Friday, October 31, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
6 weeks old
Hazel will (sometimes) smile at us! 
She loves this hand-me-down bouncer seat. I'm not crazy about the design, but it makes her happy so we just go with it.
Love this outfit- thanks Auntie Erica! This was right before the lip tie snipping (that will have to be another blog post...)
Family visit!
This past weekend, some of the Grand Rapids Coopers drove up with Grandma MacDonald to meet Baby Hazel! We are SO happy that they made the trip. They are busy and I know it wasn't easy to make the long drive. We're glad they came!!
Friday night: trick-or-treating downtown
Aidan was Stitch, MaKenna was something from the Disney channel, and Arie was Wonder Woman.
GG loves Aidan! He was Aidan's shadow the whole weekend (and every time they get together). Aidan is so patient with GG.
Uncle Paul was happy to meet Hazel.
NIP for the first time! Quite a feat when your baby hurts you every time she nurses.
Gma Mac also loved meeting Hazel.
Arie's 5th birthday party!
Msu vs U of M garage party
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Daddy's first bottle with Hazel basil
She ate the whole thing- 2.5 oz- plus I had to finish her off on the nursie. She as hungry!
Friday, October 24, 2014
Halloween 2014
Grey changed his mind about what he wanted to be for Halloween quite a few times. First, he wanted to be a bear. I thought that would be easy to make, but as I researched it I realized it would be kind of boring (brown sweatsuit with ears... Boring). Then, he moved to lion one day, dragon the next, then back to bear. By the middle of October, we told him that he had to choose one and stick with it. He said fire engine, and so we went with it! Here's the process:
Justin really took over this project!
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
5 weeks old
Hazel "talks" back to you in adorable coos and agoos. Here she is "talking" to Justin.
First bottle today! 2 oz of mama's milk.
Friday, October 17, 2014
One month old! And Hazel's birth story
Happy one month birthday, Baby Hazel basil!
On September 10, two days before my due date, I had an interactive webinar at work that lasted 3 hours. During those 3 hours, I had to focus on a computer, flipping back and forth between multiple screens, taking notes, and listening and talking on my headset. Those 3 hours tired me out so much that I started cramping pretty badly. I decided to take the afternoon off to rest. All afternoon, while resting on the coach and watching The Office, I kept thinking that baby girl was going to be coming soon. I was really taking in the quiet house, sleeping dogs, and mindless TV, really believe in my heart that baby would come that night.
Well, the cramping stopped overnight, and baby girl did not decide to come on September 10. She also did not decide to come on September 11, even after we had Grey stay the night at Grammy’s house in case she came in the middle of the night. On Friday, September 12, my due date, I went for a 2 mile walk, sat on the yoga ball, and did squats. But baby girl still did not decide to come. I was not anxious during this time, but I honestly felt like she could come at any moment, even though I was not having any contractions or other symptoms.
On Saturday, September 13, we went to the Farmer’s Market and the coffee house, just like any other Saturday. I was surprisingly calm as we watched MSU football and ate nachos. Sunday came and went, and the calmness continued. I did not feel that sense that she could come at any time as I did previously.
However, when Monday came, my stress level increased. This was the official start of my maternity leave, but there was no baby to take care of. Justin tried to distract me by taking me out to lunch at the Fresh Palate (I ordered a taco salad and had them make it extra spicy to get the baby moving), but to no avail. I cried myself to sleep on Monday night, convinced that the baby will never come and I would be pregnant forever. I still had no contractions or any other movement.
When Tuesday came, Justin went to work and Grey went to preschool. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, which kept me occupied enough to not be too stressed out. Since I was over my due date, I had a non-stress test, measuring the baby’s heartbeat during contractions. I told the doctor that it was a pointless test since I was not having contractions (I bet I was very fun to be around at this time!). But, she hooked me up anyways, telling me that they just wanted to check the baby’s heartbeat over time, even if I didn’t have any contractions. In the first 2 minutes of being hooked up, I had a contraction! What I was interpreting as baby moving or changing positions were really contractions. I had irregular contractions for the 15 minutes I was hooked up to the machines, all of which I felt as just a tightening of my muscles. I also had an ultrasound, which showed that my placenta was healthy and strong (apparently the placenta can deteriorate if you go too much over your due date).
The appointment ended with a meeting with the doctor. We talked about logistics of getting to the hospital in time for my antibiotics to be administered since I tested positively for a strain of common bacteria that is dangerous if passed to the baby. With Grey’s birth being so quick, she wanted to be sure that we got to the hospital right away to get the antibiotics into my system. After this discussion, the doctor asked me if I wanted to be examined. I said, “of course!” I was anxious to see how the baby was positioned. The doctor informed me that I was 5 centimeters dilated and 60% effaced! She said the baby was very low, and that my water could break at any time. This immediately changed my mood from sad and weary to excited and ready!
