The whole story

Here's the WHOLE story of our little guys entrance into the world. It's filled with peril over and over again like any good story:

I never go into labor. I've come to accept it and embrace it for what it is. I don't have my babies early, but I get to somewhat choose the date. With this guy I was determined to skip Halloween. I didn't want his birthday to be a choice between Halloween or celebrating him. I want him to have both. I was due November 2nd. They luckily scheduled me to be induced on November 1st. With Madelyn I was 10 days over (with no signs of her ever coming), Merrick was 4 days over and induced, Miley was born on her due date and had to be induced, and Michael was born the day before his due date by being induced. My babies just don't want to come out.

So, my Mom had come to town to watch my other kids. I spend all night on Halloween cleaning (we did trunk-or-treat the night before so the kids didn't miss out on Halloween). I had laundry to do, uniforms to gather, and food to make and organize. I wanted it to be as painless as possible for my Mom. At 4:30 I called the hospital as instructed and was further instructed to come in at 6:30. So I got ready and took a cat nap before leaving at 6:00.

The morning was fairly uneventful. Once again no movement with my body so it was going to be a long day. They hooked me up to my torturous penicillin IV and let me fester in pain, then came another bag immediately. Then they came and gave me another bag every 4 hours. I think I got between 5 and 6 bags of penicillin total. By the end I was in tears from the searing pain radiating through my arm (so much worse than giving birth). In the mean time they broke my water at about 8:45. Then the lab lost my blood so they redrew it to make sure I was good for an epidural. A few hours later they gave me the epidural. The lady said there was a little blood so she move the position of it. Then before she left she told me that it is normal to get a headache 2-5 days after delivery. Ok, I've never had an issue before. Little did I know that she must have known that I was going to be hit with the spinal headaches and she didn't do anything about it.

About 9 I started pushing. He was here 18 minutes later. He was a big boy at 8lbs, 14oz. He had the cord loosely around his neck - so no worries. But wait, he didn't start crying. He was pink and beautiful, but it took a minute for them to get him to cry. Then, they monitored his breathing and he was drawing in deep breaths (which I thought was good) and they thought he was having to work to hard to breath. So they cleaned him off, gave him to me for about a minute and a half and whisked my baby and husband to the NICU. I stayed in labor and delivery another 2 hours and was grateful to be fed (I hadn't eaten in about 27 hours). They gave me updates on the baby and told me how cute he was and that they thought he would be ok but that they wanted to monitor him and wait for blood test result before clearing him. Then I got to go up to my recovery room and I as I laid down to take a quick nap they called me and told me that he needed to eat. (This is when the headaches began.) After all, it had been over 4 hours since he had been born. Down to the NICU I went for another 2 hours while they drew his blood again (he was too dehydrated the first time). Finally the head nurse cleared him and said we could take him upstairs.

The next day my Mom and Merrick and Miley came up to see Michael. During one of the baby checks the nurse says he has a fever. So, they whisk him back to the NICU for more blood tests. Then they let me know that he may have gotten sick even though I got at least 5 doses of antibiotics before he was born (it had taken 13 hours for him to be born). Once the blood work came back positive we were good, or were we?

About 1am a nurse comes in with some equipment and lets us know that his blood work showed jaundice and that he had to be under the billy lights. This means that you can only hold them to feed them and then they have to be back under the lights with only a diaper on. How many new babies can go that long without being held? The nurses finally came to his aid and gave him some sugar water on a pacifier so that I could get a little sleep. Every time his pacifier would fall out he would scream and I would have to stand next to him holding it in his mouth. It was exhausting.

Next comes the news that he may have to stay and be admitted if his billy levels didn't come down. One big problem was that I was going to be kicked out that night. So, how was my baby supposed to nurse if I couldn't be with him. We live 30 minutes from the hospital so it isn't like I could pop over if he got hungry. I was really worried. But, the pediatrician came in and cleared him (even though his eyes were still really yellow). Oh did I mention that they drew his blood again. All in all he had blood taken 5 times in 2 days. I got to the point where I thought they were inventing things to be wrong with him. He was the healthiest sick baby ever.

Then we got to come home and my real pain began. Spinal headaches suck for anyone who is wondering. Any bump we would go over in the car on the way home made me feel like I wanted to die. My spine hurt from the bottom of it up into my neck and my entire head hurt any time I moved an inch. I called the doctors office and they told me on Friday that I should go to the ER and have a blood patch put in where the epidural was. I didn't want to go back especially since I have a nursing baby. I toughed it out and they finally got better on Sunday. 4 weeks later I was still having daily headaches, but the spine didn't hurt any more. Crazy what we do for our babies - I'd do it all again.