Grayson is born!

Grayson Ray Bridges was born Thursday morning, 2/2/12, at 5:42 am, weighing in at 6 lb, 9 oz, 20 inches long. Bed rest got him to 37 weeks, 1 day!

Labor was really fast and intense! I had no signs of labor on Wednesday, went to bed as normal, and awoke with a start when my water broke at 1:04 am. I hopped into a quick shower while Brant rounded up our bags, and by the time we got to the hospital at 2 am, contractions were about 1 min apart and very painful. I immediately asked for the epidural, but the nurse checked me and said I was already completely dilated so not eligible for an epi. I got one dose of IV pain meds, which worked not at all, but we had to make it work! On the next contraction, I was pushing. I pushed for 2.5 hours, and then he was born! Total labor time was about 4.5 hours. It was a truly amazing experience...completely surreal. When they placed him on my chest, a nurse came in, opened the blinds in the birth room, and said, "it's a beautiful sunrise!" there we were with our minutes-old baby, watching the single most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen in my entire life.

The first day was so wonderful - he latched on pretty well, and we just cuddled and loved on him all day. Then it got complicated. They discovered that I was indeed positive for a common bacteria called Strep B. It would have been treated simply with antibiotics in my IV during labor, but it takes four hours to be effective, and my labor had been so short there was no time for the antibiotic. They tested Grayson's blood, and it showed that he was fighting an infection of some sort by the fact that his white blood cell count was elevated and continued to elevate over a 12-hour period. If he had contracted the Strep B from me, then it could turn into a very serious illness, so they decided to take preventative measures to head off any problems. He was immediately taken (around midnight) to NICU at a neighboring hospital, as the one I delivered in didn't have a NICU, and they started IV antibiotics. We had to be separated that night, which was very hard for me but necessary for his health. I was discharged the next morning to go be with him. We spent the day in NICU, and determined that he was healthy aside from the need for antibiotics, so because I'm breast feeding, they gave us a family room in pediatrics for Brant and me to sleep and care for him here at the hospital. They discontinued his IV fluids and antibiotics Sunday morning, and we were going to be discharged, but then they discovered he has high levels of bilirubin, meaning he's jaundice, so we were kept one more night doing a UV bed treatment. They tested his blood this morning, and his levels haven't come down enough to go home just yet, but they'll test again this afternoon. We're hopeful the light bed works enough to get us home tonight, but it may still be tomorrow. He's a trouper, and I'll be glad to get him home where he won't have any wires hooked up, and he can sleep in peace without being tested and poked. It's so incredibly hard to see all of this happening to my tiny perfect son, but I know he's getting great care and will be just fine very soon.

On a happier note, Grayson looks a whole lot like his daddy! Brant is the sweetest daddy - completely involved in the whole eating, burping, diapering process, and helping me get sleep when I can. He adores his boy, and his gentleness and doting love is the most amazing thing...my two men are magnificent! I'm a very lucky lady. My heart is full and completely content.

More photos to come...

37 Weeks! (/happy dance)

We made it! We made it! My bed rest is officially over, and Baby Boy is now all the way to term! This means that he is unlikely to need any NICU time, and he should have no trouble with his reflexes, most importantly breathing and feeding reflexes. Woo-hoo! We'll have a February baby after all.

And just in the nick of time, I finished his blanket on Monday night!

I'm going to stay on bed rest activity level for the next couple of days, even if I don't have to, because I don't want to send myself into labor before the baby shower on Saturday. After that, though, I'll very happily resume my normal life!

Exciting Updates from the Doc

We had our 36 week check-up on Friday, and the doctor did a quick check on our progress toward labor. Baby Boy is sitting low, and we're at 2 cm dilated, 70% effaced - and that's without walking around or doing anything around the house! Yikes! What the dear doctor says this means is that we're most likely to have a baby within two to three days of the end of my bed rest. Thus, she wants me to be sure to stay bed resting until the full-term mark at 37 week - no cheating. Just three more days to go on that one, but I'm actually going to stay on bed rest a few extra days past that in hopes of attending the baby shower still pregnant. Then, it's anyone's game! Not long now... guess I better get cranking to finish the blanket!

You may have noticed that the produce size-comparison ticker has reached the final watermelon stage. Yeah... I noticed it too. GULP!

Belly shot at 36 weeks, 4 day:

We've made it to 36 weeks!

And that's about all there is to say as far as updates go, which is a very good thing! We're in the very safe zone now, and it's just one more week to get this little guy all the way to full-term. We're in the home stretch!

Saturday night, we had a little bit of contraction excitement that almost had us running out the door to the hospital. It was pretty late at night, so we didn't want to sound the alarm in case it was just false labor, which it obviously turned out to be, but it was the kick in the pants we needed to actually pack the hospital bag and set up his bed in our room. Things are getting real around here!

Baby B continues to wiggle and has started getting the hiccups, which is pretty darn cute, so I guess he still has a little room in there to move and grow. At last week's appointment, my doctor was very surprised to see how much my belly had grown in the two weeks since I'd last seen her - Ha! I could have told her THAT just from how waddley and uncomfortable I'm getting! All for a good cause... I just can't wait for this boy to get here!

35 weeks tomorrow!

Tomorrow we'll be 35 weeks, which is a FANTASTIC milestone! It's a few weeks past when we were braced to have our boy and gives him a very high chance of having NO time in the NICU from here on out. It's been a bit of a bumpy road, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of this bed rest tunnel, which is making things all the more exciting and do-able for the last two weeks of couch-ridden confinement.

