So, having officially arrived at the hospital on Thursday since we checked in after midnight, we could stay there until at least Sunday and could stay until Monday.
Friday night I left the hospital and wifey was feeling well and positive. I expected to come back on Saturday morning finder her feeling great. We had already talked it over and decided we’d stay in the hospital until Monday so that we would have an extra day of help with the baby and an extra day of monitoring showing us that everything is going well.
Fast forward to Saturday morning. I call wifey to see how she’s doing and let her know that I’m on the way. She’s crying and says that she wants to leave. I ask for details and find out that she’s had a day from hell.
She’s experiencing a lot of pain from the C Section incision and is taking pain killers. The nursery brings the baby to my wife’s room every three hours since we’re breast feeding and don’t want the baby on forumula.
When wifey needs help to put the baby in the cradle and so she can go to the bathroom, she hits a call button next to the bed. It’s an intercom that rings the nurses station. She was pushing the call button and asking for help for several hours. Each time, she was told that her nurse would be there shortly. No one was coming.
Two hours passed at one point when my wife was laying in pain as she had a full bladder and was holding the baby. She couldn’t put the baby in its cradle and couldn’t get up by herself. Continue reading ‘Hell at the hospital’
Well, I came home on Wednesday night around 7:30 from a training class I’m taking for work. Wifey was passed out sleeping on the couch. She never takes naps as she hates the groggy feeling she gets after waking up.
I should have known that something was amiss.
I started getting busy around the house and settled in at my computer in the home office. Around 8:00pm wifey woke up and decided to get some dinner. She happily ate on the couch and was watching some tv when all of a sudden she called out to me telling me she was having a bad cramp. She had been having some cramps on and off for a few days so I didn’t think much about it.
The cramps kept coming periodically and we were concerned that something may be wrong. I whipped out the doppler monitor and we checked the baby’s heart rate. Normal. Nothing to report. We decided this was fine and decided to go about our night.
The cramps kept on coming and around 9:30pm wifey went to the bathroom. She suddenly yelped and called me in. There she was on the toilet holding toilet paper that was full of orange/red blood. Continue reading ‘Alex is born 4 weeks early!’
While researching how best to care for our new baby, we came across some sites with interesting thoughts on things as mundane as baby wipes. The sites basically advocated using as many natural products as possible and keeping as many chemicals and other artificial products away from your baby as possible.
Now I’m not the hippy type that thinks you should wipe with leaves or anything, but they made some very compelling arguments.
Considering all of the childhood diseases and conditions that seem to be on the rise whose causes are unknown, why take chances by exposing your child to chemicals and artificial products if you don’t have to?
Do you really know what is in diaper wipes? What chemicals are in them? How they are made? Neither do I. The alternative suggested Continue reading ‘Why you shouldn’t use Baby Wipes’
Listening to your baby’s heart beat can be one of the most comforting things you can experience.
One of the best purchases we have made during this pregnancy is our home fetal heart monitor. I can’t tell you how many times it has saved us from paranoid trips to the emergency room out of fear that something was wrong with the baby.
From what I understand, it works similar to a sonogram. The machine sends sound waves into your tummy which bounce off of whatever they hit. It measures how long it takes the waves to bounce back and plays the result as sound.
When the heart is beating, the machine detects the pulses and plays them. Early in the pregnancy, it sounds like a little whoosh-shoosh-whoosh sound. If you get the same model we have, it has a small digital display that shows the heart rate in numbers. You’ll find that the baby’s heart rate is Continue reading ‘Expecting: Home Fetal Heart Monitor (Doppler)’