Third Trimester: A new life, a new home!

Phew! It has been one crazy year!

Between 2 moves, buying a home, and growing a person it's enough to make your head spin!

In this post, I am going to separate these big events into sections - Third Trimester, Labor, and Postpartum and I'll try to be as succinct as possible!

In the third trimester section I'll discuss what being a massive pregnant woman was like. For the labor  portion I'll tell you my labor story and include a slideshow of some photos we took in the hospital. And finally in the postpartum section, I'll share some tis bits about being home for the first two weeks with a newborn.

Third Trimester

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This photo was at 39 weeks. The last photo taken before baby behr was born! I wasn't sure if she would come early, but my OBGYN said she'd be surprised if she made it to my due date so we were waiting for her to come at any moment.

The third trimester came with a slew of discomforts. But at this point it was so apparent that I was pregnant that I was getting asked at the grocery store, and various places how far along I was and when I was due. Sleeping became really rough as she was getting bigger and making my heartburn so much worse (at least for the first half of the trimester). I could feel her every move since she was squished tightly in my belly. I needed to get an ultrasound at 37 weeks because the doc suspected she may be in a different position than normal. She ended up being posterior or "sunny side up" where her head was facing toward my belly instead of my back, but head down. I kept hearing from everyone that it was more painful to have a natural birth with the baby facing this way since the back of her head will be hitting my back and tailbone throughout the labor. I was still determined to labor without the epidural!

3 weeks before Behr cubs due date, we closed on a house!

It was a long process and lots of back and forth with the bank as it typically is, but with some great people involved, we were able to close 2 days from when the closing date was originally set. We didn't know it going into it and looking at the place for the first time, but we ended up knowing the owners! We also know the realtors involved so it was serendipitous how it all worked out. We originally wanted to wait until baby was born and stay in the apartment we had recently moved into, but we saw the post on Facebook, and it was literally perfect for us so we had to take a look. And here we are in our cozy home in Dover, NH.

I am in LOVE with the kitchen and butcher block island!

And the built-ins around the fireplace.

A very pregnant pic on closing day! January 26th, 2017.

There were a lot of preparations to be had in the meantime. Packing for the hospital was one of them and if you know me I had this done way ahead of time at 30-32 weeks. (You never know!) Things I actually used in the hospital included:

Boppy's* - I brought two, one bigger one pictured and one smaller one. Really helped keep my arms from tiring holding the little one and she rocked at latching and breastfeeding.

Nursing tank & comfy pajama pants - I wore the nursing tank under the johnny, and then wore their robe over it with my comfy pajamas on the second and third day. You won't want to wear your own stuff the first day depending on how quickly you are healing or how much bleeding you may have.

Slippers - They give you some of their awesome grippy socks, but for walking around on the hospital unit I felt more human in my slippers

Pillow - Mike stayed with me in the hospital and used the pillow. Theirs are fine though and you can always request additional pillows. Bring your own pattered pillowcase though so they don't confuse your pillow with theirs.

Nursing pads - your boobs will probably crack and bleed and leak a little bit as you're starting out.

Going home outfit - necessary

Snacks - the kitchen tends to close early. We brought clif bars to have on hand if we got a little snack between meals.

Chapstick - my burts bees was my best friend, throughout labor and the hospital. It gets dry in there!

Things I didn't touch:

Bathing suit - for some reason I had sensory overload during labor and I didn't touch my bathing suit to use in the tub at all.

Playlist - along the same lines as above. On the first song I demanded the music be shut off. I couldn't do it! The nurses even put lavender in the diffuser and I couldn't do that either.

Toiletries - they provided everything. Some other hospitals may not.

Blankets for baby - they provide blankets and hats.

Diapers - they also provide 

Her cute going home outfit <3

My work threw me a surprise shower. I thought it was going to just be an annual christmas meeting and it was, but then we were going to do the yankee gift swap and all the gifts ended up being baby stuff! My work family is the absolute best! Renee, a ukulele player extraordinaire wrote and composed a song for Adalyn as well!

