Welcome, Liam!

 

Douglas William Buhler, Jr.

Born November 22, 2013 at 4:04 p.m.

7 lbs 8 oz, 21 inches long

We are calling him Liam. I like it, it fits him.
(His dad goes by Bill, his grandpa goes by Doug
so we struggled a bit to figure out what to call him.)

 

Things didn’t quite go as planned, but I was really happy with how they turned out.

On Thursday, my midwife became concerned. I went in for an ultrasound and his amniotic fluid was extremely low. We spent Thursday night trying to get labor started – and my midwife stayed all night and monitored his heart rate every 1/2 hour.

Friday at noon we went to the University Hospital to be induced. There is a group of nurse midwives that deliver at the hospital. I’d heard great things about them – and even considered going with them back when we decided to transfer to a midwife. They were amazing! If I were to have another baby, I would go with the nurse midwives at the U as long as I could come home after the birth and use the home birth midwife for post partum care.

The nurse midwives decided he needed to be turned (his head was forward instead of head back). So they did something one of them had learned from a midwife in Mexico – they put a sheet underneath me and each stood on one side. Then they pulled on the sheet to tilt me from right to left to right several times quickly. As soon as they finished that, I had my first hard contraction as they started a low dose of pitocin.

59 minutes later we had a baby.

 

 

Despite having no amniotic fluid (when they broke my water, no fluid at all came out), Liam was doing really well until the very end. Also, my placenta didn’t detach at all. So, after an hour of trying a lot of different things, they called in one of the doctors to dig it out. That was not pleasant. Luckily they gave me some pain medication through my IV which helped some. They offered me an epidural, but after making it all the way through the birth without one, I wasn’t about to get it then. And I have to say, I really think not having the epidural has made for a better recovery for me and I think it factored into breastfeeding going better for Liam as well.

 

Here I am holding him for the first time:

 

We pushed really hard to go home 4 to 6 hours after the birth. It took a bit of convincing, but they did let us go home that night. Sleeping in my own bed was wonderful. If I’d thought I could have done it that way, I would have planned it that way. To have the baby in the hospital, but not have to sleep there was the best of both worlds for me.

Here’s Liam in his carseat at the hospital:

 

The nurse snapped a picture of the three of us before we left:

Here’s Liam on my bed the next morning:

My midwife came 24 hours after he was born to check us both out. She also came a couple of days after that and did the hearing screening, PKU, and everything they would have done in the hospital if we had stayed.

I have to say this has been my best birth experience. It’s also been my best recovery. And although breastfeeding has been challenging, it’s been so much better than with the girls. Liam was down to 7 lbs 5 ounces 24 hours after his birth. 3 days after he was born, he was 7 lbs 6 ounces. 8 days after he was born, he was 8 lbs 5 ounces. Both of my girls lost 10% of their birth weight and were barely back to their birth weight by 2 weeks.

November, Part 1

We spent most of the month waiting for a baby….but he gets his own post.

 

Here’s a picture of Sandy wearing this cute scarf my mom sent her. She wears it everywhere!

 

 

I was in charge of a restaurant night fundraiser for Sandy’s school. We got 20% of what was spent by those that ate at Zupas and said they were with the school. One day I unexpectedly needed to stay and make copies – someone else had said they’d do them and then didn’t. I’d changed cell phones recently and panicked when I realized I didn’t have any kids apps on my phone and I couldn’t get a signal in the school. So, Abby entertained herself by taking about a hundred selfies:

 

Bill’s birthday breakfast:

 

 

We really thought Bill was going to get a baby for his birthday. I had contractions – about 6 minutes apart -- but not progressing. If you look closely, you can see me in the top right corner of the picture below in the polar bear position. The idea was that the position would help him turn if he needed to. But nothing happened. Our original plan was to have him at home – thus the pool in the middle of the room.

 

It was a really stressful month and it was hard on the girls. We didn’t know when the baby was coming, and I kept having contractions that didn’t progress.

 

I took the girls to get their nails done and I got a pedicure:

 

The girls met Ronald McDonald one day:

October Recap

Here’s a quick update on our October:

 

A trip to Red Butte Gardens:

 

Random trip to Lowes, but I thought it was funny that Abby insisted on her stuffed animals riding in the cart:

She is so attached to her animals.

 

We went to Roosevelt for the day. While Bill worked, the girls and I went to Dinosaur National Monument. On the way, we stopped for lunch at McDonald’s. The McDonald’s children’s playplace in Vernal was amazing because:

*It was new

*It was the cleanest one I’ve ever been to (the one by us is new but it is always full of trash)

*There was lots of seating around the children’s playplace, it was wide open with lots of natural light, and the tables offered a really good view of the play area

*It was completely walled off from the rest of the restaurant – with only one door that was easy to see from anywhere in the children’s section.

*There was a very nice bathroom inside the children’s play area.

It is amazing to find a children’s area that is actually kid-friendly. Like Liberty Park where they have this amazing play area – and a kid-sized tunnel that leads directly out of it, but if your kid escapes, you have to run all the way around to catch them on the other side. Seriously! Who designs these things? People that have never tried to take a 2-year-old to the park! Or to McDonalds.

 

Then it was onto Dinosaur National Monument. We were lucky – this was it’s first day open after the government shutdown.

 

At first, it didn’t seem like there was much to do. We exhausted the visitor’s center and the quarry in under an hour.

But then we decided to try their scenic drive. We bought a pamphlet that directed us where to go and where to stop. The girls had a blast!

  

 

They especially liked the petroglyphs. They wanted to know how they were made. So we found a couple of rocks and I let them use a rock to scratch a design on it. It was harder than they expected. Then I showed them how easily it wiped away and we talked about how much work it would be to make drawings on rock that would last hundreds of years.

 

Bill went to a Scout broadcast. He was proud that he was wearing his Scout shirt from when he was 18.

 

 

Abby was a rainbow bug for Halloween:

 

 

Her daycare had a really cute Halloween party and the kids performed a dance number:

 

There were twins in the most adorable owl costumes. Their mom made a hat with eyes on it. Then she’d made feather capes. They turned out so cute!!

 

Sandy was a mermaid for Halloween. This is the only picture I got. I wish I’d gotten a shot of the tail. And we sprayed her hair red.

This picture was at her school – the school had a costume parade and then I stayed with a couple of other moms and we helped with a Halloween party.

 

We did our annual hot dogs – we set up in the driveway and grill hot dogs for the trick or treaters going by. We also had hot chocolate. It was a lot of fun, we had a great turn out this year. We grilled about 100 hot dogs.

 

Oh, and this was my facebook status one day in October. I thought it might be funny to look back at someday.

 

Some things I heard today from children that I would be very happy not to hear again.

"I wish I never had a sister."

"I know potty words in Spanish, do I still get in trouble if I say them?"

"If you pick your nose, sometimes it bleeds. But not always."

Can I run away from home? I'm sure I'd come back after a day. Or two. Or three.