Jazz Hands!

So. Long story short, we wound up having to be induced because of the gestational diabetes.  I felt pretty bad about it at first, but at the end I came to terms with the fact and sucked it up.  It went really slow at first because I needed to be on antibiotics  for the GBS for at least four hours before anything could really happen (this totally sucked!  Almost more than the labor in general.  Huge doses of Penicillin straight into your IV?!  NO THANKS).  So we wait the four hours, then they up the Pitocin.  Then they up it again, and again, and again.  Nothing doing.  So my midwife decides to break my water, to get him to slide on in to home.  She broke my water somewhere around 11:30 ish. I was at 5 cm.  One hour later, while they were all eating lunch, I needed to push.  NOW.  This is where it all got a little dicey.  I pushed a few times and bingo bango- there's the head.  (All ye with peni and/or weak stomachs- STOP HERE)  His head passed fine, then the next thing I know everyone is screaming at me to stop pushing stop pushing stop pushing!!!  The pain was excruciating.  I was screaming- not labor noises, screaming.  My first two were natural, vaginal, medication free deliveries.  This one was induced, yes, but still epidural free.  But this was not normal pain.  It hurt bad, the bad like something is wrong.  Turns out it was a culmination of things. One- his shoulders did get stuck after all.  On top of that, I have a prolapsed uterus, which means that my cervix never really moved out of the way 100% (sorry folks).  Next thing I know, there are three sets of hands all up in my bidness, pulling and tugging and yanking, and then he was here!

And I heard nothing.  Not one yell, not one squea

k, not one yelp.  When they got him up on my chest he was blue.  Scary blue.  Too blue.  And he was just staring at me, wide eyed.  I kept yelling, why isn't he crying?!  Why isn't he crying?  Why is he so blue?!  As the nurse tries to convince me that he is fine, as she places an oxygen mask on his brand new little baby face.

They took him, and Cory went over to the baby nest with him, and then I heard it.  That glorious newborn baby yelp and I looked up and he was fine, just as pink as can be.

Here he is.  Mr. Owl.  8 lbs 7 ozs. (TINY!) 20 inches.  at 12:47 p.m.

So that's labor.  You know the rest.  Placenta, clean up, yada yada....

Cory and I go to bed that night with Mr. Owl. Everything is fine.  Until he spits up.  And then he spits up again.  And again.  Each time it is more and more, and I'm thinking, you know- he is spitting up more than he ate.  This is not right.  The doctor came to make rounds the next morning, just as she is discharging him, he vomits.  PROFUSELY. Twice. All over himself.  And it is this weird color and consistency.  Read- not ok.  So she calmly says to us that she is going to have to keep him for observation.  We say ok, no big deal right.  Until she wheels him into the NICU.

Cory and I packed for two nights in the hospital.  We packed going home out fits for everyone.   We packed his new blankie.  We were ready.  But how in the hell do you prepare for the NICU?

I will save you the details, plus I just don't want to recap them again. But it was terrible.  To see him in there like that, with wires and leads, in an incubator, with tubes down his throat and nose, and a huge I.V. in his teeny tiny little hands.  The nurses in the NICU were great.  One just held me like a gramma and let me bawl my eyes out on her shoulder.  Once he was off the I.V. and could eat again, they let me come in every two hours to breastfeed him and just actually hold him and touch him, which was hard because of all the stuff attached to him.  But man, I loved just getting to hold him and feed him and talk to him.

Thank God he is ok.  And now, in the grand scheme of things, and in comparison to some of the other families I met in the NICU, really it was nothing.  He is totally fine.  It was some sort of a G.I. obstruction.  Now?  He is eating, pooping, and peeing like a champ.  But I promised him there that I will try my damnedest to never again let anything hurt him like that.  Life lessons? Ok sometimes those sting a little.  But those are good.  But NICU pain? For me and for him? Never again.

Between that promise, and the fact that he is the youngest, I figure he's got it made.

xoxo,

J.Danger