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Christmas Baby! (Part 1)

Since I had reached my due date and nothing was going on, we decided to make as many plans as we wanted for the Christmas Holiday. We went to my company party on the 22nd, cleaned the house for guests on the 23rd and 24th, went to a Christmas Eve dinner, attended Christmas Eve mass, and (baked and) bought lots of food for Christmas Day when both of our families were supposed to come over.

So when I woke up at 12:30 am on Christmas Day with cramps that seemed to come and go, I thought, “Oh, no….”  The cramps were like period cramps, but this was the first time that they had a start and stop to them. I tried to go back to bed, since the cramping was minimal at that point, but then I kept waking up every 20 minutes or so. Finally at 2:30, I decided to wake Peter up and said, “How would you like to stay awake with me for a while?”

He knew what that meant and downloaded an app on his tablet to time the contractions. When I went to the bathroom, I noticed a tiny bit of blood, and I just started laughing. I knew my Christmas plans were out the window now!

The app was actually pretty neat because it alerted you when to call the hospital based on the duration and frequency of the contractions. Things were about 4-5 minutes apart, but I felt like I could talk through them for the most part. The hospital said to come on in and get checked out anyway. By this time, it was 4:30 when we arrived at the ER. I noticed that the pain of the contractions had definitely increased to the point where I did NOT want to talk anymore.

They wheeled me into a room where they put monitors on my belly and started monitoring the baby’s heartbeat and the frequency of my contractions. I was 2cm dilated when we came in, and they wanted to watch things for the next 2 hours. The plan changed when a nurse came in and said that the baby’s heartbeat was responding to my contractions, so they were keeping me at the hospital.

They gave me some Cervadil, and from there things progressed rather quickly (or at least it felt quick) with dilation. Once I was 7cm, they moved me to a Labor & Delivery room, which was like a fancy penthouse room. My water broke while I was laying there on the bed, but it wasn’t like a crazy explosion or anything.

Finally the doctor came in and told me that she wanted to make my contractions more regular, since they weren’t consistently spaced. She said they were going to put me on a tiny bit of Pitocin, so I said, “Then let’s get that epidural BEFORE these contractions get worse!” It seriously felt like someone was stabbing me in the stomach with a sword at this point.

The anesthesiologist came in, and I was terrified. Like absolutely terrified to the point where I was shaking. Poor Peter…he was such a trooper. He tried so hard to calm me down, but I was almost crying from being afraid of the epidural. The doctor numbed my back, which was the worst part of the epidural, and I jumped a little when I felt it. When the doctor actually put the epidural needle in, we heard, “Oh, no…I just nicked your spine. Yea…you’re probably going to hurt tomorrow.” I could tell that he felt really bad about it, but I don’t blame him. He then had to give me another epidural in another spot, and that one took effect in about 5 minutes. It was wooooonderful, and I couldn’t feel the contractions anymore! The one thing I did notice about the epidural was that I had the shakes after I got it. I don’t know if it was my nerves or if it was an effect of the epidural, but I felt like I had nervous shakes.

The doctor came in a little while later, and I was 9cm. She said I should start pushing when I “felt the urge.” I had no idea what that meant, but I understood soon enough. The pushing wasn’t horrible…not until a head came out. Holy bajeez. No epidural can stop you from feeling THAT. My throat was soooo dry from all of the deep breathing. The nurses kept promising me that they would get me whatever I wanted as soon as she was born. All I could think about was a nice big Diet Coke — cold and bubbly! So at 4:06 pm on Christmas Day, Emma Rose was born!

She cried a little for about 30 seconds, and then they whisked her off to the corner of the room to clean her off and weigh her. Peter got to hold her first, since I got to hold her for 9 months. I think he was hooked :). I remember looking at her thinking, “Who does she look like? I want a Coke now.” And at this point, I really didn’t care that it was Christmas Day anymore. The hard work was basically over!

The nurses took her back to the corner for a while, so the doctor could give me a few stitches. Yes. Va-jay-jay stitches. I don’t care what they say; the sewing might have been worse than the childbirth. I was slightly terrified, so I sang songs while I held Peter’s hand tightly, “When will it stop? I don’t like this. This is horrible. I want to be dooooone! I thought the pain was ooooover.” Those were the lyrics to my song.

