Our time in the Hospital with Baker

In case you missed the story of the day Baker was born, you can catch up on that here. When I left off with her birth story, we had just gotten moved into the mother/baby room and had introduced Baker to our families.

If you ever wanted to see what an insane number of visitors looks like, all you had to do was be at the hospital on the day Baker was born. Most of our family was already there when she was delivered and those that weren’t there arrived shortly afterwards, so after our skin-to-skin time and first nursing attempt, we welcomed them all in after their long wait to finally get to hold her. Everyone came by to love on Miss Baker for the rest of the evening!

I was able to pump some colostrum and Cory fed it to Baker since she wouldn’t latch.

Her very first milk mustache.

The day flew by and before we knew it, it was 10pm. Since she was three weeks early, Baker’s blood sugar had to be monitored for eight hours before they could bathe her because the temperature change could have caused a drop in her blood sugar. Unfortunately, that meant that they had to stick her poor little feet every few hours (not fun for anyone involved). Around 11pm that night, Baker was finally cleared for her first bath and we were able to get her all fresh and clean.

Look at all the fun she’s having!

Um, right?

OK, so while she clearly didn’t enjoy her first bath, she sure did love having her hair brushed and still likes to have her head rubbed. Who doesn’t?

Even though I was exhausted, I don’t think I slept more than three hours that night. All I wanted to do was stare at my beautiful little girl. I would lay down and couldn’t take my eyes off her.

However, had I known the next night would be one of the toughest of my life, I might have tried to sleep a little more…

Daddy couldn’t hang.

On Saturday, we had even more visitors including my grandparents, Amber, and both Jessicas. But not before we had our first Saturday snug session.

She loved her birthday hat, obvs.

We had our hospital photos taken that afternoon and then both my mom and Cory’s mom came back up to the hospital to visit again. Around 3:00pm, Cory and the hospital staff noticed that Baker was looking super yellow and decided to go ahead and check her bilirubin levels for jaundice instead of waiting until midnight as they had planned. They said if she needed to be on the bili light, it was better to start as early as possible to maximize the time on it and hopefully it wouldn’t delay our stay the next day. That’s when the real fun began.

Even though they had pricked her foot multiple times the day before, the prick to check for jaundice was so much worse because they had to knead her foot to get enough blood for the lab. I guess it was hormones, but her pain just broke my heart–I’m not sure who was crying harder, Baker or me! I was bawling my eyes out the whole time.

It had been close to 24 hours since she had any significant amount of colostrum (I was only getting small drops after getting 5 mL the first time I had pumped) and with the threat of jaundice, they wanted us to start supplementing with formula to try and flush her out.

Her bili levels came back as 12.4, which, although not horribly high, gave the hospital staff some concern because of how quickly her color changed (or the jaundice came on) so she started her 12 hours under the lights around 5:00pm.

Little did we know the LONG night ahead of us. If we had, I would have asked my mom to stay!

So as Cory and I learned (thanks Google), apparently newborns have a “startle reflex” that makes them feel like they are falling, which is one of the reasons they like to be swaddled. You can see it in the picture below but Baker had to lay on that board with nothing surrounding her making her feel secured: this meant that she would startle herself every few seconds and would scream out in fear. All. Night. Long.

In order to keep her calm, one of us had to stand there beside her and keep her pacifier in her mouth and calm her down when she startled. At some point during the night, she ended up getting choked on some formula and spit it up–causing her to go into full on freakout mode a little while later.

About 1:30am, the nurse realized that Baker was breathing way faster than she should have been. The normal breaths per minute was 20-40 and she was counting 78 for Baker. Thinking maybe Baker just had gas, she called another nurse in to discuss and they both tried to burp her for about 20 minutes. After they couldn’t get her to burp, they decided to try skin-to-skin time with me and see if it would help calm her down, thinking she had gotten herself too worked up under the lights. Just to be on the safe side, they called the charge nurse in to get her opinion–it was at this point that I started to realize something might be wrong. Enter New Mommy Freakout Mode, Phase 1.

