Welcome Megan

Adventures everywhere.
On Monday I thought my water broke at work, so Daryl (my boss) drove me to the hospital. They put me in triage and put a dip stick kind of test in me to see if there was amniotic fluid. They also put some sensors on my stomach to listen to Meg's heartbeat and count/measure contractions.

The contractions were steady at 6 minutes apart but there was no amniotic fluid. I felt foolish. Part of the problem is that last time with Kiernan I had this huge dramatic labor and I really didn't have a good idea what a more normal one might look like. We were kept for a few hours for observation due to the fact that I was so dilated and effaced and having such steady contractions but eventually they sent us home. We stopped at Smoothy King just before they closed at 9 and grabbed shakes and went to bed as soon as we got home.
The Next morning was very similar except that now I was feeling quite sea sick as well. I asked mom to stay home with me and she very kindly did so. I slept as much as I could and tried to eat but was just too nauseous for it. At around noon I got up and swept the deck and took out the bathmat for airing and sat on the poarch swing to rest and look at the leaves and try to relax. It was beautiful. 66 degrees and sunny and the fall colors nearly at peak.

My water broke then.

I was wearing my most comfy sweatpants. They are the ones I used when painting Kiernan's play-set. It did not occur to me at the time how much redwood stain splatters might look like blood. lol
Mom brought me to the hospital and David and Kiernan showed up just a bit later. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon when we were readmitted. I was really happy to see Kiernan before going in. We played for a while in the lobby with a toy table the hospital has set up there.
This time the dipstick test came out positive and we were sent to a labor and delivery room. I was scared. A woman in the next cube was in so much pain. I wanted to help her, I wanted someone else to help her, I wanted her to be ok and not to have such communication difficulties (only spanish no english in this case). For me help = pain management. I know this is such a big deal and such a personal decision. In the Missyverse everyone gets lots of drugs because in the Missyverse this is just part of science and modernity. I feel that natural child birth is like 18th century dentistry. We now have Novocain so we use it = we now have epidurals so we use them.

After they put us in the labor and delivery room things got much quitter and only very occasionally did we hear the sounds of distress from other rooms.
Our nursing staff was really outstanding. I asked them if they wanted to be famous on google+ or twitter, as I was distracting myself by tweeting and posting at a fair clip, but they said no. So they were wonderful and I want to thank them and recommend Shady Grove to anyone around here thinking about which hospital to chose but I cannot name them.
My doctor came in  fairly quickly after we got there to check on my progress. I had my 4th internal exam in 24 hours...this made me nervous because 1 it hurts quite a bit and 2 the more you do it the greater risk of infection mother and baby get (there were 6 by the end). I was still about 5 cm dilated and now 75% effaced. Everyone expected a very quick labor once things got going because of how fast Kiernan was.

We (the nursing staff and I) discussed my desires and expectations and we got all our ducks in a row question and answer wise...how tall are you, do you want an epidural etc.
There wasn't much progress still and after looking at his schedule we decided to do the epidural first and then start Petocin at low dose while my dr was finishing up with a c-section at 11-1130.
The epidural didn't go as smoothly as lat time. The anesthesiologist was much nicer but still it is something of a blind procedure. He hit a nerve and i had the shooting pain down my back and leg thing...oouuuccchh. It seemed to have gone fairly well initially. I stopped feeling my contractions as anything more than pressure and i hoped that once the Peticon  started that I would just sort of sial through the whole thing with my biggest problem being un-surety about when to push. With Kiernan this is pretty much what happened. I was in a great deal of pain when I got to the hospital with him but once the epidural kicked in i didn't have any pain at all. Sad to say that is not the way it went with Megan.
Due to no ones fault my epidural kicked out before Meg got here. One of my nurses said that it is possible that because the labor was so fast the epidural was simply overwhelmed.

One way or another about 3 contractions into the Pitocin I suddenly started to feel things again and within another 2 contractions I could feel everything again. With a great deal of urgency I asked David to get the nurse. She came quickly as David sounded about as panic-ridden as I felt. She called the anesthesiologist back but he was in the OR. I could feel a great deal of pressure with the pain that told me Meg was on the move. My nurse called for the Dr. and any available nurses and within a minute they had all arrived. The Dr. was very happy. He said something to the effect of "Oh wonderful you are progressing". To be honest I was feeling less than wonderful aout the whole process at this point.
David was doing that thing that i always found so useless seeming in movies and birthing classes. He was telling me to breath. Amazingly although everything seemed impossible and more than irritating at the time, he was quite right. I kept not breathing. The contractions were marginally less painful when I was holding my breath. Anyway...
All the staff gathered around me and said "OH there is the head" and the Dr. said "I bet we can get this baby out in just one push. When you feel the next contraction grab your knees and push."
Grabbing my knees was a very hard thing to do. For one thing the position was less comfortable and when you are already in a great deal of pain becoming less comfortable is a hard thing to convince yourself to do. and for another thing I havent been stretching very much ever since my stomach got big and it was just a bit physically awkward all by itself.
So David grabbed one of my feet and a nurse grabbed the other and they pushed my knees towards me and indeed in one push out came Meg. It was not an easy push by any means but when I think of the long labors so many women have I know I got off easy and I am grateful.
The Dr. told me to stop pushing and Meg had her head out but not her whole body and this is the only time of the night that I nearly swore. He was right of course I didn't need to push anymore but the contraction wasn't really over yet and my body was going to push one way or another so it was a moot point.

