our time spent in the NICU.

[originally posted on 2/12/15]

katie and I were in my room waiting for jon while he was in the nicu with prim. when he got back down, i asked him if he'd told his family the good and not so good news yet. he hadn't, so he left to tell them it was a girl!!! they were very happy and loved her name. they cried when jon told them she 

was up in the nicu and they all went up to see her. this was while i was calling my family and getting medicine for my insane headache. i think his parents went home from there. jon came back down to get katie so that she could go meet her!

She said that when she talked to Primmy, she'd turn to look and her and would stop fussing. me and my sisters are lucky we look alike because our kids immediately like us all, haha! she liked katie's voice probably both because it sounds like mine and because she heard it the whole week before she was born so she recognized it. 

while they were in the nicu, i was getting myself together. katie came down to let me know she saw prim and that it was time i went up there. she (bless her) stayed back to pack up all of our belongings so that we could move rooms while i was wheeled up to my little baby. i saw her for a short time and wasn't able to hold her yet. 

it was so sad to see her hooked up to all of these cords and wires. fortunately, i never saw her while she had her feeding tube. jon showed me videos and it broke my heart. i was, however, very grateful to see her so large and so pink! besides all of the cords she looked like a brand new healthy baby. we were only there for a few minutes before heading to the recovery room where we sent out texts letting our friends and family know she was born! the nurse in the recovery room was seasoned and very kind although it grossed me out to hear her go on about how i was in pain because it was as though a freight train slammed into my vagina the four hours i was pushing. nevertheless, she did the dirty work of helping me address the downstairs and get me set up with ice packs.

prim had a little feeding tube for the first few hours and told Jon and Katie i couldn't breastfeed until they were sure what was going on with her lungs. when we got up to the nicu at about 7:55pm, i realized jon hadn't even held her yet! here he is holding her for the very first time. she couldn't take her eyes off of him, she loved her daddy right away!

breastfeeding went pretty well from the get-go and although it felt a bit weird, i was so happy about it! i totally prepped for and researched breast-feeding my whole pregnancy and was so excited to do the best thing for my little baby and be able to bond with her. jon was very encouraging. i considered no medication birth, cosleeping, cloth diapering, etc. but breastfeeding was the main thing i was dedicated to and excited about.

here are John and Kathy holding their first grand baby. during the pregnancy they had a hard time expressing how excited they were for the baby's arrival but they immediately bonded with her.

i wanted to get jon a gift when the baby was born to welcome him into fatherhood and i wanted it to be something that could last forever. i got him this swedish axe that he's been wanting forever and engraved it in my beautiful handwriting! 

almost a full day went by before katie sheepishly asked if she could hold prim. worst sister award goes to me. i was so tired and overwhelmed that i didn't even realize she hadn't held her yet. here they are together for the first time! prim already loves her aunt katie, we are all so happy she was there through everything. 

ashton was at the hospital while i was giving birth but because everything took so long, she didn't get to see me or prim. her and aaron came the next day and got to hold her! they are such good friends and are expecting a little girl of their own in march. while ashton was holding prim, little aurora was kicking! 

it took less than a day for this nickname to be thought up. by uncle sam.

this is the day after Prim was born at about ten o'clock at night. they would have us come to the nicu every three hours to breastfeed prim. that meant i'd feed her and hold her for about an hour, go back to our room to eat and sleep for about an hour and then start waking up to get ready to go to the nicu again. the nicu nurses would call us about 15 minutes before they wanted us there to wake us up. i am not sure if that is normal protocol, but we are so grateful they did that!

november 17th, 5:50 am.

the weekend she was born was very cold. jon would push me to and from the nicu in a wheelchair because i wasn't able to walk very far yet which meant we always had to go together and jon couldn't ever sleep longer than i did. we were starting to get worn out. at some point this day i was with prim for longer than i should have been and by the time i got back to our room i was very late for my pain medicine. while jon was pushing me through the halls the cold air was blowing on my bare legs and when i got to the room i was shivering uncontrollably and it felt like pain was radiating from my lower back. the nurse didn't seem to care very much and just gave me my pain medicine. jon covered me with layers and layers of blankets, put his coat over me and put a heat pad under my body. at north central baptist they have a massage therapist who gives every new mom a 15 minute massage. she had come in the day before to set up a time to come in-she walked in right after i had given jon his ax. she stood by the door talking to me and eyeing the ax without saying anything. her timing wasn't great as she got to my room right when i was having what we later called a 'freeze out'. it killed me to have her pull the covers away to expose my bare back to the freezing air, but i allowed it since i really wanted that quick massage. she massaged for about ten minutes before my body stopped shaking uncontrollably and then continued to massage for another 20 minutes. she talked about how she was former military and took this job because she wanted to continue to help people. the military topic seemed to come up often while we were there because of my marine corps blanket; i didn't mind. i fell asleep after she left and when i woke up i was almost delirious and sweating profusely! in a panic jon took off all the blankets and tried to calm me down, my sweat was soaking the sheets. we tried to talk to the nurse about it, but again she didn't seem too concerned. i told jon and myself that the pain in my lower back was probably from the two epidurals, the back labor and the uncomfortable sleeping position i was in while i slept in the nicu on the couch visiting prim the night before. jon said the nurse thought it was hormone changes in the body.

