Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Hospital Days

I'm sitting here doing what I do pretty much all the time now - nursing. Little Malachi is growing so much all the time so I have to feed him about every three hours, sometimes more often, and he eats for close to an hour, so I get two hours or less rest between feedings. The great thing is I have found a way to nure hands-free so I can update the blog.

Well, I want to say a little bit about the hospital stay. We loved our hospital. Everything was super when it came to the medical staff. The nurses and doctors were all great. The administrative and other types of personnel, on the other hand, were extremely irritating! I just had a baby, Josh and I had barely slept in 48 hours, but some crazy cleaning lady came in our room at 4am to change trash and clean the floors!! Why are you cleaning my floors at 4 o'clock in the morning!? We already weren't sleeping much in the night because we have a newborn baby who thinks day is night and night is day so he slept all during the day like an angel and wanted to be awake and screaming all night. Plus there are the nurses who have to check my blood pressure and temperature and Malachi's blood pressure and temperature. I just wanted to sleep and no one would let me.
But things were really great with Malachi. He was lifting his head up off of the chest of the person holding him on his first day! One of the nurses had him in the nursery to weigh him and when she brought him back she said "Ooooohh! He is STRONG! He was cryin' so I picked 'im up and we went lookin' at the other babies. He lifted his head up off my shoulder and looked at them like 'Why you all cryin'?!' I said 'Boy! What are you doin' liftin' your head up! You olny two days old! You ain't supposed to do that yet!'" So that made us feel good. It also made us laugh. Malachi also found his thumb the day he was born so he would suck his thumb. It was really cute! His itty bitty tiny thumb! Malachi also liked to move all of his fingers independently so it looked like he was a little wizard casting a love spell on us. And maybe he was casting a spell! We sure do love him a lot!

Here are a couple more pictures from the hospital. This is the first pic of Josh with his new baby boy:Here he is lifting his head, looking like a little turtle:
And this is how everyone knew he was a breech baby:
And here are three videos from the hospital. The first is Josh before my surgery, then Josh after the baby was born, ad finally me telling about the birth. Enjoy!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

MALACHI JOSHUA SILLAMAN

For those of you on Facebook, you have seen the hundreds of pictures I've posted of Malachi. I can't stop taking pictures. I've never taken so many pictures of one person or thing in my life, but I can't stop.

Moving right along to the point of this post. I want to tell my story about how Malachi came into the world. We had planned a C-Section, but it did not quite go as planned. Easter Sunday, the day before the C-Section, we went and had dinner with the McAveety boys, their wives and their parents. We had a great time. I wasn't allowed to eat past 8:00pm, so at 7:30 I had about 4 pieces of carrot cake. It was awesome. Josh and I went home around 9, exhausted, but of course we couldn't sleep. We kept saying things like "We're going to be holding Malachi in a few hours!" and "This is our last night in this house before we have a baby!" And all sorts of things like that. Finally at 11:30, we turnd off the light and decided we needed to rest as much as possible. Our friend Justin would be picking us up and taking us to the hospital at 6:30 am.

At 11:40, I decided I'd better go ahead and use the bathroom, since it's something I do 18 times a night with Malachi pushing on bladder all the time. Well, I went into the bathroom and started to feel very sick. I wasn't sure which end something wanted to come out of, but I felt awful and I was in some pain. Suddenly I realized "Oh, whoa. This is a real contraction." So I did my breathing and tried to focus until it was over. Then I went back to the bedroom and said "Josh, I just had a contraction. I'm going to the living room because I can sit up on the couch and it's more comfortable." So Josh said "Well, just keep track of how close they are and let me know if anything happens." I said I would and then I called my sister to talk to her about it.

About a half hour later, I had another contraction and I thought "Dang it! I'm not going to get any sleep if they come every half hour!" I started texting Ashley and talkign to her about it, and then fiv minutes later I had another contraction, so I started timing them, and I started having contractions every five minutes for about a minute to a minute and a half. Well, that's when they say to go to the hospital. I called my hospital and I said "I'm scheduled for a C-section at 9:30 in the morning because my baby is breech, but I am having contractions. They're five minutes apart, 60-90 seconds long." So they told me to come on down and they'd check me out.