We did some work decorating and organizing in Baby B's nursery over the weekend, too. Now, when I say that WE did work, I mean that Brant did actual work while I sat on the bed and took tags off of baby clothes and unwrapped blankets and things so that Brant could later shlep it all downstairs, wash it (3 loads), and bring it back up for me. Then I sat on the bed the next day while I folded and sorted it to be put into the appropriate drawers. Brant put up the decals, got the crib together (Actually, that was a few weeks ago, and I'm just really behind in the report.), and shlepped, as aforementioned. I'm happy to report that it's coming right along. It is by no means done, but it's at least ready enough for Little Man to come home, since he'll be sleeping in our room for a while!

Here are some new pics:
Dinosaur friends in the rocker

Crib with dino sheets

Dresser/changing table with tree decal (I LOVE this tree!)

Dinosaur and volcano decals above the door

I go into his room to make sure it's still cute about three times a day, now.

In other news, I've taken up crocheting to pass the time and started a blanket for Baby Boy! I'm hoping to finish it before his arrival, and with all this downtime on my hands, I think it's a manageable goal. Here's what I've got so far, at about halfway done:

Final photo, our 34 week bump-shot from this past weekend! It feels like less of a bump and more of a hill these days...

Belated Update & The Full Story

I'm a few days late to update this, and the word has mostly spread about our appointment with the doctor on Friday. She checked everything out, and it looks like bed rest has been doing its job and significantly slowed the progress that my body has been making. We're to continue as we have been until 37 weeks when we reach full term, and at that point, I'll be fully released to live life as a functional human being again! We're just two days away from 34 weeks, which is the sucking reflex milestone, so we're very happy to reach that and go beyond. Three more weeks to the finish line!

I don't think we've fully explained to anyone the nitty gritty details of what's happening, and for posterity and clarity, I've decided to pull back the curtain and lay out the medical truth of it - dignity be damned! :)

Here's the run-down as I, a non-medical professional, understand it...

Disclaimer: Wordiness and extreme sharing below!

A few points to make all this make sense:
-Cervical thinning/shortening is normal in later pregnancy as the body gets ready to deliver. It usually begins around 35-36 weeks, as I understand it, and should start thinning from a thickness of 3.5-4 cm.

-Funneling is when the cervix begins to open from the inside out. It literally looks like a funnel. This can be due to several factors, but in my case is likely due to a high level of amniotic fluid that's causing extra downward pressure. This isn't really normal and shouldn't really happen, but it's not a HUGE deal...

-The purpose of bed rest, in my case, is to keep pressure off of the cervix so it doesn't thin further and to avoid stimulating contractions, which I seem to get from sitting upright, standing, or walking around for more than a few minutes.

Now for the timeline:

29 weeks (when this all began)
-The Friday we went in for that fateful, sudden appointment, my cervix was measuring 1.8 cm with significant funneling, which is about half the thickness it should have been at that point. Coupled with the contractions I was having, it meant I was beginning signs of preterm labor. This is why we were sent immediately to the hospital to monitor the contractions and receive the steroids for Baby B's lungs. If the contractions had been or become regular overnight, they would have administered medications to stop the contractions, but luckily, this was not and did not become the case! Therefore, they sent us home after the second steroid shot with instructions to stay on bed rest and come back if the contractions got worse.

-By the time we saw the perinatologist the following Tuesday (still 29 weeks), my cervix had thinned further to 1.5 cm with the funneling, but they considered this 'no change' because it was such a slim difference. This appointment included a very thorough sonogram that showed our boy is very healthy with a very strong heart and a working diaphragm, and confirmed that the kidney fluid is at a normal and insignificant level. Baby B even gave us a thumbs up to let us know he's doing fine!


31 weeks
-We saw my doctor again, but she didn't check my cervix so as not to agitate it because I hadn't been having any significant or regular contractions. This was a no-new-is-good-news appointment, and I was just glad to get out of the house for an hour!


33 weeks (Friday's appointment)
-My cervix has shortened to 1.2 with just a little bit of funneling after four weeks of strict bed rest, which is so-so on what we wanted to happen. It would be great if it would stay put and stop thinning at all, but this slight shortening is okay too. As I said before, we're just staying the course and keeping up the bed rest until 37 weeks, and we'll see the doctor for a check-in again at 35 weeks to make sure things continue to go well.


So that's the long and gritty version of what's been going on with my inner workings! I'm not usually one to share things about my body parts, but in this case, I thought it might help our baby boy's grandparents to know the full run-down rather than being vague. Plus, I'll probably want to remember all this stuff one day, and it helps to have it written down somewhere. So long as the World Wide Web doesn't crash...

Christmas and The Bump

We had a lovely, quiet Christmas at home, less by choice than by necessity, and got several new things for Baby Boy and for our impending parenthood, including a spiffy, high-tech camera! He'll be a well-photographed kid, that's for sure... :) We were sad not to spend the holiday with the mid-western branches of our families as we'd planned, but it's all for a good cause. Just two and a half more weeks to milestone one (34 weeks - sucking reflex), four and a half to milestone two (36 weeks - eating independently), and five and half more weeks to full term! Bake, Baby, bake...

Here's the latest on the belly front, taken on Christmas Day at 31 weeks + a few days: