heather, marc, wren & z mroz

Yesterday was a fairly good day. They had to put Wren into an isolette because she wasn’t able to maintain her temp after they gave her a bath. However the last 4 or so temp readings have been just perfect so they are slowly turning down the temp of the isolette, a few more degrees and they can put her back in a crib. They were also starting to worry that she wasn’t having any wet diapers, but last night she had a good wet one. At the begining of the day they had Wren on a feeding schedule of 15 mL of breast milk or formula every 3-4 hours or when ever she wakes up. Heather was able to keep up with that amount either by pumping or directly feeding. But then they upped the feeding to 30 mL, so the last 2 feedings had to be more formula than her milk. We are waiting now to meet with the doctors on their rounds today to get an update and see what the next day holds and what their plan is for Wren. They haven’t talked about a timeline for when she can leave yet, but I don’t think they ever do until it is the day.

Breast feeding has been a struggle. I think it has to be hard in normal conditions when you have the baby with you. It is extra hard when you have to do the feeding in the middle of the NICU, and it seems like the nurses are rushing it and not willing to wait until it happens. Our OB doctor came and checked in on us this morning and we let her know how it was going. She went and talked with the ICU nurse for today and hopefully today the nurse will have a little more patience with us and allow Wren to feed longer naturally instead of having to do the bottle as often. I think they are going a little over board on Wren, she really seems to be doing fine. Our OB doctor agreed that it might be overboard but they would rather go overboard and check everything than not enough. She also mentioned that in the ICU they aren’t used to having “normal” babies that are already able to breast feed, so that might make it hard too, because they are so focused on the exact little things they need to do to get sick babies healthy.

My parents came yesterday too. They were so excited. They got to hold her and my mom even feed Wren a little. Pictures of Grandma and G-pa Mroz with Wren:

Thanks for all the phone calls, emails, and comments on the website. It is great to know everyone out there cares so much, is praying for us, and is just as excited about Wren as we are. Thank you so very much.

Wren is doing much much better today. We just got to go see Wren in the NICU. We got to change her diaper, hold her, love her, Heather got to try breast feeding, and I was able to feed Wren via bottle some milk Heather was able to pump.

They took Wren off the oxygen this morning at 3:30AM, they are running some more tests tomorrow, another chest xray, and seeing how things go. My guess is that everything is going to be fine and they will let her out of NICU tomorrow, but they aren’t sure yet and need to make sure she is recovering from all the “infiltrates” (?) and nasty maconium that is floating in her lungs.

Okay I just got an update from the NICU as I was writing this. They are putting Wren in an isolet thing to get her temp up. They turned off the heat lamp to see if she can maintain her temp, and she isn’t its around 96 instead of 98. They are going to keep her in isolation for a while and slowly ween her out of it to see if she can maintain her temp by herself. They still said we can try breast feeding again, so we are headed back up to the NICU to see her and try feeding again. Hopefully this time we can get some sort of latch.

Lots more photos from our first visit with Wren:

Wren Elena Mroz – Don’t have the detals yet… 7 pounds something, 21 or so inches long. They wisked her away to the Special Care Nursery. She was having trouble breathing and they intebated her 4 times to get all the maconium (baby poop) out of her lungs. I walked with the Nurse over to the Special Care Nursery, they put her on 40% oxygen (normal air is 21% oxygen), they are going to do some chest xrays, some labs, and give her an IV. We think everything will be fine but pray that Wren does okay and we get her with us soon.

Photos of Wren:

Heather finally got the go ahead to start pushing she has been dong it for about 2.5 hours. We can see about a quarter size of the top of the baby’s head. It looks like it has dark hair.

The baby may be OP (sunny side up) but the Doctor said it is coming out vaganially. Heather is doing an awesome job pushing. She is making progress on each contraction. She is awesome.

Its 1pm the next day since coming to the hospital. We are giving in to interventions Heather and I are exhausted. Heather is working so hard, but not progressing very quickly. She was making progress on her own but not much. This afternoon they broke the water bag. Started to help but then died off and heather was progressing but super slow. Just a few minutes ago they hooked heather up to an IV with oxytocin (Pitocin) a very low dose to hopefully get this baby out today.

Not sure what else they are going to let us try before they say we have to have a ceasarien. Poptart is looking good on the monitor throughout all of this and heather’s blood pressure is doing good, that is why they have been letting us go so long. Hopefully it won’t be terribly longer. Stinking interventions get that baby out.

Some progress was made last night and all day yesterday, not a whole whole lot but some. Did some walking. Heather is having stronger contractions, but we aren’t there yet. We may ask them to break the bag of water, not sure yet or when.