After another 15 minutes or so went by with Baker on my chest and the charge nurse asking me all kinds of questions, Baker’s breathing was still too fast. The three nurses thought it would be best to call the pediatrician in. By this point, I was in tears again. Mostly because I hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours, my hormones were so out of whack, and the fear that something might actually be wrong with my baby girl. Proceed to New Mommy Freakout Mode Phase 2.

The pediatrician on call wasn’t at the hospital, so they had the nurse practioner from the NICU come in, as well as a respiratory therapist, to check Baker out. The NP said she would call the doctor after examining her and we would go from there.

They took Baker off my chest and all five (three nurses, a NP and a respiratory therapist) started checking her over. By this point, I was sobbing. Like, the really ugly, can’t catch your breath sobbing. By the time the dust had settled, they had stuck a tube down Baker’s throat to suction out her stomach as well as down both nostrils to suction out her lungs. Her stomach and lungs were still partly filled with some mucus from delivery as well as some of the formula she had choked on earlier. New Mommy Freakout Mode, Fully Initialized.

Baby Girl was crying so hard which made me even more upset, so I couldn’t watch, but Cory watched the whole thing. He says it was extremely hard to watch, because she was alert the whole time; screaming, choking, and terrified. Cleaning her out seemed to help slow her breathing, so they returned to her to my chest so we could all calm down.

As soon as she was calm, we had to put her back on the light, and she was instantly upset again. And when I say upset, what I mean is inconsolably hysterical. The charge nurse finally decided that something had to be done because Baker didn’t need to get that worked up again after they had just gotten her breathing rate decreased, and so she went to the NICU to steal borrow this bumper. While it did help significantly, one of us still had to stand there and kind of squeeze it around Baker for her to feel safe on the table.

We took turns standing with Baker and resting. Have I mentioned this was the longest night of my life?

Thanks to our wonderful nurses, who were also as frazzled and exhausted as we were, we survived the night (barely!) and waited on the results from Baker’s bilirubin level check Sunday morning. We were praying hard (and so were our friends and family) that we would get to go home. After 12 nights in the hospital, I was SO ready to be home! I had fur babies to snuggle!!

Those poor feet had been pricked so many times! And they would continue to be pricked the next four days.

They encouraged us to leave her on the light every last minute we could, even though the 12 hours was up, to help fight the jaundice. She was much calmer than the night before (go figure) so we got a little rest in between nurses coming in and out.

I was cleared for discharge first and the pediatrician came in to tell us that while Baker’s bili level had gone up to 12.9, it wasn’t a significant enough increase to keep her another night, so we could both go on home. Praise the Lord! Not that I was going home without my baby anyway…my doctor had already promised to fudge the paperwork so that I wouldn’t be discharged without her warned that I might have to stay another night. Wink wink…

Over the next couple hours, Baker passed her hearing test, we saw the lactation consultant, and then had to wait on a bili light to take home with us with instructions to see our pediatrician the next morning before we were discharged…but we were going home!

We dressed our real life baby doll and waited on Daddy to load up the car. When you spend that long in the hospital, you accumulate a LOT of stuff. I wish we had gotten a photo, but he had to load up a cart and take it down to the car. Twice.

We were so tired and I was even more swollen than I was before I gave birth but trust me, we were super excited to finally be discharged around 2:30pm!

When we got home, we found that Amber had decorated with pink balloons and made a wreath for the door as well as a “Welcome Home Baker” banner (which is still hanging)! We introduced the dogs to their new sister and settled in for the evening. After our whole experience, if I have one piece of advice to offer to any new mom, it would be to have someone stay with you the night you get home from the hospital…you’re gonna need the rest! My mom stayed with us that first night and it made a world of difference to get a few hours of sleep.

Our short time in the hospital with Miss Baker was such a sweet time. I’m so thankful to be able to write down all the little firsts we experienced, never to forget, and to share them with everyone as we get started down this crazy road of parenthood!