quickly, we went back to the triage room and the OB came to check me again (time around 8:15?) and I was dialated to an 8. She said “ok, let’s get you checked in and I’ll call Shelia” Shelia was the midwife who was on call that night and the one who had delivered Drew. They don’t call them in until they’re sure you are in active labor, but by this point I was ready to go! I told them to tell Shelia to HURRY or she was going to miss the birth because this baby was coming SOON!

And I was right. I don’t remember getting from triage to the delivery room, I very vaguely remember bawling waiting for Shelia to get there. She took about 25 minutes, and the second she walked in the door I said OK, you’re just in time, let’s do this! And I started pushing. That part took about twenty minutes (Tanner said, but it felt like ten). And it was completely awesome. I had delivered Drew naturally too, and there was no question at all for me that I would do it again (barring a medical emergency of course). Some people will never understand the “why” behind that, but that’s ok. It is the single most empowering, exciting, joyful thing I’ve ever done. There really are no words. The reward of the pain was a little life outside of me. A body all on its own that before had only existed inside of me. A tiny, fragile, brand new body, spirit, and soul. This crazy impossible creation of woman, man, and God, cells, water, nutrients, breath–a human being with eyes, nose, mouth and limbs. Life! Life is incredible!

I couldn’t have asked for anything to go better. It was painful, but short and sweet. I felt very in control, very aware. And I was so happy when that girl came out. The umbilical cord was covering her gender, but Tanner thought he saw hints that it was a boy. He said “Oh man, I think we have a boy!” But I knew. I just knew. Before I’d seen proof, I said “No, it’s a girl!” as I pulled the umbilical cord away.

I was right. It’s a girl! Little baby Alice Dakota Staples. 7 lbs. 11 oz. Born 9:08 p.m.

The next day Tanner brought Camryn and Drew to meet her. They stopped at Costco on the way and showed up with a beautiful bouquet of pink roses that Camryn picked out for me for my birthday and a blanket and stuff animal for Alice for hers. It was so so fun having them meet the baby! Camryn is already the greatest big sister. Drew is mildly and occasionally interested at best, but totally ambivalent most of the time. I’m kicking myself hard for not getting a family photo with all of us–we still don’t have a single photo of all five of us! Tanner was present, I promise.

Later that night when she was not even one full day old, after Tanner had gone home with the kids and I was eating dinner, a nurse practitioner came in to deliver some bad news. Alice had been grunting earlier during feedings, kind of just like she needed to poop or something. It seemed like nothing and they thought she probably just still had a little bit of fluid in her lungs but they decided to do a chest x-ray and some blood work. By this time, she had stopped grunting long ago. I was holding a perfectly happy healthy seeming baby, thrilled at how well my labor and delivery had gone, with how well she was nursing and how lucky I was to have this beautiful baby. The nurse practitioner was there to tell me that her blood work was abnormal. Very abnormal. It took me a really long time to figure out what she was saying and that it was bad. Her tone of voice wasn’t particularly alarming, so I just kind of kept asking “oh ok, so what does that mean?” She was giving me stats and numbers, telling me what her white blood cell count and others things were relative to what was normal. But me, not speaking medical, didn’t really get it until she said they wanted to take her–right now– and give her a spinal tap, send her to the NICU, start her on antibiotics and keep her there for at least a week. I was completely shocked. Basically (according to my non-medical personnel interpretation), her blood work & white blood cell count had given us a heads up that her body was gearing up to fight a very serious infection that her body wasn’t yet showing physical symptoms of. They needed me to sign a consent form for the spinal tap (so they could make sure it was just in her blood and not her spine too) and wanted to take her right away. I tried calling Tanner a few times and he didn’t pick up. I felt really helpless, like they wanted to take my perfectly healthy baby for scary and unnecessary medical interventions to treat something that I wasn’t educated enough about to really understand what was going on–not to the fault of the nurse practitoner–I asked a lot of questions and she explained everything, but I’m not a doctor. In the end I basically said “Ok, you’re the medical professional and know more than I do. Do what you have to do and please take good care of my baby.”

I couldn’t go with them and was pretty distraught when they left. I was sitting there alone eating my birthday cake wishing we didn’t live 1000 miles from family so that Tanner would have been there with me. A really lovely kind nurse came in and listened to me cry about what had just happened, and soon I was able to get ahold of Tanner and have him come down to the hospital for a few hours.

I’d made the right decision and it turned out Alice had Group Strep B. That thing they test you for at 36 weeks pregnant that I’d tested negative for, but must have gotten before delivering. Next thing you know we were looking at a ten day NICU stay so she could have a course of antibiotics. My mother booked a flight and whisked in to save the day. I don’t know what we would have done without her (Thank you Nanna!!) Because she was home with my two older kids, I was able to stay at the hospital during the whole NICU stay to be with Alice and feed her every three hours.

