Logan Chiune Funai is born

Logan Chiune Funai

born 11/2/2011 at 3:32 pm at Missouri Baptist Hospital

8 lbs, 20.5 inches long

Logan is a good nurser and is much happier now that he is getting some real milk.  He loves being swaddled and wearing socks, and cuddling with mom and dad.  He is already starting to put on some weight and get back up to his birth weight.  He has a little bit of jaundice, but not too much yet.  He is pretty mellow – only a little squawk when he got his Hep B vaccine – but does not like his clothes being off.  We love Logan.

Birth Story in lots of detail:

I had been having contractions off and on, but it looked like the baby definitely wasn’t coming early like Seth did, so we had plenty of time to do all the Halloween celebrations.  The week before Halloween, both boys got pretty sick.  First, Seth and then Andrew.  They had some sort of stomach virus and had a day or more of tons of vomitting and then gradually recovered over a week.  Not fun at all.  In the middle of that, I got sick one day too.  At first, I thought I was in labor because I had contractions 3 minutes apart for quite awhile, but nothing really happened.  But I was miserable miserable, couldn’t eat, just laid on the ground all day in a fetal position.

So, after that, I was definitely up for an induction when my doctor suggested it.  Seth’s labor was very fast (about an hour) and if I went into labor it would take at least an hour for Katsu to come home, get the kids to friends, etc.  Plus, I had been induced for both the other boys when my water broke and if I had to been induced and we have no family around, I would rather be induced when I now we have friends to help watch the boys.  So, my doctor scheduled an induction for 11/2 at 7 am.

Well, 7 am came and went, much to the boys chagrin as they were dying to go play at their friend’s house.  Finally, the hospital had space at 11 am.  We picked up Andrew at preschool, dropped the boys off and headed to the hospital.  After waiting for a room and getting processed, we finally made it to the room.  Everything seemed to take awhile.  I think I didn’t get an IV until around 1:00 and Pitocin started until around 2:00.  I wasn’t feeling particularly well – for some reason I had a headache from the morning and also as soon as I changed into my hospital gown, I got really shaky. 

Otherwise, things went smoothly.  I was 4cm when I got to the hospital (I had been 2-3 cm the week before and 80-90% effaced).  By the time the Pitocin kicked me up to regular contractions, my doctor wanted to break my water and I was measured to be 6 cm.  The contractions hurt at this point, but no more than the ones I had been having the last couple weeks.  But I had been feeling worn down and shaky the last week in general and wasn’t sure if I could deal with transition labor, so I decided to get an epidural.

The epidural didn’t get put in very well.  With the first try, spinal fluid leaked out, but they did get it in eventually correctly – Katsu said it took several tries and he was starting to get concerned.  I wasn’t in too much pain, so I surprised it was so hard.  But the epidural worked and I didn’t feel much pain at all until near the end of dilation when I could finally feel my contractions (this was reassuring to me because up till that point I didn’t really feel in labor).  Very quickly, I felt like I needed to push.  They found my doctor and we got all set up and about 7 pushes (over like 3 contractions later), Logan was born.  I had a small episiotomy cut right before I was about to tear, so thankfully no tearing.  This is my first time without a 3rd degree tear, so hopefully it will heal better.

This was definitely the most enjoyable of my labors, because I felt not too much pain, so I felt like I could actually enjoy and remember the labor.  This is also the time I felt like I felt the urge to push and felt like I knew what I was doing, too (even without an epidural with Seth).  The total labor time was probably about an hour – not bad at all!

Logan looked good (although a little blue on the extremities) and after a bit of rubbing started crying.  He also peed when he came out.  He has lots of hair, because he is our baby, of course, but one of the nurses kept commenting that he was too pretty to be a boy. 

Okay, back to the epidural.  So, as soon as they put the epidural in, I had this horrible back pain.  It just felt pretty uncomfortable, but it gradually got worse through labor and then afterwards.  I had been warned that I would probably get a headache from the leaking spinal fluid.  And by the next day, the back ache intensified and then went up through my neck.  It was like this horrible throbbing pain.  I felt like I could probably deal with it, but my body was not dealing with it well.  As long as I lay flat on my back (or partially on my side to alleviate the back pain), I felt fine.  But if I sat up or got up for even 5 minutes, I would start vomiting or passing out.  Nursing was getting to be impossible. 

So, the anesthesiologist came back and gave me a blood patch.  They had left my epidural line in because they figured this would happen, so basically they take some blood from your arm and then put it through the epidural tube and they believe that it clots the leak in your spine.  Then, the headache should go away.  When they give you the epidural the first time, they don’t say much.  But when they read the list for a blood patch it’s kind of scary – possibility of paralysis or death … even though it’s the same risks basically as the first epidural.  Less for me, since I already had the line in.  Afterwards, I had to lay flat on my back for 2 hours.  Then, I was allowed to lift anything (although the baby is probably okay) or strain for the next 2 days.  Thankfully, the patch worked and the back/neck pain went away and I feel mostly normal.  I am scared to death it will come back, though.  I mean, how do you take care of a newborn if you can only lay flat on your back?  Really?  So, now I am kind of thinking if we have more kids, no epidural.  Because I think labor pains are way easier to deal with (and way shorter) than an epidural headache.  Yikes.

Otherwise, Logan and I stayed in the hospital just over 2 days … it took FOREVER (like 5-6 hours) for the pediatrician to finally come to the room and discharge Logan because they kept having pediatric emergencies (poor other families …).  Katsu stayed at home with the boys each night, which always is a little hard for me taking care of the baby in the hospital all by myself for 12+ hours a day, but it was okay.  The boys came by once, but it was a little crazy because it was when I was dealing with the spinal headache and when it got really bad.  They left just before I got the blood patch.

Now, we are home and figuring out the whole newborn thing again.