Now this is my first baby. Usually, with your first baby you're in labor for like 14 hours or something. However, my family history has been somewhat different. The longest labor my mom had was 6 hours, and one of the kids was only 2 hours. My sister went into labor at 6am, didn't realize it until 8am and had Anneliese at like 9:15. So the Hatcher women seem to go quickly.

So I woke up Josh - except he wasn't actually sleeping. He was kind of waiting for me to come in and say it's time to go. Josh jumped out of bed and started gathering everything together. I've never seen him move so fast!! I was still contracting every four or five minutes, and we got in the car and left our parking lot. Then I threw up my four pieces of carrot cake. Awesome. So we headed to Baltimore at 1:00 in the morning. We we're getting close and I realized that Josh won't really know how to get there. We've been to the hospital twice, both times we took a different route and it was in the middle of the day. So in the midst of contractions, I started looking up directions on my iPhone. Josh said "Um, Kat, I know you're busy but I'm really going to need your help when we get into the city." And I told him I was looking it up so I could give him directions between contractions!

We finally made it to the hospital and got a really close parking space. I got out of the car and I was walking around the back when I started contracting and throwing up at the same time. NOT - FUN ! So I groaned in annoyance and started praying that Josh would look over and see an abandoned wheelchair in the corner or that one would fall from Heaven, or that someone in a wheelchair would come around the corner and give me a lift. Right about that time, a security guard in an SUV came around the corner, saw me nine months pregnant throwing up, and said "Do you need a wheelchair?" YES!!!! YES I DO!!!! Praise the Lord!

I got to the wheelchair after a little tiny bit of trouble and I was SO relieved. Until Josh said "So we're just going to straight to Labor and Delivery ont the 16th floor, right?" and the security guard responded "Ah, usually they want them to check in down in the Emergency Room first." Josh, not satisfied with that answer, said "Ok, well, how about if we just go right on up to the 16th floor?" So the security guard called someone and asked and they said "IF she's ready just take her on up to Labor and Delivery." Josh told me later that if that had NOT been the response, he was prepared to do whatever necessary to take the wheelchair away from the security guard and escort me to the 16th floor himself!

So we finally made it upstairs. It was about 1:30 at this point. The security guard wheeled me into the Registration room while I was finishing up a contraction. (This is my least favorite part of my story because of the - not so smart - registration lady, but it's also my favorite because of how funny it was after the fact.) The lady said "May I have your name?" So I told her, gave her my insurance card and Driver's License, and she asked me "Do you have any other insurance?" I told her no and started to feel a contraction coming on when she said to me (Are you ready?) - "Why are you here today?" WHAT?!?!?! Why am I HERE?!?! Calmly, but with an edge of "Are you some sort of idiot?!" I replied "I'm having a BABY." My contraction began to gain strength so I couldn't really talk and she condesendingly said to me, with a chuckle, "Yes, dear, that's why everyone comes up here, but specifically why are you here? Are you having contractions." I could only nod, but I wanted to scream "CAN'T YOU TELL?!?! You see this EVERY day!" So then, I was still contracting mind you, she says "And what's your Social?" I can't tell you right now, Crazy! I was just breathing, focusing, and the lady was just staring at me until finally she said "I'll just make copies of your cards. Let me know when you're ready." And Josh, who was very nervous and ready to take me to the OR himself, said "We pre-registered. Why do we have to go through all of this again?" I have no idea what she answered. I was trying to not kill her. She asked me some more questions while I wasn't contracting and I was feeling better. Then I started having another contraction and she says "Oh, you work at Starbucks! And what's the phone number there?" Then just stared at me while I am obviously contracting AGAIN! So Josh whips out his phone and told her, and he was able to answer some of the questions. When I was done contracting for the second time, we were almost ready to leave registration, but she hadn't given me back my lisence and insurance card. She was holding them, about to give them back, and she asked me again "You don't have any other insurance?" I told her no again. Then she said "Ok, well we just have to ask because sometimes people DO have a second insurance that they don't tell us about and it causes a lot of problems with - " I cut her off by yelling "I DO NOT HAVE ANY OTHER INSURANCE!!" So she handed me my cards and told us to wait in the hall. As we're leaving the room, I started having ANOTHER contraction. That whole ordeal took less than 15 minutes.