Its a little after 4 am. Heather is trying to rest some between contractions. The contractions haven’t gotten much stronger and haven’t gotten very close together, although they have been fairly painful for most of today already. Heather’s bag of water is still intact. She is exhausted. She didn’t get much if any sleep last night and not getting much sleep tonight.

After Heather gets a little more rest we are probably going to ask to have her checked to see how dialated she is now, and if it isn’t almost all the way “there” (~10 cm, fully effaced) we’ll have them stick a hook up Heather and break the bag of water to get things going that way. Hopefully with the little bit of rest she has gotten the last couple of hours, her body will be ready to get poptart out. If things don’t start happening soon I’m fairly sure the doctors at the hospital are going to make something start happening if we like it or not. We are coming up on 12 hours in the hospital, and about 26+ hours since heather has been having consistent painful contractions. Here is all the contractions we timed last night and yesterday before going to the doctor if you are interseted in seeing them: Contractions

Okay it really isn’t that late yet. Its 12:45 AM. Heather was able to get some rest in between contractions. She is totally going Sydney Bristol on the pain. She is giving into and is cool, calm, and collected during the contractions. Its crazy, I don’t know how she is doing it.

My parents showed up a couple of hours ago. I said hi but Heather wasn’t up for it yet. Heather’s Dad just walked into our room and said hi, he came in town too. Crazy.

We are going to try doing some walking and see if we can get this birthday party started. Sorry Luke and Paden, poptart won’t be sharing your guys birthday.

So it is about 10PM on 5/27, Heather and I have been at the hospital since 5pm. No baby yet.
Heather’s contractions have been going strong since late last night early this morning. She is amazing. I can’t believe how well she handles the pain. She is doing so good.

We started the day timing contractions and I wrote into work saying I was going to be starting my leave. The contractions were strong but didn’t seem steady or even to us. We decided to go to our scheduled doctor appointments at 2:30pm and wait on going to the hospital based on what the doctor said. We had a BPP. It was long and heather hand about 5 or more contractions during it and several waiting before and after. We waited a while for the NST and they finally called us. Hooked up on the fetal monitor for the NST the nurse said Heather’s contractions were coming as quick as 2 minutes apart. The baby looked great on the NST. We saw the doctor. She checked Heather. According to our doctor Heather was 6 cm. The doctor was excited because the BPP said the amniotic fluid was low (6.3 and they want it to be above 7?) and if Heather wasn’t already in labor and so dialated she would have to start talking to us about inducing. She sent us straight to the hospital.

At the hospital they walked us straight into our room. The nurses seem nice and the doctor on call is nice too. I think they offered to break heather’s bag of water about 5 times already, but really nice.

Gotta go heather is having another contraction.

Good morning and happy birthday! Today is Marc’s brother Luke’s birthday, Paden’s birthday…. and maybe Poptart’s birthday? We’ve been up all night with contractions and haven’t headed to the hospital quite yet, but I think today is the day! I was secretly hoping that yesterday would be the day since I had strong contractions and it was my sister’s birthday (and since marc and I both have holiday birthdays how apporpriate would it be for our baby to be born on Memorial Day?).
Contractions have been between 3-8 minutes apart all night, and although they are about 5-6 minutes consistently right now they are not nearly as long and as painful as some of the earlier ones. Not sure if that means that I’m slowing down or what. Anyway, if you are up and reading this you are the first to know… we haven’t called anyone yet… I’m trying hard not to be the first time mom with the false alarm!

My parents keep asking if poptart can come out and play. Well poptart can’t yet and won’t untill he or she is ready to. Or at least untill the doctor starts trying to induce poptart out.

Poptart’s tentative birthday 5/23 came and went. Heather is doing good. She is getting a few contractions today but nothing really strong or steady. To make sure poptart is still doing okay we have a half day worth of tests scheduled at the doctor tomorrow, unless poptart decides to get the birthday party started today. Scheduled at the doctor tomorrow includes a biophysical profile (BPP), a non-stress test (NST), and a chat with the doctor.

I personally think poptart is delaying just so he or she can have their own EPT record right away. If poptart delays untill 5/30 or after, poptart’s birthday party will coincide with our hospital’s golive on Epic.

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The whole time-lapse didn’t turn out quite as cool as it was in my mind. I ended up having the camera set at the wrong settings for about a month worth of photos. The photos between week 19 and week 29 were way too washed out to put in, so in the time lapse it looks like poptart got way huge all of a sudden but there are 10 weeks of growth missing. Ah well. Enjoy.

