On Wednesday morning I went to my 38 week checkup with my OB doctor, Dr Phung. He pronounced me 4.5cm dilated and added that he "stretched" it a bit so I may go into labor any time. In fact he gave me the option to go into the hospital that day and have the baby if I wanted to. He said he would break my water and I'd probably have the baby quickly. Being one who would rather avoid excessive medical involvement if possible, I decided I'd just hold off till the baby was ready to come out on her own. You take your time, Emma!
All day I felt backache and irregular contractions which I decided to ignore. No more false alarms, Emma! You got me once, you can't fool me twice! I took a long 40 min walk around the community in the afternoon. My contractions started getting a little more painful in the evening but still 10 min apart. So I went to bed early that night. We had Howard's mom come over and spend the night again, just in case. Woke up at 11pm, the contractions were getting painful enough to wake me up, but still 8 min apart. Drifted off to sleep again, and then 1:30am I woke up in real pain. But the contractions were still only 8 mins apart! I didn't want to wake Howard up without it being the real thing, so I walked around and labored for an hour until finally I had it. Time to go to the hospital!
They said i was 5-6 cm and we were in a labor and delivery room within 30 minutes. But my labor wasn't progressing, in fact they were down to every 10 minutes. To make matters worse I had to be hooked up to a monitor so I couldn't walk around and speed things up. We waited until 8:30am for my doc's shift to start - both of us took naps for a bit. Then at 8:45 the nurse, Jyll, a sweet and lively nurse said the doc ordered pitocin for me. I was 7cm dilated before I started pitocin. Within 10 minutes my water broke while I was talking to my parents. Then the contractions came fast and hard. Squeezing life out of Howard's hand. Pain. Urge to push. Call the doctor. Nurse telling me not to push, breathe, hee hee hoo hee hee hooheeeheehooheeheehoohehehoo Only 9 cm, don't push. I CAN'T! WHERE IS THE DOCTOR freakin doctors they always come in at the last possible second. Finally at 10am Dr Phung came in nurse says OK PUSH! and then that morning on March 10, 2011 at 10:08am Emma Grace Chang was born, 8 pounds 1 ounce, 20 inches long.
The minutes right after birth. The minutes after the immense and damn-near existential relief of 8+ pounds exiting your body, are always so overwhelming. The first time, I was filled with confusion. What is this. What just happened. Huh? This time, I'm still not really sure what I felt. Exhaustion. As the nurses took Emma over under the heat lamp bed to be measured, rubbed down, poked, prodded, printed, I laid there motionless, lifeless, trying to regain my consciousness. Then the tears came down my face as I realized what just happened. That little screaming, wiggling, chubby-cheeked creature was mine. I had just given birth to our second child.
We were led to our recovery room, where we spent the next 24 hours until we left the hospital. I remember clearly the first 24 hours after Avery's labor. I was unprepared to handle and completely overwhelmed by how physically handicapped I was. I needed help to get out of bed, go to the bathroom, change myself, and a list of other embarrassing things that you moms know. I was humiliated, tired, confused. This time, I expected all that, and my dear husband was there for every step just like he always has. Without the emotional drain, recovery was much more tolerable this time.
Emma just slept and woke up every 3 hours to feed that night. And just when we were wondering if she was getting anything at all, she took her first, second and third poops in a span of 15 minutes, burning through 3-4 diapers and startling a out-of-practice Daddy. She screams during diaper changes. Hates them like no other.
The next morning, our smallest visitor was the most important one. Big Sister Avery arrived! Along with Daisy Ama and Tonny Agong, Cindy, my parents, and my grandma! It was one crowded recovery room. At the suggestion of some wise friends, I carefully planned it so that the baby would be in the bin, and I would be waiting with open arms. When she saw me her eyes lit up and we snuggled. She brought me flowers! Balloons!
Then I asked her "Avery, where is Baby Emma?" which she always responds "in your tummy Mommy!" This time I showed her my tummy and said look! No baby! You want to find the baby? Her eyes lit up again "Ok!" Her eyes went to the baby in the bin. She looked over it, serious and contemplative for a while. Then she pointed at the green bulb syringe in the bin and said "Is that for her boogers?" Ah yes, quite a perceptive one. She has one too. Next question. "Can I give her the pacifier?"
The week before I gave birth she was still clingy and fussy around the grandparents. Then magically and with impeccable timing, as Emma happened to be born on the date that Cindy came back from San Francisco and Howard's dad came back from China, Avery switched to her normal happy self with her Auntie Cindy to play with and her Tonny Agong back. Thank goodness! The extra people allowed for Avery to stay with Howard's parents for a couple nights, then she came home the night we were home, then went and stayed the night at my parents house where she played with Auntie Cindy all day. After that she was shuttled back to Howard's parents house to hang out for a day and then dropped off at school in the morning. I can't describe how thankful we are to our great family and how appreciative I am of getting help when we need it the most.
We went home that Friday afternoon, and at night Howard's mom arrived with the best gift: a postpartum live-in nanny, who would stay with us for the next month and a half to help me take care of Emma as well as cook all the special diet foods that I need to eat. Liang ma ma has been doing this for around 8 years now, and she is a wonderful little lady, with two grown kids of her own (Cal grads) and two grandkids. She sleeps in Emma's room with her and when Emma wakes up to feed, she brings her to me. This way I can just sleep, feed, hand her off, go back to sleep. She brings me food. Last time after Avery's labor, I was so busy trying to do too many things that I really couldn't heal and ended up healing all wrong. My episiotomy wound was problematic for more than 2 months. This time, having learned the hard way, I really just let go and let Liang mama help me do everything with the baby. Yeah I had pangs of guilt about it, but it didn't last long. I've had lots of breastfeeding time to bond with Emma and I"m not worried about not having enough time to do that in the future. To be a mom is to understand the importance of a swift recovery.
Now we are in our third week postpartum, and I'm about 70% healed. There was a significant setback as I came down with some kind of mystery infection that gave me the worst case of chills and my fever climbed up to over 104 at times for the next 3 days. Motrin did not help to lower it. I went to see the doctor about it, who said it was not mastitis or UTI or anything he can see. Gave me a prescription for antibiotics, which took care of the chills but not the fever and I continued burn for another couple days. Doctor wanted me to go to the ER if fever persisted but I realized that the fever would go down when I sweat it out. So now I'm just sleeping on towels, waking up in a pool of my own sweat from the fever and also postpartum sweating. Lovely. Very lovely. Atleast I can sleep now. And atleast I feel much better. After 4 days, I think I'm going back to normal. Each day I may get a bout of fever which I can reduce by sweating. Its pretty weird. Anyways I'm still on the antibiotics. I have no idea if it even is an infection or I just got sick cuz I went out a week ago to Avery's preschool to see her perform. But whatever, the worst is over.
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2 comments:
YAY! :) Your girls are sooo beautiful. I can't wait to meet Emma!
:)
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