Lars in One Month!

How quickly a month goes with a newborn! While I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office for Lars' one month check-up, I looked around and realized that he wasn't the smallest/newest baby there anymore! Sad! I love that they grow and change, but those fresh newborn days are so, so brief.

Lars had a much more eventful first month than with the girls. Putting them in their carseat for a short activity was a big deal. Poor boy has been shuttled back and forth to school, gymnastics, and swim lessons. Some days I'd just look at him and think, "When did I last nurse you at home instead of on the go somewhere?" I really look forward to the evenings when the girls are down and I can just hold him without having anywhere to go. - I do usually have a kitchen to clean, but that's so much less pleasant than holding a sweet smelling baby (or sour smelling, depending on lots of factors that day!).

Poor Lars was pretty sleepy the first two weeks, probably due to me being on some high-prescription antihistamines. It was tough to keep the little guy awake and so he seemed to stay more like a brand new newborn who just sleeps and sleeps all the time. Happily, even off the drugs he's been a good sleeper and maintained a pleasant personality. He is a very calm and alert baby. Sometimes the girls ask why he's crying and I say it's because babies cry. They know that, but he's been such a good baby that he normally doesn't just cry. He's got lots of spit-up, but it doesn't seem to bother him too much. I felt like the other girls (especially June) were pretty fussy and I really had to work with them to diffuse the gas in their tummies. I think part of it is that I'm more careful about what I eat now. I noticed with June that she was more fussy after I had a really fatty dairy, like Blue Bell ice cream. So with Lars I avoid ice cream and too much dairy all together.

Like I've written before, he's been a good nurser from day one. In fact, from his two week appointment to his three week, he went from 8 lbs 1 oz all the way to 9 lbs 8 oz. The doctor did a double take when she read his chart. He's a little tubby and a little short and has a fat head :). At the month check up, he was 10 lbs, 8 oz and 20.5 inches long. That translated to 80th percentile for weight and 30th for height, ha ha. And his head was in the 90th percentile! It's actually all a blessing because all the antihistamines can make milk dry up, so I was very blessed and happy that that didn't happen. I was hardly ever painfully engorged with him like I was with the girls, I'm not sure if that's been because he's such a big eater or because of the meds. Either way, it was nice.

The circumcision was sad and I really didn't like cleaning that area.... And I don't know why, but they won't circumcise in the hospital here. They made us wait until he was two weeks old, which felt even more sad! I often just think he's another girl since he's wrapped in lots of the same blankets and then I get a surprise when I open him up for a diaper change. What's that?!

That's pretty much all the news. I got back from my last appointment with the rheumatologist and hooray - it doesn't look like I have Lupus! There isn't really a definitive test for it. There are eleven markers and you have to have four of them to be diagnosed. The rash was iffy, so really we just had the positive ANA test. She did find that the ANA was drug-induced. She thinks it was probably previous birth control (a medicine that has hormones) that induced the autoimmune response. So that was interesting. She also found another uncommon antibody in the blood tests. This was actually is linked to more miscarriages and blood clots. Since I've had two miscarriages out of five pregnancies, it's probably due to that.

Post-partum begins

Well, as I was nicely recovering and feeling great about Lars, my postpartum recovery really threw me for a loop. About four or five days after the birth, just when my soreness was going away and I was starting to feel more normal, I noticed a few hives in my vagina while I was in the shower. As most people know, that whole area is a huge mess for a while. I didn't think much of it, but the next day it was really a lot worse. I googled it and found that some people had a reaction to the same kind of pads that I was wearing. Since I had switched over to this brand around the same time, I figured that was the issue.

I took a Benadryl and sent my mom to the store to get a different brand. (As a side note: I'd highly recommend bringing your own Poise or Depends adult diapers to the hospital instead of the mesh ones they give you. It was so much better!) Even with the change, the hives didn't go away but were spreading and becoming really uncomfortable. I got hydrocortizone cream and Benadryl cream and doubled up on Zyrtec and Benadryl and nothing was stopping these guys! Finally on Sunday, when everyone was at church, I hopped in the shower and started to get really nervous. They were spreading up my backside and front side and were just really angry, red, itchy, and hot. And everything down there had totally swollen up out of proportion. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. I decided that on Monday morning I'd call and at least ask to speak to the nurse.

I dropped Willa off at school Monday morning (Lars was now nine days old) and called the doctor as soon as his office opened. I was going to just ask to speak to the nurse, thinking that maybe this wasn't such a big deal, but I decided to risk overreacting and I asked if there was any way I could get an appointment that day. They got me in to see the nurse practitioner pretty quickly. When she walked into the room she took one look at my nether regions and was like, "What?!!! Let me go get the doctor!" So the doctor came in and took a look. He checked the sutures (I had a minor first degree tear), but there was no swelling or edema there so the reaction wasn't coming from those. I asked if it could be post partum hives, which are actually a thing, but he said it wouldn't be so localized. We wondered if I had had a reaction to something they prepped me with at the hospital.