Very quickly after we left that room, a nurse came and took us to Triage where they told me to go ahead and put on a robe and pee in a cup. There was no way I was going to be able to squeeze out any pee. I hadn't had anything to drink for 6 hours and I had gone to the bathroom like 6 times at home. So I prayed for a little bit of pee and I got maybe an ounce. Finally I came out of the bathroom and laid down on the table. They hooked me to some monitors and a doctor came in, checked to see if Malachi was still breech - he was - and said she was going to check to see if I was dilated. FINALLY!!! I thought! I can tell you right now I'm dilated! So the doctor checked me, looked at the nurse and said "You need to call Dr. Richman right now!" The nurse said OK but didn't move. The doctor said "Right now! Call Dr. Richman and the on-call doctor. She's 7 cm dilated." I very quickly said "I want the epidural!" because my doctor told me they don't give it to you past 6 or 7. Of course, I was having a C-section so she said to me "Honey, don't worry. You're getting it." At that point it was close to 2am and maybe 15 minutes later another doctor came in and said he was going to check me to see how I was progressing. He checked and said "We need to get her to the OR. She's between 8 and 9 cm." And I was contracting about every three minutes.

At 2:27am, they wheeled me into the Operating Room and I sat on a table to get my spinal. I was really nervous, but after all thsoe contractions getting me up to 9cm, I didn't even feel the needle! They told me to lay down immediately, and it wasn't two seconds before I started to feel great! Josh said he could hear me and he knew the moment I got the medicine because I had been so quiet and focused the whole time, but as soon as I got the medicine I started chatting like crazy. I remember saying "Oh, this is WON-derful!! I LOVE not having contractions!!" Then I asked where Josh was, and they told me he would come in after they had me draped. Well, they draped me and I still didn't see Josh. Someone asked me how I was doing and I said "I just miss my husband!" About that time, he came in. As I saw him walking toward me, I heard a doctor say "I'm making the incision now." YUCK! Josh had a great view of everything they did in the surgery. He could see the smoke coming from where they were cauterizing as they cut, he could see blood and other things going everywhere, and then he looked at me. And I was happy as a clam and said "Tell me a story, honey." He did a great job telling me basiclaly the plot to "You've Got Mail." He said that he wanted to tell me something he didn't have to really think about because he was watching them pull stuff out of me (Gross).

I threw up again on the operating table. Talk about a weird experience. I was lying flat on my back and I couldn't feel my chest to cough or help me in any way. It was really annoying! Another kind of funny thing we thought about was that for us, other than salvation, this is the single most life changing experience we've ever had, and probably ever will. For the doctors and nurses, it's whatevs. Every day. The nurses were joking around, the anesthesiologist was texting after she knew I was ok. It was kind of bizarre.

Well, a few minutes later, Josh was getting quiet and I knew they must be pulling the baby out. Then I heard him cry. Oh my goodness!! It was the most wonderful cry I've ever heard. Josh said "Oh my gosh!" And I said to Josh "What does he look like?!" umm - a baby? And Josh said "He has hair!" He was born at 2:52 am, weighed 7 lbs 2 oz and was 19.3 inches long. They let Josh take pictures and they let Josh hold him and they brought him down to me so I could see him, but I was completely numb so I couldn't hold him yet. And they washed him and did all the stuff they have to do. There is a test they run one minte after the baby is born and five minutes after. It is called APGAR, which stands for Activity, Pulse, Grimace, Appearance and Respiration. Each of those five things is rated 0, 1 or 2. Basically 0 is bad (i.e. no movement, no pulse, no response to stimulation, blue or pale all over, no breathing), 1 is ok (arms and legs flexed/ little movement, pulse below 100bpm, facial movement only with stimulation, normal color but hands and feet are blue, weak cry or faint breathing) and 2 is good (active spontaneous movement, good pulse, sneezes and coughs with stimulation, normal color all over, nice loud cry). He did a great job! He was 8 at one minute and 9 at five minutes. His little hands and feet were blue for a while, but the nurses told us that was normal. We are so proud of him!

