Baby Love Part 3

My third pregnancy was something else.  We lived in a state that didn't have a single in-network provider for our insurance, so we had to drive 45 miles to the next state for anything requiring a doctor unless we wanted to pay way more out of pocket than any family should ever have to for medical care.  It made things really interesting when it came to prenatal care, and I can remember being convinced that I would give birth in the car on the way to our approved hospital.

Like my two previous pregnancies, I was put on bed rest, I think it was around 33 weeks.  I was also prescribed medication just in case I started contracting.  Our other babies had both been born premature.  Since I had two small children already, and a husband who worked long, crazy hours, my mother-in-law came to stay with us and help out until the baby was born.  She was great to have around.  Wouldn't let me do anything but pee and every other day I got to shower.  I sat in our huge, green leather recliner for two weeks, hand sewing a quilt for our daughter while she was there. 

On night just before bedtime, I started having a few minor contractions.  They weren't painful, but they were steady and only about six minutes apart.  I took a pill like a good girl, sat back, relaxed, and...continued contracting.  An hour later I took another pill because they advised me it might take two to make contractions stop.  Or not.  My mother-in-law was in bed asleep.  My husband was still at work.  It was midnight.  I was having contractions that kept getting stronger and closer together.  Oh, and I was 45 miles from the hospital.

I woke Loretta, called PJ at work, and set about packing a hospital bag.  (No, I didn't have one ready because it was still five weeks to my due date.)  PJ made it home in record time (because there is zero traffic in Cheyenne, Wyoming at midnight any day of the week) and we headed out at NASCAR speed to Fort Collins, Colorado.  I was positive we wouldn't make it, and PJ kept speeding up to ensure that we did.  I'm pretty sure that trip only took us about twenty minutes. 

When we arrived at the hospital, a nurse had to come out with a wheel chair to collect me because I knew if I tried to walk in, the baby would fall out!  She assured me that it would be fine as we were riding up in the elevator with another expectant mom who was farther into labor than me.  When her nurse jokingly told a story about a woman giving birth in that very elevator the year before, the woman shot her a death glare and yelled, "That was me!"  OK.  So much for putting us at ease...

We got checked in, changed, into a room, checked, and were told it would be a while.  I wanted to take advantage of the new jacuzzi tub, so they moved me in.  I'd like to offer a little tip here.  A powerful jetted tub is not a good thing for a woman in the late stages of labor.  I felt like I was being pummeled to death, and the nurses couldn't figure out how to get it to stop completely, so every five minutes the jets would start up again, I would curse the new wonderful birthing center, and my poor husband would look helpless. 

It wasn't long before I knew I needed to get out of the tub and to the bed, so we hurried (Ha!  Yeah right.) out of the bathroom, got the bed prepped, and they checked me again.  My midwife gave me the go ahead, and I'm pretty sure I never pushed.  I maintain to this day that I just complained and whined until my son fell out.  I didn't get to see him right away because when you have a preemie, they have an entire NICU team in the room waiting, and when the baby is born, they whisk them off to make sure all is well before the mommy gets a chance to see the little screaming bundle of ugly old man baby (except my babies were all beautiful.). 

When they determined he was fine, just needing a little oxygen, they filled me in on all the stats.  With as much as it hurt when he came out, I was sure he was at least a nine-pounder.  I was in shock when they told me he weighed 3 pounds 15 ounces.  WTH???  No really.  But his head was E.Nor.Mous.  Off to the NICU he went, and my nurses did the usual fussing over me.  My midwife was great, and my husband was a champ!

When I finally got to go see Baby Boy Eldridge, I was amazed how tiny he was.  I know all babies are sweet and little and cute, but BBE was minute.  I was afraid to touch him for fear he would break.  I had bought bags of sugar bigger than this baby, and I was somehow supposed to be able to keep him alive.  I had an immediate internal panic attack at that thought. 

