Lina Daniella is here!

My cousin had her baby! She's sooooo cute! My poor cousin had a pretty bad birth experience...okay, let's just say it, it was horrible. But look what she has to show for it!!
Again, I say, she's sooo cute!

So here's the story as I've understood it. Andrea got to the hospital at 6am to be induced. Due to other mommies going into labor and having to be attended first, she didn't actually go in to get induced until about noon. They broke her water, and when that didn't result in enough contractions, she was put on pitocin (around 1pm). She dealt with contractions every 3 minutes until about 5pm, when the blessed anestesiologist gave her an epidural. She was 4cm at this point. She got a break from all the fun contractions until about 8:30pm when she started feeling them again. She asked for more epidural, but they said, nope, sorry, you're 10cm. At 9pm she started pushing. She pushed and pushed until she tore. And then they made her push some more. At 10:45pm, they said, sorry, c-section. At 11:10pm, Lina was born via c-section.

So my poor cousin got the worst of both worlds. She's doing much better now. Both Mommy and Baby are doing great! Nursing is going really well, thank goodness. The last thing she needs after her difficult experience is a tough time nursing! They'll probably be home from the hospital today. I totally want to go hold Lina, but I'll have to contain myself until at least Thursday. (That's when I'm bringing her dinner.)

For more pictures, go here.

He's here!

Marcelo Evan was born on July 26th, 2007 at 2:32pm. He weighed 5 pounds, 13 oz.

Here's how it went down: I had contrax all night on Wednesday night. At 8am, I called the doc to see what I should do. I wasn't sure if it was false labor or real labor, and I wanted to make sure the baby wasn't under stress. The doc told me to go straight to the hospital to get checked. I started bawling. Marcelo was all excited, and I was bawling. I was like, "What? Go to the hospital? I'm not ready! It's too soon!" We took our sweet time getting ready, and finally showed up at the hospital at 10am. My contrax had slowed down to like 15 minutes apart. They hooked me up to the monitors and made sure the baby was fine. After two hours, I had only had like 3 contrax, so they said they were going to give me one more hour, and if they stayed that far apart, I was going home. By then, I was all geared up to have the baby, so I was a little disappointed that it could be a false alarm. Anyway, in that last hour, the contrax sped up to 10 minutes apart again, and when the doc came in to check me he said, "I don't think your contractions are going to stop. We're going to go ahead and have this baby today." So they started prepping me for surgery. I was sooo scared about the spinal. But it wasn't terrible, and the anestesiologist was like, "You did great! That was the easiest spinal I've ever done!"

YEAH RIGHT.

So the doc starts to cut me open, and I CAN FEEL IT. I immediately tell the anestesiologist, who is by my head, "I can feel that!" He was like, "Yes, you're going to feel pressure." I was like, "No, I can feel the sharpness of the knife." He didn't want to believe me, but told the doc to hold on a second anyway. I could also move my right foot, which I didn't think was normal. The doc started back up again, and I could feel it a little less, but I still knew there was way too much sensation. Then, I started feeling an enormous amount of pressure and pain. It was absolute hell. I started crying and sqeezing the crap out of Marcelo's hand saying, "I'm in a lot of pain, it hurts, it hurts. I feel a ton of pressure." So the anestesiologist started getting worried. He asked me to describe exactly what I felt, so I did. Basically, I felt like I was getting run over by a mac truck. I felt like there were a thousand pounds of pressure on my stomach, pushing all my organs into my back. My back ached like a mother, too. It was the scariest, most horrible feeling in the world. They started to pull the baby out, and it was literally like my whole stomach was going to get ripped off my body. They were tugging and tugging, and I was crying, saying, "Please hurry. Please hurry." Once they got the baby out, the pressure was a tiny bit better. The anestesiologist was instructing the nurses to hurry and get the baby over to me, because he was convinced that it was all in my head and that I just needed to see the baby. Well, no. It wasn't in my head. So I saw the baby, and then went right back to clenching my teeth and trying not to scream. I felt them moving around my organs, I felt them stitching me up, I felt everything. It wasn't like, knives and needles pain, it was just the pressure of everything they were doing. It's hard to describe, but it was freaking horrible. Once it was over, the anestesiologist was like, "They're done. I've given you more pain medication, so that should be kicking in." They wheeled me to the recovery room, with me still in tears, and still in a ton of pain. The anestesiologist was so confused about why I was in so much pain. I kept hearing him tell people, "That was such an easy spinal and I thought she was going to be completely numb because she's so small." So he came and asked me again to describe what I was feeling. I told him I could move my foot the whole time. His eyes opened wide and his face was like, "What? That's not good." So he told the nurses to get me more pain meds, but nothing was working. As I was laying there waiting for them to bring me some morphine, my head all of a sudden started to THROB. Like, intense, crazy, I feel like my head is going to explode, throbbing. I promise you I'm not exaggerating when I say I thought a vein in my head was going to burst and I was going to die. I was soooo scared. I was crying the ugly cry at this point, and asked Marcelo to give me a blessing. They finally got me some morphine, and all the pain started to subside. But from about 2:30pm - 4:00pm, I was in the worst pain of my entire life.

