Our First Struggle: The First Night Home

        I was hospitalized for two days after the birth of Lily. We were discharged the afternoon of Friday, February 14^th. My fiance Terence, and I were so excited to take our little baby girl home. He was most excited about introducing her to our dog, Max. I was most excited about having my bed back. 

       Up until then we hadn't really ever been alone with her. We had a lot of visitors and my mom was at the hospital with us almost the entire time. Since I had delivered her so late and didn't get into my recovery room until close to midnight we decided to put her in the nursery while I got some sleep after being so tired for so long. Terence had gotten a little sleep, but not much. The worst part about having her in the nursery was them coming to wake me up to feed her every 2 hours. That was terrible because they would wake me up and then she wouldn't want to eat. I considered telling them to just give her formula instead of attempting to breastfeed. I didn't have them give her formula even though it was exhausting and very difficult, luckily the hospital had some great lactation consultants that were able to help us before we left. 

When we got home we were so excited. Max loved her! He checks on her when she cries and follows around whoever has her. He loves to sleep in his bed next to her cradle in our room or next to her crib. We did have to keep him from licking her though, he loves to try and lick her feet. 

     We figured we would be just fine having a few friends come over and watch a movie with us. We just assumed she would sleep just fine. Up until then all she really did was sleep. We watched a movie and ended up staying up til a little after midnight. Right as we crawled into bed she decided to wake up... and stay up. She started crying and screaming. We tried everything to get her to stop. We changed her diaper, fed her, burped her, and made sure she was nice and warm but nothing worked! 

She would calm down more when she was held and rocked so we took turns doing that, but as soon as you stopped the wailing would once again begin. We each got about 2 hours of sleep while the other dealt with the baby in another room. We were so exhausted and had no clue what to do. We wished we had accepted the offer of help from my Mother who said she could stay and help us that first night. (We plan to accept it when we have more children sometime in the distant future!) By the time we were finally able to put her down the sun had come up. We were exhausted and were glad to finally get some sleep. The first night was absolute hell. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone. I have never been more exhausted or annoyed in my entire life!

  We learned a few valuable lessons that first dreadful night.  We learned to always accept help, no matter what. Even if you want to experience things on your own and think you can handle it, still accept it. You have to be strong enough to put your pride aside and ask for help when you need it. -We learned that you are never to old to need your Mother. Mine has been a lifesaver in the two weeks since Lily's birth. She's been there for advice, to listen to my fears, questions, and concerns and she's been a shoulder to cry on when things get too overwhelming. The birth of Lily taught me the importance of family and to surround yourself with good people, people who genuinely care. I can honestly I don't think I would have been able to make it through labor and delivery or the last weeks without her guidance and support. Even though I don't always agree with her advice it's still so great to have the other options and another viewpoint. 

           

           Things aren't always easy. Trying to balance having a family and focus on school while Terence works and attends classes is the hardest thing we have ever done. We've learned so much in such a short amount of time. I'm sure our little girl will keep teaching us new things everyday. Who knew you could learn so much from something so new, and so little. 

Not Everything Goes As Planned... Especially When A Baby Is Involved.

                The first lesson that I learned from having my daughter is that nothing goes as planned when it involves a baby. My entire pregnancy I was so positive that I would have my daughter early by a few weeks; I may have if she had been turned correctly. Throughout the 4 months I had contractions pretty regularly. She was doing okay, and the contractions weren’t causing dilation so they weren’t too concerned at that time. Time continued to drag on as I anxiously awaited for her arrival. The last month was the worst, thinking that she could be here at any time. Every time I had contractions I would nervous and excited, just to be let down when they stopped. I went to my 37 week appointment and found out I was 1cm dilated, I was so excited. I had been walking (while shopping for her!) constantly trying to start labor. I figured I would do the same thing for the week and see what happened. I went back at 38 weeks and was at 2cm. My Dr. was very pleased and thought that she would probably make an appearance over the weekend. The weekend came and still no baby! I had an appointment on Monday morning and I was still at a 2! We scheduled an induction for the following night.  My goal for delivery to have a natural delivery, I didn’t want an epidural or Pitocin.

