Yeah Doctors!

So we had our first pediatric appointment today with our pediatrician this AM and it went well. We were initially concerned as the doctors at the hospital were SO concerned about the bilirubin and whatnot. The pediatrician was very calm, collected, and knowledgeable and told us that our bilirubin levels were totally normal and safe. He pointed out that he is above weight (good thing) by 5 ounces and he looked great. Doctor said “your baby is perfect”. Which of course we already knew, but you know… 😉 But overall it was just nicer to have a doctor that was very upbeat, positive, and ran along the same lines that we did. Phew. Rebecca was very relieved.

The car ride with Mason was fine, he seems to be fine riding in the car. Odd thing, both the passenger side rear seats in both cars have SOME issue with them, so the baby has to ride behind the driver. Which is usually me. Which means that I have to ride all forward and what not. It sucks. I need to get those things fixed. Soon.

WE ARE HOME

well mason’s bilirubin finally got low enough and we were allowed to leave (13.1 for those that are in the know). We just got home about 1 hour ago. His first ride in the Audi was good, although it is really hard to drive slow and it MAY not have been the best time to be driving in the rain with temps in the 40s and race tires and race pads on, but all went fine.

On the way home we stopped at taco bell. Mason didn’t get anything, but that is because he didn’t know the menu and he couldn’t make up his mind quick enough. You snooze you lose. Rebecca and I got dinner.

BIG thanks to the mom’s who I know worked hard to clean the house for us, it looks great. Everything is neat and clean. And Gail bought food and many other little do dads that look great.

Today was a long day of anxious waiting, but we are all home, all are well, and now it is time to actually pretend to be normal, get used to life with the baby (as best we can for now). Rebecca is still sore from the delivery and her stitches, so I am playing run around the house guy for a bit. I gotta figure out when I am going back to work.

The waiting game…

So the official word is that his Strep B culture came back negative, so he is fine there. The only still out standing is his level of bilirubin. There is a sliding scale I guess that takes into account age in hours and bilirubin level and plots it on a percentile. We are in the 75th percentile. So currently Mason is sitting under a bili-lite and on top of a bili-blanket in an attempt to get the levels lower.

Basically, bilirubin is a yellow pigment released during the normal breakdown of red blood cells. It is carried in the blood until the liver grabs it and filters it out. The issue is that, in infants, there is more bilirubin in the blood stream than the liver can breakdown and thus the yellow pigment actually gets absorbed and the babies skin takes on a yellow color. The lights help break the bilirubin down and thus makes it easier for the liver to filter it out, I guess?

So the bilirubin levels are higher in breastfed babies, which Mason is. So they have him under the lights in an attempt to get his level down below 13. He was at 14 this AM… It is a bit confusing, since the levels on the chart go up as the baby gets older. So it is not an exact science really, or so it would seem based on the words of the pediatrician. So we are under the lights, waiting for the level to drop. So we wait some more. The light treatment runs for 6 hours and then they restest. The test takes about 1 hour to run. If it is higher than, I would imagine 13?, then we go under the lights for another 6 hours plus 1 hour test. So We leave at 4pm. Or we leave at 11pm. Or we leave at 6am tuesday. Or Or Or etc.

So we are eager to leave, and technically too high levels of bilirubin can eventually pass the barrier into the brain and hurt development, although I doubt that is likely, it really isn’t worth getting home 6 hours earlier for that. So we wait…

Good Morning!

While he has been opening his eyes more in the last 1/2 day, he has also been crying more and just more babylike. In the beginning, he just slept and slept and was actually quite quiet. Now he is doing normal 2 hour feedings and all that. He does spit up yellow junk alot, but if I am to understand these babies correctly, spitting up is to be expected?

He slept from 3am to about 8am without issue and he was pretty chill even at 8. He needed to be changed and he is feeding now, but even with that he wasn’t crying or anything. Every once in while he sneezes, which is actually kinda funny.

So hopefully today he will be more aware. Near the end of yesterday he was opening his eyes way more and looking around way more. He has begun actually looking AT you and it would appear he is actually focusing on you. I was holding him last night and I had a long curl hanging down and he kept looking at it. He did get annoyed when I has tickling his face with it though. Go figure.

1 day old…

So as I type this we are one day old, depending on the clock you chose to use (I would have thought they would all be better synced, but they aren’t). Whoohoo!

Overall today was very smooth and unexciting. All three of us slept ALOT and that made the day go by very quickly. Baby slept the most, so much so that it was hard to wake him enough to get some breastfeeding done. But as the day progressed, he was spending more and more time awake, and we are up to 30 minute feedings now.

The initial plan was to stay 24 hours and head home, but since Rebecca was strep b positive (AKA GBS, Group B Strep), they have decided that they want to keep us around to make sure the baby didn’t get infected. They drew some blood and they are gonna watch it for 48 hours to ensure he isn’t infected. That puts us set to leave around early monday afternoon. While annoying, it really isn’t too bad. It would be nice to be home, but all we are doing is sleeping and having visitors, so whatever. We haven’t worked out the details, but it appears we can stay in the room until monday as well (as opposed to discharging mom and keeping the baby).

The grandmas and aunt carmen were at the house this AM cleaning and setting stuff up, which was great (I assume, since I haven’t been home yet). Everyone came by to visit today at around 2pm (and Uncle Kevin brought me taco bell! score!). Kevin, Carmen, My parents, and Rebecca’s mom were all here checking out the baby. Kevin and Carmen each held the baby, it was cute. The baby still sleeps alot, but he should be keeping us all the time in no time!