I feel a million times better today. I just need some sleep! Marcelito was born 3 weeks early! I guess he didn't want to be an August baby. He's doing great. He's awesome at nursing, thank goodness. He's much hairier than Diego, and his hair is darker, which is why we decided he wasn't a Cristian. (We almost named him Cristian Marcelo.)

Oh, and my parents were out of town, so they missed it. They showed up at the hospital at like 6pm, totally bummed out.

He was 5 lbs 13 oz. Teeeeny tiny. I was 5 lbs 14 oz. He was 19.5 inches long, just like Diego. Diego met him in pretty bad conditions. We called my MIL at 1:00 to tell her the c-sec was happening, so she said she was coming with Diego. We were like, "No, let him take a nap, there's no point. It won't be for at least another hour." Marcelo, Celo, whatever we're going to call him, was born at 2:32, but no one got to see him till like 3:30, and they didn't see me till almost 5. So Diego didn't nap at all. He was here in a waiting room for 3 and a half hours! So yeah, by the time we saw him, he was pretty miserable. He just said, "Baby. Baby. Baby." But he was totally cranky and kept crying for everything. PLUS, he has a rash all over his entire body, a fever, diarrhea, and was throwing up yesterday. So I didn't really want him to close to the baby. Perfect timing, right?

My mom misunderstood my story, and told EVERYONE in my family that I had felt every single thing during the surgery, including being cut open. So I had my grandma and aunts calling me crying yesterday, saying how sorry they were that I went through that and that they wanted to sue the doc, etc, etc. I was like, uhh, let me clarify. Yes, I felt a lot of pain. No, I did not feel them cut me open like some horror movie. My mom also emailed everyone and told them "Cristian Marcelo" was here. Way to jump the gun.

Anyway, I'm pretty pissy today (not as bad as yesterday, though) because I'm super tired and can't get any sleep. Every time I try to sleep, someone calls, or a nurse comes in, or whatever.

Here's a pic we took last night. Marcelo and I almost changed the baby's name again after everyone left because neither one of us is getting used to calling him Marcelo. I keep calling him Celo, and he keeps calling him Junior. (I hate Junior, by the way.) Anyway, it just feels super weird. But then we look at him and we're like, he's so not a Cristian, or any other name. So Marcelo seems to be the one that fits the most. I don't know. I hope I get used to it soon, because I have to fill out the Social Security papers today!

Yes, I know my robe is hideous, but it's all I have!

And here's one where Marcelito looks a lot like Diego:

Diego's Birth Story

Okay, so it has taken me a month, but here it is. My birth story.

Diego Aiden is here!

He was born on February 1, 2006. He weighed in at a whopping 6 pounds even! Tiny! He was 19.5 inches long.Here’s how it went down.