I went home and got the last items into the Jeep, packed a bag for Grey, and cleaned out the fridge. When Justin came home with Grey, we ate (take out Pizza Hut) and then walked him down to Grammy’s house for Grey to stay the night. The 2-block walk was tough for me, as felt like the baby was moving lower and lower.
When we got back home, the only thing that felt comfortable was being on the yoga ball. I started on the yoga ball at about 9pm, and by 10pm or so, I told Justin to start writing down my contractions. They still didn’t feel like “contractions” to me since I could talk through them, but I never had contractions before my water broke with Grey, so, looking back, I think I just didn’t know what to expect. But, he got a sticky note and wrote down each contraction. They started at about 15 minutes apart, but quickly dwindled down to 9-10 minutes apart. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom a lot, and every time I went I was convinced that my water was going to break. But, it never did. By 11pm or so, I told Justin that I wanted to eat something, knowing that I would need to keep my energy up if the baby decided to come in the middle of the night. I choose Wheat Thins with horseradish cheese. Weird choice but it tasted so good!
Shortly after I ate, I went to the bathroom and there was some blood. This scared Justin and he immediately went and put his shoes on to go to the hospital. I told him that it would still be some time, and that we should keep timing the contractions. I wanted to try resting in bed for a bit, so I went upstairs to lie down. Justin called the nurse line, convinced that we should go in. The nurses said we could come at any time, but we should start making our way soon.
I was still not convinced that things were moving too quickly (why?) and I thought we had some time. In bed upstairs, I had such a strong contraction that I got scared and started crying. While I was very motivated to have an all-natural birth, the strength of that contraction scared me and got me thinking that I couldn’t do it. Justin calmed me down, reminding me that women have babies all the time, and that I had done this once before so I could do it again. He also helped me with a visualization technique that we talked about ahead of time. While I thought I would want to visualize each contraction as a wave, Justin told me to visualize each contraction as hiking up a hill. During this really strong contraction, he looked me right in the eyes and told me, “this is a big hill – find the top of the hill and soon you will be going down again.” That helped tremendously. But, when I was “down the hill,” it became very real to me that the baby was coming TONIGHT. I told Justin that it was now time, and that we should go to the hospital. It was midnight.
By this time, my contractions were very close together – I had 3 contractions in the car, and the hospital is about 2 miles from our house. The band Kings of Leon was playing in the car, and the song Wait for Me was on repeat, so that song was in my head for the entire birth.
When we got to the hospital at 12:05am, we entered at the Emergency Room entrance and checked into the reception area. While the receptionist called up to Labor and Delivery to tell them I had arrived, I felt a strong urge to go to the bathroom. By this time, my water had still not broken, and I was convinced that my water was going to break right there. The receptionist asked the Labor and Delivery nurse on the phone if I could use the bathroom, and I could hear her through the phone say, “NO!” I think I said something like, “fine, I will just go right here!” (Again, I am sure I was a joy to be around).
The Labor and Delivery nurse had a wheelchair for me, and she was running to come and get us. I had 3 contractions on the way up to Labor and Delivery, and each time I got out of the wheelchair because it hurt so much to be sitting down. I remember that the nurse did not like that.
We got into room 2283 and I immediately began stripping off my clothes. While I packed various options to give birth in, my sense of touch was turned up to level 11 of 10, so I didn’t want anything touching my skin. I got into the bed and the nurses immediately began trying to get me an IV to get the antibiotics. So, while contracting and trying to get in a comfortable position, the nurses were poking me repeatedly in my right hand because they couldn’t get an IV to stick. They moved to my left hand, trying 3 times before getting an IV in. It was very uncomfortable and I wanted it to be taken out immediately after the antibiotics were done (which they didn’t do).
At this point, the pain had really overtaken my body. I knew I needed to get my mental state back in order to handle the contractions. So, I told Justin to help me with the visualization technique again (I think I screamed to him during a contraction, “where’s my hill?”). After a few contractions, the nurses were joining in on coaching me through my hills.
The doctor arrived after I had been there for some amount of time (the timeline starts to get fuzzy for when the doctor arrived). The on-call doctor was one that I had butted heads with before, but she checked me and I was at 7 centimeters dilated, so I knew that there was little that she could do to medically intervene and interfere with my all-natural birth plan. So that made me very happy. But, my water had still not broken by this point. I was very scared about why it had not broken yet, yelling out, “why has my water not broken yet?!?” After a few more contractions, I felt a warm rush of pressure, and I looked down and the doctor had broken my water (without telling me!!!). Looking back, this makes me very frustrated.
After my water broke, the doctor left the room and I contracted for some time (15 minutes…?) with the nurses and Justin coaching me. My hair kept getting in my face, and I asked Justin to get the hair bag from the suitcase to put my hair up. He struggled so much with trying to put a headband on me that I joked with the nurses that we should have practiced putting my hair back. Needless to say, the contractions were strong, but comparatively not anywhere close to what was coming up if I could talk and joke between them.
