Labor and Delivery

We have the sweetest boy! He is so obedient- he even came on his due date! I went into labor at 7:30 on Monday night with contractions every 5 minutes for the next 10 hours, until we went into the hospital the next morning at 5:30. We were expecting to be sent home, but the baby's heart rate was dropping every time I contracted, so the doctor decided to speed things along and get this baby here.

They told me the doctor would be in a 7:00 to break my water and I would probably want my epidural then. I was definitely wanting it then, but there was an emergency c-section, and they said I would have to wait another hour for them to finish. I thought I was going to die! The doctor said he would wait to break my water until I got the epidural, so we worked our way through the next hour from hell with contractions coming every minute and a half. I finally got my epidural and it was AWESOME! The pain was totally gone, and I was relaxed, but we had to wait until 11:30 for someone to come break my water.

At that point, we just rested for a while. Ned and I both took short little naps. Around 3:00, I started feeling my contractions again, and they told my it was time to start pushing. Apparently they just tell you how to do it then leave the room and let you get to it for a while. No doctor in there, no nurse; just Ned, my mom, and his mom. I guess they were pretty confident I wouldn't make any progress for a while. The doctor checked me after a while and told me they would have to turn the baby. He moved into position, and after about an hour and a half of pushing, baby Jack was born at 4:43 pm, 7 pounds, 12 ounces, and 19 inches long. After a bath, we got to hold him for a while. He was so alert and even nursed a little. We got to spend about an hour with him before they took him to weighed and checked out. Unfortunately, his temperature was over 103 degrees, and they said he would need to start IV antibiotics right away. The nurses kept saying "hopefully it's nothing" over and over. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that phrase this past week. They took some blood cultures, and said they could rule out sepsis (I think it's a blood infection?) in 48 hours, but he needed to stay on the IV until we knew for sure. That meant my baby was moving to the NICU. Next, they came and told me there was a problem with his blood pressure, and he was going to need an EKG to see if there was something wrong with the arteries to his legs. Again they were saying "hopefully it's nothing." It came back clean, thank goodness. Finally around 11pm, they let me go visit him.

The next couple days passed in a blur of delicious hospital food, 20 minute bathroom routines, and trips to the NICU to hold and feed Jack. He was so agreeable, even when they were drawing labs or changing his diaper, and he was the perfect little nurser. Trying to cuddle with him with all those wires was hard, though. At the end of the second day, it was time for me to be discharged, but we were still waiting for the blood cultures for Jack, so he would gave to stay. They were also worried about reflux and wanted to watch him through the night. He kept gagging and trying to swallow, and all of his stats would drop. There weren't any empty rooms on mother baby, but the nurses said we could pay for a room on pediatrics if we wanted to stay the night, and I could keep coming in for feedings. We did, but held our breath in the halls all night, trying to avoid H1N1.

The next morning, they told us everything looked great and he could go home! We waited for him to get his circumcision, and then finally took him home. We took him back to the hospital every morning for the next couple of days to check his biliruben count, and it kept rising, so Monday the doctor decided to put him on bili lights. This wasn't a big deal to me, but I didn't love not being able to snuggle with my baby. We kept checking his temperature once he started the lights, and it was low. Only 96 degrees. We called up Lori and our doctor to find out what to do. We tried warm blankets, skin to skin, heat packs, everything we could think of, but it only got up to 96.6. They told us to bring him in to the after-hours clinic, and I couldn't stop wondering what I was doing wrong and why he kept having problems. The doctor there gave him a catheter to test his urine (poor kid- the circumcision was only a couple days old!) and sent us back to the hospital to have more labs drawn to test for a bacterial infection. They came back fine, but showed that he did have low blood sugar.

So now everything seems to be fine. He takes medicine for the reflux, and to help with the low blood sugar, I'm supplementing breast-feeding with bottles. Also that kid has a mind of his own when it comes to breast-feeding, so pumping probably isn't such a bad idea for us. He's a little fussy, but I think the reflux might have something to do with it. He was beautiful eyes and makes the funniest expressions with his mouth! I'm feeling great- almost 100%- and I'm already 7 pounds lighter than when I got pregnant! Now if this belly would just go away...