A Birth Story - Maren Lindgren

(Please note this is my documentation of the birth. Apologies if it's a little too much info for you.)

Maren Christine Lindgren entered the world on February 16th at 2:40 pm. She weighed 7lbs 15.5oz and was 21 inches long.

Her arrival began on Sunday the 15th around 7:00 pm. Derek and I had spent the day with Cindy and Rick after going to a quick hospital appointment because my blood pressure had been too high the past few days. Leaving the hospital, they said I wasn't dilated at all, so we assumed we still had a long road a head of us. I was in desperate need to be out of the house, so Cindy and I walked around the mall for a few hours and then hit a friends house aftwards, where I ate some very spicy chili. Two hours later, I was in labor.

Derek and I were planning to celebrate our Valentine's Day that evening. The night before I was too sick, I had a terrible cold. So, Derek started making dinner when we got home from SF. Around 7:00 I was sitting there and felt a sudden gush and thought oh my goodness, I think my water broke. And a few minutes later my mucus plug came out. So, I was pretty positive she was on her way. I called the hospital. They told me to eat dinner and then head to the hospital. Derek had made this fantastic meal and neither one of us were really able to eat it. We got down what we could and headed across the bridge into SF. It was pooring down rain.

We arrived at the hospital around 9:00 pm. We were put in our birthing room and ended up with the room with an amazing view of the city, which was great to look at the next morning. Contractions started coming pretty strong while we were in the car and just progressively picked up from there. Nicole arrived around 10:00 and began helping me through them. My plan going into this was to have a natural birth. I had two things working against me with this. First, I had a bad cold and hadn't slept well the past few nights. Second, I am not a night person at all, so doing things in the middle of the night is not easy for me. I spent my time with contractions in the tub, on an exercise ball and in the bed. As the night went on, my contractions increased in intensity and frequency. Frequency became the real problem. I had almost continual contractions with no more than 30 seconds rest in between. After about 6 hours of contractions, I couldn't take it any longer and thought if I could only sleep for a little while, maybe I can get through this. So, I opted for a pain drug that lasts for an hour. Well, I ended up with 4 more of these. Each one I took worked a little less and by the last one, it lasted for about 15 minutes. At around 3:30 am my mom arrived. She drove all the way from Orange County through the middle of the night. It was really great to have her there. Early in the morning, I finally gave in and decided to take the epidural. This allowed me to go to sleep for an hour or so and get ready to push. Derek, Nicole my mom and I all worked to push through each contraction. Things seemed to being going well and the nurse originally thought I should be able to push her out in about an hour and a half. However, unlike my contractions earlier in the evening, when I started to push my contractions started to spread out quite a bit to the point where they were almost 5 minutes apart. So, the progress we made with each push retracted during the time between contractions. After 3 hours of this, a team of doctors came in and told me I had 3 options. 1. Push for another hour and if she's not out, move to an assisted delivery. 2. Go straight to assisted delivery. 3. Go straight to a C-Section. And the head resident stated she thought it would take me another 3 hours to push her out on my own and she wouldn't let me go that long. The nurse who had been with me all morning, Heidi, had stepped out to grab some food right before the doctors came in. I really trusted her and wanted her opinion but she wasn't available. So, Derek and I agreed we would move forward with the assisted birth. As they were about to wheel me into the operating room, I had this overwhelming feeling I was making the wrong decision. And nurse Heidi walked in the door and I could see it in her eyes that she thought I could have done it without the assist. But, the decision had been made and off we went.

The operating room was overwhelming. There were about 20 people in the room, doctors and nurses. They put me on a super narrow table, I have no clue how larger people fit on this thing. Derek came it. I had a total meltdown. There was all this commotion. Nurse Heidi came over and calmed me down. She said we were going to push on the next contraction and so I did and in a matter of 3 pushes, Maren came into the world. It took about 3 minutes. She cried immediately and I knew she was ok. They brought her over to Derek and I. I was able to give her a kiss and then they took her off to the nursery and Derek went with her. Unfortunately, my placenta didn't want to come out, so I stayed in the O.R. The doctors waited 30 minutes for it and then made the decision to manually remove it. Even with the manual removal, it didn't really want to come out. So, an hour and a half after the deliver, I was finally coming out of the operating room having lost a lot of blood and feeling really bad.

But the instant I was able to hold her, I forgot about all of that and just focused on being with her. She was beautiful and super alert.

I will end my story there. Recovery week is something I'd prefer to block out of my memory. I would not have survived it without Derek and my mom.

But now I can say being a mommy is a new, amazing, challenging and wonderful experience.

Better Late than Never

I have finally made a wedding album! We're coming upon our two year wedding anniversary in May, so I thought it was about time. We had great photographers, but the deal we cut was that we would receive digital copies of all the photos and could do what we wanted with them. It did not include them putting together the album. I was really good about framing and album creation for family, but just never really got around to it for us. I'm happy that they're finally together though. Here are two of my favorite shots. The first one, I should probably be ashamed of because no bride should be tossing back beers quite like I did that night, but I had so much doing it! I had the time of my life at our wedding and I think that photo represents it well. And the other photo is a sweet photo that I just really like.

My next task, going through all my Cooking Light Magazines, I have a lot of them, and cutting out the recipes I want to keep.

Side Note: We purchased the CRV last night. Now we own 3 cars. Hopefully the Subaru will be sold this weekend.

Am I in Labor?

