Avery's progress so far...

Now that it has been a couple of weeks, it is time to write a little about how Avery is actually doing (and how her parents are adjusting to being parents). As I mentioned, there have already been many highs and lows in this short time, which I suppose is just good practice for parenthood in general. Avery is doing really well - after the slight scare at the hospital when she came close to losing 10% of her birth weight, she is now at a whopping 9lbs 5 oz (her birth weight was 7lbs 11 oz) in 2.5 weeks. I actually asked the pediatrician if I should be concerned that she is gaining too much weight, but he said that really wasn't a problem since I am breastfeeding.

At any rate, much has happened over the last couple of weeks. Uncle Trus (our dog) came home from living with the grandparents and has adjusted very well to having Avery around. He basically ignores her, which is just fine with us since he still doesn't really like other kids - we confirmed this when Brent, Chelsea and their 7-month old son Aidan came to visit.

We also had another medical scare - Avery had a slightly elevated level on one of the conditions they test for during the Newborn Screening program. She is fine thank goodness, but she had to have extra bloodwork and a urine sample to make sure she didn't have a genetic disorder that can result in a range of conditions called organic acidemias. Needless to say, when the hospital does the screen after they are born and tells you that no news is good news, and then you get a call from CHEO...panic definitely sets in quickly. But really, she is totally fine after all.

Avery has already had many visitors, which has been awesome - and thank you very much to everyone who brought us food and/or had us over for meals over the last couple of weeks. It has all been extremely appreciated! One highlight visit was from Uncle Dan and Auntie Andrea who came to Ottawa from Calgary. They were, of course, stunned by the amount of snow we have here, but were also quite thrilled with their little niece.

Another special visit was from Grampa Kelly (who barely said hello to his daughter before checking out his granddaughter), Cassandra and Shelly. They also brought Avery a special rabbit teddy bear they created themselves at Build-a-Bear. The teddy is named Robin Rabbit, thus carrying on the tradition of the name Robin in the Pearce family.

Avery had her first Easter dinner over at Gramma and Grampa Herage's house and wore a very cute outfit (courtesy of Dana) - since Avery mainly only wears sleepers, we had to get her a little more dressed up for a special occasion. And she had to put on her Easter bib:

And finally, on Thursday Greg went back to work so Avery and I decided to have a big adventure and take a road trip to Brockville to see the Masons - particularly Avery's birthday buddy Nicholas. We spent a very nice afternoon with them and had two great meals. Nicholas is definitely a cutie - must be something about being born on March 4th! :) I didn't manage to take any pictures of the two of them, but when the Masons post theirs, I will link to it. Here they are:

The hospital experience and first few days

So it turns out that Greg and Avery are asleep in the glider as we speak...thought I had better take this opportunity to start typing before they wake up - or until I get too sore, if you know what I mean! :)

Our time in the hospital...it was certainly a whirlwind and great learning experience, with a bunch of highs and lows. On the whole, I have to note that the nurses who cared for Avery and me were awesome and complete professionals. Two stood out in particular, Helen and Jovanna (sp?), but all of them were very helpful in their own ways. Not to say that there weren't some frustrating times, but overall it was fairly positive.

We started off in a ward room in the Mother-Baby unit - we weren't very excited about this having requested a private room, but we did eventually get moved at about 11pm on Tuesday night. At least there was a place for Greg to sleep in the private room!

Tuesday went by in a blur - we had a ton of people come visit, including Gramma and Grampa Herage, Gramma Pearce, the Keans, the Haggertys, Bonnie and Ted & Jamie. It was nice to have everyone and the presents were all very much appreciated! Day one we started learning how to breastfeed, change diapers and bath Avery among other things. It was a little hard to take it all in, but we kept plugging away. Having been fairly nervous about nursing, it was a little disconcerting when Avery would hang out at the breast but not really suck. The nurses weren't concerned because they said she didn't really need to take anything in for the first 24 hours, but it made me a little worried. That night, however, our nurse showed us a way to nurse that Avery actually seemed to like and she started snacking on the colostrum. She continued to nurse over the next day with more success some times than others, and to be quite frank, my nipples were starting to show the wear and tear. I know proper breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt, but hurt it did! Wednesday night, Avery was extremely cranky and wouldn't settle down. Our nurse took her away a couple of times so that Greg and I could get a little sleep, which really helped.

By the next morning, the nurse on duty became concerned that she had lost too much of her birth weight. We were supposed to be discharged at 9:30am, but the freaking-out about her weight delayed that all by a couple of hours. Avery got down to about 9% of birth weight lost, still above the cut-off of 10%, but the pediatrician insisted that we supplement the breastfeeding with an oz or so of formula at every feed. I have to admit that she did settle down quite a bit after having her first bit of formula, so it was clear that she was hungry and was not getting anything from the colostrum. We were not happy about this situation and were worried the formula from the bottle would wreck the little progress we had made with breastfeeding, but it was simply a matter of my milk needing to come in - which it did during the night on Thursday.

After supplementing for about 36 hours and my milk coming in, we took Avery to the pediatrician on Friday morning. They weighed her there and she was up about 5 oz from the day before - so at least we didn't have to worry that she was starving any more. By the time we went back to the pediatrician on Monday morning, she was up to 7lbs 14 oz - above her birth weight in less than a week. Seems we have gotten the hang of this nursing business after all.

