jacobguinn.com

I updated everywhere, but here, on Monday when we got to go home. We are truly enjoying the time at home, and doing well with eating and sleeping, as usual.

Our first night, we didn’t sleep very much - wanted to be awake - but last night, we did great! We slept from 3am to 7am this morning - and probably would have slept longer, but I changed his diaper to wake him up to eat…works like a charm!

Anyway, many pictures are up, here and at jacobguinn.com/gallery

Take a look!
Melissa.

Well, as soon as we figure out this eating thing, we can get Jacob home! He just needs to learn how to eat, and eat well for 24 hours…for the moment, he is happy to just let them keep a tube down his nose and feed him that way! It’s not frustrating yet, but I am sure we will get frustrated if he doesn’t start to pick up on it in a week or so…and, we’ve been working on it for the last 10 days!

Other than that, he is doing great…he is perfect…no problems, except not wanting to eat his meals…

I’ll be posting some pictures here shortly…or later tonight when we get back…

We will be having a baby shower in Chattanooga on February 3rd at 2pm at Fleeta’s (mother-in-law’s house)…if you are interested in coming, let me know! We are registered at Target…a few things at Wal-Mart (I got a little upset when I spent 45 minutes registering there the other night - they were my original registry - and the things I added did not get on my registry! So, we made a little switch!)…

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well!!!
Love, Melissa.

He is doing well, and hopefully, he will eat some tonight! They said that I could try to breastfeed him, and I hope that he takes to it. Babies usually don’t learn how to coordinate eating and breathing until they are at least 34 weeks in the womb. I am hoping that since he is so well developed for his fetal age, that he will take to eating very easily! He has been sucking on a pacifier for the past 24 hours, and he seems to be able to do that pretty easily.

I got to change the first diaper today…he didn’t have any poop, but the nurse said the previous two diapers did…I am certain that I will soon enough get to change him with his finer work at hand.

Other than that, I will be heading out of this place tomorrow…and Jacob will probably be staying for a little while longer. I hope not more than two weeks…and, hopefully, just one!

More later…Melissa.

Well, as you can see, we have a boy. Decided to go into labor at 8:30pm last night, and we progressed rather quickly to full dilation and a baby at 5:15am. Kyle is excited, as the baby has the same birthday!

My contractions started to get a little more painful around 11pm, and the OB resident said she would do an exam at midnight when she came in, but I didn’t think that they were making that much progress. At 2am, she came back in and said that my contractions were looking like they were stronger, and she would like to do an exam, as she thought I was in active labor. Sure enough, at 2am we were 4 cm and -2 station…they decided to put me in the Labor and Delivery section instead of a High Risk room.

Shortly after moving into our L&D room, I decided that I needed to see dinner again- which they said was a good sign that my body was changing and we were progressing through labor. At 4am, my nurse took a look and checked my status - she said she couldn’t feel any bit of a cervix…which meant I was fully dilated. When I was checked at 2am, they said that I would probably progress a cm/hour…this was quite a bit quicker!

My doctor had been called at 2am, and they called her at 4am to get her in…she did make it! We pushed for about a hour, I think…my mom and Shad’s mom were there when the baby was born. Baby’s head was still quite a ways up when we started pushing, so it took a little while…we got to see him before they took him off to NICU…certainly is a small bundle!

He is 18.5 inches long, 4lb, 9oz…they had him on a CPAP to push room air into his lungs, and they have since taken him off of that. His BP was dropping, so they put him on meds to make it go up…they are currently weaning him from those. He looks wonderful! He will probably spend a minimum of a week in the NICU, two weeks tops, unless anything else goes downhill.

I get the wonderful job of pumping until he can start eating…hopefully it will go well!

I think that is it for now. I’ll keep everyone posted!
Love, Melissa.

Well, I figure to keep up with some people, this is going to be the easiest!

Friday at 8:15pm, my water broke. No contractions…no warnings…and, 8 weeks early!

We headed straight for the hospital, of course after calling a few of the residents and finally getting ahold of one of them, so we knew exactly where to go. They confirmed that it wasn’t just me, not knowing the difference between pee and amniotic fluid, and told me we wouldn’t be going anywhere until the baby was born!

They put me on magnesium sulfate, which slows down the contractions, and wanted to be sure to get two doses of steroids 24 hours apart in order to help the babies’ lungs develop. This has all taken place, and I have been taken off the magnesium sulfate (”mag”), and now I am just waiting to go into labor. As long as the baby is not under stress, and I do not show any signs of infection, we will be here until at least Thursday - if I am not in labor by then, they will induce me.

Yesterday was a very tired day for me, as I didn’t really sleep at all on Friday night…last night, I took some meds to help me sleep, and they did really help…I’m doing the same tonight.

We are doing well…I am having an occasional contraction…nothing to write home about yet! After we got off the mag, the baby certainly enjoyed that as well, as we have been moving like we did before the mag! It’s a good thing. I don’t have to be on the electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) except for 20 minutes a day until I go into labor…that is a good thing, because it’s not all that comfortable.

Please pray for a healthy baby and a healthy mom…that we will go into labor before they decide to induce, because I really don’t want that, but also that I will be accepting (as I have been to this point) that we are where we are so early! We certainly were not expecting a January baby!!!

I hope all is well with everyone else…
I’ll keep you posted from my room at the “Hotel Erlanger” as I have taken to calling my new ‘home’.

Love, Melissa.