Beth Christine Chipman

Beth was born September 24, 2010 at 6:51 pm. She was 8 pounds and 3 oz and 22.5 inches long. I can't believe she is already 7 months old! So I thought I would give her her big debut on the blog as well as document her life for the past 7 months. I'll probably do this in stages since most likely it will take me a while to get it all done.

Delivery

I was induced, a week over my due date, on September 24, 2010. We headed to the hospital and got there at about 10:45 am.

Here is me right before we left for the hospital! Yes, I was large and in charge.

My doctor broke my water at about 11 and then they put me on pitocin.

Me in the delivery room with my purple popsicle. At least you can eat that if nothing else.

The contractions started out pretty manageable and when they became unmanageable I got the epidural at about 2:00 pm. I progressed really quickly after that. By about 5:00 pm I was already dilated to 9 cm. Once I started pushing, I thought it would go even faster and she'd be here before we know it! But after an hour, the doctor realized that she had turned and was posterior (sunny side up as some say). He tried to turn her back but she wouldn't budge. After he said he might break his fingers if he tried any further, he told us that she wasn't going to turn and we'd just have to get her out posterior. I was worried and scared because I knew it would be harder. It definitely made for a tougher delivery.

After about 2 hours of pushing, an episiotomy, and getting another doctor to come and literally forcefully push on my stomach for several minutes... she came out! It was pretty intense. It also didn't help that my epidural block had run out and I was pretty much feeling what seemed like everything.

Other than a very sore head, from a suction which came off during the process, little Beth was healthy and strong. And so cute...

We were so excited to see what she would look like. She had lots of blonde hair.

It was amazing to hold her for the first time. I will never forget this moment. It makes me cry thinking about it.

Dan was my rock during the delivery. I couldn't have done it without him. Thank goodness for my coach!

Her first bath.

You can see her poor little head wound.

Tiniest little feet.

Aunt Mia gave Beth this little hat. It is the cutest thing on her. I love it.

I really loved delivering at IMC. It was such a great experience I didn't even want to leave, especially being able to have the nursery right down the hall in the middle of the night! But 2 days later we headed home.

I didn't expect such a range of emotions as we were coming home. I just started bawling in the car thinking that I really was coming home with this little bundle. I didn't quiet know what to expect.

But Dan was such a natural!

It was so inviting coming home to this...

My mom made this cute sign. It helped calm down my nerves.

The first couple weeks were amazing. Beth has such a sweet little spirit. She was also a dream baby, sleeping and eating so well. I guess it is true when they say a bigger baby is a happier baby.

So this isn't the best picture of the 3 of us, but it is one of the few that we have from the beginning.

Here are some pictures from the first couple months.

Beth's first sponge bath at our house.

Before we knew it she was cracking a little smile.

And figuring out she was a champion

I love a neck nussler.

Right from the beginning, Beth loved munching on her hands. We pretty much always had to keep these little mitts on her so she wouldn't scratch herself.

Poor Beth lost almost all of her hair on the top of her head. We called her Larry Miller during this time of her life. It got even better when she acquired some cute baby zits.

We decided to name her Beth after both of Dan's grandmas:
Betty Jeanne Chipman (her given name is Elizabeth) and Beth Burton Stohl.

Here is Beth with sweet Betty Jeanne.

Beth's middle name, Christine, is after my dear sweet mom. Love her!

I actually think they look alike in this picture.

Beth grew a lot in the beginning. Here are some measurements...

Birth: 8 lbs 3 oz, 22.5 inches long

2 weeks: 9 lbs 8 oz

1 months: 13 lbs, 24 inches

When Beth was just about 3 1/2 weeks old, we had a pretty unexpected turn of events. On Monday evening October 18th I started having these very strong pains on my stomach/back, basically the whole abdominal area. I had about 8 of these pain episodes earlier in my pregnancy and was diagnosed as having kidney stones (which still hadn't passed). So I thought that I might be passing the kidney stones. Usually during these episodes, the pain would go away after about 45 minutes. Well this time it had been an hour later and was still going on. It started at about 4 pm, and at 5 pm I called Dan at work and told him he needed to come home immediately because it was so bad. (I also had an episode just the Friday before that lasted 30 min and could be managed with medicine). I took some percocet that I had from recovering from delivery and it didn't seem to put a dent in the pain, so we went to the ER at about 5:45 pm. My parents came down to help Dan with Beth. Laura and Mia also came but Mia couldn't come in because there were too many people there. I was so glad people came down. After having an ultrasound on my abdominal organs they told me I had several good size gallstones and would need to have my gallbladder removed. It was devastating news and we had no idea. We knew about the kidney stones but were shocked to hear about the gallstones. So we went back home at 9 pm and I tried to get some sleep. The ER said to call and schedule a surgery the next day.

