1 Week and Growing

It has already been a whole week! (working on the birth/hospital post, so sometime soon)

I'm home with Kevin while Ryan and Kherington took Ryan's family to Paris for the day. I think I'm going to try to be productive...get some sewing and cooking done, but we'll see.

Back to Kevin. He is pretty much the chillest baby out there. He sleeps, eats, poos and repeats. I know he's cried (like mad cry) once, but as soon as he pooed (took about 5 minutes of crying) he was back to his normal chill self. He currently wakes up around 1am and around 5am to eat each night, but even that I just hear him start wrestling and smacking his lips but not crying.

Kherington liked to chill too, but she chilled AWAKE. Her eyes were always open and watching us...we thought people were crazy when they told us baby's sleep 16 hours a day b/c that was definitely not the case with her. I think Kevin is balancing the two out.

To me he looks a lot bigger than when we first came home, but who knows...I guess I'll find out Monday when the midwife comes by to check on him (basically just weigh him and make sure he's gaining weight).

Some pictures:

And a little Kherington hightlight - Kherington enjoyed the dinners that the Relief Society Sister's brought over...especially the Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce :)

Belgium Hospital Stay

A normal hospital stay in Belgium is 5-6 days! That is insane! Especially considering that you basically do everything yourself so it’s more like being in a nice (and hot) jail cell in my opinion.

Insurance only covered a shared room and I didn’t care enough to fork out the extra 150 euros per day for a private room so we went with it.

I got wheeled into the room and my roommate had people over for visiting hours (speaking dutch). The midwife told me I couldn’t get up on my own until 9pm…which I really really couldn’t because I was still attached to the IV. She said to ring the button if I needed to pee or if the baby cried…then she left.

Ryan chilled for a little while. We got me setup and he left around 7pm to go retrieve Kherington from her friends house.

I chilled. Luckily I had saved a book to read while I was in the hospital…I’m not sure what else I would have done. Kevin slept.

The night shift midwife came around 10pm to take the IV out and help me got the bathroom…basically just tell me how many pads to put on (3 ginormous pads…yeah, lost of bleeding). After that she left. I rang the call button when Kevin cried the first time…I had no idea why I needed to, but they had told me to. The mid wife came in, checked his diaper...he hadn’t pooed, so she handed him to me and left.

Basically we were on our own. When he cried, I tried feeding him…he LOVES to suck...I QUICKLY found that breastfeeding is VERY PAINFUL the second time around. My uterus contracted like crazy giving me worse contractions than I had had when I was in labor! To make matters worse, I hadn’t had any type of pain meds. I finally rang call button and asked for some pain meds…come to find out what they give you is about the equivalent of tylenol (not very strong) so I was still painful. Not only did the uterus contract. I think this is because his suck was so strong!

Long story short, some things that are different in hospital stay in Belgium are as follows:

1. You bring everything – towels, extra pillows, clothing, etc.
2. Only 1 bottle of water was provied – this might have been because it was a weekend, but I thought that was very strange considering in the US they gave me a ginormous water bottle and expected me to drink like 3 a day.
3. The baby stays with you in the room all the time – even when I went down the hall (public hall mind you) to shower in the morning, they told me to just leave the baby in the room (not very secure…except for the fact that I had a roommate)
4. Shower was down the public hall
5. You bath the baby yourself – they had a room with a couple sink and you’d wheel the baby down the hall, give him a bath, weigh him and dress him on your own.
6. I had to request the pain meds – they were never offered to me
7. Rooms were HOT – the sun had been shinning and there was no AC in our room…ugh
8. You just walk out of the hosptial…no need to ‘check-out’ – they told me if my gyn and ped both said it was okay I could leave….but the med wife and nurses never actually signed me out or anything

I luckily was able to leave the hospital after just 2 nights. When we left the hospital Kevin weighed 3090 grams (6 pounds 13 ounces). Because I left early, a midwife comes to the house to check on me and Kevin.

Kevin's Birth Story

Kevin’s Utrasound due date was April 5^th, but his calendar due date was March 31^st. Since Kherington came a day before her calendar due date (and her ultrasound due date was about the same amount of time later) I was sure that Kevin would come March 30^th. That was the date. Well, babies have their own timetable.

A couple days before my desired due date, I started getting really nauseas at night. I would feel sick each night starting around 5pm. I figured this might be a sign he was coming (even though I did not have this with Kherington). No such luck. March 30^th came and went. I was pretty frustrated.