The funniest thing about our little man was his little frog legs! Every time a nurse came to see him, she'd say "Oh, he must have been a breech baby!" Because of thsoe crazy frog legs! Once we were done in the operating room, Josh went to the recovery room, Malachi went to the nursery and I got stitched back up. I had to go to the recovery room for a while. My temperature had dropped to 94.5, and I couldn't go down to the Mother Baby Unit until it was at least 96.5. That took about 2 hours. I finally got to go down and be with my little boy around 5am. He was so sweet and precious. Here are a few of my favorite pics of him in the hosiptal.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

One Day More

HAPPY EASTER!! This time tomorrow I'll be holding a little Sillababy in my arms! We are so excited for tomorrow. My C-Section is scheduled for 9:30am and we have to be at the hospital at 7:30 am. I'm a little scared but I feel more at ease now than I did two weeks ago for sure! I talked to a lady at church this morning who had a C-section and she really made me feel better. I've just been praying that I won't be scared. I think I'm less scared of a Cesearean than I am of natural, though! Josh and I have seen this scheduled birth as a real blessing. We know exactly when we get to meet our little guy, we won't have to rush to the hospital in a panic, and we get to spend today together and celebrating our last day of pregnancy, a family of two. IT's really exciting that this is our last holiday just the two of us. It was our first major holiday married two years ago. We are celebrating the new life we have in Christ because of His resurrection! Tomorrow we know we'll be celebrating the new life God is giving us when we see that sweet little baby. It totally blows my mind to think that after nine months I'll finally get to see him in just a few hours.

Josh and I were discussing how excited we were to see the baby and Josh said "You know, I'm excited to meet him, but it makes me realize how I'm even more anxious and excited to meet Jesus!" Isn't it wonderful when something in your life reminds you and reveals to you something about your faith in Christ. We are all aflutter with excitement about meeting our son, but how much more awesome will it be to stand (or probably fall to our knees) in the presence of God's Son!! The anticipation we are feeling now is nothing compared to the anticipation of Heaven. And all of our preparation for this baby is like what we do on earth. We try to walk worthy of our calling to prepare us for the day we meet Jesus face to face.

Enjoy your Easter! We will post pictures of the baby - and his name! - here and on facebook. Here are the pictures we took last week. We'll take one more tomorrow morning before we leave.

Love,
Mommy and Daddy Sillaman

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Flipping Babies

So yesterday we went to the hospital for my doctor to do an external cephalic version to try and get Sillbaby to flip. First, they gave me an IV, which was more uncomfortable than I thought it would be!! Then we waited forever and a doctor came in to do a sonogram and see how my little man was positioned in my belly. They said that he is a complete breech, which means his knees are bent and his butt is down and his head is up above my belly button. Well, I could have told them that! Haha! Then Dr. Richman came in and he was so nice. He told me it takes 30 seconds to a minute and that while one doctor held the sonogram on me so they could watch Sillababy move, he would hold the baby's head and another doctor would hold the baby's bottom. Then they would work together to try and turn him. The doctors all seemed to think it would be successful, saying that the baby is about 6.5 pounds so he's got plenty of fluid and room to move, my placenta is in a good place for it, he was positioned in a way that makes the turn easy, and I'm thin and my doctor's success rate is better on thinner women. So Josh held my hand and he was so sweet. He told me I was doing a good job, and we was rubbing my arm to help me relax, just like our birth instructor told us. The version HURT! It was not only an uncomfortable physical pain, but imagine someone pushing on your stomach - I was having trouble taking a good breath! I felt like I was kind of being punched in the stomach and the wind was getting knocked out of me! Well, Dr. Richman and Dr. Karina got Sillababy halfway and then he squirmed out of their grasp. They gave me a minute to catch my breath and calm down a little and gave it another try. Right at the same spot, Sillababy just would not turn any further, so Dr. Richman decided it was best to let him stay how he is. We made an appointment for a C-Section, so I'll be delivering on April 5 at 9:30 in the morning. After the version attempt was done, they hooked a fetal monitor around my stomach to observe his heartbeat for about 45 minutes to make sure he was okay. If he went into any large amount of stress or if his heart rate had dropped or anything, they would have to perform an emergency C-Section. Sillaboy did a great job, though! He was a little stressed at first - who wouldn't be! - but he calmed down very quickly and the nurses told me that he was a very happy baby.

