Alana's Here!

Miss Alana Ruth joined our family a few days ago and we couldn’t be more happy! She is a perfect little angel and I feel like everything about my pregnancy with her and her delivery were completely different than how things went with Brett. With Brett I had contractions every night for a week that kept getting increasingly worse. With Alana I had been feeling some crazy weird pressure and pain, but I was never really sure if they were contractions or not. I went to the doctor and found out I was dilated to a 3 and 50% effaced. I was pretty excited and surprised by that news considering I wasn’t even really sure if the pains I had been having were contractions or not. They really did just feel so completely different than with Brett. By Friday I was starting to feel more like I might have her soon. Mom P. was planning to come stay with me starting Sunday, but they ended up coming up on Friday night instead. It was a fun weekend and although I came pretty close to going to the hospital on Friday night, things calmed down and I felt pretty good all week.

It was so nice to have Mom P there to help with Brett and meals and everything. It was also wonderful to have her comfort and support since Sean was so so busy with his first week of general surgery (if we weren’t convinced before that surgery isn’t for him we sure are now!) I had another appointment on Tuesday and nothing had changed which was a little discouraging. My doctor told me that I could come to the hospital on Wednesday night if I was having any contractions and she would probably just induce me since she was on call. It just didn’t feel right on Wednesday though. She also mentioned that I could come to the clinic on Friday to be checked again if I wanted. I didn’t feel right about going on Wednesday, but felt like Friday would be a good day to at least go in so I didn’t wonder over the whole weekend. On Thursday night I felt like it was a good possibility that I would have a baby the next day so I made sure I got to tuck Brett in and read lots of stories and sang lots of songs. Then I went and cried because its hard to let go of being a mom to one! Thinking of having a newborn also made me realize again how big my little boy is getting which I love, but its still hard to see them grow. Sean and I talked a lot about all my fear and apprehensions about having a new baby and my fears for her safety during birth etc. I asked him for a blessing and we decided to postpone it till the next morning since Sean was feeling a little fuzzy from exhaustion. It was nice too because Sean didn’t have to be at the hospital till 6 as opposed to the 5AM call he’d been doing all week. He woke me at 5:30 and gave me the most wonderful blessing. It was so clear that the entire blessing was directly from Heavenly Father. Sean went off to work and I stayed home and recorded some feelings about the blessing. Sean kept some pretty clear notes on what happened from here on so I am just going to copy those in and I’ll add some pictures too.

Alana's birth

Day 1

5:30AM Sean gives Jennie a blessing. It doesn't focus much on the delivery, rather on the special daughter that we are going to raise.

8:20 Jen arrives in clinic, was told she was dilated to 5cm 80% effaced -1 station, set up on monitor for 40 minutes which tell us she is having contractions even though she doesn’t really feel them. Sean arrives at 9:50 windswept and chilly from the unusually brisk day

11:00 We show up to hospital after driving around looking for parking for 10-15 minutes, busy day at the hospital! Then up to triage. We have admit orders but labor and delivery is full so we chill for an hour and a half

12:50pm We decide to walk around the 1st floor lobby. Jennie eats a delicious blueberry muffin and Sean has some hot cocoa. We head back to triage, wait a bit more (30 min), then finally get to go to the floor, room 12. A wonderful nurse takes good care of us. Contractions looks much more regular and impressive now. 

3:00 Amniotomy (breaking water)? Nope, Alana has her hand in the way, so we start pitocin. We have lots of good chats with the nurse about church and family while she titrates up the dose. Jennie gets lightheaded after the epidural, but sitting her up fixes her right away. 

6:30 Dr. on call comes in and says he thinks Jennie is still at 6-7 and is too high for amniotomy. He jokes that we'll need to break the tie (with another kiddo). "Always looking to get more business." Also says he'll be on call Sunday if we're still around. 

9:15 We meet our night nurse and new doctor on call, says she's still at 6-7 and -1, breaks her waters. Mom P. has come now that Brett is down for the night.

10:00 Really painful contractions(why does anyone do this without medication!?) - we got behind with the button on the epidural, so we help Jennie through the pain and Mom makes sure to hit the button like clockwork every 10 minutes.