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The day is drawing near! I’m due on Friday! I’m not too anxious, but I am trying to be very in tune to my body and evaluating everything to make sure I’m not in labor… and there’s nothing really. We had a doctor’s appointment today and the nurse and the doctor both said something along the lines of ‘so, you’re still here!’ – um… yeah.. well I’m not due till Friday and I’ve been expecting to go late this whole time… are you trying to make me impatient?!?!

Well, there isn’t really much else to update on. My blood pressure and protein stuff has all been fine now – the doctor said she sometimes wonders if my diagnosises were wrong (the diabetes and the preclamsia) – who knows. I’m going back on Friday for another blood pressure check and NST just to make sure everything is still going good.

OH – Marc and I have decided on names! We really waited to the last minute. I’m trying to make some personalized onesies (one boy and one girl)… we’ll see if I finish in time or if they look like something we can go out in public with! It really is a relief to have names that we agree on though (although it would be nice to have 2 of each so we can decide what poptart looks like the most… but I can’t be too picky).

That’s all for now. Hopefully my next post will be a birth announcement!

So everyone knows – it’s official – our baby will not sleep in a cardboard box, a laundry basket or a dresser drawer! We have a playard and it’s wonderful! We set it up next to our bed and it has this bassinet part that has nice padding and is elevated so we can easily get poptart out. I’m so excited!

We also went to the doctor yesterday and everything looks good. My blood pressure was fine and the baby is moving down – I am 70-75% effaced, not dialated, and the baby is at a zero station. Results on my 24hr urine collection aren’t back yet, but I’m trusting it’s going to be ok. The doctor said I should still take it easy for the remainder of my pregnancy, but I’ve been ok’d to do laundry so I’ve been doing a lot of that… and making muffins… looking more at baby names… and spending time on the computer (if you haven’t noticed).

We really need some pictures up right? Maybe I’ll learn that part today.

Good news! We had our 36 week ultrasound and the baby is not too big! They were estimating 5lbs and some ounces and my OB is thinking 7lbs or so by delivery (all this can be up to 15% off). I was very excited about this because I do not want to be induced!
Weird stuff – Last Wednesday my skin was more itchy than usual and when I got home from work I noticed all these red bumps on my skin. They kept spreading and getting more itchy, but when I woke up on Thursday morning they all went away and I felt fine. Then the afternoon came and I was all itchy again! And it was worse! We debated going to the hospital or at least calling the on-call nurse, but that never seems to help much so I just vowed to call the doctor first thing in the morning. The bumps all went away (of course) in the morning, but I called anyway because I knew they would probably come back at night… a nurse called me back and she said that it was probably a viral thing and ‘it happens sometimes’.. and said it was ok to take benedryl. So Friday and Saturday night I took one benedryl and that helped a ton (the itching spread to the palms of my hands and bottoms of my feet… impossibly to itch). Sunday night the rash was a little better so I made it through the night drug-free and by Monday night I was back to normal. SO… Marc took pictures and I decided that the doctor needed to see this weird, weird rash (maybe we will post the pics here too so you can get grossed out)… when I showed them to her she looked shocked and wanted to show the dermatologist (yes – I did call you to tell you about this – I’m glad the message got to you). They both said it was hives and she asked the normal routine questions that everyone asks me when I have weird skin issues – did you try a new soap? do you have new sheets? new laundry detergent?… no.. no.. no… I have really sensitive skin so I know not to do those things. Anyway… sorry for the novel… just had to vent! I told her it was gone now.
MORE Weird stuff – So yesterday morning at my OB appointment they did the normal stuff.. weight, blood pressure… ‘oh, your blood pressure is high’ (which is what they said last time, but then qualified it by saying it was high for me since I’m usually low)… I thought maybe all the cleaning I did the day before or taking the stairs up to her office might have caused it, but that didn’t seem to ease the doctor’s concern. They also found protein in my urine! So these are both signs of preclamsia (why me?) – so she wanted me to take a non-stress test, do some lab work, and collect a 24 hour urine sample. The non-stress test was a fun experience and poptart did awesome – she said it was the best one she has ever seen. The lab work came back good… and I’m in the process of collection a whole lot of urine today! (I even have to do it at night.) She wanted to see me again on Friday so we are going in and getting more lab work and I’ll turn in my pee.

I don’t know how all this stuff happens to me, but it does! It’s funny because I feel great, haven’t gained much weight (15-18 lbs depending on the week… I keep going up and down), and have overall enjoyed my pregnancy. I really need to post more so I don’t write so much each time! OH… I’m done with work now – I had my last day on Friday. It was sad and I keep visiting, but now I can get stuff done (that’s the other thing… I’m on rest… I can’t do anything today… no cleaning, no laundry… nothing… she said I can go to the bathroom which is good because I have to collect my urine!)