Our hospital stay

We got in Friday night, really, late. I don't think they did another heel prick but they hooked him up to a monitor and he had to have sensors placed on him and the bili light underneath him. With all those wires it was a mess trying to get him out to feed and change him. The monitor would go off every minute all night long. The next day another heel prick and an IV was put in. It takes a really special person to put an IV needle in a newborn. They use the tiniest needles looking for the tiniest of veins. Thank God she got it in quick, but it was awful to see him on it since they had to bandage up his hand really good.

His bili number came back at only 19.3 (it was 19.5 when we were admitted I just thought it was 18) so it was terrible that it didn't much at all. The plan then was to do another heel prick that evening, that maybe with the formula, breast milk, and IV that the number would drop. That evening 19.0. Not enough but at least they took the IV out and the took the sensors off. I felt so much better about that at least. Sunday morning, another heel prick. The number 18.3! The doctor would like to see a 15 but if it continues to drop that evening we can go home and we could probably just take home the bili light to use a little longer. Later that evening the number spiked to 18.8. I was a hot mess just bawling thinking the worst. The doctor recommended a million tests and an incubator. So they had to draw like 2 tubes of blood. My poor baby was being pricked everyday of his first few days in the world. His feet had several red dots on them. Once in the incubator I felt a little more at peace because this was going to kill the jaundice and we would go home. Plus he looked so cute with his shades and his arms raised over his head. He was nice and warm.

I think back sometimes and wonder how we made it through that week. When we were at the hospital we were awake maybe every 2-3 hours to feed him. Justin kept a log of every oz of breast milk and formula he took at what time and whether he pooped or peed. He was so diligent and perfect at that that the nurses were impressed and wanted a copy of his log, lol. He was pretty scared during this time too. If someone would have told us that jaundice is so common and the numbers can drop and spike or that jaundice can last longer than his did then I probably wouldn't have been so scared. Finally Monday morning came and another heel prick followed by the best news ever! his number was 15.8! We got to go home that day but had to follow up with our pediatrician the next day for another heel prick.

Yay, I'm going home!

The crazy thing is that the next day his bili number was up again at 17. Yeah, it was a roller coaster of emotions. I barely had time to get over my birth experience. I told Justin that if jaundice wouldn't have happened then I could've easily processed and taken in the birth as not too bad but all of this made for a week of hell. Ok so again we went on Wednesday for the last heel prick and it was down to 14. On his one week birthday nonetheless :) Stay tuned to hear the joys of breastfeeding (insert sarcasm here)!

Happy 2 months baby!

One day late but I wanted to share about Easton's 2 month check up. He is a whopping 14 pounds and 24 inches long placing him in the 95th percentile! I have a big boy :-)

I actually went in thinking he would be 12 pounds but nope, daddy was right in guessing he would be 14. Easton also got his first vaccine. We're following Dr. Sears schedule for now so he only got the DTap. My champ didn't even cry. Mommy almost did though.

In other good news the doc said, again, to get him off formula if I want. It won't hurt him to stay on it but he doesn't need it. I have a story to share about the woes of breastfeeding, but that's for another day.

As of today he's only gotten 2 1/2oz of formula so we're doing awesome!

Jaundice sucks!

I'm going to say it again, God is GREAT! That should really be the name of my blog because seriously you may not know when He's working in your life until you've gone through something, whether good or bad.

What I mean is that had certain things not happened as they did the results could've been far worse for us. For example, had I gone to a hospital to have Easton, I would've ended up having a csection. They would not have wanted to me be in labor so long after my water broke and they would not like me pushing for so long. Actually it would've looked something like this:

water broke so start me on the IV for gbs
labor not progressing quick enough start me on pitocin
pitocin kicking my butt so get an epidural
labor slows down, well time for a csection. I would've been the classic story of what happens so much nowadays. Yes, I'm grateful that we had the birth center and the midwives. I like to say they were Easton's angels.

So back to us at home thinking everything was wonderful minus my right nipple becoming raw to the point of bleeding. This was the reason we called the lactation consultant and she came on Friday. Day 2 of us being home. But first, early that morning my mom thought Easton looked a little yellow. I started noticing it too and wondered why he was sleeping so much when by then he should've been going through the cluster feedings. He should've been up constantly feeding but he wasn't.

The LC arrives and proceeds to do her thing. She weighs him initially and notices he's lost 9% of his weight in 2 days. Not good. I breastfeed him and he gets weighed again. He ended up losing like 2oz! Very bad. She notices too that he just falls asleep on my breast and isn't sucking very well.

I'm crying at this point because she's very concerned about what's happening. This is where things start to unravel, or more like I start to come apart. We didn't have our appt with the ped until Monday but she called in and asked if they could make time for us because he may have jaundice and he's lost too much weight.

While we're getting ready we had to give him a bottle of formula which he took and drank right away. Thank God that I happened to have both a bottle and formula! I later found out he was dehydrated. Just typing this makes me tear up because I remember how he looked and it really hurts to think that something worse could've happened.

I had gotten a free can of formula and an Avent bottle in the mail. I still had the formula because I was going to donate it whenever I found out who to give it to. I never thought he would get jaundice and he wouldn't suck very well. Or that my milk wouldn't come in like it should've. I thought and planned on solely breastfeeding and that I wouldn't have any problems. Silly me. Always an optimist.

At the ped's office she looked him over and directed us to the nearest hospital to have his blirubin checked.

At the hospital, they pricked his heel. He just slept through everything. It was so heartbreaking.

We went home and started gathering our things in case we got the call from the ped to go to a hospital and have to stay overnight. Sure enough she calls and his bilirubin number was 18. High enough to get admitted into the hospital. We asked the ped to choose the hospital we would go to. We had a choice of two and she chose Levine Children's hospital in Charlotte. I know that really sick babies go to this hospital so you can try to imagine how this made me feel.

I have to take a pause here so I can go buy some food! I hate recalling all this anyway. See ya tomorrow!

Easton's birthday part 2

So where was I?

The doctor showed up sometime in the morning and joined the fun. She was on my left, Justin on my right, the midwives down below. I was in bed on my back, where I NEVER thought I'd be. In class we learned that it's not the most natural position to birth but rather squatting would be easier. Yeah well, no one told me that sometimes being on your back is necessary. Easton was tilted just right so that it caused him to be stuck a little. I had to get on my back to get him out.

So after maybe 30 minutes or an hour(?) of screaming and pushing, out came Easton. He immediately starting crying. I was in shock because all of a sudden he was just there. I can't really explain my thoughts at this point. I was exhausted and excited all at the same time. He was put on my stomach and I just held him and we looked at him in awe.

My baby boy was here! Born at 11:43am weighing 8lbs 4 oz and 20 inches long.

I tried to see if he would do that baby crawl to my breast, but he was having a hard time so I had to help him, lol.

The pain doesn't end here though. The placenta still had to come out. That hurt like a you know what. All the while, the midwife is pushing on my stomach! I was given a shot of Pitocin in my leg because I was bleeding a lot. There I was expecting this part not to hurt because again I read that you'll be so into your baby you won't notice what's going on down there. Yeah right.

So after a while they wanted me to get up and go pee, but as soon as I tried to get up I passed out. Guess what I got then? A sniff of ammonia and a catheter. I'm telling you, you lose all modesty!

Easton did get a Vitamin K shot because of all the pushing I did and just in case he experienced any bruising.

Later when I did get up to pee on my own I passed out again in the bathroom so I was given an IV. This helped a lot and by 11pm that night we went home. Everything was perfect and we were totally in love. Little did we know that two days later all hell would break loose.

I'll write about the jaundice and our hospital stay next.

Only hours old :-)

Easton's "birth"day

This is not going to be a fairy tale. I'm going to try to recall as much as possible and be completely honest. So just a warning that I will get graphic.


August 16, 2011
I got up around 7am to go to work and do an evaluation. I was on maternity leave, but my boss had asked me the week prior if I could do it since I'm the only Spanish speaking therapist. Anyway, I go to the bathroom and when I wipe I noticed just a little tinge of blood on the tp. So I think to myself, 'hmm interesting, I wonder if this is the start to something?'

8:30am I'm leaving the office after grabbing the test I needed and proceed to get in my car when I feel a small gush. I get out and go to the bathroom and sure enough I'm wet and more comes out over the toilet. I know I'm not peeing. I have no clue why but I thought 'ok it's just a little bit, I'm going to go do this eval.' I get back in my car when it happens again. I get back out, go back to the bathroom, and finally tell myself, this eval isn't happening today.

I tell our lovely insurance lady 'I think my water is breaking.' She gets up all excited, hugs me. I say I'm going to go the doctor so I don't think I'm able to do this eval. Duh she tells me, go to the doctor.