Soon after, my parents came into the room, and Peter finally announced the baby’s name. We had been keeping her name a secret until birth because we wanted a little surprise factor. I think everyone was so excited about Emma’s birth that they didn’t have many opinions on her name…but we are big fans :). Peter’s mom and Jim also came in shortly after, and they were just as excited about baby Emma. Emma’s first gifts were a teddy bear from Grandmom & Grandpop C. and an owl from Grandmom and Grandpop McC.

  

After that, I remember the nurses taking the baby up to the nursery to clean her off more, and a nurse helped me pee for the first time. Talk about an experience. I have never had to use so much equipment to help me pee before. Two weeks later, things are finally starting to get less complicated in the bathroom department.

After a pee, they wheeled me up into the Mother Baby floor, and lots of family greeted Peter and me there. I honestly don’t really remember much of the conversations that we had or what people gave us. I was dead tired at this point. I do remember being happy that my brother and his wife were able to be there, since they were flying out of the country on Dec. 26 to go on their honeymoon in Jamaica.

 

The next few days in the hospital were extremely tiring…mostly because the nurses, doctors, consultants, etc. kept coming into the room every 20 minutes, so we never got any sleep. I started to get a headache/neck ache which I definitely thought was a result of lack of sleep and labor pushing (–you tense up every muscle in your body, so I expected that was why my neck hurt). I had never birthed a child before, so I didn’t think anything of it when I felt like I had been hit by a train.

On Thursday, Dec. 27., we were scheduled to go home. Before we left, an anesthesiologist came in to check on me and see how I was doing. He started to give me funny looks when I told him that I had a strange neck pain when I stood or sat. He said it sounded like the result of the botched epidural #1, but if I could live with the pain, then it would go away in about a week.

We packed all of our stuff up, and I was wheeled out to the car. The wheelchair was excruciating for my neck, since I had to sit up. The car ride home was also absolutely horrible for my neck. Once we got home, I flopped on the couch to lie down.

But we were happy to be home! The dogs were happy, too. Lily was curious enough to give a good lick to Emma’s head. Lennon was (and still is) very interested whenever Emma makes a noise. We are fine to have them sniff and lick her, but we are trying to manage Lennon’s interest level by giving her billions of toys to keep her busy.

Part 2 to come later!

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You’ll Poke Your Eye Out

On Thursday night, I was working at the dining room table…when all of a sudden, Lennon decided to go into super stealth mode toward the stairs. Her ears perked up, and she ran with a purpose toward the steps.

So I looked over and saw a little furry body hopping down the stairs. It was Tubby, the sugar glider. This sugar glider loves to get out and test his fate.

Tubby (on the left)  
Tubby before his diet

I ran to the steps and grabbed Tubby, yelling to Peter to grab Lennon, and at this same time, Lennon jumps toward my hands, scaring Tubby…so Tubby proceeds to jump on my face. Yes, face.

And wouldn’t you know that I haven’t clipped his dagger nails in a few months, even though I keep telling myself, “I really need to clip his nails.” Just in case you don’t know what their feet look like, here is a great pic I found online; it really showcases the talons of death well.

Where do his nails land, you ask? IN MY EYE. Like actually ON MY EYEBALL. At this point, I don’t want to pull him off my face, since his nails are like little hooks, so I just have to wait until he moves off of my eye. 
We called the eye doctor at 8:30 pm, hoping he had an answering service that could tell me what I should do. Luckily, my wonderful eye doctor was on call, and he called in some eye antibiotic gel that night. So I saw in Rite Aid with one eye closed — I could’t really open it because it would just start pouring tears down my face.
My watery eye 🙁
Me moaning on the night of “the incident”
My eye doctor was able to see me first thing the next morning and gave me more antibiotic gel. So yea… for about 1.5 days, it was almost impossible to open my eye. Luckily, all is healing well, and I don’t look like a cyclops anymore. However, I do have this awesome M-shaped scratch in the middle of my cornea. Wee!
The day after…disregard my messy kitchen.
It has been cleaned since then.