The next morning I woke up and felt really down and out of it. I called and got an appointment for about 2 weeks later for the surgery. I just stayed home and rested most of the day. Well unfortunately the day got much worse. Starting at about 9 pm I felt another attack come on. This one was so much worse. I really felt like I needed my Dad and Scott to come down and help Dan give me a priesthood blessing. I was so glad to see my parents and Scott at the door, but I was not well, and felt like death. I had taken medicine as well and it didn't seem like it was doing anything again. After they left, I tried to go to sleep even though I was still hurting a lot. I really only slept for a couple of hours. At 1:30 am I woke up with even worse pain and ran to the bathroom to throw-up. I thought I was going to be able to sleep it off and wake up and it would be all over, but it was only worse. I threw up a couple of times. It was probably the worse violent vomiting I have ever had, sorry to be graphic here! I tried to take more medicine with some red jello, because I was told I had to eat with the medicine, and we knew we had to go back to the ER.

So Dan strapped our little 3 1/2 week old Beth in her car seat - poor thing - and drove me back to the ER at about 2 am. This time was so much worse than the night before. I was throwing up in the car and got it all over me. I walked into the ER thinking I might die I was in so much pain. I remember feeling so stupid that I walked in covered in throw up all by myself (Dan had to get Beth out of the car and had dropped me off so I could get in there earlier and wouldn't have to walk through the parking lot) and couldn't even really talk I was in so much pain. But in some ways I didn't care because I knew that I was in the right place now and they could take care of me. I really don't remember a lot from this ER visit though, which I think is a blessing that your mind forgets things. I ended up having to get emergency surgery on my gallbladder right then because it was so inflamed. Right before the surgery, it was 4 am, I remember thinking that Beth had to be fed because I didn't know when she would get to eat, since I was going to be under for a couple of hours (she was still eating every 2-3 hours then). So I literally nursed her as they wheeled me down the hall toward the operating room.

This is really hard to write because there is so many horrible terrifying feelings associated with this time. So I am going to try and make it brief, but I remember waking up and seeing my parents and Dan there at my bed and unfortunately one of the first thoughts I had was why does this still hurt? Shouldn't this pain be gone? Well after the surgery, usually someone with laparoscopic removal of a gallbladder should be able to go home the same day. But I was not getting better. In fact, later that day (October 20th), I remember thinking I actually felt worse believe it or not. They let us have a room in the maternity ward so we could keep Beth with us, but soon the nurses realized there was something else wrong because I wasn't getting better at all. After taking me completely off any food or water, I was just kept on an IV. After running some blood tests, the found out that I had developed pancreatitis! What happened was sometime between my 2 ER visits a gallstone had traveled down from my gallbladder and into my pancreas. It was blocking the pancreas, making it extremely inflamed and was causing a lot of problems. Essentially my body couldn't digest any food at all. It was even more painful having this pancreas problems than having the gallstone problems. The maternity ward nurses and my doctors decided I shouldn't be in the maternity ward any longer because I needed more care and I was getting sicker and sicker so they moved me to the patient tower. That was hard because it wasn't the best idea to have Beth with us in this new area of the hospital. So she just stayed with our families. I ended up being in the hospital for a week. Luckily the stone somehow just moved on its way and over time my levels gradually started getting better. Thank goodness they found this while I was in the hospital because pancreatitis is very serious and much worse things could have happened. I was lucky not to have any organ damage. So here are some things I guess I'll write down to remember from the hospital...

• Supportive family - our families were amazing and literally carried us through this time. They took care of our Beth: teaching her how to take a bottle, and my dad taught her to take a binki. They literally took care of her 24-7 passing her from family member to family member. She probably loved all the attention!
• Pumping - Because I was trying to keep breast feeding Beth I just had to pump to make sure my supply wouldn't die out. Somehow I got through that. It literally was a miracle that I was able to keep my milk supply having not had real food or water for several days.
• Beth was amazing - all of this really seemed to have happened, in some ways, at the perfect time. Beth still didn't really know who was who and she did great going from house to house.
  
• Walking the halls with family members - to get up my strength I would try and walk several times a day around the halls of my hospital floor. Dan and my Dad were great coaches. Helping me walk further and further every day.
• Dan working through the night - Dan's job was very supportive and let him stay with me in the hospital so I wouldn't be alone. But he amazed me taking care of me all day and then he would work in our hospital room at night with only the light of his computer. I'm sure the nurses were confused why he never slept. It really touched my heart how he sacrificed for me.
• Visitors in the hospital - I loved getting visitors! It was so nice to have people come see me. Everyone was so nice, giving flowers, taking time to say hi, bringing me magazines. It really showed me the support system we have.

This picture is of Dan taking some things to our car the day we got to leave the hospital.

Once we got home it wasn't easier, as you can imagine. I was extremely weak and now had to recover from everything. I couldn't really even pick up Beth very well.

Again, people were so kind and brought us many meals, helped clean our house, and helped with Beth. My mom was literally my angel. She would come over basically every day all day to help me while Dan was at work. Having her there is what helped me to recover. As I got a little stronger, we would go on walks and she would just listen to me as I worked through all the mental repercussions. Mom's are so important! I love you mom!

My mom wanted to take this picture so that we would have some memory of these wretched days.

Although this experience was really hard, I learned so much. The support of our family, friends, and our ward was overwhelming. I don't know what I would do without them all! So thank you to everyone out there! It means so much!

Now on the road to recovery, I could finally get to enjoy Beth.

See future posts for more...