At 4:00 am on Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling a little trickle of water. I thought to myself, “Did my water just break?”, waited five minutes, felt another trickle, and decided I’d get up to use the bathroom. My undies were wet, but not soaked. When I wiped, I had some clear mucous tinged with blood. So I figured I was losing my mucous plug and laid back down. At 4:30 I started having contractions every 8 to 10 minutes for two hours straight. At 6:30 I decided to call my doctor’s office. I said, “I think my water may have broken and I’m having contractions.” They said the doctor would call me right back. That never happened. I kept feeling little trickles for the next two hours. They were a little pink. So I wasn’t sure if it was my water of the mucous plug, but I wanted to play it safe. My contractions stayed at 10 minutes apart until 7:30, and then slowed to 15 minutes until about 8:30, and then slowed to 30 minutes until 10:30. At 10:30, I called the doctor’s office again. I said, I think my water broke, I called this morning, but the doctor never called me back. I described to the nurse what happened, and she said, “If it wasn’t a gush of liquid, it wasn’t your water breaking. Time your contractions for the next hour, put on clean undies, and call me back in an hour to let me know if you’ve had a big gush. If it’s just a trickle, it’s not your water breaking.” Obviously, she’s retarded. Marcelo came back from work to check on me right after I hung up, so I told him, “You know what, I’m going to lie and tell her I had a gush just so she’ll check me.” So I called back at 11 and lied. At 11:45, I went in to be checked. By this time, my contractions had completely stopped. As soon as they started to check me, water gushed out. The dr said my water had definitely broken and I needed to get to the hospital to be induced.

I went home to grab a few things we had forgotten and to grab a bite to eat before what we thought would be a long road ahead. At 1:30, I arrived at the hospital. By 2pm, they had me on Pitocin. I asked if there was anything we could do to avoid getting put on Pitocin because I was so afraid it would make it harder to go natural, but they said that since my water had broken, they were racing the clock and I needed to have the baby as soon as possible to avoid infection. So I got on Pitocin. At 2:30, I started having contractions every 3 – 5 minutes. They were not fun. Each time I had a contraction, the baby’s heart rate went way down. They tried making me change positions and did whatever they could to see if things would change, but the baby was really distressed and his heart rate was just dropping too low. At 3:30, my doctor checked me again. I was at 3.5cm. He said the baby was just not responding well, and that if this was happening this early in the game, it was just too dangerous. Soooooo……

C-SECTION.

I said, “Ok, do whatever you have to do. That’s perfectly fine.” And then I burst into tears. Not because I was disappointed, but because I was terrified. They wheeled me into the OR before my Marcelo and my FIL had a chance to give me a blessing. Everything was happening so fast. I kept crying because I really really wanted a blessing first. They put a stupid catheter in me and I was still having contractions, so I was VERY uncomfortable. So when they put the spinal in, I was not a bit concerned by it. It didn’t hurt at all. And just 2 minutes later, my lower body went numb, so it was bliss. Marcelo came into the room dressed in scrubs. He had a mask on, and all I could see were his eyes. He looked terrified. He sat next to me and whispered, “I’m going to give you a blessing. But I’m going to do it in my head.” So he put his hands on my head and while the doctors were buzzing around and talking, he gave me a blessing. At 4:03pm, Diego was born. Like I said, everything happened soooo fast. He came out crying. It was amazing. They showed him to me all bloody and purple. Then they cleaned him up and showed him to me again before they took him to get tests done. I didn’t see him again for an hour. That was the hardest part, emotionally.

My wound is healing nicely. The first three days were rough, but after that, the recovery was way easier than I had expected. Diego is doing great at breastfeeding. My lactation specialist in the hospital was THE BEST. Things are going very well and I’m deliriously happy. My tiny little man is sleeping right now. He's been fussy today.

I can't believe he'll be a month old tomorrow! Here's a picture of him with his daddy.