My favorite part of this story is how both the lady at Rite Aid and the nurse at the eye doctor’s office both looked at my file and said, “Happy Birthday!!” Hahaha! For some reason, this makes me laugh :).

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31 weeks…lots to recap!

I’ll begin with a belly pic to get this out of the way :).

31 weeks and 5 days

This week has been filled with cleaning, writing thank you notes, putting new baby items away, and building furniture — ok, maybe Peter did all the furniture building.

Pile of Gifts 
More Gifts
Dresser Assembly
Crib Assembly
What Lennon did while I folded laundry…

Also, last weekend we went to the 2012 Wine Festival. I think everyone had a great time. We brought crackers, grapes, and cheese galore. I was obviously the DD, but it was nice to get out of the house and be among so many friends! The weather was gorgeous and couldn’t have been better for a wine festival. 
The Wine Tasters

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Lennon’s Surgery – Week #2

Just as a side note, I’m trying to keep record of Lennon’s ACL surgery, so other dog owners out there can see the progress of the surgery recovery. Hopefully this will help someone who may have questions. I will also blog about pricing that we found, because there is very little information out there about this.

Over the past 2 weeks, our Australian Cattle Dog mix has been recovering from an ACL surgery, called Lateral Suture Stabilization. She is doing pretty well, and the doctor says her incision site looks absolutely wonderful.

Even though she “just had” ACL surgery, this dog has returned to her normal sassy self, which is good… That’s what I keep telling myself :). She wants to play, run, stand, etc. At the moment, the only thing she is actually allowed to do is rest in her crate, eat her dinner (standing up if possible), and go out to pee on a leash. No running, no jumping, just resting.

We literally just got the OK to start taking her on three 5-minute walks now that she has had 2 weeks to heal. We tried taking the cone off, so you will some pics with, some without. She just had the cone put back on about 2 minutes ago, because she wants to pick at her last 2 stitches.

During the second week, she was still toe-touching and tapping her paw on the ground, which is good, because she’s trying to use the leg again. Here is a video of the toe-touching/tapping thing, so you can see what it looks like.

Thursday, May 27, was her 2 week mark, and we started the 5 minute walks with her. She absolutely loves getting out of the house, but I just want to stress that this is something you do with your dog AFTER the 2-week mark and AFTER the vet tells you it’s ok to do this. I will blog again next week and maybe even have the motivation to scan and post the pricing information about the different surgeries that we were quoted.

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Lennon’s Surgery – Week #1

So, last week was Lennon’s first ACL surgery. She had her back, left leg operated on, because the left leg was worse than the right. We originally started out with the “referral” we got from our regular vet. He referred us to some surgical specialist, who quoted us for a TPLO surgery. TPLO is one of the top-notch, “gold-star” (as they put it) surgeries that you can get to help with a torn ACL. It doesn’t actually fix or repair the ACL in any way. It changes the angle of the knee, so your knee no longer needs an ACL. I don’t really get how it works or how it fixes the problem, but I’ve heard and read a lot about it by this point.

Of course, we wanted to do the right thing and fix Lennon’s legs, but something that would have ended up costing about $10,000 in the end is just crazy. We went and saw another vet for a consultation about other surgery options. I’ve read before that there are about 4 surgery options for this problem, so I wanted to hear about something other than TPLO.

We took our “pup” to my family’s old vet (before I was married) to see what options they could give us. They talked about a surgery called TTA, which is essentially the same as the TPLO (just not copyrighted), and another surgery called Lateral Suture Stabilization in which the vet replaces the old ACL with nylon fiber.

After a lot of questions and research, we decided to go with the Lateral Suture Stabilization technique, because it was better than nothing, and our vet said the results are just as good as the other surgeries. It takes a little longer to heal from this surgery, but he said he sees very similar results in the end.

