Anya has arrived!

ANYA LEE POPP

born:
10/23/2009, 10:15 pm
4 lbs 12 oz, 15 inches

...and DAMN CUTE!


Induction started Friday morning and was pretty dull until late evening. Active labor for a couple of hours, pushing for 20 minutes and whoosh! out she came. The NICU nurses hadn't even made it downstairs yet! My doctor prepared me by telling me that Anya came so fast they weren't quite ready so they called a CODE to get them to hurry. She also warned me that there was about to be 10 more people in the room...and I was still legs spread. Good times!

Anya had a little trouble remembering to breathe in her first few minutes but soon got the hang of it. By the time they showed her to me she was breathing on her own. Then she was whisked up to the NICU so they could keep a close watch on her.

Over the last week she's had some ups and downs. Problems holding her temperature, keeping food down, and a little jaundice. Today, exactly one week after her birthday, she was moved to a different floor where NICU babies go for a few days before they're released. She's eating plenty of food now and keeping it down, her temperature is steady, and the jaundice started to come down without the need for UV lights. We're hoping to have her home by Monday. Fingers and toes crossed.

Funniest thing that happened...

On Wednesday my milk came in. My breast was ginormous and red and painful. Eerily reminded me of when I was first diagnosed and MY cancer WAS painful. I mentioned it to the nurse taking care of Anya that day and she asked a lactation consultant to speak to me (even though I can't breastfeed due to Herceptin). So both the nurse and the lact. lady came and pulled the curtain closed. I lifted up the right side of my shirt to show them, but held my arm over my left side. They both commented that it looked very swollen, but could they look at the left breast to compare. With a smirk I said, "Uh, no, I don't have it anymore." They both said "Oh!" followed by an awkward silence. Without something to compare it to they really couldn't tell me if my breast was normal, so they told me to ice it and take pain meds and let them know if it got worse.

It's Official!

Anya will come into the world sometime on October 23rd, 2009. I hope early rather than later. I had the amniocentesis today to check her lungs and she's ready to breathe. They poked me in the belly with a long needle. Told me it wouldn't hurt as much as a biopsy but they didn't give me anything for the pain and ended up poking me twice. Yuck! It wasn't as bad as having screws drilled into my head, but it was very uncomfortable. Makes me worry for tomorrow. On the one hand, I've been through so much shit already that my pain threshold should be pretty high, but on the other hand, I'm a big wuss and usually whine and cry until I get pain medications. Sigh. Well I'll be taking a benedryl tonight to get some sleep and I'll be crossing my fingers for a short, easy labor. (How's that for wishful thinking?)

fight mode

As I am anxiously waiting for the induction this Friday it occurs to me that I am more nervous about giving birth then I was for my mastectomy. It helps that I was unconscious for that event, but still, in the days leading up to it I wasn't as nervous as I am now. I think I was less apprehensive then because I was in fight mode. I had accepted what was to be as a necessary part of fighting cancer. Now I'm not in fight mode, and it's not just me that will be put to the test. So somehow, between today and Friday, I've got to get into a mindset that I'm going to handle childbirth as best I can for Anya's sake. She needs me to be strong, so I'll do my damnedest.

Countdown On

Everything has progressed normally...it's really quite boring. The amniotic fluid dropped as usual after treatment, but we started at such a high number (12) that the drop to 8 didn't really matter. It's been a couple of weeks and it's starting to climb now. All her ultrasounds looked pretty good, her dopplers (blood flows) look great, and her NST's (non-stress test: checks for heart rate and movement) have all been perfect. Alas, she's still not growing, and they're worried (I'm worried too) about the potential return of my cancer as a result of postponing my Herceptin treatments a few weeks at a time. So, since she is doing so well on all fronts but size they've decided to evict her early. In one week in fact! I'll be induced Friday October 23rd at 36 weeks!

She'll probably spend awhile in the NICU getting special care and attention until she puts on weight and is breathing well and keeping her temp up. In the mean time, I'll be getting my first CT/PET and full MRI scans in months. Yikes! Soon I'll know if was all worth it or if the risk I took was just too great. I hope I will take one look at my baby girl and know I did the right thing. I hope that will give me strength on the day I get my test results back.

Last Treatment

I had my last infusion of Herceptin today. Well not really, I'll be back on the stuff at regular 3 weeks intervals for the rest of my life, but this was the last one with Anya inside. I hated it as I have every time. Knowing that she was getting some of it too and it would make the fluid go down. I'm not taking any chances this time. Resting, drinking and eating will be my only tasks for the next few weeks. And it will be just a few more weeks. 36 or 37 weeks would be the miracle goal, but really I could be induced next week if the fluid drops that quickly. More likely they'll put me back in the hospital as soon as the fluid drops and keep me there until it's time. I can't believe I'm about to be a mom. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

I'm also exhausted. Haven't been this tired in a long time. Herceptin always makes me tired for a day but today I feel like my strength has been sapped. Iron counts or something. Or maybe it's just a pregnancy thing.