For two days we made visits every few hours to the NICU, and then it was time to check out.  I was all packed up and ready to go home to make plans when one of the NICU nurses came into my room and informed us that our bitsy little read-headed baby with the swirl up front was too cute and sweet to not have a name.  They were all tired of calling him Baby Boy Eldridge.  That's right.  He had no name.  We couldn't decide what to call him.  We talked.  We thought.  We talked.  Finally, Christian, our oldest son who was just shy of 4 years, said he had watched a cartoon and the boy in the cartoon was named Connor.  He said it was a good name, and it started with "C", as did both of our other kids' names.  And so the nurse went back to the NICU to make a name tag that said Connor William. 

The one really great part of delivering Connor in Ft. Collins was that they own several blocks of houses on the street adjacent to the hospital.  They use them specifically for families of long-term patients.  My MIL, my kids, myself, and my husband, on his days off, got to spend the next 17 nights in a three bedroom house with all the things a house should have, and it only cost about a quarter of what two hotel rooms would have.  Plus it was a two minute walk to the hospital. 

By the time we were finally allowed to take him home, Connor weighed 4 pounds 10 ounces.  I could only wonder if they were out of their freaking minds.  Why the hell would they let me take a baby so tiny and fragile home?!  Didn't they know I had a rambunctious pre-schooler and a toddler waiting to get their hands on him?  They insisted that he was ours, and therefore we had to take him.  And so, with six little rolled up receiving blankets to prop him in his giant of an infant car seat, a small oxygen tank, and the biggest pacifier on the planet, we went home.

One week later he was off the oxygen.  A week after that he was circumcised.  Another tip:  Don't be in the room while your son is being circumcised.  Holy crap.  And wow.  But mostly yikes.  He was still so tiny that people would look into his car seat, see only blankets, and think we forgot to bring the baby.  For the first little while I had to resort to buying him doll clothes because preemie clothes were entirely too big. 

And now he's six.  Today is his birthday, and I'm in awe of the funny, caring, lovable little character he's become.  While I miss the so tiny super little red head with the pinwheel cowlick, I am so proud of my generous little white-blond monster with the pinwheel cowlick.

Baby Love Part 4

I'm sure the title has confused you because nowhere on my blog can you find parts 1-3. Let me clear this up: they don't exist...yet. I'm starting with part 4 because my baby, my C4, is turning 2 today. I've decided it is time to write out her story.

I will admit that out three older kids were either total surprises, or very loosely planned pregnancies. This is not the case with Miss Caroline. In October of 2007, my husband and I decided we would try for one more baby. We wanted to be done with the giving birth to new babies part of our lives before we turned 30, and time was passing quickly. So, I set up an appointment with my midwife, had my IUC removed, and off we went... ;0)

This pregnancy didn't happen as quickly as our others, and two days before Christmas that year, our family was split up by life. PJ moved the kids and I back to Boise, but he still had to stay behind in Wyoming for almost two months to finish working. I don't know if you know this, but it's hard to get pregnant when separated by 700 miles.

When PJ finally arrived in Boise shortly after Valentine's Day, um, let's just say we put our plan into motion. On March 29th, we got our first positive test. Yea! Since our older kids had been born prematurely, I called right away to get an appointment with my midwife, but it wasn't set until my eighth week of pregnancy. Until then, I was hyper-sensitive to smells, nauseated, miserable. These were symptoms I hadn't experienced with my previous pregnancies.

Not long before our first visit to the midwife, PJ and I were talking, planning, deciding our baby's future when PJ realized he had just assumed all along it was twins. I panicked, of course, and called Katie. After all, she had twins. I knew she could tell me all about it. That phone call only confirmed that my severe symptoms could indeed be a sign of carrying twins...

The first visit went well, and I filled Georgianna (the midwife) in on PJ's suspicions, my crazy symptoms, and asked if there was any chance at a quick ultrasound. She figured we should know what we were getting into right away, and took us into the little ultrasound room. I will never forget the look on her face, the way she didn't turn the monitor toward me, the way she excused herself and came back with a doctor. After taking a look, they both left, and when she came back in, she described what looked like the beginning development of twins, but growth had stopped. She told us by the looks of it, she believed it may be a partial molar pregnancy. In other words, the babies weren't developing, and I would miscarry. I left her office in a state of shock. We had gone in with such joy, and came out devastated.