Meg came out and gave off a healthy wail and was whisked to a neonatal prep station across the room. She got the highest APGAR of the day and made a lot of fuss. They brought her over to me after what seemed like hours but was very likely a few minutes and I got to see her.
It is so strange seeing your baby for the first time. It was this way with Kiernan too. In effect you are meeting a stranger or if not a stranger something like a penpal or an online friend whom you have never met in real life.
I knew so much about Kiernan and about Meg. I knew that one slept well at night and the other slept through the day given half a chance. I knew that one liked to play kicking games with me and the other liked the sound of Davids voice so much that my stomach would bulge in his direction every night as we went to bed  just to hear his voice. I had seen sono pictures and calculated probabilities of features and personalities. But just at that first moment as I was getting my mind around not being pregnant anymore both babies were complete strangers.
I never felt any emotional ambivalence towards them. I wanted so many wonderful things for them. Not just them as my hypothetical children but them as immediate innocent human beings. Them as the people for whom I was to blame.
I m a bit shy even antisocial if given half a chance, but much of that is because I feel so powerfully a responsibility for the people around me most of the time. It is vital to me that they do well. That they are happy and good and that I do all I should for them. For a long time this meant all I could for them. For me this is an emotionally exhausting way to live so it is much easier if I surround myself with people who I understand or people whose demands I can match fairly well. I expect that everyone functions this way to a greater or lesser extent.
With Meg and with Kiernan that feeling of wanting good things and goodness is amplified so many fold that it becomes a need rather than a want.
Immediately Meg is my priority in the same way that Kiernan is. I hope I can balance that. I know it will be tricky to say the least and I know that it is my issue in many ways. I know that sufficient care will be taken but want extraordinary care.
I am so glad that they gave me Meg when they did because it meant that we were able to know each other a bit before they took her away. She got to smell me and have a good try at nursing and I got to feel her and see that she was not blonde and see that she had 10 fingers and 10 toes and all the other things I had wanted reassurance of throughout the pregnancy and even the planning for the pregnancy.
She was warm and small and goopy and red and sweet smelling and ready to nurse. She was lovely and of course looked as slug like as any infant.

David got to hold her and stroke her tiny fingers and take pictures of her and we smiled at each other an marveled about her quickness in coming and in the uselessness of the epidural and breath sighs of relief that it was all over and we had out baby girl now.
They came back to check her again about 20 minutes later and it was then that we learned it was not in fact all over.
Apparently Megan had some difficulty with transitioning. She was still breathing like she had just finished a marathon lo these many minutes later and that was not a good sign. They counted and recounted and called in a few more people to count her breaths. They laid her on me to see if it would slow her down at all (it did but as soon as they took her off she started up again) and eventually much to my angst they took her to the NICU.
They let David follow them.

I waited to be inspected and OK'ed  and eventually they let me go there too.
We were worried of course but well informed and we have been allowed to go and hold her and talk to here as often as we like. This means that unlike with Kiernan's birth and first few days at which time I stayed firmly in bed with him at my side, we have been in and out of the NICU at least every 3 hours and have been getting very little bed time.

Meg is improving by leaps and bounds and went from high oxygen to humidified house air to nothing up her nose at all. She has gone from IV all the time to supplemental bottles (I am pumping again) to good old fashioned nursing. Tonight they plan on removing her IV entirely. She has jaundice of course and they will most probably hold her until Saturday.

We are trying to make sure Kiernan dosent get too disrupted by all of this. David is spending the afternoons and evenings with him so that he has most of his normal routine. Mom is staying over and he quite enjoys her company. and Granma and Grandpa Scearce have been coming up so that he can have his usual care takers with him.
He came to the hospital yesterday and will be in again today. He oves the hospital. They have pudding and beds with buttons and elevators to ride in. He has not met Meg yet but he has seen some pictures and understands that she is out now.
So far so good. Things are improving very nicely and we are being treated excellently well. I couldn't be happier with Shady Groves quality of care.  We have great medical attention and comfy beds and free wifi and round the clock visitation rights for Meg and for anyone else we chose to see. The food is not too bad at all and there is as much rest to be had as could possibly be had with a new born.
I thank God for my life all the time but rarely publicly. This seems like a great time for publicly.
:) Thank you God.