Month Three: Let your hand be!

This is what the past month has looked like. Not all the time, but for a good part of it.

When she's not smiling, this is what this past month has looked like. I was an avid thumb-sucker when I was a baby. Since she was born, Bridget had all the makings for the same habit. In hopes of preventing the need for braces, we began pulling her hand away from her mouth and putting the binky in instead. However, the hand-in-the-mouth became more frequent and we finally noticed it was chewing, not sucking. In case you didn't know, a baby constantly chewing on their hands, accompanied with massive amounts of drool, difficulty sleeping, and thereby crankiness are all signs of one thing:

TEETHING.

This picture gets funnier the longer you look at it.

I haven't even begun breast feeding yet! (you can view the previous post for all the delightful details on that). Now she has her four fangs coming in, thus becoming a baby Dracula. Normal babies get their bottom two teeth around 6 months. Way to show up the other babies Bridget. I'm positively ecstatic about trying to feed you within the next month. *note the sarcasm.* Actually, let me change that altogether. After much thought, fasting, and prayer Tony and I found that formula is going to be our method for feeding her. I gave breast feeding/pumping-all-the-time a valiant effort, but we know she will be just fine with formula.

Just before Christmas, we also found out Tony passed first term! Woo-hoo!!! Words cannot justify just how proud of him I feel. He worked his tail off trying to take in medical school, dealing with crazy pregnancy hormones, and then becoming a daddy all within that first few months of school. He has officially become my Batman. (Superman is way overrated- he was born with super powers but Batman had to work and use his ingenuity to become a superhero with awesome gadgets). We both joke that the rest of med school will be a breeze in comparison to this first term.

This past month we also bought ourselves a really nice camera: the Nikon D3300. It's beautiful. With the help of an old friend, Tony was able to purchase three lenses, the bag, and the camera for about $700. However, we didn't think about Grenada taxes. Supposedly they aren't supposed to charge import taxes on cameras, but they did for us. A whopping $230 just for us. Merry Christmas! We do love it though. I'm so excited I get to document Bridget's firsts here on the island. Pictures are a necessity for the grandparents to see how she's growing and a great way for them to see we're still alive.

Bridget and I have realized we've become vampires- even evening dusk is too bright for us.

Bear is still adapting well to Bridget. He goes on a walk or run with Tony every day and loves all the napping he gets. Sometimes, as you can see, he likes to play around while she's sleeping. This can be noisy from time to time so we have to keep an eye on him.

We took some family pictures for the holidays and I made a sign just to prove it was really December... my mind still believes it's July. Here are some of our favorites:

Baby Britches is becoming stronger and stronger every day. She holds her own head and pushes herself up with ease. Rolling has become an easy skill, although she still hates tummy-time if we put her there- she has to get there herself, but then she can stay there for up to 10 minutes. We have heard her giggle once so we know it's coming! She smiles a lot and is constantly reaching for things and trying to grab them. Her favorite toys to grab? Mom and Dad's hair. We have yet to determine her eye color. There's a yellow ring in the middle still, but the outside changes from gray to green to blue then back to emerald again. 

She is developing such a personality and we love it. The grumpiness is probably because we were doing things in the wrong order or not doing it the way she wants. Honestly, I don't know where she could get that strong personality from... neither Tony nor I have it... *cough cough.* In reality though, she has become an easier baby. Still difficult and strong-willed, but a good baby. She laughs when we kiss her neck and has constant smiles when she's waking up. She hasn't begun using the sign language, but once she picks it up, things could become either really difficult or really easy.

The week after Tony got out of term one, we took Bridget to the pool for the first time. The results were basically the same as the ocean: it was too cold for her. Tony took time to calm her down and then eased her into the water a second time. She was napping, so it seemed to not bother her as much.

We took her to the pool one other time during the break and she liked it MUCH better than the previous time:

We also took her to her first full day of church the Sunday before Christmas. She didn't want to show off her dress. When she was sleeping she was actually really cute. Thanks for the pretty dress, Grandpa!

This was our Christmas tree. Pinterest calls it the invisible Christmas tree. It hangs from the ceiling, so it doesn't take up floor space. I hope to sell it next year around Christmas time.

Bear probably had the best Christmas. He didn't know what he was getting, nor did he have to pay crazy taxes on it. Haha. He was a happy pup.

Can I just say how excited about this camera I am?! I love that we can document her and all the fun family things that will be happening in the next few years. Sure I have a lot to learn regarding how to use it, but pictures are pictures :)

Oh! Also, Tony got her to laugh her first giggles! And, best part!, we got it as a video! This happened Sunday night (1/11/14).

Over the past month, Bridget has been getting more muscles. You can't tell from these pictures, but all those tummy rolls are actually muscles... Okay maybe they are rolls, but we won't tell her that. She has learned two new tricks all thanks to her little developing body: 

1. Tummy time is much more fun now! She can see and workout at the same time. It's super cute how when she's getting tired of holding herself up she'll just plop her head back onto the bed, rest a second and then bring it back up for round two.

2. She's sitting up with help! Batting at toys and reading books has never been so enjoyable. As with tummy time, she can only last so long before wanting to take a breather. In this picture, you can see a shadow to the left- she's watching me as I work on the computer! She sat there for about 5 minutes, uninterrupted, totally content.

Check out my 10 pack.

This is more of a cute picture/story: after removing her diaper, Bridget will often try to run away before we can put another diaper on her. This particular day, her escape did not do so well being that she forgot to raise her arms before rolling.

The Elephants in the Room

Over the past three weeks, I learned and experienced one of the most tragic scenes of motherhood: breastfeeding. When you bring up breastfeeding, it's hard for whoever you're talking to to not look at them. So let's get this out there...

Melons.

Who-haas.

The girls.

Ta-tas.

Chesticles.

Boobies.

Breasts.

Names for the two life long partners-in-crime make everyone's eyes gaze downward. And what's worse is when you talk about breastfeeding, For those of you who have never had to experience it, do not be fooled as I was. When people vaguely mentioned that "breastfeeding was hard, but so worth the effort," I had always imagined the difficulty came from time management or maybe not wanting to nurse in public, or the obvious waking in the middle-of-the-night feedings. Nowhere, in my ignorant little mind, had I ever imagined breastfeeding to be painful. Wait, not just painful, but excruciatingly tormenting.

Tony had asked me once if breastfeeding was really as bad as child birth. My answer was, and still is, it's like comparing apples to oranges. With a natural child-birth, at least you know it will all end soon- whether it be the baby coming out or you dying. With breast feeding however, it's allowing your already tender, sore, and even bleeding nipples to be put into a living suction machine (if you can imagine the scream sucker from Monsters Inc.) for half an hour every 3 hours. Oh, it hurts so bad that you dread the moment when your precious, beautiful baby wakes up. I cannot tell you how sad that feeling is. You just spent 9 months making something that you feel you cannot actually enjoy because every time she is awake, you're in pain.

I absolutely hate this picture, but it's how I looked for several weeks.

And the worst part is that previous moms know about this! I have never appreciated my mom more than those three weeks she was here, especially trying to cheer me on during the most embarassingly vulnerable and exposing position I was in. To know that she endured continuous distress for me while I was a baby is humbling. Tony and I decided we owe our mothers much better Mother's Day gifts from now on. We may even need to make them ultra nice just to make up for all the crappy hand-print ones from childhood.



Now everyone says to tough it out for two weeks and you'll be good. Two weeks?! I don't know if you know this, but that's 14 days! Assuming your baby eats maybe 10 times in a 24 hour period, that equates to 140 feedings! With the pain I was experiencing, there's no way I could have done that.

Every person is different; this includes pain tolerance levels. Maybe mine is extremly low or maybe I have an infection or something, but breastfeeding caused extreme discomfort. So much that I just made fists and shook while Bridget ate. I endured it for a little while. Eyes closed, shaking, drenched in cold sweat, whimpering. After a few days I experienced LoM, or Lack of Motherhood. I couldn't do it. I was not strong enough, nor willing to endure it any longer. I gave in to the dreaded formula and of course my food-motivated angel accepted the bottle as her next loving mother. We only needed to give her one bottle of it though. I just needed one break, just for one night.

Since then I have been pumping, giving her everything I can without the dread.


Guys. The breast pump is one of the greatest inventions ever made. Yes it makes you feel like a cow, but it's consistent (no baby who falls asleep and wakes up with a jerk thereby tearing off the nipple) and helps nipples heal. Down side? You have to make time for it. You can't pump and feed or care for a crying baby at the same time. Don't get me wrong, my nipples still hurt really bad, but at least it subsides after 10 minutes.

I'v been running into an issue though: my milk seems to be lessening with each passing day.

So what is the whole point of this read? It's a shout out to all those who endured, those who could look into their tiny baby's eyes and not think of themselves, those who knew that breastfeeding would be worth it in the end.

...(1 week later)...

I need to change, explain, and verify what I have previously written. Yes, that pain was real and I was not just being a total wimp. Maybe a little wimp, but I was not crazy; I had/have thrush. Thrush is a very common fungal infection occurring in humid places that can cause pain when left untreated for a long time.

Need I mention that I had told both my OB and the pediatrician about my pain, and they both basically said suck it up without even a second glance? Ahh... TIG. (For those of you back home, this stands for This Is Grenada- a slang way of saying "of course this would happen here") So after some research, Tony found the constant burning nipples symptom to possibly be thrush, not to mention we could see a white film developing on the nipples. So off to the SGU clinic I went where the nurse told me burning could be very normal for breastfeeding mothers, at least it was for her, but then it went away! (Well good for you honey, it's been 3 and a half weeks and my burning isn't going away.) The "doctor" - I put the quotes on because I was seen by someone wearing a vet school lab coat and looked everything up on her phone after I told her what I thought it was- gave me medication, but not the go-to Nystatin that is given in the states. After a quick internet search, Tony decided to email his school adviser who is a pharmacology professor. She said DO NOT take the medicine prescribed. The sweet professor then called to every pharmacy on the island looking for Nystatin for Bridget and another medicine for me. We received the medicines the next day. She checked in three days later to see how we were doing- little improvement meant my infection was too deep and I should take the medicine that was originally prescribed.  So now we're almost a week on drugs. Bridget has had pretty bad gas build up resulting in scary-loud farts (at first I didn't believe it wasn't Tony) and some of my infection has cleared up. Now at least my boobs don't burn all the time. The pump hurts now though. The nips are super sensitive still. Let's just keep praying they'll toughen up.

...2 months later...

Bridget is now 3 months old and I still pump four times a day, supplementing with formula. I am so incredibly grateful that we live in an age with baby formula otherwise I'm pretty sure Bridget would have starved to death. The medicines have been working fabulously although it has taken quite a bit of time. Future moms out there: if you ever have a "burning" sensation, that is not normal. Pinching or soreness, sure, but never burning. Also, thrush is treated very quickly in the states, never left alone for several weeks being told to suck it up. That made the infection become so much worse. After using the Nystatin for 2 weeks, the medicine wasn't clearing me up, although it did work in Bridget. I went in to Dr. Lowe, Bridget's pediatrician who also practices internal medicine on adults. She prescribed three different medicines to really hit the thrush hard. Over the past month I have slowly been getting better. Pumping is rarely painful, they're a normal color and don't hurt when I put a bra on. I hope I can begin breast feeding in the next month. It'll take time to build up the proper milk supply, but supply and demand, right?

This whole ordeal has been the absolute hardest part of having a baby. The LoM can be debilitating and overall defeating. I am thankful for the prayers I know my family has offered that have given me so much strength to persevere.

How we became parents OR If Hell had 4 walls...

So I guess Cherish has relinquished to me the "honor" or relating the birthing story. I will try to tell it as accurately as possible, though things may have tainted a bit darker with time.

