Happy 21st Birthday Drew!!!

Ok....so I'm cheating and writing this the day after but posting this the day before. I had a good excuse...I was out having lunch with my birthday boy! or is that man? :o)

His stats...

Andrew Thomas
April 26, 1984
10:05pm
7lbs 11oz

Drew was the typical first pregnancy. Tom and I both glowed from the positive test results. My mom made the comment to Tom that by looking at him you'd think he was the only one to have ever done it. LOL My dr was an old school dr to the nth degree which in a way was kind of nice. He didn't do tons of tests, never had a u/s, pretty laid back. My last visit from AF on the day we got back from our honeymoon, July 4th, putting my due date at April 11th...so he was 15 days late. PG itself was problem free.

On the 25th we were visiting my parents playing Risk. I asked Tom to go home which made my mom raise her eyebrows. We'd gotten so they almost had to kick us out at night (leave home to be at home all the time syndrome lol). We got home about midnight and went right to bed. About 2am I woke up with a terrible backache, got up drew a hot bath and soaked in it for a while and it went away. I got back into bed and slept until a backache woke me up again about 4. Repeated the procedure again and slept until Tom got up to go to work at 6. I BEGGED Tom to stay home with me because I didn't feel good although I wasn't positive I was in labor. He said he couldn't and went off to work. I laid in bed and cried. I dozed on and off until about 9am when I noticed that I was having contractions and not just a backache anymore, I timed them. They were ALL over the place! I was jumping from 14mins to 4mins. The 4mins made me nervous as the hospital was almost an hour away.

Shortly after 11 Tom called me to see how I was doing. Again I begged him to come home and he said he couldn't. I started crying and told him I was having contractions and didn't feel good and really wanted him home. He said he'd see what he could do and left it at that. He was home in about an hour (we lived 4miles from work but he was on the road). I called the dr's at 12:30 and they told us to head up to L&D. We got everything ready, dropped off the dog and stopped into both parents house on the way...we walked in about 3:30! LOL

While having an old school doctor was good for the pregnancy, it wasn't so great with the delivery. Luckily I didn't know any better to be upset by it. I was shaved, given an IV and stuck in bed...I was thankful he didn't order an enema! LOL I had back labor and it was rough....the contractions were still irregular, I was about 3cm dilated. After about 2hrs of laying there I was informed that my blood pressure was getting too high and I was developing pre-e. They gave me demerol to bring my pressure down, it slowed the contractions to almost a dead stop! This prompted me to be given pitocin, it was started about 6:30-7.

As they upped the pitocin, the contractions became intense and quickly picked up. About 9:30 I started to feel pressure and reported it to the nurse. The dr came in, checked me, did a cerivical block (shot of pain killer into the cervix, not that I felt it helped) and told me I was ready to start pushing. With a few pushes his head was visable. The nurse said I was good pusher and asked if I was often constipated. Ummm, NO! Why do you ask? She said she would have guessed I was by how well I pushed. LOL I was then informed it was time to be moved to the delivery room. I asked if they were INSANE! I'm expected to move with things like this? They said that it was how it was and went to get the gurney. I felt like an idiot getting pushed through the halls in the middle of a contraction and with just wanting this baby out NOW!

I was transfered to the table, my legs went up into stirrups and I waited for the dr to get ready...yelling the whole time that I had to push NOW! Finally everything was ready, the dr was in position and I was allowed to start pushing again. As the head started to crown the dr performed the episiotomy. I pushed about 4 more times and he was out and put on my belly. Tom got to cut the cord which shocked him. I looked at the baby was surprised to see that it didn't look like newborn (or what I thought I newborn would look like). I made the comment that he looked like an alien. LOL Tom got upset, mostly because it he thought it wasn't the proper thing to say infront of the nurses and doctor. They weren't tickled with how Drew was reacting so they took him over to the table to wash him up and stimulate him. He seemed to do ok after that. While the dr was stitching up my episiotomy I was given a chance to hold and nurse Drew before they took him to the nursery and I was pushed to recovery.

My blood pressure continued to stay high and I was put on bedrest and phenobarbitol. Between having had the demerol during delivery and the phenobarbitol after I was pretty groggy. The following morning the pediatrician came in to tell me that Drew had a fever and was being transferred to the NICU unit. I sent Tom down with him and demanded he report back to me. It was thought he might have menigitis as one of his spinal fluid samples looked a bit cloudy. We had to wait for lab results that would take a few days but in the meantime they were starting him on IV antibiotics and had him in a NICU isolation room.

I finally convinced the dr to allow me out of bed to visit him but had a strict time limit. I was wheeled down to the NICU and placed outside his isolation room window. They were working on him and I could hear him screaming. They were trying to get an IV in and having a hard time of it. I was in tears just sitting out there. I wanted to run in there and throw them all off of him and runaway with him. Finally one of his nurses realized I was sitting out there and watching. She drew the shades to the room and demanded I get sent back up to my room. They'd come get me when they were finished and he was settled down. Unfortunately my blood pressure was giving me a problem so I wasn't allowed back out of bed until just before I was discharged on the 5th day post delivery (it was when a 3 day stay for normal deliveries was common).

I was visited by the lactation nurse and given instructions on how to pump. I told Tom I felt like a cow at milking time. I didn't think I was pumping enough so I turned up the pressure past what I was told to. Little did I realize I wasn't suppose to get too much, it was only colostrum. I had my milk in and I was engorged within 2 days! OUCH!

It was SO hard to be wheeled out of the hospital without Drew. I was crying my eyes out the whole way to the car and kept thinking...I should have him in my arms right now! I was given orders to go home and get into bed and continue my meds. Unfortunately my mom was there when I was told that and she said she'd make me. Tom and I went to their house to stay because it was only about 15mins from the hospital instead of an hour. Tom went to work since I was staying with my parents. When we left we were told Drew could be admitted for as long as another week or two. They still weren't sure what he was sick from. (they never did find out a definite thing either). The next day we got a call that Drew was perking up nicely and drinking from his bottle. The following day (7 day old) they called and said we could come pick him up. I paged Tom at work and had him FLY home! We went back to my parent's house for a few days. They didn't have a crib/bassinet so we made him a cozy bed in a dresser drawer with some towels and a sheet. He still likes to tell that part of the story. LOL When he was 10 days old Tom and I went home to be a family of 3. Tom stayed home for a week with me and then I was on my own...and the fun truly began!!!