While still in the hospital, we were lucky enough to see the lactation consultant. She was so helpful and even though I may not have been having as many difficulties as some people, she was still able to give me a couple of tricks that really made a difference. She was also a lot less stressed out about Avery's weight, lack of bowel movements, etc. than the nurses, which helped calm Greg and I down enormously. We did make a call to Telehealth late on Friday night, but hey, we are first-time parents after all! And now I hear the little angel waking up, so I had better go feed her!

The labour and delivery story...

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Originally uploaded by The Herages

I wanted to try and get the full labour and delivery story down before I forget it - even though it has already been about 2 weeks, I still feel like it was yesterday. And this way, the little princess will be able to read about it one day (I hope), since she won't have a traditional baby book. I have never been any good at those things!

My contractions began on Sunday, March 2nd at about 10pm. Since I had had a couple of contractions here and there, I didn't really think labour was actually starting. After all, I had plans for Monday that I really wanted to get done! :) However, they kept coming and I didn't get any sleep that night. I basically hung out in the bathroom so as not to wake up Greg, reading and breathing through the pain. I took a really long shower (long even for me), and eventually tried to sleep a bit. At about 5am I woke Greg up because I didn't feel like doing the contraction business on my own any more, and let him know that we were likely going to the hospital soon. Of course, we had freezing rain that morning so he had to spend about 30 mins scraping off the car while I hung out on the exercise ball. Our hospital was the Ottawa Hospital - General Campus.

We ended up heading to the hospital around 1pm on Monday because I had a previously scheduled ultrasound to check on the baby because I was overdue. Of course, I don't really remember having many contractions on the way to the hospital or during the ultrasound, but they were about 8-9 minutes apart when we left the house. The ultrasound went fine and we were told the baby would weigh about 8 lbs. We then headed to the triage desk and I was assessed as being about 2.5 cm dilated. Because the hospital doesn't admit people until they are 3cm dilated, they told us to go walking around and get something to eat. I wasn't really keen on that idea because I was having serious trouble keeping food down (ask Greg about me vomiting up blueberry sauce in my hands in the bathroom at about 6am - and about him having to clean it up). But we went to the caf, hung out for a couple of hours and then went back to triage. I was eventually assessed again and was only at 3cm - and the hospital still wouldn't admit me! I got seriously cranky because the contractions were pretty strong and about 5 mins apart, so they offered me Nubane, a narcotic. I had never really thought about taking narcotics that early in the process, but I did and I was so glad because I was able to sleep on the couch in the early labour room (!) for a couple of hours, and when I was assessed later, I had dilated to 7-8cm. So they finally admitted me then!

When we got into the labour and delivery room, I had to make a decision about having an epidural. I had never planned on having a natural birth with no drugs, but I was just trying to last as long as possible without taking anything. I guess the Nubane kind of threw a wrench in those plans, but I definitely don't regret that! I started waffling about whether to have the epidural or not, since I was relatively far along, but in talking it through with the nurse, I realized that I would probably "need" one eventually. So I got the epidural at just before midnight on Monday. The worst part of that was having to get the IV needle inserted - the nurse missed and blew the first vein she tried on the back of my hand, and I had a bruise for about 1.5 weeks as a result. Thankfully she called in another nurse to try the second vein and that worked fine. Of course, once the epidural was in my contractions slowed down and became fairly irregular. This allowed me to get some sleep, but they eventually had to give me oxytocin in order to make the contractions regular and have me start pushing. So much for no interventions!!!

I finally started pushing at around 5:20am on Tuesday. I pushed for close to 1.5 hours with very little progress - in retrospect, I think I just wasn't pushing as hard as I could have but I really didn't know what was what at the time. A decision was eventually made to use the vacuum to get Avery's head out, because I really wasn't going to be able to get it done on my own. With the use of the vacuum, hospital protocol states that certain people need to be in the room. All of a sudden it seemed like there were about 10 people there - 2 nurses, one OB, 2 residents, a med student "observing", and a few people from pediatrics, along with Greg and I. And of course, this was shift change time, so as soon as I delivered Avery there were a whole bunch more people coming and going.

So the vacuum...basically once it was on it was about 2 more contractions before her head was out. And they weren't fun contractions but at least it was over with fairly quickly after that. The part that I found challenging (well one part), was the "stop pushing" phase. How do you stop pushing when that is all you have been doing for 2 hours and the baby isn't completely out yet? There was some tearing of course and the requisite stitching afterwards. I guess the residents sewing me up saw the looks on my face because they offered me a local anaesthetic for the pain of the needle. I took it because they said it would take them 5-10 mins to finish. Shouldn't the epidural have covered the pain of the sewing process as well???

At any rate, by this point we had held Avery, figured out she was a girl, weighed her in at 7lbs 11 oz, and gotten her back all cleaned up. The first thing I said to her after that was that I hoped she was ok with being an only child because I really didn't think I could do that again! Of course I was kidding, but holy Hannah, was that ever a process!!!

So that is the labour and delivery story. Next time Avery takes a nap, I will try to write down some memories of our stay in the hospital. I can't believe this all basically happened two weeks ago. Time is flying and yet the nights seem to drag on and on... :)

She's finally here!

Just a quick post to announce the arrival of our daughter Avery Beryl Pearce Herage. She was born on March 4th at 7:03am, weighing in at 7 lbs 11 oz. As you may know, I was completely expecting that we were going to have a boy, so I was a bit surprised when they told us she was a girl - especially after Greg mistook the umbilical cord for...well, you can probably guess. I understand her leg was obscuring a good view of the evidence. :)

I plan on writing more about the whole experience shortly and posting pictures on Flickr, but that will have to wait for another time. Till then, we're off to experience all the wonderful and crazy thrills that come with parenthood!