On Monday morning at 3 am Cherish started having contractions. She didn't tell me, but used an app that she had on her kindle to quietly keep track of their duration and separation. I awoke at one point in the night and asked her if she was okay. She responded that she was and so I fell back asleep. When I woke at 6 am her contractions were coming more forcefully and regularly. We were sure we were going to be having a baby today so I emailed my professors and asked to be excused from class and then gave Cherish all of my attention. At 7 am her contractions were every 4 minutes and lasting at least 90 seconds and she thought (at the time) that they were pretty bad. That was when we decided to call the doctor.

Dr Lendore, our doctor gave us his cell number as well as his office number, of course I didn't write down which was which so I ended up trying both and... no answer on either. Great... I waiting 15 minutes and tried again. Still nothing. Cherish suggested that I try calling the hospital and asking them to call him. I did and after about 10 minutes he called me back. I told him our numbers and he asked that we come in to be checked out at the very least. We left the house at 8:15 am.

I had never driven to the hospital at 8 in the morning before. For those of you that have to try it in the future its pretty much crazy! The roads are extremely skinny and apparently everyone drives on them in the mornings. It took us about 20 minutes to finally arrive. The drive over must have made Bridget decide she didn't want to be born because when we got to the hospital Cher's contractions had slowed to about every 8 minutes. Kids these days. We got checked in the hospital and they took us up to the patient room where we just kind of hung out for the next little while.

Cher wasn't in a lot of pain yet, so we laid on the bed together and watched tv and talked. Cherish's mid-wife (she was a hospital employed worker) came in to help us "get settled" and then she was gone until the doctor came in to do his initial exam. He checked her and she wasn't dilated at all, not 1 cm. He ordered an enema for her, apparently that gets things rolling and cytotec (maybe? IDK what it was, but it was a pill they gave her vaginally that was supposed to dilate the cervix). The midwife gave Cher the enema and then left to talk to some lady or hangout in the break room and we waited for things to get rolling. The doctor went back to his office to see patients and said he would be back after lunch time.

While the doctor was gone Cher progressed ever so slowly. I brought her the pregnancy/exercise ball and she bounced around on that for the most part because her contractions were getting bad enough to where she couldn't walk or even really stand. The doctor came back at 12-ish and check Cher. She had dilated to a 3, but the baby was face up! The doctor told her to keep waiting and she should turn on her own. We kept waiting, but her contractions were getting pretty bad and she was getting tired. She kept bouncing on her ball and I kept bugging her to breathe during the contractions.

Between 12 and 3pm the contractions got a lot worse and Cher was getting worried that she wouldn't have the energy to push when the baby decided to come. The midwife would make appearances every hour or two and tell Cherish, "You need to walk." Stupid idiot, can you not see that she can't walk and that's why she is bouncing on the ball? Sheesh. That was all that midwife would do/say. She would enter the room, stare at a bed or something, just listening to us, and after a minute would give us the advice and then leave. Finally at 3 I called in the doctor and Cher told him that she just wanted the baby out, C-section or natural, just out. He checked her again and she was still at a 3. This and the fact that she was getting so distraught and tired got him moving a little. He took some blood to check for anemia (Why? IDK.). He did this during a contraction too, so Cher got a nice bruise on her arm from it. Why would you ever draw blood mid-contraction?? He told Cher that if she wasn't ready by 6pm they would do a C-section.

Those last 3 hours were the worst. Cher cried from frustration, I cried from not being able to do anything useful, the midwife did nothing (seriously, nothing) and the doctor got ready for a possible C-section. We hadn't eaten all day except a bowl of cereal at 7:30 am. They wouldn't even let Cher drink water. The doctor came in at about 5:30 because Cher was starting to have the desire to push. When he checked her she was at 10 cm and it was go time. The delivery bed where they had her sitting didn't have handles, or stirrups, or anything to make having a baby in it a possibility. They wrapped Cher up in "sterile cloth" which looked like old bleach stained shirts and forbade me to touch her anywhere but on the hand and back. Then they told her to grab her thighs from behind and balance on her butt (because there was no backrest, or bed elevator or anything) and push. In case you're having a hard time envisioning this, I understand. That type of positioning is not in anyway a comfortable, restful, nor really possible position to be while pregnant, nevertheless giving birth. It's like putting your whole body in a V (like one of those intense ab workouts) and grabbing the back of your quads while going through a contraction.

