I thought I should go ahead and update on recent events, most importantly the birth of little Adrian Huxley.
I've got to say he's a wonderful baby and so easy going. I feel really blessed to have him and Gavin in my life. I couldn't have asked for anything better than to be surrounded by these precious people who are so full of love.
So, Adrian was born at 39 weeks. A very long 39 weeks that were not only painful, but worrisome. We moved from Japan to Germany in my 5th month which was stressful enough, but I ended up having some medical issues. Since I was 17 I had dealt with occassional pain in my ribcage/sternum area. It seemed to get worse with stress. I was told by different doctors that I simply had heartburn. This pregnancy set it off in the worst ways that would become so painful I'd vomit. In my 6th month my husband ended up calling an ambulance for me (against my wishes, of course) after it became so bad I could barely move. They took me to a German hospital, but when they sent their reports for follow up care to my military clinic no one could interpret the German labwork. I went to the military clinic to have more labs done, but instead the doctor poked my ribs and decided it was highly possible that it was inflammation in my gallbladder. After getting an ultrasound done, they saw my gallbladder looked like an hourglass filled to capacity with stones. I had some stones making their way toward my pancreas and liver, so the doctors decided to yank the sucker out within the week since it was posing a concern with my pregnancy. I agonized and cried about having surgery because I was scared for my baby who had yet to come into this world. Then even after the surgery, I worried about how the drugs and anesthesia would affect him. But, those worries were for nothing because everything turned out fine.
So on my 39 week check up, a Monday, the midwife did a membrane sweep. This is supposed to help naturally induce labor, but only if you're body is close to labor anyway. It works only about half of the time, according to my doctor. I would not reccomend doing this to anyone. Dear Lord, that was unnecessary pain that put me into false labor that night. I kept having contractions for the next few days, but started having stronger ones Wednesday night. They kept waking me out of sleep and around 3am I tried taking a hot bath to ease the discomfort. Once that stopped helping I knew I had to get to the hospital. I called them ahead of time, like they ask us to do here, but instead of saying they'll get the room ready they told us to go to an off base hospital since they were diverting all patients right then. I don't know why they were doing that, but this put me under stress. How can a woman in labor accept these sudden last minute changes that other people throw at her? We finally got to the German hospital and I got into a bed at 530am (the clock was on the wall in front of me...what bad placing!) and I asked for something to take the edge off the pain I had in my back. They took some blood and said they had to test it to see if I could tolerate the drugs they had, and 30 minutes later they come back to let me know I am allowed some medication, but as they checked me to see how I was progressing the midwife stopped and told me I couldn't have anything because the baby was coming. I wasn't even hooked into an IV yet.
I think at this point I wanted to lose my mind. Nothing was going the way I wanted it to go. A strange town, strange hospital, strange doctors, no birth plan or records on hand with these doctors, and now they're denying me any relief when my back felt as if fireworks were exploding against my tailbone?! I was scared because I was so out of my comfort zone and I wasn't prepared to be turned away from the hospital and doctors I had planned everything around. But then all I remember is having to push and everything else went out of my mind, like I went braindead and I couldn't have thought about anything even if I wanted to. The only people in the room besides myself and Nick were the head doctor and the midwife. It was very quiet and personal. I only pushed for maybe 10-15 minutes and after Adrian was delivered, they immediately toweled him off enough to allow me to feed him and cuddle him within his first minute of life in this big world. They actually left the room and said they'd get his birth weight/height when we were ready. There was no pressure from them to haul him off to do anything. In fact, I was allowed to leave the hospital 6 hours later. It was truly the best birth experience I could've asked for. I was so happy that things went as smoothly and as naturally as they did and Adrian was finally here.
We had our beautiful, healthy baby boy at 7lb 8oz, 20.1 in on January 12th at 0637.
