10 Days Old

July 9, 2010: Molly is 10 days old today. She has been an easy baby so far, but not worry free. At her one week check up our pediatrician heard a heart murmur. A heart murmur is not the defect in the heart, it is the sound of turbulence in the heart. He told us we needed to take her to see a specialist. So yesterday we were up at the CT Children's Medical Center in Hartford. She had an EKG and an ultrasound. We met with a fantastic pediatric cardiologist named Dr. Wu. She told us that Molly has a hole in her heart. The good news is that the hole is very small and in a good location in the very muscly lower portion of the heart. Dr. Wu told us that the hole should close up on its own with no medical intervention needed. We will see her again in 4 months, and then 6 months and then every year until she turns 5 to get the heart checked on. But the doctor also assured us that Molly would not have any restrictions on her lifestyle due to the heart abnormality, she can play sports or be a military fighter pilot if she wants to. So it was a scary day for me, but it ended up well and we are thankful it was not a bigger deal.



Besides that Molly seems to be doing well. She eats for about 10 minutes every 3 hours. She sleeps all day and is usually awake the most from 7-10 pm. She is fussy at that time and has taken to the paci. We've been feeding her somewhere between 10-11pm and going to bed. She has been sleeping in our bed right in the middle of us. She has been doing great at night, mostly just needing to be fed one time in the middle of the night and going back to sleep quickly. She wasn't doing that when we tried to have her in her own bassinet so we've kept her with us. I think it is still early enough that bad sleeping habits won't form yet and for the moment we are all getting good sleeps considering we have a newborn. I think this is crucial since we have two very energetic toddlers who need us at our best during the day. She's been spitting up some and had a few big throw ups. She breathes very noisily, almost seems to struggle to breathe. That makes me nervous but I guess it is normal enough not to worry our pediatrician. We've given her a few baths and her umbilical stump fell off two days ago. At her one week check up she was back to her birth weight of 8 pounds 3 ounces. Two days later at the hospital she weighed 8'14, but she did have a diaper on so I am not sure how much that weighed. Either way, she is gaining weight nicely. I'll get more pix up soon.

Molly's Labor

July 2, 2010: Here is my labor story with Molly. I had a scheduled induction for June 29th. I slept pretty well the night before and James and I headed off to the hospital around 6:15am. I registered and we were in the room by 6:45. It was a hurry up and wait situation. I thought we had to be in there by 7am so my Dr could break my water before heading into her morning c-sections but she was unable to see us until after the first one. So we just hung out in the room, I got into my lovely 'johnny', got my IV put in and we watched a James Bond movie on the laptop. At 8:30 Dr Grogean came in and broke my water. At the same time she put a internal monitor onto the baby's head which registers her heart rate. I had a few more contractions but things did not ramp up until they started my pitocin around 10:30am. By 11:30 they were getting pretty strong and I asked for an epidural, which I got around noon. Similar to my labor with Julia the epidural had what they call a window, where it only set in on the left side of my body, so unfortunately I could still feel all the contractions on the right side. I lay on my side hoping the medicine would transfer to that side, but it never did. The pain was less, but still present. James and I chatted and my parents came in to visit for awhile. We were still working on the baby's name, trying to decide between two. Around 2pm the contractions were getting stronger and around 2:30 I started to feel a lot of downwards pressure. These were hurting me a lot. I knew it would be time to push soon. They called my Dr to come in. My contractions were about 2 1/2 minutes apart. I pushed 3 times and Molly was out at 3:06pm. She was our heaviest baby, half a pound heavier than Casey and a pound more than Julia.
Our stay in the hospital was pretty good. Molly slept so much. We also sent her to the nursery both nights which bought us some sleep. We were able to get 4-5 uninterrupted hours by doing that. The toughest part for me is the feeding. It is hard to know if the baby is getting enough to eat and they don't want to wake up to eat.
We came home yesterday and things have been pretty smooth. James's mother is here helping with the girls which has been great. Our first night at home went well. I fed Molly at 11pm and we were all asleep by 11:45. She woke up at 3:45 and did not want to go right back to sleep, but we all fell asleep again by 4:45am. We slept in until about 8am. So all in all it was not too bad. Molly has been very easy and sleepy again today. Right now she is sleeping on James's chest which is one of the best feelings in the world. My milk is starting to come in which hurts but I am glad to be able to feed Molly more than just colostrum. Hopefully she will be pretty easy tonight too.