Liam is here!

I know it's been a while since I posted, but I think the birth of my son deserves a post! So to start off, I'll share my birth story. :)

On July 3rd (when I was 36 weeks and 5 days pregnant) I had an appointment with my OB and I was 3cm dilated and 75% effaced. With Alia I didn't go into labor until I was 4cm, but I just had a feeling that labor was imminent. I had been telling people how I thought Liam would be coming early, and how I just felt like it would be soon. On the evening of the 3rd, I started having some kind of painful contractions, but I brushed them off as probably nothing. I had an "Irritable Uterus" this pregnancy, which means that I would just have contractions all the time for no reason. On the night of the 2nd I'd had some painful contractions, but they had dwindled after an hour or so, so I wasn't too concerned about the contractions I was having on the 3rd. However, they continued to get stronger and stronger, until I knew I was most likely in labor. So we had Trevor’s dad stay at the house while we headed off to the hospital! By the time they checked me, I was 5cm dilated, and the contractions were getting pretty bad. So they transferred us over to a delivery room, and got me the epidural, which was so nice, because by that point, the contractions were probably the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.

By then I was 7cm dilated. Soon after, they broke my water, and a little while longer I was at 10cm. The nurse thought Liam was back to back, so she had me lay in a few different positions to see if we could persuade him to flip over, and it must have worked, because when Dr. Ponder came (she was not my OB, but she was the on-call doctor) she said he was face down and we were ready to try a push. Because I’d told her that it took three hours of pushing with Alia, Dr. Ponder said we would just see what a push looked like, but she wouldn’t get her gown on yet. Well, after one push, she said, “Okay! I’m grabbing my gown! I think this will be pretty quick!” And it was, thank heavens. It took only about ten minutes of pushing for Liam to be born at 2:29am, making it four and a half hours since I'd arrived at the hospital. As soon as he was delivered, they put him on my chest and Trevor got to cut the cord. Once he was weighed and cleaned off, they let me do skin-to-skin and start breastfeeding. He was so alert, and kept sucking for about 40 minutes. I knew right then that he was probably going to be a better eater than Alia. So after we had a little time, they moved us upstairs to the recovery room. I had a small second degree tear this time around, but I could tell I was in for a better recovery than with Alia, because the morning after giving birth, I was ready to be up and moving around. With Alia, I had a bad episiotomy and was confined to my bed the whole next day and it took the full 6 weeks before I had recovered. It's now been a little over a week, and I feel pretty much back to my normal self in terms of healing.

My only struggles right now are breastfeeding and sleeping. He's eating well, but I'm so sore that it often brings me to tears when he eats. I thought maybe it was his latch, but I went to a meeting of Le Leche League and the specialist there said that his latch is fine, but Liam has a lip tie and likely a tongue tie as well, which can make breastfeeding painful for me. At his two week check-up, I'm going to have the pediatrician look at it and decide if it needs to be clipped. Alia had a tongue tie, as well, and breastfeeding was painful all the way up until my milk dried up.

As for sleep, Liam sleeps okay, but he's just up breastfeeding every hour to an hour and a half, so not much chance for me to sleep in between. Also he tends to cluster feed until 1am, which means I get a late start to the night, and then Alia is up at 7am. But as soon as he starts going longer between feeds, I know I'll catch up (well, as much as a mom CAN catch up!).

We're so grateful for Liam and very grateful that the delivery went better than it did with Alia. We're lucky that he was such a good weight (6lbs 11oz) for being early, and that he had no complications. Now if we can get him to survive with Alia wanting to pull his hair and poke him in the eye, then we'll be set!