Every doctor I saw over the next week would tell me what a miracle it was that she was okay. They’d say it was absolutely crazy that we caught it when we did. The initial blood work they’d done had come back just slightly abnormal-barely barely off enough that they decided to go ahead and test it again, and that’s when the numbers came back off the charts. They told us her blood culture grew really fast, meaning that she had a large amount of bacteria in her blood and would have gotten really sick really fast. Babies can die from this infection and routinely did so ten years ago. I’d get so overwhelmed with gratitude that our little girl was okay. Natural birthing with midwives in a hospital setting with access to doctors, emergency care, and a NICU is definitely my preferred birthing experience! Highly recommend it.

my mom

I could only feel bad for myself for not having any family close for about two seconds, because my list of people here in Kansas City who have my back and who I can call on for help is long. Much longer than I’d realized. Friends have brought meals, brought me huge bags of amazing snacks to the hospital, kept me company in the hospital, sent flowers and gifts for me and Alice and my other kids, taken the older ones so I can rest, driven Camryn to preschool and dance, helped me with bedtime, taken my dog for a couple weeks, cleaned my house, taken newborn photos for me, called, texted. YOU, my people, are awesome people, and I really appreciate having you around.

I’m going to be really honest, the extended hospital stay was kind of a dream come true. I feel terrible saying that because my daughter was in intensive care, but once she was on the antibiotics, we knew she was going to be fine, so the worry was gone and instead of returning to a chaotic household after 48 hours where I’d have a house and two other kids to take care of, I got to heal and rest for eleven days in a quiet empty hospital room. Really really quiet. The kind of quiet that got really old and lonely fast when I had only one baby, but now that I have three–being alone in a quiet space is rare and so good. I got to nap as much as needed, have nurses take care of my baby whenever I needed more sleep, and I had cafeteria vouchers for most of my meals. Some really good friends came to hang out with me, and I read the better part of two books and a National Geographic from cover to cover. I also, of course, fed Alice all day and had looooong long cuddle sessions with her.

Here are some notes I took of the next few days:
Day 11 We came home! Camryn just about died of excitement when I got in the car with Alice. “Mom!! There are FIVE people in our car!! You and dad and Alice and me and Drew! Our whole family!” And halfway home I looked back and Drew had reached his little hand around his car seat to hold Alice’s hand, and my mom heart just about exploded into a million pieces.

Drew: “I wanna feed baby Alice!”

Day 12 was my first day spent solo with all three kids and it went AMAZING. I felt great, like I’ve totally got this. #likeamomboss was going through my head all day. I got Camryn dropped off and picked up from dance on time, and went to the grocery store in between with Drew and Alice (who slept the whole time). The kids played outside the rest of the day, I ate a salad, no one watched any T.V. I’m telling you people, #likeamomboss.  And then. . .

Day 13 Sunday- got hit hard by mastitis. Couldn’t even get out of bed all day. You win some, you lose some. Fever, chills, body aches–mastitis is really painful. Every woman who I was texting that day who had had mastitis before felt really bad for me and said something like “oh my gosh mastitis is the absolute worst thing ever” and they were right. It is. That is the day I texted all the people who had offered to help if I needed it and told them I needed it. This is something I’ve gotten better at in life and I feel like it’s a valuable life skill. The help I got over the next few days was such a relief!
Day 14 Tornado warnings. Down to the cellar with all 3 kids which can be accessed only from the backyard, not the house, so I dragged my sick body out of bed with all 3 kids out into a torrential downpour, down into the gross spidery basement while the deafening siren was blaring (it’s right by our house) and scaring poor Drew to death. We were soaked from the 20 seconds we were outside. I get mixed information from Missourians about whether or not this is necessary. Is this necessary?? Because it’s the worst, but if my house gets hit by a tornado I don’t want to die. This is Camryn being a totally sweet sister and comforting Drew.

Day 15-16 the day and the night and the day that there was no sleep and they were as if it were one day. She wanted to nurse non-stop from midnight-8 a.m. and didn’t sleep for longer than a ten minute stretch that whole time I swear. She’s never done that before (or since thank heavens) and it was a low low blow.

Day 16  As Tanner and I are completely zombied out on the couch at the end of the night I turned to Tanner and said “I forgot to brush my teeth today.” He patted me on the knee and said “you’ll get there.”

And I will. I will get there. 

Now it’s day 38 and this blog post has progressed at the rate of one sentence per day, and I’m fairly certain I brushed my teeth this morning. My recovery has been awesome– way better than my first two– and I feel pretty much totally back to normal. Alice is such a lovely baby. We are so blessed and so grateful to have her here safe and sound!