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Nicholas Adric was born at 8:11 p.m. on December 24. I was in labor for 15 hours, and it all went well. During pushing my midwife got into a sort of "emergency mode" that wasn't helpful to me, and I never quite hit my stride and felt competent at pushing the way I did at the earlier labor, but my partner was fabulously positive and excited and encouraging and helped me through it.
I had an episiotomy, which I'm totally convinced was the right decision: He was born in one more contraction after that, and I didn't have any additional tearing, and it is healing well.
Nicholas inhaled meconium, so he was whisked away for suctioning; I saw him emerge in the mirror, and then he was GONE. That was very hard on me.
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He was taken for observation for 2 hours and was very sleepy when he finally came back, but later that night we caught up on our bonding. We had 2 nights and a day together in a postpartum room with nice nurses (didn't say a word about co-sleeping) and pretty good food.
Then he developed severe jaundice and had to be treated with UV lights and immunoglobulin. The best place for them to do this was in the neonatal ICU. We knew we were so much luckier than most of the families there, but it was still very stressful being able to hold him only 20 minutes every 3 hours and see that he was miserable the rest of the time.
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After 29 hours he switched to having just one, flexible, fiberoptic light in the back of his clothes, and we can use that at home. It's still annoying but a big improvement. And he's getting better and is healthy in every other way.
Happy new year, everybody!!!
I had an episiotomy, which I'm totally convinced was the right decision: He was born in one more contraction after that, and I didn't have any additional tearing, and it is healing well.
Nicholas inhaled meconium, so he was whisked away for suctioning; I saw him emerge in the mirror, and then he was GONE. That was very hard on me.
Then he developed severe jaundice and had to be treated with UV lights and immunoglobulin. The best place for them to do this was in the neonatal ICU. We knew we were so much luckier than most of the families there, but it was still very stressful being able to hold him only 20 minutes every 3 hours and see that he was miserable the rest of the time.
Happy new year, everybody!!!
