How Did I Get Here - Part 3

You can see the rest of the series here

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When you look back at certain events, especially as time passes, different things stand out to you.

I wonder if part of it is your brain trying to make sense of what happened, to find some meaning or depth. But sometimes it just feels like a scratched record skipping and playing the same three notes over and over until you want to scream in frustration and pain.

I hear the beeping of the monitors and feel my legs squeezing. The room is much smaller than the one earlier, and the window is on the opposite side. My arm hurts where the IV is. And my abdomen burns.

And then the guilt follows.

Last night I thought it would be so neat if my baby was born today. The consequences didn't matter, what a neat birthday it would be. My partner comes in and tells me what he knows - our baby is in the nursery on oxygen. He doesn't know anything else. 

A nurse brings a polaroid of my baby, because I can't get out of bed to go see her. Why? I still don't know. It's probably nearing 4pm, but time means nothing to me because nothing makes sense. My parents are there, they saw her through the window of the nursery. They bring some gifts for me, for the baby. That I still haven't seen.

Everyone keeps calling to say congratulations. How do you handle that when you aren't even sure that you had a baby? Maybe it was just a bad dream and I'm going to wake up soon to go to the hospital.

Finally, at 9pm, almost 8 hours after she was born, the nurse comes in and says she is there to take me to see her. It takes about a half hour to get everything set up and wheel me down.

She's on oxygen. With an IV. She has a green pacifier, naked except for a diaper. She looks bruised and has hair on so much of her body. She has so much dark hair and is so tiny. 

She doesn't feel like mine. How could she? She exists outside of me now and I hadn't seen any of it. That will take months to heal, made worse when she's transferred.

I am not allowed to hold her. She is struggling with oxygen and they are worried about her, so I hold her hand. What kind of mother can't hold her own baby. We only stay for a half hour. 

I sleep fitfully. They brought me a pump, so I was doing that every two hours around the clock. The nurses joke that I'm doing so well because I'm getting 1 ounce every time only hours after having my baby. I don't know any different. They place the milk in orange snap top containers like what camera film was in. They don't tell me to not overfill it. Almost all of it had to be thrown out when we got to the next hospital because they weren't sealed and the milk wasn't safe. I had about 30 ounces when we went two days later, and they could keep maybe 10 of them.

I slept and ate and pumped and took meds and let them push my belly and showered the next day and got the catheter out and hoped I could hold my baby eventually. She was 24 hours old when I finally did, with the help of nurses because she was sent next door to the higher level nursery when her oxygen level needs kept increasing. 

I held her. She was so small. Five pounds. I didn't know what questions to ask or how to feel, just hoped it would make sense eventually.

My partner held her, all the while my mom was with us taking pictures. We stayed for an hour or so and then had to leave. My in-laws were there, meeting her through the window. The first grandchild for both sides. What a special time, right? 

Time passed, she never left the nursery, and we would get updates often with how she was. She was born Wednesday, by Friday they were talking about discharging me on Saturday, but she probably wouldn't be. I was able to walk to the nursery then and see her, but I still had to have a nurse escort me and stay with me, and it felt even more like I had no idea how to take care of this baby without someone making sure I wasn't doing something wrong. We didn't get to hold her again before Saturday, her oxygen needs kept increasing and they told us she might need to be lifeflighted to another hospital because she was almost at the limit they were allowed to give.

Nod. Smile. Hold her hand. Pump. Meds.

Friday afternoon the pediatrician came in to tell us she was being sent an hour away. The team was called and had to get her set up so they could go because she needed more help. 

Have you ever had those experiences when everything is in slow motion? You hear words but they don't really click and you wonder what is happening because it doesn't really make any sense? I knew she was being sent away. I knew I was still a patient at this hospital and couldn't leave. I knew my partner was not ok. So, I put everything I felt aside and prepared to go.

A wonderful nurse called the hospital and asked if we could have a place to stay while she was in the NICU, and they had a room set up for us in the PICU. It was evening and too late to set up at the Jubilee home, and they weren't sure they would even take me since they were hoping it would be a short NICU stay. I called family and let them know. I packed everything. I went to see her and had to leave because they had to get blood from her and I couldn't handle them poking her over and over.