As it turned out, after six weeks of blood tests to make sure my hormone levels were dropping as I miscarried, Molar Pregnancy was ruled out. No one was sure what happened. As requested, we waited a few months for things to settle, regain some normalcy, and decided to try it one more time. Oddly, I felt a sense of peace through this whole time. I hurt. I cried. I wanted to lie down and give up. But underneath it all, I felt hope. It was like God was telling me our timing was bad, but He would make things right for us.

Once again, within a few months, we were pregnant. This time I didn't want to tell anyone. I didn't want to get my hopes up. I went in with low expectations and expected the worst because I couldn't handle my heart being broken again so quickly. Again we set up our first appointment, and waited out the eight weeks. We didn't tell the kids. We just tried to keep to our daily lives as normal as possible.

That first visit went much more smoothly than the last. Georgianna did an ultrasound again, and this time our funny little gummy bear was dancing, and we could see the heart beating. It was overwhelming to say the least.

The next several months passed and all seemed to be going well. Since I had a habit of going into early labor, she did my glucose tolerance test a few week early, and lucky me, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I took a class, met with a nutritionist, changed my entire diet...

It only lasted a couple of weeks, because at exactly 34 weeks, I went into labor. I didn't realize it because I didn't have contractions like with the other kids. The only reason I even wondered was because I had started bleeding lightly. In the wee hours of the morning, PJ and I went over the hill to the hospital where I was checked, admitted, and was too far gone already to stop labor.

My first three children had been delivered completely unmedicated, and this time I decided to try a little something. Since they had already put an IV in, my midwife suggested Stadol. (I don't recommend it. It did nothing to ease the pain, and really made me feel loopy and disconnected.) Just as my contractions were getting more intense, a nurse came into my room and told my midwife that the woman across the hall was about to deliver, and her doctor hadn't arrived yet. Georgianna ran over, and that's when I had the sudden need to push. The nurse panicked because Georgianna was delivering the other baby, and she kept telling me not to push. (If you've never had a baby before, please understand that when you need to push, your body does it on its own. There really isn't a way to not push at that point.)

Georgianna just made it back in time for the last couple of pushes, and than little Caroline Grace made her entrance into the world. At six weeks early, she weighed 6lbs, 7oz and was 19 inches long. Because she was a preemie, we had a whole NICU team standing by and they gave her a good once over. She was breathing on her own and doing fine, so they let my husband carry her up to the NICU.


The next two weeks were spent going back and forth over the hill to the hospital and then home. With feedings every three hours, and three kids at home who wanted attention, life was exhausting. It was RSV season, so the kids weren't even allowed into the hospital to see our new bundle. They had to just see the pictures we took on our visits. Finally, on her two week birthday, Caroline came home.


A lot has happened since then, but she is still our baby, our tiny princess. Today she turns two, and I can't help but look back and remember those miserable first months when all she did was cry, and when she met her grandparents for the first time because that was the first time she laughed, and her first steps, her first birthday, and so many other milestones. But at the same time, I'm looking ahead. I can't wait to hear her say, "I love you." She will learn to ride a bike, and jump rope, and sing her ABC's, but she will always be my baby.

Sweater Central

So, I found a great baby sweater pattern, and I've since fallen in love with it. It's the first clothing (besides hats) I've ever crocheted, and it turned out to be a great pattern to start with. The problem is, now I have a couple of little sweaters sitting in my livingroom that I need to find homes for. First, let me show you one that is already being loved on. It was the first one I made.


Next is the one I call the Watermelon sweater. You can see it in an earlier post, but I will put it in again so you don't have to go hunting. This one is about a 6-9 month size, lime green with hot pink edging and flower, and it zips up the back (they all do so far) so your baby can't wiggle out and escape.


The most recent addition is this one. It is a rose color with a slightly darker scallop edge around the hood, cuffs, and bottom. It's about a 24 month size. I am asking $30 for each of these, and that includes shipping in the continental US.


This one is my favorite. I made it for my friend's baby. She just got it today, so I don't have any pictures of him in it yet. I will be sure to post when I do. I used a much more expensive yarn on this one, and it is a lot thicker than the others I posted. It would cost $50 for me to make another with this same yarn, but it turned out beautiful! It's going to be great for our uber-cold Montana winters!