The Schmerers

Happy belated birthday to Ms. Abagail Marie Schmerer! I have quickly discovered just how hard it really is to get anything accomplished with a new baby in the house. I was just as naïve about this as I was about the idea of scheduling her arrival, but hey, live and learn, right? I’d actually tried to post an update when we were still at the hospital, but something was wrong with the site, so it had to wait ‘til we’d gotten home. Well, now we’ve been home a full week and it’s taken me this long to do this and I’ve had this thing written for days now!

At any rate, the Lord blessed us with a remarkably easy C-section and she was born at 12:19 PM on Friday, September 11th, 2009, so I’m only a couple of days late in wishing her a one-week happy birthday wish. She weighed in at 7 pounds, 14 ounces and was 17 ¼ inches long. Her overall size is very average, but her belly was a bit big at birth, so the doctor didn’t regret the C-section.

Abagail had some fluid in her lungs at birth, so she spent about 2 ½ hours on oxygen in the nursery and once she was off that, she was still under close monitoring for another 1 ½ hours or so. This is pretty typical of C-section babies, as they don’t get the opportunity to have the fluid compressed out of the lungs like they do during vaginal deliveries. The doctor had warned us about it, but I still had a few tense hours, waiting to hold her. George was running back and forth between the room and the nursery, showing me pictures and getting to check on both of us. It has already given me a new appreciation for what parents of NICU babies have to go through (or during any medical issues) when the care of your child is completely out of your hands and out of your site. It’s probably a good thing I was still a little fuzzy from the meds they’d given me for surgery. I wasn’t the basket case I’m sure I would have been otherwise.

She spent our last day and night at the hospital under a bed of lights for a slight case of jaundice, but since they have great portable beds for this, she was in the room the majority of the time. The jaundice wasn’t even bad, but the pediatrician said that since we had decided to stay that day, she might as well spend her time under the lights.

At the hospital, we had a steady stream of visitors, so Abagail definitely has quite a fan club already. And why not? She is pretty dang cute. And we were told that dinners are taken care of for us all week. Our church family is absolutely amazing! I continue to be amazed at how blessed we truly are. Folks were willing to bring us food out through Saturday night and we’ve got plenty of leftovers to last too.

For me, the C-section and recovery have not been a problem. I’m getting around much more easily than I thought I would be. The incision is pretty uncomfortable, but never even registered as painful. After the 24 hour mark, I was able to be un-catheterized, un-IV’d, and de-compression hosed (for potential blood clots). Once I was mobile again, it made things MUCH easier. But hey, it meant George had to change all the initial tar-poop diapers since I couldn’t get out of bed. Lucky me!

The folks at the Norman hospital are wonderful, so the support and help were great. But, both George and I were anxious but ready to find our own routine and continue the “getting to know you phase” once we’d gotten home, which we did last Monday afternoon at about 4PM.

I am nursing and all in all, it’s gone really well. Those first few days were certainly an adjustment and I guess they truthfully still are, but I still feel good about the progress we’ve made. When we went back to the hospital on Wednesday to have her jaundice level checked again (and found out she was fine) she had stopped losing weight and had put back on almost two ounces. By the time we go in this Friday for her 2 week check up, she is supposed to be back at her birth weight.

I don’t care how much you read, what other parents say to you, and how otherwise prepared you think you are, I don’t see how you can ever really be ready for the fatigue that comes along with nursing a baby every 3 hours or so. She’s a very heavy sleeper and if I didn’t wake her up every 3 to 3 ½ hours, I have no idea how long she’d go without eating. I find this hard to believe since she is a product of me and George. We’re both pretty big fans of food in general, so the idea of not eating is foreign to us. Of course, when I remind her that it’s time to eat, she’s all for it, but at this point, her desire for sleep still seems to be outweighing her desire for food. I’m sure that won’t last much longer. Needless to say, I seem to spend the bulk of my day going through a pretty laborious process of waking her up before she’s ready to eat. It takes longer to remind her to eat than it does to actually eat.

I will continue to post pictures and updates so you can see how Abagail progresses with her growth and milestones, so don’t think that now that she’s here, the blogging is over. However, I certainly can’t promise how often I’ll get out here to post, but if you’ve been following me for any length of time, you should know how not regularly I post anyway. So for now, thank you for all the prayers, well wishes, and support for our new blessing. We are most appreciative and hope we can show our gratitude appropriately to everyone who deserves a thank you. And, if you’ve texted or called and I haven’t responded, don’t take it personally. I’m probably just trying to waken my sleeping-like-the-dead child.