She hadn't had any food up to this point. Just an IV. Getting her to bleed was an entire expedition, the team later told me. She was hydrated but it just wasn't enough and she had so many sticks that her heels were raw. It hurt to see it, and so I didn't.

They put her in a helicopter and left. We followed, after going to the store and buying a pump, and an hour later we were at the hospital. They got there long before we did, and as soon as we pushed the button for the NICU, a nurse was there to meet us and explain how we had to come in and wash our hands and prepare to see her. When the new hospital was built, it was so weird to go in and see the NICU wasn't behind a locked door and you only needed hand sanitizer to go in. We had a full sink, with timers on how long to was our hands. And this had to happen every time we entered.

We go into her room, and she already looks amazing. She's less red, she's breathing easier. The neonatologist, who would become one of my favorite people, told me everything that was going on. She didn't need to be intubated or put on CPAP, just the lower elevation may do the trick to help her breathe. He explained different things they had planned if anything needed to be done, and they had already got a feeding tube in and with the milk I brought, they would start to feed her to prepare for me to nurse her. 

It was surreal. This high level facility, where things were locked down and we had to wash like surgeons was treating me more human than I had felt in the last two weeks. They helped us get set up in our room, brought a hospital grade pump for me to use, containers for my milk, and cleared an entire shelf of the fridge for me. I was included and seen. This was not what I expected.

Saturday she increased her food intake each meal, getting ready for me to start nursing her on Sunday. Her oxygen needs were going down, she looked great. She had lost a lot of weight, over a pound, but they were excited at how much she was improving.

We went to eat with family, shopped around town, the last Harry Potter book came out and my mom bought it for me for something to do. I read it before we came home the next Wednesday. We hung out with our daughter for a couple hours every day, but I was young and inexperienced and had no idea what to do, and it was easier to let the nurses do it. 

Sunday we started nursing. It was so weird. Why did no one tell me it was so weird?! But she was doing ok, though not eating as long as they wanted her to. She still had the feeding tube, even though now I was pumping 4 or 5 ounces of milk every two hours, so that definitely wasn't an issue. But it was just because she was small and tired and they wanted to make sure that she was still being fed. The lactation consultant came in and was so rough with me, and I still had no idea what I was doing when she left.

And then a nurse came in. She sat with me while I felt overwhelmed trying to get my baby to eat, told me I was doing great, that she was doing great. She answered my questions, but mostly she just made sure I was okay. 

We take that for granted sometimes, I think. I didn't really need her, but her presence made all the difference to me. I still didn't know what I was doing, but I felt more like I could handle it after she left. I don't remember her name, and that is one thing I regret. She made such a difference to me and what happened, and I am forever grateful.

Monday brought jaundice. I knew I had it as a baby, but they were growing increasingly worried. Her levels were 15 and then 19 and then 21. They told me if they got to 22, she would get a transfusion. She lived in the bili bed on Monday and nursing was hard because she was so tired. But, she was finally pooping, and was still eating every couple hours, which was huge. Monday night I got to her room to nurse and they were so happy to tell me her level was down to 19 and things looked like they were getting better. She still needed the lights, but it was less dire, and we were doing it.

I nursed every 2 to 3 hours, and Tuesday brought hilarity when she ripped out the feeding tube herself. I should have known then that this baby was going to be a spitfire and do things exactly how she wanted them. They thought about putting the tube back but decided to see if nursing would be enough and left us to it.

We had to watch these videos before she was able to leave and they wanted us prepared, so we watched one on abuse and one on feeding and I think one on carseats, but I don't remember much anymore. Tuesday was over so quickly and it was surreal that she was almost a week old.

Wednesday my partner decided to drive home and go to work, and I swear, he had barely been there for 20 minutes when the hospital told me she was going home today. She had been off oxygen for about 30 hours and was doing so well, her jaundice levels were down to 12, and it was just unreal that this was our life.

She had to have a carseat test and her hearing screen and they had to explain everything to me. She was being sent home with oxygen because we lived 3000 feet higher and sometimes babies just have a hard time with the elevation. We had an appointment to see her pediatrician on Friday and he would tell us what to do.

By 1pm, we were out the door.
With a baby. 

How in the world did you take care of a newborn???

Crash course, here we come.