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miss.kitty.jane posted:Is it still okay to post birth stories here? I am also wondering if someone has already set up some sort of repository of goon birth stories, because it needs to be done. I'd like to know this as well, because I will be waking up in about 6 hours to take my wife to the hospital for our "elective" C-section and so by this time tomorrow I should have a son and a birth story to share! Ahhhh!
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Feb 20, 2011 11:49
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 08:54 |
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I am a Dad! We were scheduled for a c-section this morning and were supposed to be at the hospital at 7am. We had the alarm set for 6am for a quick breakfast and to carry the pre-packed bags to the car. At 5:30am I hadn't been to sleep because I was too excited and my wife woke up as well because she was too excited. We were chatting away and all of a sudden her waters broke! Mild contractions started over the next 20 minutes or so, but very light and not particularly painful. We went into the hospital about 20 minutes ahead of the old schedule, and we confirmed via ultrasound that he was still breach so went ahead with our previously arranged c-section. Everybody involved was friendly and professional, everything went smoothly and with no pain for my wife. I was able to hold her hand and she remained talkative and perfectly fine throughout. Towards the end of the...uh... extraction phase I peeked over the screen and saw that they had everything but his head out of my wife and it looked to me like a bit of a struggle to get that part out... but great success. Once his head popped out, he opened his eyes, looked around and said in baby-ese "what the gently caress is going on here?" then he regained his composure. Jake was born at 8:55am 21st Feb 2011. He only cried a little bit when they dried him off, weighed him and gave him his vitamin K shot. Other than that he has been much more chilled out than I expected for his first day. He's basically slept a lot, fed several times from both boobs, plus about 3.5ml of colostrum my wife expressed in advance and spent 11 hours straight in skin to skin contact with either my wife or myself. My total lifetime nappy changes is now 2! The first one was ok... but I suspect the second one had been in there a bit longer, and had somewhat solidified... that stuff did NOT want to come off. Question for Aagar! As a man who no doubt has much experience in getting feces off scrotums... what advice can you give? It was a long ordeal for me, and I think must have been pretty distressing for him. Question for anybody: He has long razor sharp fingernails already, and I worry about the lifespan of his face and eyes in that environment. Should one invest in some baby fingernail clippers, or is it best to just cover his hands in mittens until a certain age?
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Feb 21, 2011 12:26
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Points taken everybody, and thanks for the wealth of information! Little Jake Hadrian saved up a massive poo for when I arrived at the hospital. I was holding him but he was being really fidgety, then he basically did a press-up on my chest from a 45 degree angle, tensed his whole body, his eyes got really wide and I felt the impact on my hand through the nappy, then he did a massive "aaaaaahhhh!" sigh of relief and fell asleep on me. When I went to change his nappy I used a wet cloth flannel/washcloth/facecloth/whatever you want to call it, and it worked much much better than the cotton balls, baby wipes or what have you that we'd used before. With me doing the wiping and changing, my wife doing the distraction/entertainment, he hardly even cried, and it was all reasonably quick and satisfying for all concerned. I'll pick up some quality scissors on the way to visit them tomorrow. We've stuck him in mittens for now, but he already has a scratch under his eye and on his cheek, we just need to do damage minimisation now! My wife didn't get much sleep last night after I left the hospital because it seems Jake only likes to sleep while he is being cuddled. He seems to hate being swaddled and put down, and has so far struggled out of our and the midwives' best swaddling efforts and cried until he was picked up. We're really hoping that he likes his own cot (which will be attached to the side of our bed for now) better than the clear plastic cot he is currently refusing to use. We don't *want* to co-sleep any closer than the side-car style cot, but will of course cave if that is how everybody gets more sleep. Is it the consensus that some babies just don't like swaddling? Even though I've read through all the previous thread, all I seem to recall is just how much babies love being reminded of the constricted environment of the womb, but Jake just loves being frog-legged face to chest with mummy and daddy 
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Feb 22, 2011 10:57
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Jake is 3 and a half days old now and his poo has moved on to a much more yellow runny variety. This has been so easy to clean, almost all if it comes off with one swipe of the nappy. What is causing us difficulty though, is the urine. We can't get it to stay in the nappy  . Penis up, penis down, flared nappy legs, leave the nappy legs as they are, the urine seems to just come straight out and soak whatever he is sitting on at the time. So far that includes me, my wife, our bed, our couch, his pram and his sling.Dear god what do we do??? We are planning on continuing to use the disposable nappies at least until his umbilical cord drops off, are different brands really significantly different shapes or are we doing something wrong? edit: for those concerned, the nappy seems to escape almost entirely unscathed from this somehow! Phooney fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Feb 24, 2011 |
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Feb 24, 2011 09:40
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Miss Shell posted:Phooney, different nappy brands definitely do make a difference. If it's coming out the leg holes, perhaps his thighs are too small for that particular brand of nappy? Unfortunately it's a bit of a trial and error process finding one that works well. I would get a small pack of a different brand and see if it makes any difference. And it's not necessarily a case of most expensive being the best. The most expensive brand of disposable nappies here were completely useless on Chloe; the best ones for her were probably the cheapest ones around. I think you posted before that you're in NZ? I am too! Which brands worked best for you?
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Feb 24, 2011 10:33
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Thanks for that. I believe the ones we have are huggies, we got a voucher for a 108 pack, plus I think it was huggies that were being used at the maternity unit, we grabbed a few before we left. We have quite a few samples of different brands from going to baby shows and various baby related events during the pregnancy, so hopefully in there we find something that fits and works.