The nausea kept it’s pattern, so I figured, well, at least by April 5^th he’ll be her for sure. The night leading up to the 5^th, I would go to bed not feeling so well and having some minor contractions. I would think, okay, just get some sleep and you’ll wake up during the middle of the night and need to go the hospital. Then, each morning and I would wake up STILL PREGNANT and feel just fine. So not cool.

April 5^th came and went. I had a doctor’s appointment and baby monitoring appointment that day…in Belgium when you hit your due date you start going to the hospital to get monitored for 45 minutes…they check the baby’s heart rate, your contractions and the baby’s movement. The monitoring appointment showed everything was fine. At the doctor’s appointment I learned that he was still REALLY HIGH (had not dropped at all) and my cervix was beginning to thin. I think she stripped my membranes, but didn’t call it that…she just did something and said, “Hopefully that will encourage some contractions.”

As a last case scenario, we decided I would be induced Monday April 11^th if he still hadn’t come on his own…mind you that is about 2 weeks later than my desired due date…Ryan’s family was coming on April 15^th and I really wanted him out and to have time adjusting before they got here.

April 6^th came and went. April 7^th came and went. On April 8^th I had another monitoring appointment that showed the same thing…happy healthy baby, very content where he was.

FINALLY April 9^th I woke up around 6:30 not feeling good. As in not feeling good like I had each night I went to sleep but this time is was in the morning. I got up and watched a movie that we had fallen asleep during the night before. Around 7:30am I started timing contractions online. The contractions didn’t feel good, but they never really hurt a lot and they were only lasting about 30 seconds BUT they were about every 6-7 minutes. The doctor had told me to head to the hospital when the contractions were every 10 minutes and lasting 60 seconds for 1 hours (we live about 30 minutes from the hospital and it’s a second baby and I tested positive for Group B strep so they wanted to be able to give me two doses of vaccination before he came out)

I really didn’t want to jump the gun on heading to the hospital. We were dropping Kherington off at her friend Alex’s house across the street and I didn’t want to have to do that twice J. Finally at 10:30am the contractions were lasting about 50 seconds every 4-6 minutes. They weren’t quite a minute and they weren’t very painful, but I also didn’t want to have the baby on the road. Ryan took Kherington over to her friend’s house (she cried a little, but we later learned she did just fine) and we left for the hospital around 11am.

At 11:30am we went up to the delivery area at Edith Cavell hospital in Ukkel, Belgium where I was going to deliver and got buzzed in. They strapped me up to be monitored for another 15 minutes which showed I was in deed having contractions (still not super painful). When they checked me, I was already dialated to 5 or 6cm! WOW….wasn’t expecting that. I had only dialated to 3cm with Kherington and my contractions HURT so this was different.

Ryan left to get me checked-in to the hospital. The midwife gave me an enama (that’s the norm here…maybe too much info, but they squirt a whole bottle of this liquid up your rear and tell you to wait 5 minutes to go to the bathroom). She told me to change into one of my t-shirts (they don’t provide a hospital gown) and asked if I wanted an epidural. My response: “Yes, the contractions don’t hurt now, but I don’t really want to feel the baby coming out.”

I got the epidural around 12:30pm and pressed the button once to administer the dosage. They also have me the first does of meds for the GBS. Then we just chilled. Contractions continued, but I didn’t really feel them…I could however feel my legs the whole time.

My doctor arrived…she came in the room in shorts and a blouse and Ryan had no idea who she was. She said the baby was still really high. A short time later (without any pitocin or whatever it’s called) I had dilated to a 10, but my contractions weren’t strong enough to push the baby down. The doctor broke my water, gave me a little pitocin, told me it would take a little while to take effect and left.

It did not take a little while. I could feel the contractions (the epidural had apparently worn off)…basically I feel like I had to poo really really really badly but there was nothing I could do. It HURT. I finally pressed the button to give me more epidural drugs, but I later learned that because of how I was laying it didn’t have the right effect (yeah…NOT COOL). The midwife sat me up a little so the epidural could circulate correctly, but it didn’t completely numb everything up like it did with Kherington. I still had the horrible need to poo (or so it felt).

Kevin was born at 3:33pm on Saturday April 9^th. He weighed 3275 grams (7 lbs 3.5 oz), was 49cm (19.3 inches) long and had a head circumference of 34.5cm (13.6 inches).

Just like Kherington, he had poo so he was taken to the adjacent room to get everything sucked out. They wiped him off a little, got his measurements and then layed him on me where he chilled for a long time. (in the meantime I had delivered the placenta…very nasty looking thing). While he was laying on me (in our own towel mind you), he pooed in my hand and on the towel.

After awhile the midwife took him and got him dressed (in clothing we provided…yes, that’s Belgium for you) and Ryan finally got to hold him.