Caroline was here too, but I honestly slept through it. We watched last week’s episode of the office on my laptop, and I am sure we will sleep well tonight again. Tomorrow we expect some more visitors.

So at the end of the first day of parenthood, we are all doing well.

the birth

so we were moving along, it seemed Rebecca’s pushing had become much more focused and we were beginning to make progress. But as time passed, we found ourselves not progressing and Rebecca was getting more and more tired. By around 8pm, Rebecca was very frustrated and was beginning to talk of going to the hospital, getting some pain meds, and delivering the baby. We discussed it with Jaren and Caroline and determined that the hospital wouldn’t give us pain meds but would most likely give her petosin and she would push the baby out, likely causing even more pain.

I got Rebecca into the pool and we chatted for a bit. I said since this was something we had decided on, the homebirth, that we should do our best to make it work. So we pushed and pushed and while it looked like we were improving, we lost each push because there wasn’t a contraction following to keep us progressing. We also continued to check the fetal heartrate and noticed it was dipping right after each push. Since we weren’t progressing, the heart rate was low, and Rebecca was extremely tired (by this time we had been working with regular contractions for roughly 31 hours, and we could see the head but not progress any further for the last 4 hours. We passed the cervix about 12 hours ago.) The decision was made to transport to the hospital. All of the options were laid out to us, and we chose the hospital due in large part to the low heart rate, indicating the baby was in some form of distress.

So we called 911 at 8:08pm and they sent a fire truck and an ambulance. I calmly explained the situation to the 911 dispatchers and we were taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital just off North and Western. Unlike movies and TV, the ERs in most hospitals is very slow. And it isn’t too often that an ambulance transports a woman in labor, so everyone knew we were coming. We got upstairs and Dr. Toks was there to deliver the baby. Rebecca was on a saline drip. She was moved to a bed with stirrups and the doctor started looking around. Since he could see the head, and the color was purple due to the swelling of labor, we wanted that baby out quickly. While he got the tools ready to do an episiotomy and had a vacuum ready to suck the baby out. But rebecca pushed the baby out and the Dr. pushed and prodded and the baby came out quite quickly.

At first I saw the head and I thought the baby was really tiny. Since we were a bit early (2-3 weeks) I worried. Until I saw the REST of the head come out, and it was clear that what we saw was only a portion of the head. It was kind of molded to meet the openning we were pushing it too, but that goes away super quick. The baby came out quickly once we passed the head and shoulders and we saw our new baby boy.

Immediately Dr. Toks clamped the cord and stopped him. I told him we didn’t want the cord clamped right away, we wanted the cord blood to pump into the baby. He looked at my very confused and said “Well, what do we do with him then?”. I politely but sternly told him to take the clamp off the umbilical cord and to hand the baby to Rebecca. Everyone in the room was aware that this was a homebirth that needed transport, so the support staff was actually very nice and accommodating. The doctors, however, were very concerned and confused. Almost bewildered, the doctor handed the baby to Rebecca and the support staff quickly wiped him down. It was actually really really cute. I wish I had brought my camera, as I had forgotten it in the hustle of the transport. Dr. Toks started talking immediately about liability and procedure but we ignored him. The pediatrician on the scene also talked about liability, etc. But I shot them both dirty looks and told them to hold on, and I was aware of the procedure. It was a very nice moment. After a little bit, most likely less than a minute, we let the Dr. cut the umbilical cord and they took the baby to the bassinet in the room.

We questioned everything they did to both Rebecca and the baby. We passed on the Hep B, we wiped off the eye goop pretty quickly. We questioned the stitches, as Rebecca tore. We were pleasantly surprised to find out the baby stays with us most of the time. We go him breast feeding pretty quickly. We got a couple shots (vitamin K, blood work, etc) but it was pretty smooth. The support staff was great and were very friendly, helpful, answered all our questions and odd requests. We got 4 vials of cord blood and the placenta. While they looked at us kinda oddly, they let us keep them.

Once the baby was back (vitamin k, food print on the birth certificate, etc) he was quite response and appeared to recognize our voices. His official weight was 8lbs 3.4 ounces and 21 inches. He was a 9.9 on the blah blah scale, which is good. Official time of birth was 8:38pm and we had only been in the hospital for like 20 min tops. I can stop him from crying with my voice. I got to wash him for the first time, and I admit while he is pretty fragile, he is also pretty resilient. Thankfully Caroline and the grandparents were all around to help us n00b parents out. He took the Rebecca’s chest quickly, and has fed a number of times without issue.

We got moved to our postnatel room and I had to get a cab to take the placenta and cord blood vials home, since there was no way for them to be stored there, which was fine. I did meet Daisy the woman at the security desk as we hung out as I waited for cabs that never came. She called me one, he drove by with no lights on (headlights/taillights) and never stopped. The 2nd guy never came. I got another cab company before the 3rd was suppose to show up.

So I finally got home, took a quick shower, grabbed clothes for myself and Rebecca and baby. I grabbed my laptop to write this. I took a shower and returned to the hospital. So tired, crashing out soon.EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

YEAH, I really did just type that as I fell asleep at hte keyboard… until tomoorrrrooowww….