Labor

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This was the last drink we had before (while?) I went into labor. We were celebrating valentines day and I had a small glass of champagne while I was having what I thought were braxton hicks contractions (fake labor). Little did I know they'd grow more intense over the next couple of hours! I called the doc and told her I was having contractions 5 min apart 1 min long over 2 hours and she asked if my water broke or if I've had my bloody show, neither of which I thought I had. So she told me to stop timing them and to come in if they grew more intense. We tried to go to bed but it was getting really uncomfortable, to the point where I had to stand up out of bed from the back pain. I told Mike it was time to go in.

When we got there around 2:30 am I was at 6cm dilated and you can see that it was all good above -when I wasn't having a contraction. They had me get into bed and they said they were going to check to see if I'd be staying. They claimed, "You're 6 cm! You're definitely staying."

The contractions were starting to pick up. Mike and my Mom would rub my lower back which was pretty much the only thing that would make me feel better. It was around 8cm dilated that they said my water still wasn't broken yet and asked if I'd like it broken. I asked if it would break on its own since I didn't want too many interventions and they said it may or may not but that once the water breaks it would move a lot quicker and the contractions would get more intense. I didn't agree to have it broken until about 45 minutes later at 9-10cm after trying to push but the water was in the way. It did get more intense, but when the bag was broken, it brought my cervix back down to 7cm since the bag was holding it open. Back to laboring.

They had my try different positions to try to bring her down and flip her from sunny side up. They had my sit on the gravity ball with my elbows on the bed and this was extremely uncomfortable with all the back laboring. And even though they told me not to push before 10cm, my body was almost doing it for me at this point. I kept having to stand up from being so uncomfortable so they gave me the "peanut ball" and had me lay on my side in bed. They checked my cervix again and I was back at 8cm, but my cervix lip was in the way. Then the OBGYN told me she'd be back in an hour and hopefully she'd be past that lip, this seemed daunting at the time since we were moving so quickly before.

I labored for another hour and she still wasn't past the lip. The doc had to manually flip it, which my mom said happened with her for me. At this point it was go time. Time to push! I was getting excited to meet my little girl. I pushed for around 2 hours when she started to crown. But she wasn't getting past a certain point. I'd push harder, but then her heart rate started to drop so I had to roll over to my side and breathe oxygen to get it back up before pushing again. They found out the cord was around her neck, but loosely. After another half hour or so of this, the doc said, "Alright, at this point the baby is stuck, we have two options - an episiotomy, or the vacuum." I just wanted to meet my baby at this point, and I heard about episiotomies being harder to heal so I opted for the vacuum.

Three pushes later, Adalyn June Behrmann was welcomed into the world at 11:06 am.

I have never felt more relief in my life. Relief that the wait to meet my first born daughter was over, and relief from the amazing work the body does to create and birth a new life. I cried along with my daughter, and my first words to her were, "Hello baby girl. It's okay, you're alright now."

Postpartum

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Sleep deprivation. Check.

Between a crying baby and having to nurse every 2-3 hours, and staff coming to check in every four hours, we were exhausted. Good thing baby was latching on well because that would've made things that much more difficult. One of the nights Addie did not want to be put down or she'd start crying at the top of her lungs. So I held her the entire night trying to fight sleep while I let Mike get some rest so I could rest in the morning. I slept in until noon. Mike had to shoo away any staff or doctors that wanted to come in. The next night the staff offered to take her into the nursery so we could both get some sleep. I felt bad because I thought my baby would wake all the others up but they reassured us that it would be fine. We finally got some extra sleep we needed.

This was a sight I had been waiting a long time for.

Addie had lots of visitors! 4 generations. 

Our beautiful baby. With a full head of hair! That's where all the heartburn came from.

Does she have big feet for a baby or is that just me?

"Welcome to the World!" Her cute going home outfit.

Tired new parents scared shitless of going home without an amazing staff to help with everything.

Going home

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Scariest/cutest ride home ever.

SO Milk drunk

The first week with the baby was the biggest learning curve ever. Life literally revolves around the baby and when she needs to eat and sleep and poo. But you're so in love that you'd do anything for that little sweet pea <3