A Little Scare...

Here are a few pictures of our little one. Looks pretty healthy huh? Except, she's not a huge fan of baths yet... we're working on it!

The day after I last posted, Sienna gave us a little scare. Around 7:00 p.m. I noticed some swelling below her right eye. We kept an eye on it for about 20 minutes and it seemed to be getting redder and more swollen. Since it was late, we took her to the pediatric urgent care center. Luckily, because of her young age, they let us wait in a private waiting room, so she didn't have to be exposed to all the germy kids at urgent care! The pediatrician sent us over to the ER at Children's Hospital because she was able to squeeze some puss from Sienna's eye. They don't take any chances with infections in newborns! At the ER, they did a full septic work-up on her... again, taking every precaution because of her young age.What a long and terrible night! Dennis and I sat helplessly as they took four attempts to get an IV in and then had to get some fluid from her spine to test for any serious infections. Sienna put up quite a fight! She peed and pooped on the poor nurse who tried to get a urine sample! One nurse who had to hold her down during the spinal test said she could barely hold her still. She's incredibly strong! In the end, it turned out just to be a little eye infection. She likely had a clogged tear duct that became infected. Must run in the family, both my brother and I had clogged tear ducts as infants. Apparently it's a fairly common thing. We spent that first night in the hospital ER and finally got transferred to our own room at 5:00 a.m. We then spent one more night, while they gave Sienna antibiotics through her IV and waited for the culture of her eye puss to come back from the lab. Happily, she's made a full recovery and is just taking an antibiotic twice daily. She loves it! It's strawberry flavored and she gulps it down :) Anyway, this whole experience was a little unnerving, but ultimately everything is fine. It's nice to know that we've got such amazing medical care here in San Diego. Children's Hospital really, really impressed me!

Sienna

She's 2 weeks old today!

It's simply amazing how suddenly your life changes completely when the baby arrives. I'm starting to really identify with being her mom.

Right now she's sleeping in my arms, so I'm typing very inefficiently with one hand! Her little arm is curled up next to her face in her usual sleeping position. She's sleeping so peacefully... what a doll!

It's a girl!

Sienna Cathleen Bonilla arrived at 7:41 a.m. on Wednesday, January 2, 2008. She weighed in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces and measured 20 inches long.



She's our dream come true and simply wonderful!

The big day is here!

Tonight I'll be going into the hospital to start my induction!

I have been neglectful of this blog over the past several months, while I've been busy blogging about my diabetic pregnancy over at HealthCentral.com. But I've continued to be a faithful reader of many O.C. blogs and wanted to share my joy with our little diabetic community.

My pregnancy has gone wonderfully! I've honestly never felt more healthy and fit in my life. Swimming has been the best addition to my life, and I plan to keep it up forever. Also, eating a lower carb diet has paid great dividends in the weight department. I hope to maintain this diet for a lifetime as well. I've gained less than 20 pounds during the pregnancy. It's pretty cool because I've actually slimmed down in my face, arms, and legs. People keep commenting that I'm "all baby." I never thought I would be one of those pregnancy ladies who doesn't look pregnant anywhere but my belly!

My blood sugars have been darn good, with A1c results of 5.0% and 5.4% during my pregnancy, without very many hypos at all. Still, despite my best efforts, we learned at my 36 week growth ultrasound that the baby's belly was disproportionately large! This is a very common diabetic complication, though one that my doctor thought I might avoid due to the quality of my control and my modest weight gain.

Because of the potential for the baby to be large, my doctor has decided to induce labor about a week early. My due date is January 8th, and the induction will actually begin on the morning of January 2nd. Clearly the doc's not too concerned, otherwise he'd have induced earlier or advised a cesarean section. To the contrary, he's committed to given me and the baby a chance to have a vaginal birth. We'll just have to be careful and not use certain interventions (such as the vacuum or forceps) because of the risk of injury.

So, the plan is to go into the hospital tonight to begin the cervix ripening process. This should get me dilated to 3 or 4 centimeters, before starting the IV of Pitocin tomorrow morning. I was pleased to learn last Friday that I was already 50% effaced and dilated 1.5 cms! Upon hearing this news my doctor remarked, "That's an inducible cervix!"

I've been carrying high and at this point still haven't seen the baby really "drop." However, I'm having other symptoms that the baby is descending into my pelvis. Mostly, my left hip is pretty sore, especially when I walk! Also, I have these sporadic sharp, nerve pains in my groin area that run down my leg. I'm continuing to feel the baby kick (or knee) me in the rib area quite often. Even though my pregnancy has been fairly easy, I'm starting to get uncomfortable now. I think this is nature's way of making mother's eager for labor!

If you're curious about more details about my diabetic pregnancy, please check out my posts over at HealthCentral. It's been great keeping such a detailed record of my experience. It's truly been a joy!

The picture I've attached was at 30-31 weeks. You can see my pump tucked into my bra strap!

I'll be sure to write soon and post some pictures of Baby Bonilla as soon as possible! Happy New Year everyone :)