Pregnancy - October 2011

I figured I’d type of up my birth story while Kathryn is napping. I swear they gave me the wrong baby, she hardly every cried in the hospital. Now we’re home and it’s all. she. does.

Labor and delivery was a million times better than I was expecting. I woke up at 3:45 Sunday morning to a really strong contraction and my water breaking. I took a shower (before waking up hubby since I knew he’d just want to go straight to the hospital) then called my doctor. I was going to wait a little bit to call because my contractions were only 8 minutes apart but since my water broke I didn’t want to wait to long. Doctor told me to come in but I could take my time. We got to the hospital around 5, I was 4 centimeters dilated and contractions were 2 minutes apart. The contractions obviously hurt, but they weren’t as bad as I was expecting them to be. I got an epidural (a beautiful gift from the heavens) around 7:30 and pretty much slept on and off from then until I started to push. At one point I asked the nurse if I was still having contractions because I couldn’t feel anything. They started me on pitocin and by 10:30 I was 7 centimeters. A little while later I started to shake pretty baldy, I always shake when I’m nervous and the nurse said that it could be a side effect from the epidural. We realized later that it was because I was in transition. My labor and delivery nurse checked me around 12:40, she asked if I felt any pain but I told her only a mild pressure on and off. She didn’t say anything else but I could tell by the look on her face I was further along than she had expected. She said, “I’m going to find your doctor, be right back.” My doctor was delivering another baby and the nurse said that she wanted me to start “practicing” pushing; this was at 12:48. After about 3 practice pushes the nurse told me to stop and “whatever you do, do NOT push”. She ran out of the room and I heard her say to someone, “Get Dr Peters in here right now, she’s crowning.” All of a sudden it seemed like there were a million people in my room. After 3 or 4 pushes, Kathryn was born at 1:01pm. It was the most amazing thing because I could feel the pressure of her being born but I had absolutely no pain at all. I started to cry as soon as I hear her cry, then looked over to see hubby (who gets emotional sometimes but NEVER cries) crying. I did get a second degree tear so that’s not very fun right now. I had zero side effects from the epidural and was walking around less than 3 hours later.

Then we got up to the mother baby unit…..while the nurse was helping me get settled in Kathryn started to choke on some mucus. I didn’t notice it because she didn’t make any noises. The nurse suctioned it out and showed me what signs to watch for. It happened again a little later, I suctioned the mucus out but called the nurse just to double check that she was ok. The nurse said I got everything and I did a great job. While I was talking to her Kathryn’s face turned bright red and her lips went blue. She tried to suction it out and couldn’t, she grabbed her from me, flipped her over and started to hit her back. It didn’t work so she took her out of the room. I just about lost my mind. I kept telling myself that she’s ok and the nurse would get everything out, but I couldn’t stop crying and shaking. The nurse came back in and said she’s ok but they needed to keep her in the nursery for a while so I went there to be with her. They called my pediatrician who suggested a NICU doctor look at her. The NICU doctor said she probably swallowed my mucus plug and because my delivery so fast all the normal mucus didn’t get pushed out during birth. She ordered a tube put down her nose to her belly to pull up whatever mucus was left. It was so much! And so thick too! My poor little baby had all that junk in her belly. The nurse said it was so thick there was no way she would have been able to work it up on her own and her belly was so full that’s why she wouldn’t nurse for me. She also had a chest x-ray, which was clear. They decided to keep her in the NICU over night and as much as I wanted her in my room I knew she’d be taken care of there. I went over every 3 hours to nurse and cuddle with her. The doctor said that since she wasn’t getting anything from me and she had no wet diapers that they wanted to supplement with formula, I initially told them no but was told that she was getting dehydrated and it was either formula or an IV. I couldn’t let them stick an IV in my baby so I said ok to formula. She still had a very hard time sucking and wouldn’t take formula either. The doctor came to my room in the middle of the night to say she was still dehydrated and they needed to put in a feeding tube before in got so bad that she needed an IV. She needed to eat a certain amount every 3 hours but they wanted to get her to learn how to suck too. I started pumping right away and we gave her whatever I pumped first then supplemented with formula. If she didn’t eat the necessary amount by mouth the rest was given to her by the tube. She finally started to eat more by mouth and the tube was removed on Wednesday morning, they kept her for one more night just to make sure she was still eating good and having wet diapers without it. The first night at home without her was hard. I sobbed the whole ride home, then sat in her room and cried more. Every day we were told she might come home tomorrow so I stopped getting my hopes up. Even when I called the NICU when I woke up the morning she was discharged the nurse told me to bring a going home outfit for her, I left everything in the car until the doctor said she was working on her discharge papers. I know compared to all the other babies in the NICU she’s so healthy but it still killed me to see her hooked up to so many monitor and machines. I probably would have lost my mind totally if it wasn’t for my husband. He never left my side and made me take breaks to eat and sleep. He even went over to the NICU to feed her in the middle of the night so that I could sleep.

I had and still am having a very hard time getting her to nurse. I cannot get her to latch on and because she had so many issues with eating, I’m afraid that she won’t be getting enough. Right now I’m pumping every 3 hours (getting about 2oz total each time) and giving her that in a bottle. I’m trying not to supplement with formula too much but I have no choice sometimes. I have an appointment with the lactation consultant on Tuesday; hopefully she’ll be able to help me. There are times when I want to just say forget it and only use formula, and there are times where I want to try everything possible to get her to nurse. I get so frustrated sometimes which I know doesn’t help the situation at all. I just want her to get what she needs to be ok.