10:30 The contractions are not nearly so painful now, and Jennie is starting to feel pressure. We sleep for a little bit since the epidural is working much better now

Day 2

12:15am We're ready to have a baby! The staff are in a flurry readying the instruments and getting gloves on. Jennie pushes once and Alana instantly crowns. She doesn't even have to push again; Alana slides on out after the doctor fixes the cord which was wrapped around Alana’s neck twice. Dr. places her on Jennie and Sean cuts the cord. The nurses take over a minute later because Alana hasn't cried out.

For the next hour or so the nurses put Alana on blow-by oxygen via a mask an inch or two in front of her face, occasionally suctioning her mouth but not really getting much mucus. Alana doesn't make a peep - she makes a couple of small cries but stays mostly quiet during this whole time. Mom P takes lots of pictures and video footage and shuttles the results back to Jennie so she can see what is going on and what Alana looks like. Sean stays by Alana, who is rooting around constantly looking for some sustenance.

Eventually they decide she can go skin-to-skin with Jennie, although still with the oxygen on. As soon as Alana is placed, she takes a fantastic latch and horks down her first meal like a pro; not only that, but her oxygen saturation improves. By the time the NICU nurse is consulted and comes by, Alana is solid and doesn't need any more oxygen monitoring. Mom P heads home. Nurse gives Alana her Vitamin K shot and Alana still finds no reason to cry.

3:30 We arrive in the Newborn Care Unit in room 628; they have taken care to find us a room where Sean can sleep on a couch. We were anticipating having to double up, which would have meant that Sean would have had to go home for the night, but it turns out there is a complete room open to us. There's not much sleep to be had, though - they educate us for 45 minutes on new baby care and the particulars about the unit, etc. Jennie sings Alana to sleep with the help of a pacifier.

6:30 Alana gets her first bath, in the nursery. Jennie wanted to come but was still feeling a bit shaky, so just Sean went and got some footage. Alana continues to be completely calm and composed with hardly a sound.

7:45 Pediatrician comes to give Alana her first full physical exam. We get some more instructions, get some breakfast, and proceed to have a very pleasant day!

Brett and his Papa and Mimi P come to visit in the morning. Brett is feeling free-floating and thrilled to be taking care of his grandparents; he is very understanding when he can't go upstairs to meet Alana yet because of the flu season restrictions, so Sean shows him the footage and pictures of her so far. He learns that when Alana was born, she needed "Help, please!" and the "nurses said, 'Okay! I'll help you!'" and "Lana's all better now." He emphasizes in each picture, "Lana happy!"

Our nurse for the day was a long-time nurse at Presbyterian with a heart of gold; she addresses everyone as "sweetheart" and has a compliment with every breath. She helped us get a new room when we had to double up in the morning. We could tell she liked us quite a lot and took extra effort to make us comfortable. She even let Sean take out Jennie's IV and give her her Tdap vaccine after she learned he was a medical student.

Alana gets her hearing check and passes the earliest that any baby is able to.

That is the end of Sean’s notes =(

Day 3

My dear friend Dodie came to visit us too in the hospital which made my heart so happy!

Mom and Dad Z as well as my sister Sam and niece Kaity arrived on Saturday night and came straight to the hospital. It was so so exciting to see them and they were of course thrilled to meet Miss Alana! They have been here in Albuquerque all week and we have been loving all the time together!

By the time night came Alana was in full cluster feeding mode! She nursed for about 4 straight hours which was a little exhausting and uncomfortable! I woke Sean up around 1 and he helped me to feel good about calling the nurse and asking for some formula. Alana took about a tsp and fell straight to sleep. About 20 min later she woke up wanting more. She ate about an ounce in all and we all got some sleep. Alana had her PKU and weight checked at her 24 hour mark and she only lost about 5 oz.

By morning we were all ready to go home. We told the nurses and they got going on our discharge papers. The doctor came in and gave me the ok to go home. We headed off about 10:30 and I was giddy to get home and see my Brett! Here are a few shots of the room we were in, notice that its snowing in Albuquerque!:

Brett really liked Alana until we asked if he wanted to hold her. He has been a little nervous about her but he seems to be warming up a bit!

I of course have tons more pictures to share and tons more to say, but this is a start at least =) Pictures of Kaity and Sam are still on the camera, they will come later.