When the doctor came back, I was at 9.5 centimeters with a ½ centimeter lip that would not budge (just like with Grey!). Since I had this exact thing with Grey, I knew I just had to wait it out, contracting in different positions to get that lip to move. These contractions were at such a high intensity level (called transition in labor terms), and Justin says that I spent 1 hour contracting to get the lip to move. I contracted on my side, on all fours, with the squat bar (all with the Kinds of Leon song in my head). The doctor would come in and out, and one of the times she checked me she tried to manually move the lip with her hands. But, nothing worked to get that lip to move. The pain was so terribly intense. That is probably a funny thing to actually say about a birth, but the pain was much much more than I remember with Grey. I do think it’s true that you forget the pain of labor after it’s over, but with Grey’s birth, I felt like I was in another world – I had pain with him, but I was mentally not even in the same place as Justin, so dealing with the pain was much different. With this birth, I remember thinking, “when am I going to zone out?” The pain was so real, and I was so mentally aware of everything.
I did look at the clock at 1:40am, thinking that this was going to be much longer than Grey’s birth. Soon after that, when the doctor checked me, she suggested that I try to push during a contraction to get the lip to move. I spent a few contractions on all fours, pushing with the rush of the contraction even though I did not feel an urge to push. After a few contractions, the nurses told me to flip to my back. By this point I was feeling the urge to push, which actually felt like a welcome relief from the contractions I had been dealing with for the last hour. As I was pushing, I remember thinking, “when is she going to check me to see if I’m at 10 centimeters?” Little did I know, I was already at 10 cm, and I was not pushing to move the lip, but I was pushing the baby out! So about half of my time pushing, I didn’t even know that I was pushing the baby out.
Once I realized this, I was focused on the task at hand. I could feel the baby move down, and I felt very intense pressure and heat. I thought I would have some time in this phase, but before I knew it, the doctor was getting suited up, and the nurses were wheeling over the cart of supplies. The baby was almost out! I had three rounds of very intense pushing (with the feeling like I was going to rip in half!), and before I knew it, I looked up and the baby was out!
She let out a very loud cry right away, and the nurses put her on my belly. The umbilical cord was pretty short, so she stayed on my belly for what seemed like forever as we waited for the cord to stop pulsing to be cut (it was really about one minute). Justin cut the cord, and they moved the baby up to my chest. She was so loud and very squirmy! I remember that the nurses could not get over how alert and aware she was. After about 15 minutes, she got quiet and was just peeking out from under the blanket, breathing heavily with my breath. During this time, the nurses still kept on about how aware she was. They said they could tell she was an old soul.
She nursed within 30 minutes of being born, and she pooped twice while on my belly. At 30 minutes, the nurses took her for less than a minute to get her weight and to position my body to deliver the afterbirth. Once she was back on my chest, I had a very painful time of stitching me up (4 stitches in total) and waiting for the afterbirth to be delivered. I was in such shock from the stitches that my perspective is that my body just clamped up, not allowing the afterbirth to come. The doctor was very concerned, talking about surgery to remove the afterbirth if it didn’t come at 60 minutes after the birth. I knew this would mean that I would be away from the baby and pumped full of lots of drugs. So, I spent a few minutes trying hard to get myself mentally relaxed so I could push the afterbirth out. But, at 45 minutes after the birth, the doctor told me that there is basically one final chance to get this afterbirth out, which is to give me pain meds to relax my body. Although I knew it would make foggy for a while, I agreed and they gave me the pain meds. Within 2 minutes of getting the pain meds, the afterbirth came without me pushing. Crisis averted.
At 60 minutes after the birth, the nurses took the baby to the warming table next to me, got her length, footprints, and performed a few basic tests (all perfect scores!). They helped Justin give a quick sponge bath to baby girl, and put her back on my chest when they were finished. I was very foggy this entire time, and I actually closed my eyes and fell asleep for part of it. When I woke up, I was very sad about missing the first moments of my daughter’s life, but a kind nurse reassured me that the drugs were helping my body rest, which is what I needed. She also said that it was Justin’s turn to have some boding time with the baby. This helped me feel a little better about the situation.
After they put her back on my chest, all the hospital staff left the room, and we had 2 solid hours of alone time with the baby. We peeked under the blanket at her fingers and toes, looked at her short but dark hair, and kissed her cheeks. She was awake for part of the time, quiet and content, but she also slept for some of the time. Those 2 hours were wonderful – calming and full of love - and they seemed to fly by. The next time we saw a nurse, they were preparing us to go to our recovery room where we would spend the next 2 days.
Baby girl CC did not have her name until she was 2 days old. We had a few names we were trying out on her, but we were continually reminded of the nurses’ impression of her being an old soul. That led us to our old-fashion name, Hazel, which is the name of one of my paternal great-aunts. Hazel’s middle name is the middle name of both of our mothers (Paula Lynn and Denise Lyn).
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