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WHAT. A. WEEK.
First, Danny and I are proud to announce that Franklin Ascher Engesser arrived on May 24, 2013 at approximately 1:40 AM, weighing in at 8 lbs 8 oz, 20 inches long. Yup-there were balls growing inside of me, but they’re gone now.
Here’s the birth story for all of those who have been wondering what the heck happened???? I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and placed on insulin fairly quickly. Because of this, we had to induce at 39 weeks if the baby hadn’t arrived on his own. The womb must be like a super-duper cozy lounge, because at 39 weeks, I wasn’t even dilated and had not experienced a single contraction. We checked in for the induction on Tuesday, May 21 at 8 PM to get the ball rolling. The first night, I was given something to dilate me. No dice on dilating, but it did kick off contractions. Wednesday, I spent the day on pitocin. Crampy contractions all day long, feeling pretty crappy, but still not dilated. Wednesday night we tried a third medication to hopefully dilate me. By Thursday morning, I had dilated to nearly 2 CM (YAY!). The doctor broke my water to get things moving and then started off with more pitocin. Oh…the baby had pooped in-utero, so we had our first scare-the dreaded meconium. Right away, the doctor explained the potential danger of the baby inhaling the meconium and that the NICU would be on deck for delivery. With that in the back of our minds, I spent most of the morning having some pretty painful contractions. I opted for about an hour’s worth of IV meds and then went for the epidural. By this point I was hooked up to about a bazillion tubes-2 IVs (normal IV stuff, insulin, pitocin, IV pain meds, epidural, baby heart rate monitor, uterus monitor, blood pressure cuff, and last but not least, a catheter). Then I took a nap and things progressed. Fast forward to 9:30 PM. I was FINALLY ready to push (YAY!). Baby had other plans: the Little Guy was head down, and made some progress, but after 2 hours of pushing, it was pretty clear that we weren’t making any progress. By this time, we had been in the hospital trying to get this kiddo out for 52.5, that’s right, 52.5 hours.
The doctor made the call to deliver by C-section. Poor Franklin was pretty low, pretty big, and had wedged himself into the birth canal pretty tightly. In order to get him out, the doctor had to make the normal bikini line incision and a vertical incision. At 1:40 AM, we found out that we were parents to a baby boy. It probably won’t surprise anyone to hear that after such a long ordeal, Baby Frank was pretty banged up. I think we had a little bit of back-labor, total cone-head, some bruising, bluish feet, probably inhaled meconium. I couldn’t really see much, and was pretty out of it, but Danny thinks there may have been 3-4 people working on him. We got to see Franklin briefly and Danny got to hold and accompany him to the NICU. He’s got a full head of hair, pretty fair skin, and blue eyes – we’re anxious to see if they will change or stay blue (Danny’s family all have blue eyes, as do my mom and my sister).
At 5 AM, I had recovered enough for us to go see Franklin. The NICU nurse told us that due to long labor, and getting wedged in weird during the attempt at vaginal birth, inhaling meconium, there was a chance that he had lost oxygen to his brain. He was placed on cooling therapy for 72 hours to help ensure that his blood flow goes to his brain and other vital organs. It broke my heart to see our little guy hooked up to a ton of tubes and monitors. Over the next few days, Franklin’s condition and appearance improved quite a bit. It was extremely difficult knowing that we would not be able to hold him until after he had been re-warmed.
On Monday, May 27, Baby Frank had been successfully re-warmed. When we went to see him, he was very happy to be warm and swaddled. We finally got to hold him – he loved it – we loved it. We found the Baby Einstein channel on Pandora Radio and played some music for him – it had been a week since he’d heard music and it seemed to soothe him (check out my post about Tiny Overlord’s Musical Education to see what this is all about). I was discharged on Monday, but Franklin still has a few more days in the NICU. Tuesday, they’ll begin introducing breast milk to Franklin via a feeding tube. We don’t know exactly when he’ll be able to come home, but we really, really, really hope that it will be soon!