This seems to be a question I'm asking myself pretty often lately. And last night, I was confident it was happening. I was having pretty strong contractions about every 3 minutes that lasted about 30 seconds. This went on for about an hour and a half. I wasn't 100% confident though because I haven't lost my mucus plug nor had any leaking or bleeding. So after the hour and a half, I decided to call the hospital to see if these things needed to have happened in order for me to truly be in labor. The nurse said no. So I hung up thinking ok. . .maybe this is the real thing. And to my dismay, I didn't have another contraction after hanging up the phone with the nurse. So, I'm back to patiently waiting for the baby to make her appearance. I keep telling her I'm ready when she's ready.

Kid Mobile

This is the car I've had since November of '02. I needed a snow car while living in New Hampshire, so this is what I bought. This car has been great; and Derek and I thought it would make a solid family car too. Much to our surprise, when we went to have the car seat installed, it turns out this isn't such a great family car. The car seat wouldn't fit in the middle of the back seat, so it has to sit behind the passenger seat, which would not be that big of an issue except, the passenger seat has to be all the way forward with the seat back straight up in order for it to fit. This basically makes the front passenger seat inoperable. So, we spent the weekend car shopping. Car shopping while 39 weeks pregnant is pretty interesting. We lugged the car seat and stroller with us everywhere we go to make sure we don't run into this issue with the new car we purchase too. Our requirements for a vehicle: all wheel or four wheel drive so we can get to Tahoe, enough room for baby stuff, leather seats so it's easy to clean up messes, space for the dog when we go on road trips and good gas mileage. And we'd prefer to not spend a ton of money because the car is likely to get thrashed by kid(s). We've discovered our requirements rule out quite a few vehicles. So, we've narrowed things down to either a Honda CRV or a Subaru Forrester. I'm sold on either one, so from here on out, it's up to Derek to work his magic and see where he can get the best deal. And I'll sadly say good-bye to my WRX.

Maren's Room

As you will recall, we started working on Maren's room back in December. It has been a bit of a process, but we're now at the point where we are doing all the finishing touches. Curtains and pictures need to be hung, but beyond that, we're in good shape. Because we have a two bedroom house, I still needed space for guests, so the room is a nursery and can accommodate two others. Here are a few shots of the room. I was really shooting to avoid pink and brown because it is everywhere right now. But because it is everywhere, it was pretty much impossible to avoid. So, we went with brown, green and a hint of pink.

And this is her exploding closet. Mom has had to keep a few things in there, but I think I'm going to have to find somewhere for this stuff pretty soon.

And since I had been working at home, I decided to get all of her clothes and bedding washed. I spent a lot of time doing this. And then my mom arrived and informed me you can't use regular detergent on baby clothes, so I had to start all over again. I am finally finished. I'm sure I'm going to run into a hundred other things I start to do and discover it shouldn't be done that way; and I'll have to start all over. Oh the things I have to learn. Good thing I'm headed to a surviving the first two weeks with baby course tonight.

The Man Weekend

Over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Derek held a man weekend in Tahoe. He had friends from the Bay Area, Canada and Arizona come to participate. They had a ton of fun; and he came home saying men are disgusting when women aren't around, so they next time they're going to invite at least one girl. We'll see when that next time happens. :)

A few days before he left, I had a doctor appt. I was pretty confident the baby had dropped and sure enough they confirmed she had dropped and things were starting to look like she may arrive soon. So, Derek was very nervous about leaving me, but snow was not in the forecast, so I knew if anything happened, he could make it back in time.
With that being said, I was still a little nervous about being home along. I made Jody stay with me Thursday and Friday night. But, I was going to be solo on Saturday.

Saturday afternoon, I went to get my hair done and then Jody and I grabbed lunch together. While we were eating, I saw this kid that looked really familiar walk by the window and then a man that really looked like my mom's boyfriend and the next think I knew my mom, Ron and kids were standing in front of me. Let me just say a sigh of relieve came over me because I no longer had to worry about anything because my mom would be there if anything happened. It was the firs time the kids had been to SF, so I tried my best to be a good tour guide, although I didn't move very quickly. Here they are at the Golden Gate Bridge. Jody was the photographer and I took a nap in the car. It was a beautiful day in San Francisco.

Day 1 - Maternity Leave

Here I am. . .12 more days to go. . .lets hope she arrives in less than that. :)

Today is my first official day of maternity leave. What a strange feeling. I don't have to go to work until July! I can hardly believe it. For my wedding, I took one month off of work. Beyond that, I've never had more than 2 weeks off since I graduated college, which will be 10 years ago this May. This is a much needed time away from the office.

The last two weeks I've struggled a bit with being at home. My life has been on such a routine that the lack of routine really caused me to quickly lose motivation to do anything. So, my grand thoughts of updating my blog regularly went out the window. When I wasn't working or in a meeting, I was napping or watching TV. I was the ultimate couch potato. It was truly pathetic; and I've decided completely unacceptable. So, no more couch potato ways. I've got a list projects that I've wanted to complete for a while and require limited physical activity. So, between now and when the baby is born, I will have myself on a schedule to complete these tasks and will not start my morning with the Today Show, followed by View, then some news, Martha Stewart, Dr. Phil, Oprah, etc. It is disturbing how much time can go by in front on the television.

One of today's tasks is catching up on what has happened around our house over the last two weeks. So read on. . .

(Side Note: If my belly doesn't stop itching I'm not sure what I will do. It's driving me a little insane. I'm assuming it's happening because my belly is stretched beyond belief and my skin just can't take it anymore. And it looks super disgusting. My brother touched it the other day and completely freaked out. It's so hard and slick.)