Baby Girl's Birth Story

Excuse my rusty blogging...

11/9/16: I noticed I was losing some of my mucous plug... I could be going the next day! (This is what happened with my first); I started to feel painful contractions, but they were irregular.
11/10/16: I have an OB appointment and my husband comes with... I tell my doctor my latest news, he didn't seem too impressed. His news, I was still only 1/2 centimeter dilated. What. The. Hell. I asked him if he every recommends any old wives tales to get labor going... since I've started to receive some advice about walking more and eating certain things. My doctor says NO, and that he only recommends I get some rest, because the next thing I know, I'll go into labor at 2 in the morning and I'll be too tired because I've been walking around. I was so disappointed, I did NOT want to work the next week... actually, I just didn't want to work period. My boss pings me to check how I'm doing in the afternoon and I let him know about the on and off contractions. He shares how his wife went into the hospital like 3x and they were all false labor contractions. Bummer!
11/11/16: 2:30AM, I wake up to go to the bathroom and wipe to see blood. I'm not that worried as I know that bleeding can be common after an exam... so I put on a pad and go lay down again, but of course I don't sleep. I continue to get up to wipe to see if the blood lessens or not. It doesn't. I wake up my husband and tell him what's going on and tell him I'm about to call the doctor. At around 4am I call the OB line, my doctors aren't on call, so I talked to another doctor, who tells me what I already googled, "bleeding is normal after an internal pelvic exam, if it continues to increase or doesn't stop by morning then call us back". I thank him, stand up, and feel a gush which I assumed was blood. I call back immediately and thankfully the doctor tells me to come in. We wake up my son around 5. We've been prepping him about this, and he just sleepily gets ready for us. We drive to our friend's house who lives a few blocks away and my husband carries my son in. I get out of the car too because I wanted to bring his bag, but my husband takes it. As my husband walks away with my son, my son's head is on his shoulder, he looks back at me and smiles and waves. It was the sweetest yet saddest moment. The boy's life was going to change and he was just happily going along with it. He is the best son ever. I still think back at that time and hug and shower him with random kisses.
By 5:30am, we are on the way to the hospital. Thankfully, it is a holiday and traffic was light. My husband asks if I feel her moving, and I say yes, she actually has the hiccups right now.
I feel contractions but they are far apart, I get admitted, talk to the nurse and wait for the doctor on call to check me. He does and confirms that my water broke (I had no freaking idea) and says, "looks like you're having your baby today!" I totally forgot to ask him about the blood. I was only 2cm dilated and 80% effaced.
I get wheeled into my room and the nurse talks about getting the epidural and I was like meh, it's not so bad right now... while my husband was like ARE YOU CRAZY JUST GET IT NOW. Not like that, because he was being nice about it, but I know that's what he wanted to say to me.
I close my eyes to rest.. at around 8:30am I open my eyes to see my OB come in! I was so happy and surprised that someone I've been seeing will be delivering my baby. He checked me and I was 3cm dilated and still 80% effaced. He then just told me to get the epidural we'll see how fast I dilate, if I need it, he'll give me some pitocin and we'll get this baby out by 12. I was like wow, I loved his take charge attitude and plan. At 9:30, I got the epidural, the doctor was super nice...
9:40AM Epidural kicked in... nurses told me I could up my dose if i wanted by pushing the button. I could still feel my legs (unlike last time) but I could not feel the contractions, epidural is heaven. My husband tells me our nurse looks like Jennifer Aniston. So I had to stare at her when she came back in. Of course, my husband is right.
10:00AM 4cm
11:00AM 5cm - starting the Pitocin. My husband tells the nurse that she looks like Jennifer Aniston and asks if anyone else has told her that. She says yes (modestly) Lucky girl..., i think at some point my husband tries to take a picture of her for his snapchat followers. Creepster!
11:15ish Baby's heart rate started to drop, the nurse gives me an oxygen mask and turns off the pitocin. The doctor comes in and she tells him what's going on and he said okay checks me and said, well she's fully dilated. The nurse says, "well apparently, you only had to sniff the pitocin!"
12:07PM, The doctor tells me to do practice pushes... which I do.. then he walks out of the room and the nurses take over. I'm so confused at this point, where is he going?
I'm pushing at each contraction now... I don't feel any pain, but I do feel the pressure... I don't notice but the baby's heart rate kept dropping. (My husband notices and tells me this later) Finally around 12:30, the doctor comes in all chill, and he's like oh looks like you're doing good...and calmly says, I think the umbilical chord is around the baby's neck, that's why her heart rate keeps dropping when she pushes. I swear he was so calm saying it, I didn't even panic about that, I just kept pushing when he told me to. I pushed a few more times at this point I actually feel the head crowning, I feel pressured pain, but the doctor tells me to STOP! NO MORE PUSHING! I couldn't speak. The discomfort was unbearable. I swear the doctor took his sweet time to get everything set up, in my head I was like "what the fuck are you doing?!" I was squeezing my husband's hand like crazy.. it felt like forever until the doctor said OKAY PUSH and I guess her head came out, the doctor quickly flipped the umbilical chord off her head somehow and then the rest of her came out. They put her on me immediately, she seemed big and I was crying from the instant relief. Baby Violet was born at 12:40PM, 6lbs 10oz 20.5 inches. Everything about the pregnancy up the delivery was different from her brother's. I couldn't ask for a better OB even though I wanted to strangle him 2 minutes before my daughter was born. My husband said that the delivery was SO INTENSE and I just stared at him and thought, you thought it was intense for you?!