                We arrived at the hospital Tuesday night at 7:30, the plan was to get up to 3 doses of a pill that would last 6 hours each and help me dilate. The nurse hooked me up to an IV and put a monitor on my belly to monitor the baby’s heartbeat, and another to monitor contractions. After being checked and told I was a good candidate for the pill they said they wanted to see a little more activity from the baby before we started it. They started me on fluids and kept having me change positions. I wasn’t really too concerned at that point, just irritated that we hadn’t started anything yet. My Doctor walked into my room at about 10:00 and I was really pretty surprised to see her, I didn’t think that she would come until a lot closer to delivery. What was even weirder was seeing her in regular clothes. She asked how I was doing then told me that my baby’s heartbeat wasn’t looking too good. It kept dropping below 100, they thought that the cord may be wrapped around her neck, or that she had meconium. I was really worried. She told me that we needed to get things started right away and we needed to start Pitocin, they also wanted to break my waters and place two internal monitors, one that would record every single one of my baby’s heartbeats and another to monitor the strength of my contractions.  They tried six times to break my waters but they were unable due to the position of the baby. They decided to give me as much Pitocin as possible in hopes of starting labor and if the baby didn’t react well to the medication than we would need to have an emergency cesarean.  I was terrified, even though I wanted to avoid Pitocin, I knew I wanted to avoid a cesarean even more.

             They started the Pitocin immediately and I tried to get some sleep. I dozed off for a little while over the next hour and a half, but I was so nervous I wasn’t really able to sleep. Soon the contractions started, they weren’t really all that bad, just uncomfortable. The worst was the pressure in my back. As the night progressed they became stronger. Every couple of hours they would check to see if had dilated anymore; each time was the same, I had zero change. I was so frustrated. The doctor came in and was able to break my waters this time. They also placed the internal monitors. Once my waters broke things started to get a lot stronger. They didn't see any meconium when the waters broke, but soon after they realized that there was some. They planned for NICU to be at the delivery to hopefully avoid having her swallow any, but to care for her if she had. After all the stress of the night I ended up getting some IV pain medication- the first dose worked great, and lasted about 45 minutes, the second didn't do much, and wore off after about 15 minutes. My back labor continued to intensify and I ended up getting an epidural. The epidural was great, the doctor had it placed in less than a minute after he prepped during a contraction. It was such a relief.  Things got pretty boring, I had to change position often because the baby’s heart rate would drop once I stay laying a certain way for too long. The worst part at this point was being so hungry, and being stuck in the bed. Luckily my fiancé and Mother were there to keep me company and help the time pass. The next time they checked me I had dilated to 3 cm! Each hour they would check me, next thing I knew I was at 5, 7, and 9! It took longer to get to 10cm, about an hour and half to two hours to get to 10 and fully thin out. All throughout labor her head was facing the wrong way which was the cause of my back labor. Because of that, they wanted me to “labor down” for an hour. That meant that they wanted my contractions to just push the baby down further with hopes of turning her. I wasn’t ready to push yet, I was exhausted! I told the nurse that I just couldn’t do it! I began to get sick at this point also, I was terrible. After an hour they told me it was time to push, I was about 7:45. The doctor was there by 8:00. Pushing wasn’t terrible, but the third push each contraction was by far the hardest. I was able to talk and laugh between contractions which was a big surprise. They had to turn the Pitocin back up after the contractions began to get further apart, they wanted to speed things up because there were more problems with the baby’s heartbeat. After an hour and half my Doctor gave me one more contraction to try to get her out otherwise she was going to help me. She wanted to get the baby out right away. I tried, but was unable to get her out because of how she was turned. At 9:26pm on Wednesday, February 12^th my daughter, Liliana Marie was born.

 They had to use the vacuum to get her out. They had told me previously that unless she came out screaming I wouldn't get her right away. She was silent. They rushed her over to where the NICU team was and after a minuet I heard a small, brief cry. It was such a relief to hear her- my fiance’ left my side at this point to go over to see her. By the time he got over there she began to really cry. He brought back pictures of her for me to see. She was beautiful, and I had never been happier in my life than I had been at that point.  Luckily she was fine and hadn't swallowed any meconium. The doctors were concerned about my bleeding, I was losing too much blood, they gave me a shot to stop it and planned to run blood tests on me before I was discharged.  Eventually they finally gave her to me, and I was able to enjoy my daughter and finally eat after 26 hours.

                They came to do blood tests before I was discharged, and my iron levels were half of what they should be. They were at a 10 prior to delivery, and currently at a 6. The iron levels are supposed to be at a 12. My doctor ordered a blood transfusion. They got up to a 9 before I left and they plan to check them again at 2 weeks post-postpartum.

                Labor and delivery taught me that you have to expect the unexpected and you have to be able to just go with things. I thought I had my whole labor and delivery planned out and things would be easy, that definitely wasn't the case. I learned my first lesson as a parent; when it involves a baby, you can never expect things to go as planned.