I was weepy for a while after, and I still am a little bit, partially because I had hoped it would work, but partially because I felt so bad for my son. It was a hard day for him and he's just so sweet. Our birth class instructor has told us that sometimes babies don't turn and after they are delivered, the doctors see that the umbilical cord is too short. There are lots of reasons babies don't turn and sometimes the baby knows it's not supposed to. Josh and I are very much at peace about him being breech. He is comfortable and happy and he lets me know that all the time with his little wiggles and kicks. We are so excited to meet him on April 5 and so glad that God is sovereign over my pregnancy and little Sillaboy. God is holding him just the way He wants him to be positioned and that sounds just great to us!

On another note, Josh can't wait to cut his hair! But it also seems strange. It's been so long - the time and his locks! - that it will be odd for him to not have the long hair anymore. We've both been used to tugging on it and running our hands through it and measuring it, it will be odd when it's not there anymore. What a great bonding experience his hair has been for us! Every time I see people, they comment on my belly and want to feel it (which I don't mind!), and Josh has had similar experience! People are always asking about his hair and wanting to touch his beard. In the past few weeks, his hair and beard have started to get uncomfortable, right about the same time my big belly is driving me crazy! And yet, for both of us it's going to be very strange to not have it anymore. Well, now that I've talked about it, here are the pics we took today. Keep us in your prayers!!
Love, Mommy and Daddy Sillaman

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Third Trimester Blues

Well, hello friends and family. I bet you didn't think I'd be posting again so soon. Well, my friend Erica is also pregnant and she blogs all the time and it has motivated me to be more informative.
So, I am well into my third trimester, but I'm really just now starting to feel it. I sleep ALL . THE . TIME! Monday night I went to bed around 10 and woke up for work at 5am. I came home from work and took a nap from 2:45-7:15, went to bed again around 11:30 and woke up at 8:30 this morning. I'm ready for another nap right now. I guess my sleep isn't all that restful, though, since little Sillaboy likes to move around and wake me up a lot.
Also, I can't believe how small my bladder is! I usually wake up three times a night or so to use the bathroom, not always sure I'm going to make it to the toilet, and then hardly anything comes out! One time, I got out of the shower and used the bathroom, then I got dressed and by the time I was dressed I thought my bladder was going to explode I had to go so bad again! This happened a little in first trimester - third trimester is like three times as annoying!
I also eat a lot now. Which is funny because I thought this would be the time where my stomach is so small that I can't fit a lot of food in there. But no, the other night for dinner I ate three slices of pizza, a banana and a huge piece of cake. A normal day I could barely eat two slices of pizza. I guess this little guy just loves food!
March 5 is my baby shower here in Maryland and I am super excited. My best friend Beth is coming up from North Carolina, and Josh's sister Cherise is coming from Lynchburg!! We are going to Skype with Josh's mom and younger sisters so they can be a part of the fun, too.
On another note, March 15 will be our two year wedding anniversary! We are so excited! We bought a flip camera as a gift to ourselves, and we can't wait to start filming things for the baby, and of course after he's born, we'll be posting lots of videos of him doing cute stuff. Since so many people live so far away, we figured this would be a great investment!
I suppose this post is a little boring, but I just thought I'd give an update on what's going on with us.
Love,
Mommy and Daddy Sillaman

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Wow - Long Time No Update

Again, I am the world's worst blogger. Now that it has been an entire trimester since I've updated, for which I apologize greatly, I have so much to say! Now the reason I haven't updated is because I kept thinking "I need to wait until I upload my pictures from the sonogram!" Well, we don't have a scanner, and Josh's didn't work at church, so here I am, three months and four sonograms later, finally updating. Also I finally just took pictures of the sonograms with my iPhone so hopefully they won't look too bad. Today's update is going to have LOTS of pictures. Here we go!

