He's Here!

Sorry I haven't blogged in forever. As you can see, I have a good reason!! Micah arrived this last Friday, May 23rd, at 5:49 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds even, and he was 21 1/2 inches long.

This was a weird labor, because I started contracting Wednesday evening, but they weren't close enough together or painful enough. They were really intense, though, and I couldn't sleep all night on Wednesday night. I continued to have these same weird contractions all the next day. Finally, on Thursday night, after about 30 hours of these kinds of contractions, they started to get more painful and closer together. When I checked in, I was dilated to a 5!! Though they were really painful, they weren't as painful as Dylan's contractions, which was nice.

They immediately gave me my epidural (yay), IV, catheter, etc., and then they told me to take a nap, since it was the middle of the night. They would wake me and check on me every couple of hours. After they checked me and said I was at a 9, I was too excited to go back to sleep. :) I knew it was time to push, because it feels like you're going to poop the bed. So they told me to hold the baby in until the doctor got there. He got there within ten minutes, and it was time to push!

I only had to push through one contraction to get Micah out. His head is much smaller than his siblings' heads! And the doctor was really good about telling me when to pant and when to push, thus saving me the need for tearing or an episiotomy, which has been nice.

When Micah was traveling through the birth canal, he swallowed a bunch of my blood, and he came out not breathing. They had to rush him over to this special table, and there were three nurses hunched around him, suctioning out his stomach and trying to get him to breathe. He didn't breathe for about five minutes, and I was SOOOO scared. I was just sitting there, on the other side of the room, unable to get up, wide-eyed... Luckily, he pulled through, and he's just fine.

Those two days in the hospital were so blissful! I took total advantage of the 48 hours that you're allowed to stay. Micah wasn't satisfied with my colostrum, though. My other kids were good with it, but not this little piggy. We had to supplement him with formula. My milk has since come in, but my entire right...you know...is clogged. I suspect mastitis, because the redness and tenderness on that side extends clear up to my collar bone. I've tried massage, pumping, heat, standing in the shower, etc. etc., but nothing seems to unclog those ducts on that side. It's too painful to breastfeed, so I've been pumping and feeding Micah that way. Sigh. Breastfeeding has never really worked for me. Not that I haven't tried... I'm totally ready to throw in the towel. Or throw in the lansinoh pad, I should say.

Micah had/has jaundice, and we had to rent a bilirubin light and keep him on it, night and day, for five days. He got good blood test results yesterday and today, so we were able to turn in that stupid light today. It made things so hard, to have all this hardware attached to my son. He still has that yellowish tinge, but if the doc says he's okay, I believe him!

Apparently, I had a bladder infection that I didn't know about (the pain in my chest is all I've been able to concentrate on), and the contracting of the bladder made my uterus contract even more than it already does after birth. The contractions were so hard on Wednesday night that they felt like really hard, advanced labor. I was in a ball on the floor, screaming and crying. So Ben rushed me to the hospital, while my parents watched my kids, and they gave me morphine (ahhhhh) and did an ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed that there were no bits of placenta in there or anything, but the pee sample was what solved that mystery. I'm on pretty heavy pain pills, and of course, antibiotics for my bladder infection. Oh, and I've been constipated, too. So that is also part of why I haven't been blogging - I have just plain felt too crummy. But I'm sure things will get better soon.

Sorry - I'm trying to keep this as short as possible, because I could talk about it all day. But I wanted to show you some pictures of Micah! Ben took a million, but these ones are my favorites. Micah looks like Mr. Magoo. This one really accentuates his Mr. Magoo eyes:

He also likes to look around with just one eye. We call him One-Eyed Willie, a holla to Goonies:

He always has his arms up by his ears, or behind his head, like he's relaxing behind a desk with his feet kicked up:

Ben took our "good camera" to the hospital, and he's such a better photographer than I am. This is a shot of Micah's little feeties:

And here's a cute one of him looking at the camera. He looks like Dylan looked as a newborn, so I'm sure we'll have a little Dylan Twin running around. I can tell his eyes are going to be big and beautiful, like Dylan's:

We are sooo excited to have Micah in our family. He's a sweet little man, and he's so tiny! I've never had one this small before, and it's kind of fun! Birth is such a miracle, and I'm really grateful that he survived it, and that he and I are (relatively) healthy. I just love him so much!!