So I head over to see my midwives. I already had an appt later that morning so I arrive just a bit earlier. They confirmed that yes my water was breaking. She didn't do an internal exam to limit a possible gbs infection and infection in general. They gave me some hebiclens (for my gbs positive). It's basically soap that you mix with water. You can read more here. She said they'd call me later in the day.

About 9:30 I get home and by this time my back is aching so it was really hard to get out of my car. Justin knew what was going on of course but I told him to stay at work so he would get his full 7 days of leave when the baby was here. I couldn't really do anything at home since my lower back hurt so bad. I took a nap, listened to some music, prayed, cried, and sat around.

I finally called my mother who was expected to fly in the next day. She freaked out and wanted to come immediately. This was the last thing I wanted of course. I said no everything is fine. I look back now and remember those last hours of just being alone, before Easton, and treasure it. I was saying goodbye to the old and getting ready for the new. I cried because I was so amazed at how God had worked and blessed my pregnancy. I cried because I was about to meet my sweet boy.

By 3:30 the contractions were getting painful so I called Justin to come home. He only had 30 minutes left at work anyway. My co worker brought me a heating pad and Justin brought Pizza Hut for dinner. I should mention that Justin and I had said this was going to be our last date night, LOL. We planned on going to dinner, a movie, and then go for some ice cream. :-)

I did plan on watching our wedding video though as my "project" that we had talked about in class. Good thing I didn't choose to bake something because my back really didn't let me do much. So we watched it one last time.

Now time starts to get blurry here. I remember I got into the bathtub to ease the contractions and it was the best feeling in the world. We have such hot water that my contractions stopped when I was in there. I didn't want that happening so I got out after maybe 30 minutes.

I tried to lay on my side in bed and that brought on the worst contractions ever so I was not going to do that anymore. Yes, by now they were very painful. Justin was timing them but the midwife said to stop since we knew I was definitely in labor. They weren't consistent anyway.

One of the midwives came to see me and saw me through some contractions. She said she was going home to sleep and call when we were ready to go to the birth center. I labored on my yoga ball, on all fours, Justin rubbed my back, he helped me through contractions, and finally I was ready to go. Justin packed the car and I said goodbye to Luna.

2am- we get to the birth center and one midwife is filling up the pool in our room. I'm in so much pain I just want to get in the pool. Here's where I got my first vaginal exam to check how far I was dilated. I was already 7cm. The water was cold and nothing was heating it up. So one of the midwives called her husband to come see what the problem was. What a great husband! It had to have been 3am when he came to fix the heater. Don't worry we never saw each other!

After some time (hours) and trying new positions in the pool, I was told to get out because things didn't appear to be progressing. I labored out of the pool for a while when I wanted to get back in the pool. Finally around 7am I felt the urge to push. We had seen a birth video of this woman birthing in a pool and she just let her body do the pushing and the baby came out all lovely and wonderful. Well, let me tell you she was some lucky little prat because that wasn't the case for me.

I pushed for 4 hours. In the pool, beside the pool, beside the bed, and finally in bed on my back. Everyone kept telling me he was almost here and to try giving at least 3 pushes. They asked me to get in bed which I did not want to do because it had hurt so much at home. You're probably thinking how can the pain get worse? Well, it can and it did. I finally got in bed and they could see his head coming out but it kept going back in. They held out a mirror for me and sure enough I saw his hair on his head. It was the coolest thing! Here's where the pain was excruciating. The  midwife was pouring oil over my vagina and stretching it!!!!!

OMG, I'm sorta thankful now since it prevented me from tearing but seriously me pushing and her stretching were the worst part of labor for me. I wasn't watching any part of what was going on down there. They took away the mirror because the baby was just not coming out. I remember at least twice saying I didn't want to do this anymore. I imagined going to the hospital at this point, but moving didn't sound great either. Everyone was incredible though.

My husband, was out of this world amazing. He was the best coach. He kept telling me I was awesome and kissing my head. I can still hear him saying awesome all the time, LOL. He was by my side giving me water constantly and talking to me. He never slept and he hadn't slept in over 24 hours.


I have to take a break here since Easton is stirring. Stay tuned for part 2!

I'm trying, I really am

To come back to blogging. I'm just a little busy lately because...

I'm a MOM!!! It's amazing and really really really hard!!

I've had family at home for nearly 2 months and they have helped tremendously. God is good and his timing is perfect for everything.

I'll be back with a birth story and a new blog name (any suggestions) because again:

I'm a MOM!