Thankfully, they prescribed me some Prednisone right away and told me to come back on Friday for them to check it. I went home and took it as soon as I could and Oh, the relief!!! I could feel it work very quickly. The heat and redness immediately went down. I went through the rest of the week very happy. It was a freak thing, but it was over and done. The Prednisone was just a two day dose. Well, right as the effects of the second dose were wearing off on Thursday morning I looked in the mirror and found a red smudge on my face. It was almost like a huge pimple or cyst was coming. The area was hot and itchy. I didn't think too much of it until that afternoon when I realized that it seemed an awful lot like hives and it was spreading over my face and ears and I had small pinprick points on my arms. So I took Benadryl and Zyrtec again before going to bed. The only thing that calmed me was knowing that I had a doctor's appointment the next morning.

Friday morning I dropped Willa at school and drove straight to the appointment. They looked at my face, they looked at my nether areas again. They asked what I was washing with (Cetaphil) and everyone was stumped. So the OB called the dermatologist and asked them if they could possibly fit me in that day. And they also threw even more, heavier steroids at me. Again, I took the steroids and felt almost immediate relief.

 Here is a picture of my face as I was in the pharmacy drive-thru waiting for the new steroids. Not a pretty sight. It's going down my chest, on my arms, it was just horrible, horrible. Not to mention that by this point, I'm in the throws of postpartum hormones and my mental game is not going great.

 I went into the dermatologist that afternoon. He agreed with their treatment of throwing even more steroids at the rash, then as a "by the way" he said, "You know, it kind of looks like a Lupus Butterfly rash." ?!?!?!? Lupus?!?!?!? He said that if the red didn't go away by my follow-up next week, they would biopsy it and do more tests. Well, I went home a little scared by the Lupus, but still thinking it was a freak allergic reaction. My skin cleared up within two or three days (now I was on a 7 day pack of steroids) and I went about my business feeling normal. But of course, that would be a boring end to the story.

I now went into my THIRD follow-up with the OB. I mentioned the Butterfly Rash to the nurse practitioner who had been treating me. She wanted me to go get one more blood test for an autoimmune antibody. So I went and did that, thinking that it was just an extra precaution. The next day, she called to say that the ANA test had come back positive. So now, I not only had a rash that looked a lot like Lupus, but I also had a positive blood test come back! I was starting to freak out a little. The blood test wasn't definitive at all, there were lots of false positives with it, but for me it just didn't seem like good news to have the two symptoms together. The nurse practitioner advised me to see my PCP or a rheumatologist for more tests.

Then, again 24 hours within finishing the seven day pack of mega steroids, I looked down and the hives were coming back again!!! By this time I was just exhausted and depressed. I should have been relaxing and spending time at home with my little soft baby, but instead I was dragging him and June to doctor appointment after doctor appointment. I went to the dermatologist for my follow-up (at this point, we are now five doctor's appointments into this mess). I could only see his assistant who wasn't too helpful. My hives weren't horrible, but I wanted another dose of steroids, dang it!, just in case they got worse again over the weekend. She reluctantly prescribed them and then did a biopsy of one of the hives. The hives were slowly spreading again, but nowhere like before. They were smaller and not as bothersome. For me, it was the mental uncertainty of "Why are these things coming back? What the heck is going on? Is this an autoimmune response? Is this the rest of my life?"

Logically, I probably knew that I wouldn't have hives for the rest of my life, but it's hard to see that in the anxiety and emotion of the moment. Thankfully, Rebecca called her rheumatologist (who wasn't accepting new patients) and begged her to take a look at me. They got me an appointment in the next two or three days. When I got to the rheumatologist office, I just started crying a little. It was scary and I was facing something that could potentially alter my life in a significant and negative way. She was such a good doctor and took time to listen to me and speak to me. She sent me off for even more blood tests, but she did give me some positive notes. First, autoimmune diseases after pregnancy don't usually develop until six weeks after labor. Second, the Lupus rash doesn't cover the nose folds around the face. Looking at the photo I took, she wasn't positive, but it looked like it might be covering my nose folds. The other positive was that the ANA can be thrown off and give a positive result for lots of things - including out of whack hormones. The negative thing was that autoimmune diseases can often cause the body to break out in hives in response to the disease. For the still spreading hives, she told me to take a combination of Zyrtec and Zantac.

