The Long Haul: Baby H: Birth Story Pt 3

After Lane was out, they took the baby to the warmer to check him over real quick. I was able to turn my head and see (kind of) and then they eventually brought him over to my face so I could see him. John held him and we got our first family picture. I had an ugly cry. (Seriously so bad. I am not a crier. I NEVER expected to cry when the baby was born- at our wedding we just stood there and cheesy grinned at each other.)

After we got our pictures and I was cleaned up, they took the baby to the warmer and John followed him to the nursery for the first tests and weighing, etc. I was wheeled in my bed back to the delivery room to recover.

Then.. I laid there.. For hours? With nothing.

In the birth class, it was very clear that the hospital is very pro-breastfeeding and the baby is brought to mom ASAP for skin to skin to to attempt breastfeeding. I had nothing. I was laying in the room by myself staring at the TV and watching Family Guy at this point. It was awful. Not what I expected at all.

Eventually John came back and told me that Lane was having trouble breathing, He was doing a fast breathing thing and needed to stay in the nursery. We had no other information. I had no baby.

Around 11 or 12 we decided that we needed to let our parents know that the baby was born. We had been trying to wait for more (positive) information about the baby, but it had been a long time since we told them the surgery was going to happen.

Shortly after we called them, I was brought to a recovery room for the rest of the stay. (I was starting to be able to wiggle my toes! YAY!) At this point, John was back and forth to the nursery. He couldn't get any real information and the nurse's just told us to sleep.

WHAT. I can't go to the nursery since I have no legs, have an IV and a catheter and I can't get any information about my newborn baby! Obviously since I hadn't even held him yet, they were bottle feeding him formula. When I was first checking in, they had me fill out a form about breastfeeding, etc.- yes, we are breastfeeding, no pacifiers, if formula is needed, please use a cup not bottle. I still have no idea why he needed the formula and why they wouldn't let me try to breastfeed, or even pump for him.

I did not do much (any?) sleeping that night. No one ever came to give us any sort of update about the baby. John was turned away from the nursery. We had nothing.

Wednesday

Around 5 or so AM the nurse came in and I had another ugly cry about the baby. I hadn't seen my baby other than the couple of minutes in the OR! I hadn't even held him yet! She volunteered to take my ipod and take some pictures of him in the nursery and try to get an update for me. She came back with the pictures and told me he was still having trouble breathing/regulating his breathing. I asked if skin to skin or anything would help.She went back and came back to me with the baby.

We got to do skin to skin and latch him for about an hour or so and then Lane was taken back to the nursery. At this point (though we didn't find out until later), he was taken and officially admitted to the NICU. We only found out because John went back to check on him later and Lane was not where he used to be.

At one point in the morning, the NICU pediatrician came in and started talking to us about stuff as if we already knew.. UM NO. NO ONE was telling us ANYTHING TYVM. It turns out, they had given Lane an XRAY... yeah, no one told us. I understand that things might have had to happen quickly, but as his parents it would have been nice to at least have been notified... I was just so stinking frustrated.

One of my friends mentioned getting a pump to start pumping since we weren't able to breastfeed yet so I could start to establish a supply. DUH. WHY had no nurses or anyone mentioned this to me yet!? I was not thinking clearly and I would have thought someone would have thought to help us with this since EVERYTHING we had filled out since we checked in said we were going to try and breastfeed!

Around 3 pm they took out my catheter and let me wheelchair to the NICU. Then one of the nurses yelled at me for touching him.Cue another ugly cry. His breathing sped up when I was touching him- apparently the touch can make the babies over compensate or something? I don't know.. she could have been nicer. Again- so frustrated- I was a new mom and seeing my baby for the second time and everything I did was wrong, not helping, and I had no idea really what was wrong or going on.

The rest of the day and night was filled with trips back and forth to the NICU (walking now!) to touch the baby and get updates.The nurse in the NICU that night was SO DIFFERENT than the day nurse. She asked if I wanted to hold him as I was just staring (because touching was apparently a no-no). UH YES PLEASE! Once I was holding him she asked if I wanted to try breastfeeding. AGAIN YES.

Possibly the scariest moment of my life came next- as he was nursing (no problems latching!) he started gagging and then wasn't breathing. I panicked and the nurse came over and suctioned his mouth and then said she needed to suction his STOMACH. I couldn't watch. The sound was horrific. The baby was gagging and crying. I was crying. Ugh.

Even after all of that, she let us come back all night every three hours to bottlefeed him what I had pumped and then formula.

Thursday
Thursday was just back and forth to the NICU for feeding. In the morning, the NICU pediatrician said we could try breastfeeding for 5 minutes only before feeding what I had pumped and then the formula.

The NICU started Lane on antibiotics on Thursday also, saying that he needed them because I had been group B strep positive. My understanding was that only I needed the antibiotics but the doctor said he needed them as well. They hadn't started the antibiotics until late Thursday because even though the chart said I was positive, someone said I wasn't. Just another stupid miscommunication/bad coordination. The antibiotics needed a certain amount of time, so that meant we definitely weren't leaving Friday.

Also- giant snow storm that had Maryland all in uproar. It was actually kind of surreal being in the hospital for the whole storm.

Friday
Friday was Valentine's day. At this point our days were just on repeat. In between our NICU visits, we took advantage of the hospital's cable and watched a lot of TV- the Olympics especially.

Late Friday morning when we went to the NICU for Lane's feeding, he had been removed from the warmer since he was able to maintain his own body temperature. He was still on the monitors though (heart rate, pulse, lungs). The move to an open crib was still progress though!

John went home to check on the house and shovel out our driveway since we were expecting to go home on Saturday at some point. We also wanted to make sure we had heat still! Our awesome neighbors had already snow blowed the driveway! John also stopped at the grocery store for more bananas (LOL) since we were plowing through them in the room.

When he came back, he came into the room... with Lane in his crib! And Lane had flowers for me too. It was the first time we were almost like a normal delivery. Lane was still on (mobile) monitors, but we had our baby in our room with us and we could feed him and do what we wanted with him.

Friday night's NICU nurse was awesome. She gave us the baby for the whole night. We had to bring him back by 5 AM-ish for shift change so no one knew he was out of the NICU. LOL. It was so nice to have Lane in our room all night and night have to haul to the NICU to feed him every three hours.

Saturday
Saturday was our day. I had to be discharged since I had reached my 4 day insurance limit. I was just praying that Lane could leave with us. I couldn't imagine leaving him at the hospital.

We got to keep Lane in our room (with the doctor's approval this time!) all morning and late morning the doc came in and told us that he would be discharged with me!! We were only waiting for the pediatric cardiologist to come from Northern Virginia to evaluate him (the NICU doc was concerned about Lane's circulation, especially since I had open heart surgery as a baby- even though we had already had a fetal echo and everything was fine). The cardiologist didn't get to the hospital until around 3 pm, so we just had a lot of waiting around all day. The cardiologist ended up being the same doc that did Lane's fetal echo. It was awesome. As soon as we got the all clear from the cardiologist, we were outta there!