meeting aunt kaitlyn for the first time!

we didn't take many visitors while we were in the hospital, just family and ashton and aaron. we were so tired from sleeping small increments and trying to spend time with primrose. we were so grateful to katie and jon's family for sitting in the nicu with prim so that she wasn't alone while jon and i ate and tried to sleep and recover.

at 3am on november 18th, they brought our sweet girl to our room. she was on and off oxygen through the weekend and did well enough that after two and a half days she got to be with us. the first couple nights jon and i sat awake looking at each other laughing (in my case trying not to laugh because it hurt too much) and wishing we were with prim. by the third night, we wanted prim with us so badly, but wondered why they would bring her to us so early in the morning. we were both so exhausted. life was better having her in our room, we got to sleep a bit more and breastfeeding was easier. morning after morning the nurses would ask me if my milk had come in yet. "do your breasts feel full?" morning after morning i would tell them no. 

when we woke up, we showered with prim's bed right outside the bathroom door. she slept through it and i knew right then and there that our child was a good sleeper.

my baby scratched herself on her left cheek sometime while in the nicu, i think it must have been from her IV contraption on her hand.

that morning, my dad flew in!!!! we were all so happy to have him here! he is so good with babies and couldn't wait to meet his fourth grandchild. 

on tuesday night, they told us we were able to take our baby home! by this time i had two more freeze outs followed by sweating to death. we called my OB and told her about it and she said it was probably just a reaction to pain. that seemed legit because my lower back hurt so bad and the shivers radiated from there. i started to become extremely fearful of getting cold.

katie, my dad and ashton were all there to help us pack our belongings into the car and dress prim in her going home outfit! her shirt was a gift from amanda, her pants were robbie's/casper's, her gloves from katie and her little booties a gift from ashton. this baby is so loved.
we packed a little blue onsie covered with monkey's and matching pants in case primrose was a boy.

our drive home was stressful and very slow. my dad and katie stopped at the grocery store on the way home and when jon and i got to the house, we were alone. we introduced the dogs to the baby. my FIL had brought home items from the hospital to let the dogs smell them, but forgot to let the kitty do the same. bandit would jump and get startled any time prim would move. i took her sock off to let him smell it and he fled the room.

although katie has nieces and nephews on her husbands side, this is her first on our side. it was the best thing to see her pick up her role as an aunt to her sisters baby. being an aunt is so different from being a mom, i loved watching katie with prim. (baby girl, as she calls her)

at about 8 o'clock we went next door to introduce the baby to her great grandparents! grandpa said she was sent straight from heaven and kept calling out to grandma in the other room "come look what i have!" 

the day before i had prim when we were out on our walk, we passed grandma's house and she came running outside to exclaim "you've dropped!" her guess was a girl, and she was right. when john and kathy went next door to tell them i'd had her, grandpa said "its a girl right? 21" long?" before they even said anything. crazy stuff, y'all. grandma would later tell me that when we came over with the baby, i startled her because i looked so sick.

7am our first morning with Pirm. neither of us remember the first night with her which is either a good sign or a bad one. we were excited to have her home, but life only got more complicated from there...

a baby is born.

[originally posted on 1/19/15]

Jon and I tried to keep track of the details of our baby's birth by taking time to write out what was happening. we actually each only wrote one time. this is Jon's account:

"On Nov 15, AJ woke me up and was having contractions. We woke up, and decided that they were very serious. So we got in the shower (because we smelled like campfire) and washed up for the hospital. Aj's contractions were getting more and more severe and were very painful. We got out of the shower and called the on call doctor. She was supposed to call us right back but my phone was on do not disturb mode so we didn't hear it! She called twice more that we missed and by the time we got ahold of her it was almost 0200. When we finally talked to her she told us to go to the hospital so we gathered a few loose ends and John, Kathy and Katie sent us on our way. 