These are some of my favorites from our first ultrasound. This is when we found out the baby is definitely a BOY! (We knew it :)) I love how you can see his spine and chin in this picture. He is such a beautiful baby!

Here is a great profile shot - you can see his little hand next to his forehead and his cute little button nose.
I love this one. He was playing with his umbilical cord and he kicked it!
This one is our favorite - the classic profile where he is sucking his thumb! So sweet!
In December, we had a blizzard that was the worst December blizzard this area has seen since about 1960. Here are some fun shots of our cars:

Next are some updates of how we looked in December. This is when I was 24 weeks pregnant, so Josh's hair is something like 19 weeks:




At our first ultrasound, the technician had trouble seeing all four chambers of Sillaboy's heart, so we had to go back again. This time wasn't nearly as fun and our pictures weren't as good. When we went to see Dr. Richman again, he said they saw all four heart chambers and it all looked normal. Except for Sillaboy's left kidney. He had a "dilated renal phesis" or something like that, so I went back for a third sonogram. Apparently, this is something that is pretty common, especially to boys. The kidney swells up and he stores urine there. It usually means there is a kink in the tube that carries his pee. Most of the time, as their little bodies get bigger, they grow out of it. Here is a picture from our third sonogram. He's getting so big!! I love his little face! That's his arm up next to his head. At this sonogram, which was on January 11, he weighed 2 1/5 pounds! Here are som pics of Josh and me around that time:

During all of this craziness, Josh and I also moved into a new apartment. We had a tremendous amount of help from people from our church. We really saw how much people love us and wanted to help. It was amazing.
We absolutely love our new apartment! It has two bedrooms, a dishwasher - WOOHOO!! - and a washer and dryer. I honestly don't think there is any way we could have had the baby at our old place. Keith Cook, one of the men at our church, came over and painted the baby's room the day after we moved in and it looks awesome! We are trying to get everything ready for this little one's arrival. I had a baby shower in WV, where I got my stroller and carseat as well as the crib sheets! So now we have the crib set up in the nursery and everything is starting to feel so real!
We had two more blizzards this month - one right after the other. Here are some pics. This, what you can see of it, is Josh's car. The snow was about 30":


Here's the view from our deck. You can see my Jeep two cars away from the streetlight. Everything was totally buried.
The next blizzard came two days after the first, so not everything had been cleaned up yet. Here's my Jeep again:
We went to the doctor yesterday and he said that everything looked fine with Sillababy's kidney. He said it is on the "high end of normal," but I think everything is just fine. Now we have one thing left to worry about - but only a little bit. As of right now, I'm about 33 1/2 weeks pregnant, and my Sillababy is still in the breech position. That means he's bottom down and his head is still up. At this point, he really should be head down, ready to come on out of me. Dr. Richman said that if he has not flipped by himself by the time I'm 36 weeks pregnant, we will go to Labor and Delivery and Dr. Richman will try to turn him. Dr. Richman said that the success rate is about 50%, but it is higher in thinner women. The downside is, it is extremely uncomfortable for me and actually pretty painful .... so I'd rather he just turn on his own. If Sillaboy doesn't turn on his own and if Dr. Richman can't get him to turn, we will have to schedule a C-section. Of course, we'd rather not have to do this, but if we do, there are upsides. In a scheduled C-section, we'll know exactly when he's going to be born and we can prepare for it. I can also tell my parents and if my mom is feeling well, they could plan a trip to be here for the birth. So, please pray that he will turn, but if not, that we won't be scared and everything will go well.
Finally, here are the latest picture of Josh and me - I'm pretty sure we just woke up. Josh's hair is pretty wild and unruly! These were taken Feb. 9, 31 weeks pregnant, 26 weeks of no shaving for Josh:


With Love, (Happy Valentine's Day!)
Mommy and Daddy Sillaman