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Feb 24, 2011 11:00
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Aagar posted:That's funny - we had a lot of trouble with Huggies as well (and they were the ones we pinched from the hospital on the way out). For a while we had Aidan in Huggies (we had so many) and Liam in Pampers because Liam leaked every single time. Two weeks ago, going to size 2, they both leaked in the Huggies, so now they both have Pampers. Hopefully when they get a bit bigger the Huggies will fit (because we have two diaper cakes and a box of size-2 Huggies). It's like evolution... you adapt to suit your environment perfectly, then the environment changes! 
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Feb 24, 2011 11:33
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Jake is a little hiccups machine (among other things) at 4 and a half days old now, but also during the last couple weeks of the pregnancy. Fortunately they don't seem to bother him at all. Of all the other sample nappies we've tried, only huggies has leaked. Our midwife came over today and said that she gets people complaining about huggies the most as well. Sadly we have that 108 pack to get through... Also, we were expecting him to have lost weight from birth, but he's gone from 3.19kg at birth to 3.22kg now, he's a good little feeder!
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Feb 25, 2011 09:57
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Pluto posted:You know the flipping baby thing brought up a concern I had for a while. Do you HAVE to have a cesarean if the baby is breech? What if you refuse? My mom told me I came feet first and was born vaginally with no problem, so I don't know why it's such a big deal now. Not sure about the rules in other countries, but our baby was breech and we would have had the option of trying for a vaginal birth if we wanted. The person who attempted the failed ECV said there was probably a 50% chance it would end up in a c-section anyway though. He also said if you wanted to attempt a vaginal birth of a breach baby, you'd really want somebody quite experienced with delivering breach babies and since we were just giving birth through the public system we wouldn't really have a choice, it would just be whoever was there that day. It is certainly possible to have a breach baby vaginally, but the odds of him/her getting wedged in and basically stuck are higher. We just went for an elective c-section and it was a very positive experience for everybody. We even got the baby on to my wife's chest for skin to skin contact in less than a minute after the time he came out.
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Feb 26, 2011 09:53
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Taught or not, there's no substitute for experience. Doctors have a lot of stuff to learn and, like any of us, need to continuously learn just to maintain a relevant set of skills and knowledge. Update on leaky nappies: Treasures also leaked on me!
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Feb 27, 2011 01:51
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Fire In The Disco posted:You may not like the idea of them, but I will say-- cloth diapers are excellent for stopping blowouts. The covers or all-in-ones generally have elasticized legs and waists, and that really contains poop better than disposables. I don't mind the idea of them. In fact we were planning on switching once Jake's umbilical cord dropped off and our disposables ran low (saving disposables for outings). The poo has been pretty well contained, it's just the urine that has been Houdini-ing out of the nappy.
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Feb 27, 2011 01:58
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Fire In The Disco posted:Iiiiiiinteresting. Does he seem to have a large quantity of urine? I hope that cloth works better when you do switch to it! I don't have experience with any other babies to say for sure, but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount to me. He seems happy most of the time, feeds well, obviously would be having wet nappies if the nappy caught it and is gaining weight, so I'm not worried about his digestive system. It would just be nice to not have to clean so many things so often 
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Feb 27, 2011 02:12
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Jake is 2 weeks old today and will not have a bar of sleeping in his own cot (side-car-ing our bed). He either has to be on top of us or directly beside us and touching. Even swaddled he will find a way to scooch over. He is also a little houdini about getting out of swaddles if he doesn't want to be in them. The only time we've had him in his own cot was when he was completely comatose drunk on milk and didn't even wake up when we put him down. He was fine then for the vast majority of the night. We're just going to keep on introducing him to the cot when he is having naps during the day and night to get him used to it, and bring him out if he gets upset. No hurry I guess... but the sleeps just aren't as good when under a baby. He had a weigh in this morning, 3.87kg, 21% up on birth weight at 2 weeks, what a little feeding machine! I made a spreadsheet and this would seem to indicate that he will be 3.57*10^43 kg by the time he is 20 years old. We are going to need a bigger house. Unless he slows down a bit.
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Mar 7, 2011 13:47
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chknflvrdramen posted:Ours is InsatiaBaby or Bottomless Pit Baby :3 And you are doing a great job, you're not inept! Nursing is hard! Ours is "El Diablo Del Code Brown-o" He slept in his crib for most of the night last night, it was very impressive and restful for my wife, so fingers crossed that he is getting used to it and doesn't lapse back.
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Mar 10, 2011 09:34
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 08:54 |
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Inappropriate touching. Finally got a taste of this today... There is something about babies that makes women of all races and creeds lose their mind and scream "IT'S A BAAAAYYY BEEEEEEEE AAHAHREEGH!!!" and come in for some touchy feely. Today at the mall we were at a travel agent (friend of ours or we would have booked online) and Jake started to get a bit fussy and noisy. So to spare the people in the small shop the bleeding ears I took him for a walk to try to calm him down. This diversion worked for a while, but he was basically hungry and the food supply was busy signing things and listening to terms and conditions at that point in time, so he was going to have to wait a few minutes. I had a fresh vomit stain on my shirt at the time, and to compliment the look, Jake decided to piss on me as well from out the side of the nappy. After that he was pretty much inconsolable, which brought the crazy ladies in from even further afield than normal. One lady did the "IT'S A BAAAAYYY BEEEEEEEE AAHAHREEGH!!!" battle cry and rushed over and started restricting his arms and prodding him with her long rear end harpy fingernails, saying I needed to "fold his arms in". WTF? Fold your own loving arms in you god damned weirdo. Short trips can be difficult
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Mar 17, 2011 14:48
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