The drive was slow, not another car on the road. Contractions were very bad and very close. We got to the hospital and parked and as we were walking in, AJ wasn't able to walk anymore and sat on the ground. Luckily someone was in their car outside the ER and they went in and got a nurse with a wheelchair. She brought us up to the second floor and we got checked in to triage. By this time the contractions were very bad and Aj's back was hurting very bad. In triage she was dilated to 3cm.

We got a room soon after and AJ really wanted the epidural. She got hooked up to an iv and soon after the anesthesiologist came in for the epidural. The first time she placed the catheter it was in a blood vessel so she had to do it again. Once she got it placed and the medication flowing I almost passed out. I was standing with my knees locked and supporting AJ and all of a sudden my vision started blurring and I had to step back and put my hands on my knees. By this time it was about 0415/0430. Everything since then has been uneventful. Current time 0501."

and mine:

"The epidural was the best thing ever. When she put in the first numbing shot, I was tingly all the way down to my legs. I told her I didn't want her to tell me anything she was doing, so we mostly talked about Jon's pram from Germany. The nurses loved/acted like they loved it. It was scary when Jon almost passed out, he was white as a ghost. He sat on the sofa and the nurse sat in front of me and rubbed my legs until the anesthesiologist was done. It made me very sleepy and jon and I both fell asleep until about 7. The new nurse came in and checked me at 8am. She said I am 6/7 cm dilated and the sack is bulging. The baby was also right there! She said she could have broken my water with her finger nails. She will send the doctor in around 9am to break my water and thinks it'll be about 2 hours after that when we have the baby. I am so excited!"

when the nurse came in to check me again she let me know that my water had broken on its own and that she saw meconium in it. because of that, they would have NICU nurses on hand when the baby arrived and i wouldn't be able to hold him or her right away. that made me pretty sad but i journeyed on. i didn't progress as fast as the nurse had thought that i would. Dr. arya came in and introduced herself as the doctor on call. we let her know that we had hoped our doctor, dr. simpson would be able to deliver our baby. she said she'd call dr. simpson and see if she'd be able to come in! we were so excited because we had felt a special bond with our doctor, she'd been so kind to us the whole pregnancy. 
i started to push around 11am. i decided to have only jon and i in the room when i delivered, it just seems so personal to me and i wanted to keep it the two of us. i'm really glad i did because the whole time i pushed the only people in the room were me, jon and one nurse. it was quiet and the three of us just chatted and went back and forth about whether the baby was a boy or a girl. the nurse, jessica, kept calling it a 'he' and told us she did that because she has two boys of her own. i didn't mind too much but secretly thought it was a girl. 
when i started pushing i noticed that every time i'd push, the ribs on my left side felt like they were breaking. i didn't know what the deal was but my nurse kept telling me it was normal although it didn't feel normal. i started to feel quiet a bit of pressure in the downstairs so they upped my epidural. that didn't seem to do anything so they brought the new anesthesiologist in. he checked my epidural and saw that the catheter had been bumped out of place so i wasn't getting the medicine-no wonder! he had to do the whole procedure over again aka i got a second epidural and afterwards i felt so much better. when i started pushing again the nurse noticed that the baby was facing my side instead of facing my bottom. she told us that not all doctors will turn babies but dr. arya is one that will. she came in and tried turning the baby's body. she said when she'd turn its head the baby would turn back. she tried a couple times and decided we would just continue to push and it would be fine. this is about the time they asked me if i wanted to have a mirror to see what was going on. i told them i didn't think i wanted to see but to bring the mirror in anyway. well when they brought it in i definitely wanted to see and i'm so glad i did! it was so motivating to see the top of that little baby's head. all we could see was a pale head with very little hair!! my whole pregnancy i had horrible heartburn so i was excited to see if the old wives tale of having bad heartburn meant your baby would have a lot of hair was true and it wasn't! around 3pm (i'd been pushing for about an hour with a 45 minute break for a new epidural and then for another hour and a half or so) my nurse said that she would call dr. simpson and she would come deliver our baby!!! this is when we really started to get excited. jon and i made our final guesses and agreed that we thought we were having a girl. i never felt like i was losing steam or getting to the point of not being able to push anymore. my biggest complaint was that i was very thirsty. all i could eat were ice chips and my nurse discouraged me from drinking any water (i think this is normal). when she wasn't looking, jon would tip my ice glass and let me drink the melted ice at the bottom of the glass. (*spoiler alert* this is when i started to become very dehydrated which would lead to major health problems, but we will get to that later) Jon was so sweet the whole time. I don't know how many times the man left the room to refill my cup and when he got back he'd pick out the biggest pieces to give me and say "this is a good one!"

