kristen's fairytale: June 2012

i am so in love with this little boy of mine! it is crazy how much you can love someone that really you just met! plus, every single day i just marvel at how much i love him, and then the next day i swear that that love has increased. the thing i find funniest is when he's wide awake in the middle of the night i can't wait for him to fall asleep so i myself can catch a couple of z's.. and then as soon as i put him down i miss him! he sleeps in his pack n' play next to my bed, and even though he's pretty much right next to me i miss him and can't wait to hold and snuggle him again. i'll admit, those first two weeks were probably the roughest and most hardest days of my life, but every single second of it was so worth it! however i'm definitely liking being a mom much more these days! i'm not sure if it was because the 3 week mark is when i took a week off from visitors, or if it was the fact that my hormones finally decided to settle down, or if it was just me getting the hang of things but that third week everything just seemed to be so much easier and i started to figure out what his different cries meant and what he wanted when he wanted. plus, i finally started to get into a good rhythm with breastfeeding. i'm not sure if i was just ignoring this, or if really nobody had ever told me, but breastfeeding is freaking hard! it's not just some simple thing and it's very time consuming.. especially when you are feeding the baby every 1-2 hours. after like 2 days i was totally ready to give up, but everyone kept telling me it gets easier and even though those first two weeks sucked it really did get easier by week 3. from what i hear everyone says it really becomes second nature and a piece of cake by week 6 and that you will really start to enjoy it then, so as of right now i'm just waiting for that week 6, even though right now i'm really starting to not mind it! anywho! seeley is sleeping so i better try and catch some sleep before his next feeding!

since i think i've finally caught up on some sleep i figured i would update my blog. as pretty much everyone knows i gave birth to the sweetest little boy ever! on june 2nd, my due date, i felt the same as always.. no contractions.. seeley was still hanging out up high in my ribs, and i just felt normal. rey's uncle is moving to texas so he invited us over that day for a bbq! it was a nice relaxing day and we sat outside talking and eating yummy food! they made some really good salsa's and i tried one bite of the really hot one and rey seems to think that is the reason i went into labor that night. anywho! we came back from the bbq, and rey's grandma was with us and we stayed up talking until rey went to work. then i went to bed, but as usual i couldn't sleep. chloe was with me and she fell asleep on rey's side of the bed so i moved over to snuggle her. not too long after, around 1:50 am i felt something weird, almost thick, coming out of me so i stood up because i wanted to go to the bathroom to see what it was. as soon as i sat up i felt a HUGE gush fall out of me! like i said, the funny thing was, i was on rey's side of the bed. i went to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet and yet another gush fell out. after i let it empty a little bit i went and texted rey that i thought my water had broken. luckily i had bought a bunch of pads earlier that day because i was constantly leaking! i then tried to call rey, but he wasn't answering so i pretty much spent the next twenty minutes running around trying to get everything together that i would need at the hospital. i was about to call the front desk at rey's work to tell them to have him call me, but right as i was looking up the number he called me back and said he would be leaving right then. i then went and informed franny and dave what was happening and told franny i'd let her know when it got closer to me delivering since i of course wanted her there to help me!

rey got home in like twenty minutes and we made our way out the door and to the hospital! they checked me into a room and checked to see if my water had in fact broke, which it obviously had! seriously i hope my water never breaks on its own again! about every two minutes it feels like you are peeing yourself! plus, when i laid in the bed i had to lay on this pad to soak it all up and i just felt like i was laying in water until i got my epidural, but we'll get to that later! they checked to see if i was dilated and found out that i was 2 cm! they told me i could either just lay there and and rest or walk for an hour to try and get things progressing. i decided to walk around and rey and i spent the next hour walking around labor and delivery before heading back to the room to try and sleep. let me tell you, despite being exhausted it is almost impossible to sleep when every thirty minutes the nurses are coming in and out of your room to check on you! plus, the stupid night nurses messed up my arms trying to get iv's in, even after i told them i have bad veins and it would be better to just do it in my hand, but they insisted they could do it. after trying a few times they decided to let the morning nurse try and do it.

by the time morning came around i hadn't progressed too much and wasn't feeling my contractions at all so they put me on pitocin to try and start labor.. so at 7:00 a.m. is when they started it and said that was when my active labor started! the nurse also told me that i could get my epidural now if i wanted, but i decided to wait since i wanted to see what a contraction really felt like and wanted to see how far i could get. with the pitocin they start you off slow, and she said most people end up with doses of 20, but every time they tried to move it up, seeley's heart rate would either go up, or down too low so they'd stop it, or leave it at 1 for like a half hour before turning it off. the other thing that i had going on, was i was dilating, but seeley was still high up and not dropping, so to encourage him to drop i had to lay on my side and switch sides every thirty minutes. so around 2, i really started to feel those contractions and they were freaking painful! i decided that i was definitely ready for that epidural! i'm glad i asked when i did, because when the guy came in to do it my contractions started to get even worse. i give props to those ladies that give birth naturally because that was no fun! so the epidural was pretty crazy because as you know, it makes you numb from the waist down and it's so weird to not feel your legs! i felt bad for my nurse, because when it came time to switch sides i literally couldn't move and she pretty much had to lift me up and move me all around.

well, around five i got checked and i was at 9 cm so i called franny to let her know that she should probably come down now! at six, my body was technically ready to push, but seeley was still high up so they wanted me to wait an hour to try and get him to move down. well, at 7, he had moved down, but guess what? seeley had turned head up, which is not good so i had to move side to side again to get him to go face down! so 8 rolls around and it's time to push, so i do a couple of those and seeley's heart rate totally sky rocketed so they decided to call the doctor in case something went wrong and i needed a c-section. so he gets there at 8:30 and they have me push and seeley was doing just fine. the nurse basically said that most first time mom's will push anywhere between an hour to four hours depending on how good of pusher's they are. well let me tell you! i was freaking exhausted since i hadn't slept since the night before, hadn't had any food or water, only freaking ice chips, and pushing is hard! the idea of pushing for four hours scared the crap out of me so i pushed as freaking hard as i could every single time! at 9:30 they called in the doctor and told me that he would probably be out in the next half hour and maybe after a push or two! well at 9:44 seeley rey lucero was born! when i pushed him out and i looked over at him i seriously couldn't believe how insanely happy i was and how much i already loved that little guy! they then put him on my chest for a minute and i couldn't help but tear up a little bit! he then went off to be cleaned and weighed! seeley weighed 6 lbs and .08 ounces and was 20 inches long.. so basically he was a long skinny dude! he was such a sweet baby and had his eyes open the entire time and didn't cry at all! after about an hour they had everyone leave so i could try and breast feed him before he went off to the nursery. after breastfeeding him and rey went off to the nursery! it's funny how fast you can fall in love with someone because as soon as he left the room i was so sad and missed him already.

so that's the story of seeley's birth! being a mommy has been awesome, and very very tiring! during seeley's first week of life i maybe had gotten 8 hours of sleep.. not to mention my body had gone through one of the most grueling things ever! plus, it's pretty messed up that while you're trying to figure everything out and tired your hormones are raging! yep, that was one rough week but i have my seeley now and it was all worth it if it means i get to be his mommy!