We were pretty prepared (we thought) but nothing could have prepared us for this whole ordeal. Cher was pushing like we had been taught and I though she was doing great. The doctor and midwife however were less than impressed. "Stop screaming," "You are pushing wrong," "No, no, no" were all the words that were said. I was in shock! Holy crap! Finally Cherish stopped after pushing one more time and said, "I don't know how else to push!"The doctor explained that he wanted her to push and not make any noise... (really?)... and she got to work doing it. The stupid midwife kept saying over and over like a broken record, "Pushing like your pushing a hard stool." Yeah we got it lady, like your pooping now shut up. After 35 minutes of this fiasco the doctor sent the midwife to find stirrups that we could add to the bed to help Cher push better. She came back with them and tried to give them to me to put on. HELLO?! I am kinda busy and I don't work here. The doctor snapped at her to do it herself and so she finally did something useful. Once Cher had the stirrups I sat behind her on the bed to help hold her up and 10 minutes later they laid a baby girl on her lap (this was something Cher did not want, but in the heat of the moment she didn't mind at all)!  

Looking at that little baby for the first time was amazing, even after all that Cher had to go through to get to this point. Cher's first words about the baby were, "Look at those fingernails?" (They were pretty darn impressive.) The midwife then took that baby and got to "cleaning her up" and suctioning out her mouth and throat. A few moments/minutes (who knows how long, it felt like forever) the baby cried. It was at that point that we "knew" that all the crap was over. They finished cleaning Cher up and sent us back across the hall to Cher's room. Cher got into her bed and we took a picture.

After that I took her to the bathroom. At that point she started to feel overheated, so I put her in her wheelchair under the A/C unit. They then brought Bridget over and I held her for a while. We decided it was time to go and get Cher's mom so she could meet her grandbaby. I gave Bridget to Cher and went to tell the nurses what I was doing. When I came back in to see Cher she was feeling super sick. I took that baby just in time for her to start vomiting- probably caused by dehydration and over-exertion. I helped her as best as I could and buzzed for the nurses. They never came, so I went and told them what was happening. They really didn't seem to care which really bothered me. There she was barely sitting up in a wheelchair with our newborn across the room. I helped as best as I could and she eventually got feeling a bit better at which point I left to get Cher's mom.

When we got back to the hospital Cher was looking better and the baby was fast asleep. Cher's mom got a chance to see and hold Briget. It was probably the nicest part of the whole experience. Cher started to get tired so we got ready to go. On our way out I told the nurses I would be taking Cher's mom home and then coming back to stay with her overnight. They told that I couldn't do that and that I would have to just come back in the morning. I told them that was not going to happen because I did not trust them with my wife and baby without me there. They said I had no choice but to leave her. I told them again that I was staying, or Cher was coming home with me because I knew that I would take better care of them then they would. The nurse tried to backtalk again and I interrupted her and told her just to write up the discharge papers. I went back into Cher's room and told her what was happening and she was in accordance with me. The head nurse then came in and said that if we left that night we would have to pay cash for the delivery and that they would not bill the insurance. At this point I was livid! I laid into her with all of my frustration and told her how big of a joke their hospital was. The nurse apologized for our bad experience and promised that SHE personally would do a better job than the other nurses had before. With no real other options I had to agree and Cher's mom and I went home.

The night was as you would imagine... long. At 6 am I got up and got ready to go back up to the hospital. We got there and Cher and the baby were fine. We hung out, washed the baby and waited to be discharged. We finally were at 11:30 am. They kept trying to kick us out, but I refused to leave till we had talked to both of the doctors. Once we had, I asked them to give us a birth certificate. Guess what? They told us they do not do birth certificates... in the hospital?! We were told that we had to go into town and then back to another office to get an "official" birth certificate. The only thing they gave us at the hospital was a receipt for our down-payment and a copy of a paper that basically said "You had a baby. It weighed X and was X cm long". Yeah, really official... And with that, we were gone and the nightmare was over.