Though we had some scares and had to stay in the hospital longer than normal, we got to take home a healthy baby girl. She is loud but sweet and her hair is out of control. I heart her.

Black Water Dragon pew pew pew...

Hi folks,

How's 2012 treating you? good... good.. So, I'm sitting here about to start my Thank You cards for the guests of my wedding and I'm on my 4th envelope (stamping my address) and I have the sudden urge to blog, i.e., procrastinate. It has been a long long time, but i say that in every single post so now i feel lame for saying it. Like, you ALWAYS say that, what the hell is your reason? Who cares about your reason, just get to the point already. wow, internal conflict.

I just wanted to update myself with my life. In December 2012, I got a BFP. I didn't know what a BFP meant until 1 month later, when i started reading all the pregnancy blogs and stories and forums, and i was like wow, I got a Big Freaking Positive!

This is my TTC story, which is pretty boring, but by being boring it means that I am super lucky and am blessed in my journey to have a baby in the mighty year of the dragon!! Mwu-ha-ha-ha?

Back in March or April or June of 2011 (see this is what happens when i don't post!) Well somewhere around there I had to think about if I wanted to come off the good ol' birth control pills. BCP and I have never been friends. I've either been super moody, super tired or super something. I do want to say that i had pretty sizable boobies for an asian and decent skin because of BCP. Anyway, i always knew i wanted a baby (specifically in 2012-mainly because i will be 32 years old and secondly, year of the Dragon) and people always say being on/coming off BCP effects your ovulation cycle. I wanted to get off BCP early just in case my cycle got thrown off into some sort of wack. I talked to a friend who already had a baby, and she told me to get a calendar to track my O and so on and so forth. I was of course worried i might get pregnant before the actual wedding, but there are other forms of protection ;)
So im hummed and haw-ed and talked it over with a friend who was also in a similar situation and decided to get off. I used an iPhone app that tracked my period and then told me what day i would most likely ovulate. I was extremely lucky that my period did not miss a beat and i generally was a 29 day cycle kind of girl.

A couple of months go by and i'm not too stressed out about the TTC duties because i figured i still had time. I actually wanted an October baby, because i like the month of October! So toward the end of November, i feel a little funny, like my pelvic area had a weird dull prickly feeling and i had a weird feeling that i could be pregnant. I mentioned it to my hubby and he was like really? and that was about it. I mean, people generally don't know that they are pregnant unless they took a test OR they missed their period right? In any case.. days went by, i lived life as usual. drank wine, ate pate all that good delicious stuff AND then i had my period symptoms, back aches, crampy and tired. I told my friend that i'm probably going to get my period (she always asks how our baby making is going) and she said noo... they are the same symptoms! Who knew? I didn't.