(jon took this at noon, either right before or right after i got my second epidural)
by the time dr. simpson moseyed in i was very ready to get this baby out! she was chatting with one of the nurses and i remember interrupting them and saying "it feels like this baby is coming out!" dr. simpson is very laid back and never seems to be in much of a hurry. this was obvious during pregnancy when she would be very late to our appointments. all our appointments. that day was no different! she casually put on her gear and got in place. it took three pushes and her coaching me "come on girl, push push pushhhh!" to get that little baby's head out and in the same push the rest of the body! she pulled that baby out, held it up and i looked into jon's watery eyes when he said "it's a girl!" and the doctor and all the nurses yelled "girl!!" it was such a surreal experience, it doesn't even feel like it really happened. as the doctor was holding her in front of me i said "she's so tiny!" Dr. simpson said "she is not tiny! i can't believe she was in you, where was she hiding??" jon cut the cord and she handed our little girl to the nicu nurses and they all asked "does she have a name?" jon and i had been going back and forth on a middle name before i started to push. we were pretty settled on it so i replied "Primrose Teresa" and it sounded perfect. 

we were listening to the hunger games over the summer on our drive to carlsbad caverns. of course we didn't know what we were having, so we always bounced around boy and girl names. as we listened, we started discussing how great of a character prim is in the book. i asked jon if he'd consider primrose as a girl name and he very quickly said yes because he loves how kind and compassionate the character is. i looked it up and it was also, coincidentally, a texas wildflower. additionally, there is a little school here named the primrose academy that i would drive past every day to and from work. as i drove by i would daydream about a possible baby girl with the nickname 'Prim'. Teresa was my mom's middle name and everyone said she was very funny. compassionate with a sense of humor, hopefully our prim lives up to that:)

after the brief glimpse of my baby, they took her to get her cleaned up and weighed while i myself was cleaned up andddd stitched. i could hear muffled crying and things like "c'mon baby girl" along with suctioning sounds. they yelled out her weight, 8lbs 4oz and me, the doctor and the nurses all gasped in surprise-big healthy baby! i was definitely expecting a six pounder. i couldn't really see Prim from my bed, i could see jon looking at her smiling and the back of one of the nurses working on her. they had a big balloon that they were using to suction out her lungs, it turns out she had fluid in them as well as low blood oxygen levels. after awhile, probably twenty minutes, they finally swaddled her up and asked if i was ready for her. dr. simpson had finished with me and already left, so yes, i was ready to hold prim.

they handed her to me and told me that they were going to have to take her to the nicu. this was a weird moment because she was totally bundled up and i knew i only had a few short moments with her. i touched her cheeks and said to jon "they are so soft!" i started to cry and the nicu nurse was immediately at my side telling me that i didn't do anything wrong and not to be sad because there is nothing i could have done differently. i understood that, i wasn't beating myself up about it i just didn't want them to take my baby away before i even had a chance to be with her! 

we got a quick family photo, i kissed her and they were gone. jon and i barely had time to talk, all i could say to him was "please send katie in." he looked confused for some reason, but he left. when katie came in i told her what happened and she hugged me while we both cried. that was one of the scariest and saddest moments of my life, i am so grateful katie was there with me. she got my phone and on speaker i called my dad to tell him the good news. i had told my dad and my sisters our boy and girl first names, but no one knew the middle name. i told him her name and he got so happy. i could tell he was tearing up as he told me he loved the name. i called lizzie who was overjoyed. i later learned that she was walking in nyc and looked up at the empire state building as i told her we'd welcomed a baby girl. lastly, i called amanda who squealed incomprehensible words then said "that is the most beautiful name i have ever heard in my life!" it was so good to talk to them and hear their excitement, but at this point my head was pounding and my breathing was labored. i could barely keep up conversation because i was in so much pain, the epidural had worn off very quickly. the nurses gave me medicine for my headache and helped me to the bathroom. brittany nunley wrote very honestly about her birth story in this post which helped me SO MUCH throughout my healing process. when i went to the bathroom i was expecting a lottt of blood, so i was relieved to see a normal amount and kept thinking how grateful i was to her for preparing me. jon came back down to see me and i asked him if he'd told his family yet. he hadn't, so he left again to tell them it was a girl! her name was prim and she is in the nicu. by the time he got back, i had already gone to the bathroom and was ready to move rooms. katie packed up all our belongings and moved it to our recovery room while i was wheeled up to the nicu to see our baby.