We dropped Lennon off on Thursday of last week and picked her up the next day. They wanted to keep her overnight to make sure everything was ok. The surgery took about 2 hours (1.5 was the predicted time, so the extra 30 minutes cost us extra), but the vet was able to put in 2 nylon fibers, one acting as a back up. She is a stubborn, thick-headed dog, so we were happy to hear the words “back up.”

When we picked her up, she was doped up and making sad noises in the car, but she came home and slept a good bit. We have to keep her in a crate for 2 months to ensure proper healing time, but we are ok with that, and Lennon is making her peace with it as well. She only comes out when we take her outback on a leash and with a back sling (to help keep weight off her leg), so it takes 2 people to let her pee. She also enjoys her passive therapy or range of motion therapy, because it means she gets to lay on the living room floor for a while.

Passive therapy or range of motion therapy is when you move the leg and replicate the natural walking/running movements, so the muscle doesn’t get stiff. She doesn’t really like it sometimes, but that is expected. We have to ice her leg afterward to help with the pain, but she is such a trooper.

Since this surgery takes longer to heal, I opted for the laser treatments for her. We take her to the vet 6 times (3 times the first week, 2 times the second week, and 1 time the third week) to have them put a cold laser on the incision and the affected area, which helps reduce inflammation and pain and also increases circulation back to the muscles.

These pictures are from week 1 of the surgery. She had some really bad razor burn, but other than that, the incision is really clean and is healing WONDERFULLY. The vet is also amazed at how resilient she is. I am not surprised, because Lennon seriously is the most stubborn dog I’ve ever met. She will not rest until she does what she wants to do, which in this case… is good. It means she is trying to walk on the leg more. She isn’t putting her weight on it, but she is fully extending it and trying to walk with it. According to the vet, she is about a week further than most dogs are when they have ACL surgery.

When I get to my scanner, I will post the quoted prices of both surgeries for those people out there who are querying “dog ACL surgery prices.” When I searched on Google, I didn’t find much on prices, so hopefully this will help others looking for more information.
 

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Lennon, the Dog with 2 Torn ACLs

For the past 2 years, our 5 year old “pup,” Lennon, has been limping around and having a generally tough time doing the things she likes to do (Yep, she.). The stairs have become a no-go zone, because she tries to gallop up the stairs and usually tumbles back down when her hind legs give out. Walks around the neighborhood are a no, because they put her out of commission for the rest of the day. We took her to the vet 2 years ago, and we were told she had a sprained muscle, “Give it some time to heal. Limit her activity.” Now, if you’ve ever had a cattle dog before, limiting their activity is nearly impossible. Squirrel. Bird. Wind. Mailman. Car. Tree. Fork. Dog on TV. Cell phone. Everything causes this dog to tense up and run toward whatever object made the barely audible noise. There is no “rest” with her.

When she had her yearly dog exam in 2008, they said she probably partially tore her ACL, because her limping hadn’t gotten any better after we let her rest for a few months. The doctor said “No activity. Just bathroom, eat, lay, sleep.” That didn’t work either. A few months later, he told us to try a medicine for pain and swelling, although I honestly thought that was the worst thing to give her. Give a dog who doesn’t ever rest or take it easy a pill that will make her forget that she has an injury, so she can then return to normal jumping, pouncing, and tearing through the house. The pill is great for pain and made her return to her normal peppy self, but at the same time, now she thinks she can do all of these high-stress things on her back legs. Now in the middle of play, she falls down. She tries to run upstairs by jumping over the gate and and falls down. She tries to run after a bird on her very short walk to the mailbox and falls down. Poor pup :(.

This week, we took Lennon to a Vet Surgeon to see what it would cost to fix her leg, which we were then told it is actually both of her ACLs that are torn. So 2 legs, 2 surgeries, $7-8,000. WHAT?! Yea. That’s right. You read it. I am all for fixing my pup, but $8,000?? Let me just pull that outta my pocket for ya. And the annoying part was that the Vet didn’t give us any other options than the most expensive, PATENTED surgery out there. I have done my research; I know that there are 4-5 different surgeries, but this guy is a “It’s this or nothing,” type guy. Not cool.

