It's official...

I'm my 14th work day of maternity leave.
My brain is Jello.
My daughter is doing great. She wants to take everything in when she's awake but she also sleeps like a log. She slept for six hours straight last night because I accidentally shut off the alarm I use to wake myself up to feed her after four hours.
I feel much different as a person. I can't see a baby on TV without getting weepy. It bothers me much more than it used to to hear about bad things happening to children. I'm feeling much more "maternal" than I thought I would. I'm looking forward to all of the cool things we'll get to do with her and teach her when she's older. When I hear a good song, I think about sharing it with her later on. On the other hand, I get sad to think that she's only going to be 19 days old ONCE and I want to her to stay small enough for me to hold in one hand forever.
I'm feeling much less sharp about non-baby related topics than I did before. I watch a lot of news, but I can sit in front of the TV for minutes and realize my mind has been wandering and I have no idea even what the topic is that they have been talking about. I have to read everything over several times because I now type the wrong words.
It's worth it - and my mind will come back once I go back to work and start getting more sleep.

Ten days old.....

Our daughter arrived ten days ago. The denial is over - my life is officially different.

I'm a little freaked out right now. I'm no doubt still experiencing drastic hormonal changes, which is exacerbated by lack of sleep and the reality that I'm now responsible for a little human.

She's great. She's a very easygoing baby. When she's not sleeping, her eyes are wide open and taking it all in. We're learning a lot from each other.

I went into labor last Tuesday - I walked over to Walgreens during lunch and was feeling horrible. I felt pains off and on all afternoon and shortly after work they were coming rather frequently. We timed the contractions while watching Lost on the Tivo and then watched the Obama/Clinton debates. I felt like I was in pain pretty much the whole time, which made the contractions difficult to time but they were close together. By 10p.m. I knew I probably wasn't going to go to sleep. You're supposed to wait until you cannot walk or talk through the contractions to go to the hospital - but given the fact that it felt like the contractions were pretty much continuous, we went to the hospital anyway.

After some initial tests at the hospital triage (the room you go to before they admit you to Labor & Delivery), they told me I was dehydrated but only dilated to around 3, which was at most a centimeter more than I was at my doctor appointment twelve hours earlier. I did the math and determined that I could be in labor for 3 and a half more days at this rate. Quite discouraging, as I had already been in a good amount of pain. They said that to admit me, the contractions would need to be regular and that I had to show progress with dilation. I had one hour to prove to them that I was ready to have a baby.

Rather than give me an IV at that point, they gave me a big cup of water and a big cup of apple juice for the dehydration. I then proceeded to throw all of the liquid up onto my hospital gown. Classy. After an hour in triage, the nurses told me I had progressed to 4cm, although I suspect they fudged this number so I could be admitted.

We went up to Labor & Delivery at around midnight. The nurse offered some stadol, and to my surprise I quickly accepted it. I was quite tired of hurting, and quite tired, period, as I had been awake since 4:45 Tuesday morning. I had naively planned to do this without drugs but I rationalized it by telling myself that I had had a long stressful day at work, and I deserved to relax a little bit. I accepted the epidural as well, feeling every bit the failure that my Lamaze teacher implied that I should feel. I was promptly punished for doing this, as the anesthesiologist took roughly an hour to administer the epidural, a procedure which should only take a few minutes. She kept informing me that she was only hitting bone in my back and berated me for not mimicking exactly how she needed me to arch my back, even though I had a huge solid stomach that somehow I needed to bend. She got something to work and I started not feeling anything, and life was good. My contractions weren't doing the job of dilating, so they started me on some Pitocin to induce some stronger contractions.

At around 6a.m., which was a few hours after administering the epidural, I started feeling some pain and then a LOT of pain. At first I tried to diplomatically explain to the nurse that I was pretty sure my epidural was botched, but she seemed dismissive and told me that I shouldn't expect to not feel anything. Every so often, I would let the nurse know that the pain was horrible. But nothing really got their attention until I started crying like a two year old (half from the pain, half because I wanted them to take notice and do something). A much better anesthesiologist came to my rescue at around 8 or so and redid the epidural.

Smooth sailing from there - she was born right before noon.

The next several days in the hospital were dreamlike. I didn't sleep any Tuesday night. The baby stayed in our room for the rest of the hospital stay, so I was up for feedings and diaper changes every few hours and was invaded by doctors, nurses, lactation consultants, social workers (reminding me not to shake the baby), and people bringing me meals so that I couldn't really sleep even while the baby slept. I got about 2 hours of sleep Wednesday night and about ten minutes of sleep Thursday night. By Friday night when we were discharged, I pretty much felt like I was outside my body. I was bawling for no good reason other than exhaustion and having to take care of a baby without doctors or nurses around while being so exhausted.

We survived the first night, then another night, and another. I finally was able to get some sleep without fearing that she was going to stop breathing while I was asleep.

We've been home over a week now and I'm feeling a little more optimistic that I can do this. I'm not sure at all how I'm going to handle it all when I go back to work in April but I figure I'll manage that somehow.