Peyton turns 1 month old!

Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter Peyton! We have had quite the adventure over the past month. It has been challenging, trying on the patience, and exhausting, but also such a wonderful learning experience and so much fun all at the same time.


The first couple of weeks home were really tough. As new parents, John and I were clueless when it came to dealing with a sleep schedule (or lack there of) for a newborn. In fact, there was one night really early on where we all 3 were crying trying to figure out what to do at 3:00am (the same night we figured out Peyton loves to be bounced on the exercise ball). Peyton was crying non-stop and we could not figure out why. Turns out she was very hungry as my milk had not yet come in. We finally decided to call John's mom at 5:00am when Peyton had made herself hoarse from crying so hard. Molly advised us to feed her some water out of a bottle just to help her dry mouth and throat. She drank that right down and was fast asleep. Since that night, we have learned a TON and are still of course learning new things every day. Here is our take on events that have occurred in Peyton's 1st month of life:



Sleep:
Peyton has turned out to be a great sleeper for a 4 week old baby (at least for now. We don't want to jinx ourselves too soon). Currently, she sleeps anywhere between 5 and 7 hours for her first stretch of sleep at night. She wakes up and eats, then returns to sleep for another 2-3 hours, eats again, and usually goes down for a 3rd stretch of sleep lasting another 2-3 hours. It took us about 3 weeks to get her to this point. The first 3 weeks were pretty much a blur as far as sleep goes. We now have established a bedtime routine for her, which we are hoping sticks and helps her to continue to sleep well. Her routine consists of a diaper change, pajama's on, swaddle blanket on, and a bottle. This happens around 10:00pm. Most of the time after her bottle, she goes down into her cosleeper, which is now in her own room right away. Sometimes it takes some bouncing on the exercise ball to help her go down. We initially thought we would start her off right away in her big crib...yeah right!! She was NOT having that. We quickly went out and bought a bassinet-type bed for her called an Arms Reach Cosleeper. For about the first week or 2, we had the cosleeper in our bedroom right next to our bed. It has since been moved into her nursery where she has been sleeping in ever since. Thanks to and idea from Molly's friend Donna, we elevated her mattress just a bit so its on a little of an incline and she has slept in it ever since we did that. Thanks Donna! Before we were able to figure that out, Peyton would only sleep on our chest's or stomach's. As you can imagine, we weren't exactly getting that great of sleep this way, so we were desperate for a solution. As far as napping during the day goes, she does NOT nap usually in her cosleeper. Instead she naps either in her front carrier (Lascal), or in her car seat in the car. From my understanding, this is typical of newborns.



Clothes:

Peyton was certainly no small baby as you already know. Thankfully, however she still fits into all of her 0-3 month clothes and is still wearing those. Most of her newborn-sized clothes even fit her, although they are getting too small now that she is 4 weeks old.



Eating:

Peyton started off nursing, however after a week she lost interest in latching on. We decided that is worked best for us for me to pump breast milk and feed it to her in a bottle. That proved to be a wonderful decision, and she has been eating great since. She is up to eating 4oz at each feeding.

Doctor:
Peyton has been in the 90th percentile for height and weight since she was born and remains there today. At her 7 day check-up (which is the last check-up she will have had until her 2 month), she weighed just over her birth weight and her height was 21 inches. Dr. Steven's (her pediatrician) says that she is a beautiful, thriving, healthy baby.

Some additional birth photo's

Peyton is born!

I know I am a bit behind on updating this blog, but we have been busy around here with a newborn! Peyton made her grand entrance on Monday May 17th at 7:26pm. Here is the story of her birth and some photo's to go along with it:

I woke up at about 1:30am on May 16th to use the restroom. There, I found that I had a bloody show. John had fallen asleep on the couch that night, so I ran out to the living room and woke him up to let him know. Shortly after that, I started having contractions. Since I couldn’t sleep very well, I stayed on the couch that night and started timing the contractions. All night long, they were about 7-10 minutes apart lasting about 50 seconds. I was able to get an hour of sleep here and there throughout the night, but I was getting excited that this may be it, and feeling some pain from the contractions, so I didn’t really get that great of sleep.
John and I got up that morning and made a nice breakfast since it was my birthday. We waited until mid-morning to call our mom’s because we didn’t want to alarm them, especially since we knew this could be a false alarm. I was still having contractions at this point, but they were not super consistent, some were still 7-10 minutes apart, and others 15 minutes or so apart. We took our time getting ready for the day, and I even managed to change the sheets, and clean the bathrooms since I knew this could be my last chance for a while.
We headed over to my mom’s house first around noon, still having contractions. I could walk and talk through them still and they still were not very consistent, so I knew we didn’t need to call the hospital or the midwife yet. My mom, Molly, Katie, Lily, John and I met down at the Lake Forest Park Farmers market to walk around for a while. It was a nice day out, and was even a bit humid. We all went to Starbucks and sat outside for a while to enjoy our drinks. We decided to head back to John and Molly’s house for a card game and pizza later on for dinner.
Shortly after we got to John and Molly’s house, the contractions started to get more consistent. They were about 5-7 minutes apart, lasting a minute each. We sat around and had some good conversation, played a half a game of golf, and then finally decided to order pizza for dinner. We had planned on going out to Chinese Food with about 20 of our family members and friends that night for my birthday, but because we were pretty sure this was real labor, we cancelled that dinner. Tommy came over and had dinner with us as well. Half way through dinner, I broke down in tears because the contractions really started to hurt, and at that point I had been dealing with them for just under 20 hours.
John and I had learned both in our birthing class and from our midwife that we should call the hospital team once our contractions were 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute each, for 1 hour. Because we were well on that pattern, we called the hospital. They told us not to come in yet, as they would like to see them even more consistent. I was pretty upset by that phone call, and also getting really tired, so John and I headed home to see if we could get any sleep at all. We were home for a few hours at most and I could not possibly fall asleep through the contractions. We timed them the entire time we were home, and finally called back the hospital at about 9:30pm when the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart lasting 1 minute for 2 hours straight. The hospital said, if we felt like we wanted to, we could come on it. I couldn’t believe they were being so relaxed about it. I felt like we had really given it some good time at home, and were well past the 5-1-1 rule that we had learned in our birthing class. We packed the car, and headed into the hospital.
I remember on the way there John and I were pretty quiet. We were ex cited, nervous, and tired all at the same time. We put on some Dave Matthews to listen to on the way. When we arrived at the hospital and checked into triage at about 10:00pm, they got us all hooked up to the monitors and checked my dilation. I was still 85% effaced (we knew this from our triage visit earlier in the week), and dilated to a 3, and at a 0-+1 station. We were the only people in triage. They said they wanted to see some more cervical change, so they sent us to walk the halls for an hour to see if I made any progress. That hour was pretty brutal. It was just John and I at the hospital at that point. We walked up and down the halls, stopping to breathe through the contractions as I would have them. I would occasionally break down in tears from the pain, and frustration that I wasn’t yet admitted and didn’t even know if we would be admitted. John was an absolute champ through this hour. He couldn’t have been more supportive, talking me through it, holding my hands, playing some music on his phone, and calling our moms to give them updates.
After the hour, they rechecked me and said they wanted me to walk yet another hour to see if I could make more change. I just about lost it at that point. I wanted both my mom and Molly to come in for support. As they were on their way, John and I started walking yet again. This hour was even harder than the first. I was having a little bit of a hard time holding it together. The contractions really started to hurt at this point. I could not walk or talk through them to say the least. My mom, Molly and Katie all arrived within the hour. I felt really good about having the 3 of them there for support.
After the second hour, they rechecked me and I was dilated to a 4!!! This meant we would be admitted, thank god! I had now been in labor, having contractions for over 24 hours. We got an IV started, and headed down to our room on the 3rd floor. Once in our room, I decided that I would like to get in a warm bath to see if that would help with the pain at all. Our midwife at that point was Ira, and he had a student with him who was fantastic. Our nurse was Dave, and he too was great. I got into the tub and it felt really good. It did indeed help with the pain. John, my mom, Molly, Katie, and the midwife all took turns spending time with me while I was in the tub. After the tub, I tried the birthing ball which didn’t help much at all. It was now about 5am. The midwife decided to check me, and I was at a 5. She decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and break my water at that point to see if it would get things moving faster. Breaking my water did not hurt at all, and both John and I were thrilled to have it done if it meant things could move faster.