I started taking that medicine after I left her and it made a big difference. The hives weren't as angry as before and they reacted really well to this combination. I ended up taking it for an entire week just to really kick everything. In fact, the main reason I stopped was because I wanted to give the hives a chance to come back before my third follow-up with the dermatologist. I had that appointment this past Thursday and hooray, no more hives have come back! The biopsy result said that it was some kind of dermatitis (which I knew already, but is the dermatitis a reaction to an autoimmune or something else). I'm going to do a blood test for allergies and a back scratch test too. He also said that if you have a localized reaction somewhere it is possible to have a secondary reaction in another spot (hence, the face hives).

I'm going into the rheumatologist tomorrow for a follow up and to get my other blood results back. All in all, I'm feeling like myself and more hopeful. Now that the hives are gone, I feel like most likely this was an allergic reaction to something in the hospital. It was just in too much of a localized spot in such a sensitive area. I've steadily been getting more and more sensitive to the chlorine in pools. If I don't wash as soon as I get out of the pool, I'll get a small breakout of hives. Maybe the instruments or the catheter had chlorine of some sort on them as an antiseptic. I dunno. I also had the dermatologist send over all the photos he took of my face. Hopefully, the rheumatologist can get a better idea about the face rash from his photos. But if it does end up being Lupus, we will deal with it and everything will be okay.

This past week, I also had my four-week follow up with my OB. Everything is healing nicely and it was nice to see the whole staff and to also not have to come back until my annual exam in six months. All in all, my appointment with the rheumatologist tomorrow will be my NINTH doctor's appointment since I left the hospital. This is not counting all the appointments for Lars (his one week, two week, circumcision, circumcision follow up, and one month appointment) or Willa (ophthalmologist).

And that, my friends, was my horrible post-partum recovery. I've found that I have very low stamina for not feeling well. I like my body to be healthy and when it's not functioning as it should, it really bums me out. I just feel ick, and I want to know "WHY" about everything. And a lot of the time, that's not possible. I also feel a little betrayed by my body in times of sickness - it's supposed to be functioning at a certain level, but for some reason it's not. It's broken. Ryan has been a huge support through all this and gave me a really wonderful priesthood blessing during some of the worst of it that calmed a lot of my anxiety. I'm feeling very positive and hopeful now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will say that hives after childbirth in your nether regions is extremely uncomfortable and I hope never to experience it again.

Meanwhile, look at this sweet face fresh from heaven.

Easter Sunday, Lars was 8 days old.

Baby Lars

Yay! Baby Lars is here! Actually, he was five weeks yesterday so he's been here for a while, but we are still getting used to having him around.

We named him Lars Welker Daniels and he was born April 8th. Ryan and I both liked the name Lars, and it was Ryan's great-great grandfather's name. Welker is Ryan's middle name. He's named after his Great Grandfather Welker, who was the mission president in Germany when Hitler came to power. Ryan's grandma has some interesting stories to tell about living over there during that time (she was a teenager) including a story about her sister saying "Hi, Hitler" during a parade and getting a Nazi Heil from the man himself in return. Ryan served his mission in Germany and has been told his personality is similar to Great Grandpa Welker, so we felt like it would be nice to keep the name going.

Lars weighted 7 lbs, 11 oz and 20 inches long - so he was a pound bigger than both my girls (Willa was 6.7 and June was 6 lbs, 10.5 oz). I think it was a good weight considering he's a boy and considering that the ultrasound tech measured him at 4 lbs when I was only 29 weeks pregnant. I was preparing myself for a behemoth of a baby, but he was just right. I swear his legs were chunky in the hospital already and he hasn't stopped growing.

 The girls were excited to meet him, but on the drive over June suddenly got cold feet. She's been nervous about being a big sister (translation: she wants to be the spoiled baby of the family). But once she met him, she loved him and has been a great help ever since. She even went so far as to tell me that she decided she would like to be a mommy some day. She's since recanted that and again proclaims that she wants to stay a kid forever.

 Fresh home from the hospital. I love little newborns, but I'm always happy when those swollen eyes recover from the trauma of birth. They just aren't pretty!

 A day or two after getting home from the hospital - holding a baby on the outside like this is wayyyy better than holding them inside your stomach.

 Sweet baby Lars!

So the birth story isn't too exciting. I was due April 22nd, but as I kept reminding everyone, that date was an educated guess since Lars had been measuring further along since my very first doctor's appointment. Plus, since the girls were both born a little early, I was planning on him coming sometime in the beginning of April. The Monday before he was born, I had my regular check up. Since I was now "advanced maternal age" I had to go in every week for a stress test and a ultrasound to check fluid levels. It was so annoying because it took so much time! Lars was pretty chill in there and didn't like to perform a lot of movements while they measured - so it always took so long to get the required number of movements and spikes.

