Luz Noemi is here! Born on Monday, April 7, 2008, at 5:37pm.
Here is her birth story, which I am cutting and pasting from a letter to a friend, because I don’t have time to write it all out again.
My water broke at 12:30pm on Monday, at home. I called my dad and Adrian– and of course, got both their voicemails!! Called the midwives, called my mom, called a couple of friends, kept trying Adrian…… finally, my mom got in touch with my dad and she let me know he was on his way here, and I got through to Adrian and told him to come home. A friend came over to watch the kids, my dad took me to the hospital, and I called Adrian and told him to meet us at the hospital. As fate would have it, I saw Adrian right up ahead of us on the way to the hospital, and we honked and waved as we passed him. He stayed behind us the rest of the way, and then when we drove up to the entrance, there was my mom driving up from another direction, so we all got there at exactly the same time.
The midwife did a sonogram to see whether Luz was head-down, and of course she wasn’t. She was oblique, and they tried to turn her but couldn’t. I wasn’t dilated at all, and I had lost most of my water. They had me lie on my side and labor for a while to see if gravity would help her get into position. I was having contractions, and I felt them getting more intense, but they weren’t productive. My midwife did another internal exam, and my cervix was still high, tight, and hard, and Luz was still high up. While she was feeling my cervix, the nurse was pushing down on my uterus so the midwife could feel Luz’s position. All of a sudden the midwife said, “Stop! Stop! I feel an elbow!”
Of course, from that point we knew it would be a C-section. I started crying. I was terrified of being cut open, of the anesthesia, of something going wrong. But the doctors were really fantastic. The anesthesiologists came in and talked to me, told me how the procedure would go and everything I could expect to feel. I had to sign some papers, I was shaved, and then I was wheeled into the OR. They gave me a spinal and prepped me– I don’t even remember exactly what they did, it was kind of surreal. Once I was lying on the table, all prepped, with a curtain up by my chest, Adrian was able to come in. He sat by my head and held my hand. The anesthesiologists kept talking and joking the whole time to keep me calm. I really cannot emphasize enough how great they were. Once everything was underway, I was okay. I couldn’t stop shaking– nerves and hormones, I guess, and maybe the drugs, too. But I was actually able to talk and joke around while my belly was cut open!
Luz was born at 5:37pm. 7lbs9oz, the exact same weight Zekey was at birth. Yep, the “gigantic” diabetes baby with risk of shoulder dystocia turned out to be a perfectly normal size. We stayed in the hospital till Thursday. We are all doing well. I am exhausted, of course, and every muscle in my body aches. The muscle aches are actually much worse than any pain from the incision. Luz is nursing great, and stopped losing weight before we left the hospital. We have a weight check tomorrow; I can’t wait to see how big she is. She looks like she’s plumped up a bit. Her latch was a bit off at first, which made for some excruciating pain for a couple of days whenever she nursed on the left side, not to mention a plugged duct before I was even wearing a bra. But that seems to be getting much better. And I hate to keep mentioning this to people for fear of jinxing anything, but she seems to be a good sleeper so far. Actually, so far she is just a really good baby generally. She lies awake sometimes, contentedly looking around. She is very alert. She seems to have her days and nights straight already. I am so grateful.
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I will also add that the kids are adjusting very well. Llani is a little mama, wanting to hold her baby sister all the time. She sings to her and has a knack for keeping her calm. Zeke is not as enthusiastic but still sweet and loving. They are both doing okay with having much less of my attention. Zeke does get jealous when Adrian holds Luz, though.
Adrian has been a mad cleaning fiend, and I think the house has never been this spotless. I don’t know what I would do without him. I just hope he is getting enough rest; I’m waiting for the exhaustion to hit him.
He goes back to work on Tuesday, and I am sort of worried about how I will cope without him here. I am going to have friends visit for a couple hours each day to spend time with my big kids so I can nap or shower or whatever. Every day I am feeling more and more human, so hopefully daily life will continue to get easier and next week won’t be so bad. We are skipping speech on Tuesday because it’s just too much for me to handle, and my dad will take Zeke to speech on Thursday while Llani, Luz, and I stay home.
I can’t wait till life gets back to normal and we can all get out and about together.