The weekend i was suppose to get AF, we went to a cabin with a couple of friends up near Skyline. I was being super cautious, so even though i ate hot dogs and pate, i did not drink any alcohol. AND THEN, i did not get my period. AND THEN, the next day, my boobs started hurting like hell. I was leaning over the side of the car to get something in back and leaned against them and i was in pain. So much pain i said OW SHIT. Yes, that much pain. I took a test, one that i've had in my sock drawer from way back when that i bought for like $1.50 and i got the double line thing. I didn't take a picture, i didn't save it i just threw it away and told my husband.

Let me tell you, once you get your BFP, the worrying begins. You worry if your pregnancy will make it pass the first trimester, (lots of miscarriages happen within the first 8 weeks), you worry if you're eating right, you worry if your baby will have xyz disease. It is crazy. Anyway, if you can do the calculation i'm due in August and i'm really hoping to post more about the whole process of it all now that i'm in my 2nd trimester.

Anyway, after ALL of this happens is when i start reading pregnancy posts/blogs and realize how hard people have it while they are TTC-ing. it makes me feel sad that these things don't happen so easily, especially when you hear young kids or people who arent even trying get pregnant! stupid how life works sometimes.

hope to share more later

-h

i survived my wedding

Right... wedding posts, wedding blog, wedding pictures... i totally failed on that one. i did however, succeed in getting married so no worries myself 30 years from now. the wedding happened, even though you did not blog diddly squat about it. the wedding planning was both hard and easy. it was possibly harder than it should've been because we procrastinated like hell. Basically, we booked the venue and bought the dress and then for months and months we didn't do anything until July. HAHHHH...

Anyway, I've read wedding blogs like weddingbee for a long time, way before i was even engaged. ALL the brides looked like they had fun planning, with the pictures! and the pictures! and the research! and the stories! Wheeeeee! I have no idea how they do it. I failed at being able to "picture" my wedding. If there are ANY brides to be out there reading this and feel like they are at a total lost of knowing what you want for your wedding you are NOT alone. Here are a list of things that annoyed the crap out of me when i was planning my wedding:

What is your wedding color? - one of the two things people ask me. really? were colors that important? what if i wanted every color in the world? i've seen pictures, it would've been pretty. anything is pretty! what if i told you my color, what would you do for me besides say "ooOoo..."

Did you find your dress yet? ick, worse shopping.experience.ever

not rsvping. damn you asians

rsvping for more than was allowed. damn you asians

telling me (not asking) that you are bringing more people. damn you asians

complaining to me (the night before the wedding) on why i didn't invite your whole family. damn you asians

planning and purchasing and not seeing a single thing come together. ever max out your credit card in one single swipe?

things you "should" do for your wedding, this type of advice comes from everybody and anyone. It's worse when it comes from the og parents, because wow, people are all about customs and how the things are suppose to be and honestly get upset that things aren't the "norm" and take it as a personal insult.

ALL past brides will tell you that it is "your day, do what you want" but you know what happens when you do what you want? you're "bridezilla". so pick and choose people.

Oh. And you won't get what you want...

but you can get pretty damn close

Bottom line, our wedding was still pretty, my pictures that i've seen so far turned out great. i had FUN. the ceremony was sweet, short and remembering (because we winged it and so many things went "wrong"). our food was actually pretty damn good and it seemed like everyone else had fun. only complaint? they ran out of alcohol!

i'll leave you with the best worst quote you will hear after you get engaged..

"it's just one day..."

Bloom

Cherry blossoms were short this year due to crappy weather :(

the Venue!

Happy March everybody! Do you know what that means? It means winter is almost over and allergies have already begun. Fun times. Well, it's been a month, but we do have our venue and the contract has been signed as of February. I just never got around on updating this blog... work has been busy and now a days work > blogging. Do you remember back in the day when blogging > work? That's why i make the big bucks now... wait.. that didn't make any sense... okay i'm rambling.. and am "writing" in long run-on sentences. BUT the point is we have the venue! AND it's already MARCH! That means only 5, i repeat 5 more months until i get married. eeek. i don't think it actually hit me until my friend said "after your married" because usually we talk about when you have your wedding.. and talk has been about the wedding.. but marriage wasn't really brought up. I know, it should be one of the same.. but somehow, "wedding" just became a huge expensive event that i am dragging my feet on planning and marriage is like EEEK, holy crap.

So that's where i am... next post, wedding dress! or should i say.. marriage dress!