Welcome to the world, Kaylee!

It’s Kaylee Irena Jensen!

Born Sept 25, 2010, at 2:36pm

In the Moose Jaw Union Hospital

Weighing 7lbs, 15oz and was 20 1/4” long

<3



When Kaylee was handed back to me after being cleaned up.

<3

It’s taken me so long to update this! I went into labour when my water broke just over an hour after I put up the last post! Then the regular, increasing in intensity and more painful contractions started. I was checked into the hospital by 3am, and was dilated 2cm. It took several hours to get to 3cm dilation, and I got my epidural around 9am. Then I couldn’t feel much of anything. Around 11am, I was put on a drip because I wasn’t dilating very fast. At one point, Kaylee’s heartrate either dropped significantly or the monitor failed, but whatever the case, they turned down the epidural drug and I felt the contractions a little more, and they put an internal fetal monitor on Kaylee’s head. Just after 1pm, I was dilated fully and was told I could start pushing when I had a strong contraction and the urge to ‘bear down’. I was pushing for about an hour and 20 minutes before Kaylee officially arrived into the world. Then I had to be repaired with stitches for a little while.

Freshly born and being weighted!

She was born very healthy, and very strong! Her APGAR scores were 8/10 at 1 minute, and 9/10 at 5 minutes. Gramma Nik said, "She's already getting A's on her tests!" Just a couple days after birth she’s able to lift her head with her neck, but she can’t support it for very long. I've read they're not usually able to do this until at least a month old! She got a stomach-full of mucous on the way out though, and she gave me a couple scares in the hospital when she’d turn bright red and was choking. The first time the nurse was in my room and she handled it, but the second time scared me to death because I didn’t know if I was helping her. It turns out I was doing the right thing to help free her airway, and she hasn’t choked like that since.

She's so tiny!

Breastfeeding started out as quite an ordeal! It was taking over 2 hours to feed her, and it turned out to be a combination of many things making the problem. The lactation consultant (now L.C.) said she doesn’t like things being put in her mouth because her soft palate was likely damaged right after birth trying to get the mucous out of her mouth, plus her tongue is frequently blocking anything from going into her mouth. The L.C. also said I was holding her head wrong, and she was pressing back against my hand instead of going for the breast, so I learned a new way of holding her. Plus, she’s impatient! When she didn’t get anything right away after a few sucks, she gave up all the time and started screaming! Now we’ve found solutions to everything and we’re both finding feeding time a lot easier! Because it wasn’t going well for a couple days though (and because she still was spitting up lots of mucous), I had to stay in the hospital longer. I was supposed to be allowed to go on Monday if everything was going okay, but I didn’t end up being allowed to leave until Wednesday. She lost 10% of her birthweight in the hospital and they needed to see her start gaining weight before we could leave.

Kaylee has really nice fingernails!

On Monday night in the hospital, I started getting very hormonal! I cried at everything (it didn’t help that it was during that evening that I had to deal with Kaylee choking…) and most of the time I wasn’t even sure why I was crying. I just couldn’t stop! I tried to hide it because I didn’t want to nurses to worry about me, but I failed. They told me that pretty much every recovering mother goes through that day of crying over everything and nothing, at about the third day after the birth. That made me feel a lot better! It’s the baby blues, and it’s normal. That was the worst day though. I’d even say that emotional pain was worse than the physical pain I had during labour (although I did have an epidural… :P). I felt like such an incompetent mother because I was failing at breastfeeding and they told me Kaylee was losing too much weight and it felt like it was my fault, plus it meant that we had to stay in the hospital and I had been SO excited to be going home that day. And then I realized how fragile she was when she started choking and I just happened to be beside her at the time and I couldn’t stop crying at the idea of what could have happened if I hadn’t been right beside her when she was choking! This craziness persisted into Tuesday and by then I was crying for no reason at all, but I couldn’t help the urge to cry. That’s mostly over now… I still cry over insignificant things every now and then, but I’m not crying for most of the day anymore!!

She had her hands like this in the ultrasound pictures, and now she sleeps with her hands on either side of her face.

Thursday, we had an appointment with our doctor and she had somehow managed to gain weight from the previous day! Wednesday night was SUCH an ordeal feeding her, I almost gave up on breastfeeding! Between the ginormous amount of poop she got rid of on Wednesday and the difficulty I had in getting any food into her though the night, I thought for sure she was going to weigh less on Thursday morning. The doctor also gave me a prescription for a medication that would help my milk come in faster so she wouldn’t be so impatient about getting fed and I could pump more for bottle-feeding her as well. I think it’s working already! Also Thursday afternoon, the L.C. came to see us so she could do a check on Kaylee and myself to see how we were doing, and answer our questions/concerns about breastfeeding. She was so helpful! Kaylee and I haven’t had a disaster-feeding yet since the L.C. was here (knock on wood….).

Kaylee needed another insert for her carseat because she's so small! She loves carseat rides.

Friday evening and during Saturday, we were visiting Kae, Vicki, and Jade, who drove from Edmonton to visit us. Kaylee sure likes car rides! Even when she’s overdue for a feeding and is fussy going into the carseat, as soon as we get into the vehicle she’s asleep! She’s such a good baby. We had a lot of fun spending the day with her Science Aunties! :)

Me, Kaylee, and her science Aunties! :)

We’re starting to get more sleep now, but it’s nice to have today to relax at home and not have to go anywhere. She hasn’t had a full day at home yet! Today she got her ‘Cradle ‘n Swing’ set up and she LOVES it! She’s out like a light when she gets rocking in that thing! She also had a little nap on Mommy’s chest after she was fed. I love that my heartbeat can calm her down – I feel special knowing that I can comfort her.

Kaylee finds her Cradle/Swing very relaxing!

She’s such an adorable little angel. I feel so lucky to have her in my life! <3

I’ll post more pictures when I get some highspeed internet to upload them somewhere!