Yesterday we took Lennon to another Vet Surgeon who gave us 2 more options, one of which was more reasonable for the average person. He’s going to email us a more descriptive quote, so here’s to hoping *crosses fingers*. We want to help our pup. Our crazy, wild, frustratingly hyper pup. She may eat my Domino’s pizzas, Halloween candy, hairbrushes, Christmas cookies, Birkenstock sandals, nice couch blanket, all of my bedspreads, pillows, bottle of TUMS, acrylic paint, etc., but I love her and don’t want to see her in pain.

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Making Friends

Lennon decided it was time to make better friends with the next door neighbor-dog, Truman. What did she do to get to know him better? Eat a whole in the fence, so she could stick her head into his yard.

Notice the beard and feet.
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The Only Snow of 2010

For some reason unknown to me, it actually snowed in southeastern Virginia. This never happens. Occasionally, we get some flurries, and the lame city closes down because of the threat of wintry weather. Our area has about 2 snow plows and a bag of salt–living by the beach, we don’t normally get anything other than cold rain in the winter, so this makes sense.
The meteorologists had been talking about this “huge” snowstorm that would definitely hit our area by Friday/Saturday of last weekend. Normally, this involves telling the viewing area about a possibility of snow, closing down the schools, and then nothing happens. Totally not cool, considering there are no snow days built into the public school calendars down here, which means make-up days.
But like I said, somehow it actually snowed about 8″ in our area. Some places got a foot, some got 4 inches. Not a blizzard by any means, but people down here sure act like the world is ending–except when it comes to driving. You would be amazed at the number of people who want to drive when roads are icy. We ended up getting about 2 inches of very dense ice covering all of the secondary roads and neighborhood streets, which is why schools are closed today. It is very dangerous in some spots, but you wouldn’t be able to tell this when you see people driving 45mph on black ice, even roads where the ice is clearly present. Maybe this is my northern cynicism, but c’mon, people. Really?
Anywho, Peter and I laid around all weekend and relaxed, since everything was closed. Our dogs were super excited to have us around the house. Lennon absolutely adores anything Peter does, and she was very content to have him pet her all day.
We tried to take the dogs for a little snow walk, and Lennon was so excited, she couldn’t stay still long enough for me to take a good picture. I continuously took about 20 pictures of her, and this was the unblurriest one I could get. She really likes to hold the leash when you mention the world, “walk,” to her. And the noises she makes. You would think she won the lottery. Or whatever dogs would win if they played such things?
Here are some pictures of our snow dogs. Lily obviously loves the snow. By the end of the day, you can see that Lily is exhausted, as she collapsed on Peter’s leg with her tongue hanging out. 🙂 Silly pup.
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New Lens Day!

I have been waiting for this day to arrive. It’s new camera lens day! I am being eco-friendly, by not buying the new 50mm f/1.8D with AF. I bought a used 50mm f/1.8 Series E Ai-S on eBay. Ok, ok. I would have liked the new one, but they are $135+, and the older version that is manual is just $25-30. You caught me. It’s so fun. I’m totally loving this shallow depth of field. My old lenses don’t have a very fast f-stop, so this is new and exciting for me. I am still learning how to use it though. It’s not hard, but there is no light meter, so you have to set the shutter speed based on a hand light meter or just trying it out. I’m just making educated guesses at the moment as to what the shutter speed should be for different lighting.

Gah. I hate that I am allergic to fake jewelry. I have this really cute sterling silver charm, but I have broken all of my nice chains. So I had to wear my nice charm on a fake chain the other day, and now my neck is all broken out with hives. It’s so itchy!

Lennon has a partially torn ACL, so we are keeping her on “bed rest.” Well… we are keeping her on as-much-rest-as-possible. How do you keep a herding, high-energy, sass-tastic dog from being active? So far, we have taken the following steps to ensure that her leg has a chance to heal. The keyword being “chance.”

1. Block off any access to stairs. She loves running up and down them as fast as possible.
2. Give her herbal stress relievers for dogs to try to calm her down a little.
3. Put an ace bandage on her whole leg, so it’s awkward to walk/run on.
4. Walk her outside to pee and don’t let go of her collar… or else she will chase birds.

Any other ideas?