Lily's birth story: Part 2

Lily's birth story: Part 2

Once lily was born she immediately went to the warming bed, where she spent about 20 minutes. In a normal situation, they place baby directly onto the mothers chest for skin to skin bonding called "the golden hour". Unfortunately due to complications we never got our bonding time.

In NICU right after birth

Firstly, Lily swallowed a lot of meconium and amniotic fluid at birth, which was causing some breathing issues.

During this time they stitched up my 2nd degree tear and gave me several shots to stop my slight hemorrhaging. I passed the placenta fairly quickly, and they proceeded the uncomfortable massaging of my belly to help pass some blood clots.  After some time passed they let me hold Lily for about a minute before taking her to the NICU, which Kyle was allowed to follow her to. I was in kind of a daze for all of this and it took some time to process everything.


Kyle comes back and tells me that she needs to be on oxygen for the time being and that someone from the NICU will be coming to speak with us soon.

The nurse practitioner comes and says they heard a heart murmur, and she requires further tests to make sure she doesn't have a serious heart complication. She is also something called CUMS positive, which is where my  O positive blood was attacking her B negative blood. This means that when my blood cells die in her body, they can cause biliruben, which can cause jaundice. For about 1 agonizing hour we have to wait to find out if Lily has a serious problem or not.

She comes back and tells us it is nothing serious, though it is something strange. Her heart is perfectly healthy, but is on the right side instead and the left. This is great and weird news. So one thing down, 2 others to go. It takes her half a day and she is able to breath without any support. At this point she is still hooked up to several wires and machines, including a feeding tube that she continually pulls out, and 2 separate sets of UV lights. She is still being monitored, so I am not able to attempt breast feeding yet, though we get to hold her now that her oxygen levels are OK.

First bonding time with baby

I have a lactation consultant come and she brings a medical grade double pump so i can start trying to get my supply to come in. Late that night they inform us that I can start attempting breast feeding. We have mixed results, and I am only making colostrum at this point. Normally this would be fine, but they need to pump her with extra fluids to help the jaundice, so my colostrum is not enough on its own. We have a fabulous NICU nurse, Kelly, who is very helpful and supportive.  From about 10 PM on we wake up every 3 hours, walk to the NICU so I can attempt to breastfeed, then pump for 15 minutes after that. The next day, Sunday, they tell me that as soon as I can feed Lily enough to meet the jaundice needs she will be able to come to our room. I have a rather unhelpful daytime NICU nurse who basically says I can't breastfeed with my "flat nipples" and need to use a nipple shield,  something Lily is not really able to nurse with as we discovered the night before. Finally we get to meet with the NICU lactation consultant who is quickly able to get lily latched like a pro without nipple shields or any other devices. Take that, flat nipple nurse!


 We soon discover that the nurses have no decision making power, and often don't know the answers to our questions on how and when baby gets out. This would be fine if they admitted this. Instead they offer vague answers that lean on the cautious and pessimistic side. The NICU doctor is the only one who makes decisions, and they are only there once a day to do rounds and decide things. If we want to talk to them directly we often have to get lucky enough to stop by the NICU when they are there. Pretty frustrating stuff. 

Another day and night go by with baby in NICU. The next day Lily is finally released to stay in our room with us, but we are not able to leave because they still want to monitor her feeding and bilirubin levels.

First outfit, a couple hours before she is released to our room

Finally in the room with us, yay!

 We agree to supplement with bottles until my milk is at a satisfactory level for the doctors. Finally the next morning they come to check baby's bilirubin levels at 4 AM, but we have to wait until 11 AM to get the results. The nurse says it is very slightly higher, and according to her, this could make us have to stay longer. We know at this point to not take the nurses opinions too seriously. She also chastises us for over feeding baby, though they had been pushing us to provide her enough food... Um what?

The doctor finally gets to us at about 1 PM. She says that Lily's jaundice is fine, but we will have to stay because they are not sure we can feed her enough, and they want to monitor her another day. Thanks to no sleep, hormones, and being genuinely upset, I burst into tears. The doctor says "oh you seem upset". Yes! We are upset! We show her the chart that we had been feeding her plenty, willing to supplement if need be, and that we had just been reprimanded for overfeeding, not underfeeding! Well doctor doesn't want us to be be unhappy, and says we can go home.

A 3 hour check out process later, we are in the car with our baby girl. We checked into the hospital at 3 pm Friday, December 27th and checked out 4 pm Tuesday Dec. 31st. 

Going home!

So a four day hospital stay in all. Might sound short, but it felt like an eternity! We know a lot of babies stay in NICU longer than lily did, but we were still unprepared for the heartbreak and exhaustion of the situation. It was one of the most physically and emotionally difficult experiences of both of our lives, and baby was kept longer than she needed to be. In the end she never actually had jaundice, just the possibility of it. We had several great nurses and several not so great nurses, and dealt with a lot of hospital red tape. We had a fabulous new years eve with our baby at home, and at the end of the day we have a healthy, thriving baby girl. And that's all that matters :).

Soon to Come: Lily's 1 month update!