Friday afternoon I had a 36 week check-up. The appointment went well and nothing out of the ordinary happened. I went home and several hours later I noticed I was leaking fluids. Obviously concerned, I called L&D and they told me to monitor it for 2 hours before coming to the hospital. They say a lot of first time mom's mistake their water breaking for just leaking of urine. I was absolutely convinced it wasn't urine (you'd think one would know, right?!). I called Joe and told him to come home and we probably were going to head to the hospital. I called several friends for their advice and they said I should go in!
During the 2-hour wait, Joe and I frantically tried to finish packing our hospital bags and installing the car-seat... just in case. We had planned on finalizing our bags and last minute details that weekend! At 7pm, we decided to head to the hospital because I was still leaking fluids.
They took me in right away and hooked me up to monitors and took vitals and said I was 1 cm dilated but was not having any contractions. They soon came and did a swab test to see if the fluids were amniotic fluids or not... and ding, ding, ding... they were. They told me since I was 36 weeks 2 days... they weren't overly concerned (37 weeks is considered full-term). They admitted me and hooked me up to an IV and started me on some meds to get my contractions going. By 12:30pm I was 3cm dilated and they switched me over to Pitocin and the contractions were getting a lot more intense. They didn't want to check how far I was dilated since my water was already broken because it could cause an infection.
By 6am the contractions were pretty strong, but not unbearable. They were strong enough though where I wasn't able to sleep at all. I battled for quite some time if I should wait to get the epidural now or keep waiting (I heard the longer you can wait the better, because it can sometimes slow down delivery). Since I was getting annoyed watching Joe sleep all night, I decided to get the epidural and hope it would work so I could rest.
The guy said he had been waiting hours for me to ask for one... he was surprised I waited to long. Anyway, the epidural worked wonders and I was finally relaxed enough to sleep. It was such a strange sensation not to have full feeling from my waist down (strong pins and needles, but I could still somewhat feel/move them). I slept for a few hours on and off all morning. 12pm the nurse came to check on me and was shocked and said, "Ok, are you ready to have this baby? It's time!". Within minutes they had everything set up and enough the staff in the room ready for his big debut. I began pushing and really had no idea what I was doing, if I was doing it right, an how much progress I was making each time (I refused to look in the mirror).
At one point (about 15 minutes into pushing) the nurse told me to take a break and slow down so she could get the doctor here in time. She said she was amazed how well I was pushing and how fast it was all going. The doctor was barely able to get her gloves on before I pushed him out and Tyler joined the world!
We stayed for 48-hours and everything was going smoothly. The doctors even forgot Tyler was premature and wanted to let us go home after 24-hours, but when they remembered he was preemie (before 37 weeks) we stayed the extra day. Fortunately, there were not a ton of people delivering/recovering when I was there! My friend who works in post partum said they've been having 120+ babies born each month. With a limited number of rooms, they begin sharing rooms when they run out. That means hubbies can't spend the night and you have to hear another person's crying baby right next to you. Good thing we had the room and bathroom to ourselves!
When we were getting ready to leave, the pediatrician told us his beliruben levels were a little high (causes jaundice - very common with preemies) and gave us this bilibed for him to sleep on. It's a small bed that has UV lights coming up from inside of it. It has a mesh like jacket that we put him in and little sleeves for his arms to stick out of and velcros shut up to his neck. It was definitely a very long night because Tyler didn't like it at all! He can only wear a diaper which was terrible because he hates not having clothes on. He also hates not being swaddled! At one point, he was crying for what felt like eternity. Joe finally broke down and kept taking him out, calming him down, then putting him back... then for it to start all over again. Needless to say, we learned our lesson about taking him out so much when the next day they said his levels didn't go low enough so we had another night to do. Another long night of crying, but this time his levels were low enough to go home with no bilibed! We went back two days for follow-up labs, and then we were told his levels were beginning to rise again. Sigh... back to the bilibed for two more days.
We were lucky enough to chat with another couple who had to use the bed too. They gave us the most amazing tip! Hold the bilibed in your lap and rock him to sleep. DUH! Why didn't we think of that? For some reason, we just figured the bed had to stay in the crib. It's pretty big and doesn't exactly fit across my lap on the chair, but when I angle it just right, it works nicely. So far, it's working wonders and he seems somewhat content now.
We go back Sunday for more follow-up labs. Let's hope we get to say good-bye to the bilibed... forever!
We are so blessed and thankful that Tyler is here healthy (minus the jaundice). We were a little worried that he decided to come so early, but thankfully he is a great size and weight for his age. We can't stop smiling and staring at him in awe! Thank you to everyone for all the well wishes and words of encouragement!
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