After my water broke, the contractions got even worse. I was feeling pretty miserable at this point. I had told everyone that I was considering an epidural. Now it was about 7am (almost 30 hours into labor at the point) and Jaime took over for Ira and the student as it was change of shift for the midwife. We also got a new nurse who was outstanding. She had a nursing student with her as well, so in a sense we had 2 nurses with us. Both the nurses and Jaime said they didn’t know how much longer it would be. They said it could be 2 hours, or it could be as much as 6 hours. That was really hard for me to hear. I didn’t know when there was going to be an end in sight, and because of that I decided to go ahead with the epidural. I also had barely had any sleep at all in 2 nights at this point, so I was running out of gas.
I was really excited to see the anesthesiologist, Dr. Nishman arrive in our room. As he was putting in the epidural, John got a little queasy and had to lie down on the couch. The epidural itself was a little painful, only because just as I felt a zinger go down one side of my back, I had a really painful contraction. However, it wasn’t all too terrible, and shortly after it was in, I was a happy camper. Everyone left the room except for John and I and we were able to get about 2 hours of sleep.
Jaime came in around 10:00am and re-checked me. To our surprise, I was completely dilated! That was the good news that John and I needed to hear. The epidural had helped me to progress, and we got some sleep, so we knew that getting the epidural was a good choice. Jaime said that we would give it a little more time, and then shortly we would start to push. During this time, we were laughing and joking, and very excited that Peyton would be arriving soon. Our moms were there, Katie was there, and John’s dad had even come in for support around 3am.
From there, quite a few events took place. Here is the breakdown.
12:30pm-Started pushing. This went on for a couple of hours. We tried many positions of pushing including on my back in the bed, the squat bar, and on my side. Not much progress was being made, although we could see her head and even could see her hair. This wasn’t painful because of my epidural, but it was exhausting using all that energy to push for a couple of hours. My support team was FANTASTIC. I can’t say enough great things about the support I received from my husband, both our moms, Katie, and the nursing team. It truly was amazing to see everyone work together to get this baby out. Never have I felt that much support in my life.
3:30pm: Jaime realized that we weren’t making much progress at all with the pushing, so we discussed the possibility of using the vacuum with me. Because midwives are not licensed to perform the vacuum, she had the on call OB, Dr. Steinberg come in and discuss it with John and I. We both felt confident in Jaime and Dr. Steinberg that we should move forward with the vacuum. It is standard to have the NICU nurses in the room when a vacuum is being used. There were probably around 15 people in the room when the vacuum was being used, so it was quite crowded. They only use the vacuum for a maximum of 3 contractions because of the risks to the baby. Needless to say, the vacuum did not work.
4:30pm-Dr. Steinberg had a discussion with John and I in regards to the next step. She told us that it seemed my uterus was just not contracting strong enough on its own to push Peyton out. She wanted to try giving me some Pitocin to make my uterus contract stronger. She also said we would need to turn down my epidural so that I would feel more of the urge to push. I knew right off the bat that this meant some serious pain. John and I asked everyone to leave the room while we discussed it. At this point, we were both exhausted, and pretty much done trying. We just wanted our baby here. In our discussion, we both said we didn’t feel like this was going to work, but we felt at the same time that Dr. Steinberg did think it would work and we put our trust in her. We went ahead with it. The pain I felt during this time was absolutely excruciating. I can’t explain it. There is nothing like it. I turned into a different person during this time. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t seem to do anything during the contractions to make it feel better, or to calm myself through them. I pushed for about another 20 minutes with no progress. I was BEGGING for someone to do something about my pain.
5:30pm-We decided that a C-section was necessary. We had exhausted every other option at this point. Both John and I knew that we had tried every avenue to get Peyton out vaginally, but that it just wasn’t in the books for us. Once we decided on a C-section, the staff told me they wouldn’t turn back up my epidural because they would be dosing it differently in the OR once I got in there. The problem with this was that they were performing another C-section at that time, so we had to wait until they were done with that one and the OR cleaned until it was our turn. I was not having that. I begged and pleaded, and almost demanded that they turn back up my epidural. I was sobbing, cussing, and pleaded to John, my mom, Molly and Katie to do something about the pain. They kept telling us it would only be another 20 minutes, those 20 minutes would go by and they would say it was only going to be another 20 minutes, meanwhile the Pitocin is still making my contractions extremely strong and my epidural is still turned down. Finally, our nurse went and got the anesthesiologist and he came in and re-dosed my epidural. I could have kissed him! By the time it had actually kicked in, I was being rolled into the OR. I remember passing Anna and my brother in the hall on the way to the OR. They had arrived and hour or 2 earlier.
6:30pm-We got into the OR at about 6:30pm-about 41 hours into labor. They had John wait out in the hall while they prepped me for surgery. That was a really long time for him. He was anxious and just wanted to be with me. I was in total bliss at this point. My epidural was working, so I was no longer in pain. I also was so happy knowing that for sure Peyton would be born very soon. And as weird as it sounds, I felt comfortable in the OR since it’s where I work every day. I knew what all the equipment was, I knew what the staff were all for, etc. John joined me shortly before they started and we were on the way to meet our daughter. Because Peyton was so low in my pelvis from all the pushing, Dr. Steinberg had to push her back up before we started. At 7:26pm, Peyton DeMaris Kirkpatrick was born, weighing in at a whopping 9lbs, 6oz and 19.5 inches long! She was in fact sunny side up. The combination of her size and the fact she was sunny side up were what prevented me from pushing her out. She did not come out immediately crying, so they suctioned her out a bit and then we heard the sweet sound of her cry. She scored a 6 on her first APGAR, and then a 9 on the second one. She was healthy, and a gorgeous baby. John and I were over the moon happy.