So that Monday the doctor checked me and I was dilated to a 2, but after that check up I started having contractions and some bloody show for the rest of the week. I thought for sure on Tuesday that the baby would come in the next day or two. The contractions were real, but not consistent, but I could tell it was coming soon. Of course, that's how it always is. You think and you plan and only have you have given up all hope of it coming and having control, it happens.

I cleaned the house, made checklists for whoever would be watching the girls, etc. On Friday evening I was uncomfortable and having the same annoying contractions as usual. We went to bed that night and of course I couldn't sleep because those darn hormones totally mess up my sleep schedule towards the end. Instead of tossing in bed, I decided to get up and read a book. As I was reading I realized that the contractions seemed to be pretty regular. So I got my phone and started counting them on an app. They were regularly about seven minutes apart. I went back to bed, but now they were getting painful and it was too hard to sleep. Ryan woke up and I told him what was going on. The contractions had been about seven minutes apart for the past hour and a half, so I thought we'd still have quite a bit of time before heading to the hospital. Then, within about 30 minutes they got really painful and really frequent - like two minutes apart! Since I have gone quickly, Ryan decided he'd better call Rebecca to come over. She hurried over and we rushed to the hospital around 1:30 a.m. with the contractions still two minutes apart and quite painful. In fact, I thought I was possibly transitioning (ha ha, that goes to show how little I know about an undrugged childbirth). I should also note that Ryan got a towel for me to sit on in the car just in case my water broke - he's always thinking.

We got to the hospital, I hurried in while Ryan parked the car. They checked me and .... I was at a measly little three. What?!!! They couldn't even admit me until I was at least a four. However, I was slightly vindicated because as she was getting my info right after they checked me, I was like "I feel some fluid, I think my water broke when they checked me earlier." So she swabbed it and checked me again and not only had my water broken, but I was suddenly at a 4/5 within about five minutes from the previous check. Hurrah! I knew this was going to go fast. They admitted me and hurried me to a room and got the anesthesiologist there right away. I told him that I was super sensitive to the meds and to please give me an epidural-lite. He was pretty good and tried to do as I asked, but warned me that medicine is really more of an art than a science and they can never really tell how these things will affect someone.

The epidural took just as I wanted it to, I could move around and have some feeling but I wasn't totally dead. I rolled over on my side to get some sleep. When I rolled back an hour or two later, the epidural had gone wayyy downhill. One of my legs was normal, but the other was completely dead and numb again. Bleh, it was so uncomfortable again, just like when I had June. I complained and complained about it to Ryan and the nurses, but nothing really changed. Plus, of course because of the epidural, the labor had stalled again. Grrrrr!!! I'm so annoyed at nurses who come in and check the charts and say, "Hmmm, looks like the contractions have basically stopped." It's that dumb epidural every time, I swear! She wanted to start me on pitocin, but I really wanted to avoid it if I could. So the labor dragged out (at least in my opinion, in reality, it was probably moving at a normal speed). There was also another bag of fluid that hadn't burst and a lip on my cervix that was slowing things down.

Long story short, baby boy was born at 8:55 a.m. By the end I could feel the contractions again because enough of the epidural had worn off - but I couldn't move around to better work through them because my legs were still numb. It was the worst of both worlds! But he came out a gray, purple little creature like they all do and then when they laid him on my belly and started rubbing him he miraculously pinked up like they all do and suddenly he was a baby! It's so amazing to me how they pull this swamp thing out and then suddenly it's a baby. He latched on right away and has been a terrific nurser ever since. He is a major rooter and also loved and latched onto a pacifier pretty quick. I was a little hesitant to introduce it because I think it messed June's latch up a little. This time, he never stopped rooting, even after sleep nursing fooorrevverrr on me, so I tried a Soothie and it's been great.

My bum leg stayed in various parts of numbness for an entire 24 hours after the birth. My OB says (and I tend to agree) that the baby can push on different nerves as he comes out and that can cause numbness. Plus, since I was drugged, I might have pushed and not realized I was doing something. But the leg that was numb was also one I'd been having nerve issues with the last few days of pregnancy anyway.

All in all, it was my first time letting my contractions guide me until we went to the hospital (Willa, my water broke, and with June I had massive amounts of sudden bloody show). The hospital wasn't quite as nice or new as the other two where I gave birth, but it seemed clean and I really liked all the doctors and staff. In fact, the nurses were very friendly, helpful, and involved. We came home Sunday around noon, feeling very happy and satisfied and a little sore in the rear (me). What a difference it makes having a third baby while being steadily employed and having a house to come to! There was so much less stress all around. Ryan and I just both felt very happy and blessed with sweet Lars.