An earthling has landed.

I was up at 4am to meet Jeanette at the hospital at 5. She got there, was given pitocin, and had her water broken. She had an epidural around 10, and we slept for awhile. The whole labor was pretty uneventful until the baby started having variable decelerations in her heart rate. At that time Jeanette was dilated to 8, and they turned down the pitocin and turned her on her side. The heart rate kept dropping, but by the time they checked her again she was at a ten and ready to push.


She pushed twice and they decided to use the vacuum to get the baby out since her heart rate was still kinda crazy. It was still relatively calm, and Jeanette started pushing while the vacuum was applied. All of a sudden there was a piercing sound from the machine, and the baby's heart rate just stopped. The doctor started screaming that the baby was stuck, to push harder, and for someone to call a code. 6 people came running in and a woman junped on top of Jeanette and started pushing down HARD on her stomach. Everyone was yelling, Jeanette was screaming and crying, and the doctor was standing up and PULLING, trying to get Mariah out. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she popped out (without needing to break her collarbone). She was the darkest shade of blue I've ever seen. Fortunately her heart came back on it's own and she started screaming a few moments later. She's been fine ever since.

It was terrifying for sure. At the time, I wasn't panicking, just helping pull her legs back and push on her stomach. But afterwards it was like a truck hit me and I couldn't stop crying.

Anyway, here she is in all her glory, after giving the world hell without even being completely born yet.
(and yes, that star was edited in on the computer...something about putting naked babies on the internet seems weird).

Poops Ahoy!

I had Thing One and Thing Two (trust me, after this story you will understand why Dean and Ava deserve these names) in the tub the other night and I shut the curtain so they could splash and not get water everywhere. I walked into the other room to get Thing Two's jammies, and was listening through the wall so, you know, I would know if they drowned or whatever. I hear Thing One start screaming, "Aweesha! Aweesha!" and I run in there, thinking Thing Two had smacked his massive melon head on something. I fling open the curtain and Thing One yells "Dean pooped in the bath!". I look, and sure enough, there are tons of little presents floating around in the water, Thing Two sitting there chewing on a rubber duck and grinning like nothing happened. Thing One tells me she'd been playing in there for awhile, thinking the poop was pieces of her bathtub crayons (wow this kid eats WAY too much broccoli if his poop looks like green crayon). So I got paid to clean up poop. And guess what? I'm graduating in 4 months so I can get paid to clean up more poop! Along with other gross things.

Today was my first day back, and we were supposed to have our nursing "forum", which is just an hour long thing in the auditorium with the entire nursing school listening to the administration blab about how wonderful our school is despite the fact that we'll be in debt the rest of our lives from the insane tuition. We did, and it was boring. Now I don't have to go back till Thursday, which is weird because we're supposed to have Mondays and Fridays off for homework, then clinicals Tuesdays and class all day Wednesdays and Thursdays. But hey, I'm not complaining. I was only at school an hour and I'm already tired.

Maliha's mom is being induced tomorrow morning at 5 am! So I get to get up at 3:30 in the morning, drop Maliha off at daycare, and head to the hospital. Baby Mariah should be here sometime tomorrow, and it'll be exciting to actually help deliver a baby of someone I know! I'm pretty excited. I'll update in a day or two with pictures and a (hopefully) awesome birth story.